Speaker: Gregory Stejskal, immediate Past President of our Club, retired in 2006 as Senior Resident Agent in the Ann Arbor office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He served in various capacities in the Bureau from 1975 to 2006. Among the highlights of his career was, from 1990 to 1995, leading a major effort targeting distributors of anabolic steroids that resulted in the successful prosecution of more than 70 individuals. He holds a J.D.cum laude (1974) and a B.S. in business (1971) from the University of Nebraska.
Theodore John Kaczynski graduated from Harvard in 1962 with a B.A. in mathematics. He earned M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1967) degrees in that field from the University of Michigan. His graduate work specialized in complex analysis, specifically geometric function theory; his doctoral thesis, Boundary Functions, won the Sumner B. Meyers Prize awarded fpr the best mathematics dissertation of the year. Allen Shields, his doctoral adviser, called it one of the best he had ever overseen. Kaczynski published two peer-reviewed articles related to it while still a graduate student and three more after leaving Michigan. In late 1967, he became the youngest assistant professor of mathematics in the history of the University of California (Berkeley). he resigned that position on June 30, 1969, without explanation.
Kaczynski received poor student evaluations during his time at Berkeley. His students reported that he seemed uncomfortable teaching, taught straight from the textbook, and refused to answer questions. This reclusive behavior was consistent with the anti-social tendencies that he had exhibited at Harvard. Following his freshman year living in the dormitories surrounding Harvard Yard proper, he lived at Eliot House for the remainder of his time at the University. Students at Eliot House live in multi-person suites rather than individual rooms to foster a sense pf belonging and community. However, one of Maczynski’s suitemates later recalled that he avoided contact with others and “would just rush through the suite, go into his room, and slam the door.”
In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin that he built outside Lincoln, Montana. He wanted to live “off the grid” as a recluse. In an effort to become self-sufficient, He taught himself such survival skills as game tracking, edible plant identification, organic farming, and bow drilling. He worked odd jobs to supplement his income and received some support from family members. However, upset by real estate development in the vicinity of his cabin, Kaczynski became convinced that it was impossible to live peacefully in communion with nature. He began performing acts of sabotage against those developments in 1975. Matters soon escalated. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski mailed or hand-delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs — 16 in all — that cumulatively killed three people and injured 23 others. All but the first few of these devices contained the initials “FC”, which Kaczynski later said stood for “Freedom Club,” inscribed on parts inside them. He purposely left misleading clues in the devices and took extreme care in preparing them to avoid leaving fingerprints.
The effort to identify and apprehend the bomber was the longest and most expensive investigation in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s history. Before Kaczynski’s identity was unmasked, the Bureau used the acronym UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) to refer to the case, which resulted in the media nick-naming him Kaczyski the “Unabomber.” Our speaker will tell us about how Kaczynski initially was identified by agents working out of the Bureau’s Ann Arbor office.
