The Unabomber, who has railed against technology in his deadly campaign, so far has managed to outwit the most sophisticated crime-fighting equipment in the world.
The 120-member Unabomber Task Force has used cutting-edge computers to conduct hundreds of scientific tests on each piece of evidence gathered since the terrorist’s mail-bomb spree began 17 years ago.
Yet even the smartest computers are hobbled by the quality of the data that can be entered into them. And crime lab results can be muddied by the crude and ambiguous nature of the material being examined.
As a result, investigators acknowledge they have yet to cull a single fingerprint, DNA sequence, hair or clothing fiber that would lead them to the careful and meticulous killer.
“You name it and it was done,” said Christopher Ronay, a former FBI crime lab expert who conducted tests on Unabomber bomb debris from 1979 to 1994. “We have mountains and mountains of test results, but that hasn’t led to a viable suspect.”
Ronay and other investigators say the Unabomber fashions his explosive devices from wood, metal, paper, batteries and wires from either recycled items or those purchased at large retail chains. That has made it impossible for investigators to trace the origin of the material.
Law enforcement officials also are poring through a mountain of information, including forensic data, interviews with potential suspects and lists of students and faculty from a dozen universities and high schools that the Unabomber may have attended. It all has been entered into the FBI’s super-intelligent Rapid Start computer system.
Rapid Start can collect, organize and prioritize vast amounts of information. But it can’t fill in gaps in the data, which are numerous.
“We give the computer a name, possibly a city, and other information, and it spits back a whole bunch of possibilities,” said one federal investigator. “But that’s all it is . . . a bunch of possibilities.”
In the end, most federal law enforcement officials say that if the Unabomber is eventually identified and caught, it will be through a combination of science, luck and good old-fashioned investigative work.
“We will use every club in our bag,” said George Grotz, spokesman for the task force. The computer “is central in assisting us in organizing our work. . . . But we believe that we need the help of the public. Ninety-five percent of our investigations are solved as a result of interviews.”
Federal investigators have long used computers and other high-tech gear to boost their crime-fighting ability. But the trend has accelerated in the past decade with the rapid advancement in computer and other technology.
Howard Matthews, a retired U.S. Postal Service inspector who worked on the Unabomber case from 1980 to 1990, said that, during his first year, investigators began using old mainframe computers to compare student and faculty lists from five schools: Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Utah, Brigham Young University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Matthews said countless computer runs were completed to try to find students who attended more than one of the universities and moved from the Chicago area to Utah to northern California, where investigators suspect the Unabomber now lives.
“We just threw in different types of information to see if we could match anything up,” said Matthews.
The student lists were constantly updated and other information added to the computers, including driver’s license records, telephone directories, vehicle registration records and information concerning the purchase of explosives and firearms.
When a Unabomber device killed a computer salesman in Sacramento, Calif., in December 1985, federal investigators fattened the database with every hotel, motel, airline and rental car reservation in the Sacramento area. The names were then matched against student lists and other names already entered, according to one Sacramento investigator. Nothing clicked.
The Rapid Start computer software, developed in 1992, allows investigators to compare quickly millions of bits of information. It also allows investigators to prioritize leads–something that’s crucial in a massive, nationwide investigation.
Since June, more than 20,000 tips have been phoned or e-mailed to the San Francisco-based task force, Grotz said. After a lead is checked out by investigators, the Rapid Start database is updated.
“It is the only manageable way to accumulate, evaluate and analyze the volumes of information,” said Larry Collins, Chicago FBI chief, referring to Rapid Start, which is being used in investigations ranging from last April 19’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building to the Oct. 9 derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in Arizona.
There are 30 computer experts assigned to the task force, including five specialists in Chicago. Working out of a tiny office on the eighth floor of the Dirksen Federal Building, the local experts–along with 18 federal agents–man nine computer terminals and four lap-top computers.
The room is decorated with the now familiar composite sketch of the Unabomber–wearing teardrop sunglasses and a gray, hooded sweatshirt–along with color photographs of several Unabomber crime scenes.
“Every piece of information is put in it, and all sorts of readings and summations are provided,” said a senior FBI official, referring to Rapid Start. “It even gives a summary of pertinent information at the end of each day of the investigation.”
Still, investigators complain that the vast amount of information put into the computer remains too broad and is often incomplete. The result, they say, is one investigative dead end after another.
In the past four months, FBI officials have been gathering library circulation records from Northwestern, UIC, BYU and U.C.-Berkeley, focusing on four books the Unabomber cited in a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto.
Hoping the Unabomber checked out those books, FBI officials have entered information about their use into Rapid Start and matched the names against tens of thousands of others already in FBI and other databases.
The computer runs have generated “a significant number of hits,” said one investigator. Investigators are now prioritizing and tracking down the most promising leads.
But they doubt the library computer search will provide a key break, partly because it has been difficult to come up with a comprehensive list of people who checked out the books nearly 20 years ago. Not only was record-keeping of the main campus libraries incomplete back then, but different campus departments had their own libraries that stocked some of the books. And the record-keeping practices at those smaller libraries also were spotty.
“Many of the circulation (departments) weren’t yet computerized, which pretty much resulted in records being long gone,” said the investigator.
