The Scariest Criminal in America

It is five minutes before noon on December 11, 1985. Hugh Scrutton, 38 years old and single, opens the back door of his computer rental store in Sacramento and steps out into a bright day, where his death waits just a few feet away m a crumpled paper bag. Sunlight glints off the chrome of cars and pickups parked in the big asphalt lot that opens to the west. A 15-mile-per-hour wind blows south off the eastern hip of California's Coastal Range and rattles the bag. Scrutton steps past it, then turns.

There are two Dumpsters right by the door, he thinks. Why do people do this? Jesus, just drop the damn thing in.

Scrutton bends down and reaches for the bag with his right hand. There is no time to consider what happens next. There is a flash, a huge orange and white blast. The world is on fire. Scrutton is deafened by the explosion. He looks to his right hand. It is a mangled knot of tissue and bone dangling by a tether of skin and fat.

He reels on legs shaking in a pool of the blood that streams from his chest. He faces two of his employees now standing in the open doorway.

"Oh, my God! Help me."

Scrutton takes two faltering steps before his left foot slides in the blood and he topples backward to the asphalt. The detonation has rocketed a piece of metal pipe straight up into Scrutton's chest. The shrapnel now resting on his liver is the size of a credit card. There is a scorched hole just above his right nipple big enough to put your hand into. Hugh Scrutton bleeds out his life with his eyes wide to the high blue sky.

Sacramento County homicide detective Bob Bell got the call from his supervisor, Lieutenant Ray Biondi, shortly after noon.

They met in the parking lot behind Scrutton's store, which was marked by a sign reading RenTech Computer Rental. The rear entrances to other businesses in the L-shaped mall also had Signs--Superb Salads, The Software Center, IMS/Hasler--and metal doors with cement stoops that went down to ground level. There were a handful of vehicles parked behind RenTech, including Scrutton's yellow Karmann-Ghia. Bell had another homicide investigator take down all the license numbers, then turned back to the scene.

Two large, congealing puddles pooled around Scrutton's body. Bell let his eyes travel outward from the blast point. Wood splinters, battery components, wire and metal fragments littered the area. The gray metal door of RenTech and a blue BFI Dumpster were splattered with blood. On a nearby drainpipe, the spatters extended to a height of ten feet. The door and walls were gouged by debris from the explosion. A piece of shrapnel had torn a large hole through the wall to the right of the door.

"We were figuring that Scrutton had something in his past," Bell recalls almost nine years later. "This guy had an enemy somewhere. With a bombing it is usually one of three things: politics, money or passion. It is unusual to have a bombing murder. It got even more unusual when these dark blue suits showed up at the crime scene. All of a sudden, better-dressed law enforcement was there. The feds. FBI.

"They didn't inform us of what we were dealing with. We found out the next day. Our arson-and-bomb guy, Sergeant Ron Howell, was examining all the bits and pieces, laying them all out, photographing and tagging the evidence. He called his FBI counterpart in San Francisco, who asked Ron: 'Does this have any initials on it?' And Ron said, 'Yep. FC.' That's when we learned this was Unabom."

Unabom is an acronym, the kind federal law enforcement is so fond of attaching to its major cases. It stands for University Airline Bombings. FC is the signature the bomber (or bombers) engraves, punches or cuts into the metal pieces of his devices. It's hard to figure out what it means. It could be Fuck Computers, Fear Computers, Fight Control, Free Condoms. Pick a card, any card.

Unabom is an exclusive club with an expanding membership. The victims number 24, including Hugh Scrutton. Hundreds of law enforcement agents at local, state and federal levels have worked the case. As Unabom enters its 17th year it remains a huge, terrifying and costly mystery, ranking alongside such grisly unsolved cases as the Green River killings and the Zodiac murders. It's not likely that the killing and maiming will stop until FC is caught or dies.

A $1 million reward was offered by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, the Postal Service and anonymous private sources. The only equivalent or larger awards were for Panama's Manuel Noriega (President Bush offered $1 million) and the World Trade Center and Pam Am flight 103 bombers ($2 million). Despite the temptation of this cash haul, despite hundreds of thousands of investigative hours, despite the federal government's resources, 5000 leads, 200 suspects and two eyewitnesses, the case has not been solved. The Unabom investigators are no closer to this phantom bomber than they were when he began his bombings.

Headquarters of the Unabom task force are on the 12th floor of the Federal Building in San Francisco. A display in the reception area recounts another unsolved FBI case--the only escape from Alcatraz, made by three patient, imaginative and daring inmates in the late Forties.

This multiagency team is composed of personnel from ATF and Postal, as well as the bureau, which heads the task force of 30 full-time investigators who work in small offices at the southwest corner of the floor.

Postal Inspector Tony Muljat has been on the Unabom case nine years, longer than (continued on page 128)Scariest Criminal(continued from page 122) anyone else on the task force. Muljat is the physical embodiment of the classic detective: a middle-aged guy with thick white hair, an engaging manner and eyes that look as if they've seen it all. He wears polished, tasseled loafers, a blue blazer and gray slacks.

"The clearance of cases in mail bombings is easily 90 percent," Muljat says. "But in this case we don't know the reason or the motive. It's all speculative. The possible motives have included--"

Muljat begins ticking suspects off on his large fingers, one by one.

"Is it a professor from a college or university? Is it a graduate student who applied for a position with the university and never received it? Did he have a problem with an airline company?

"Right now I think he's trying to play a game with law enforcement. He's certainly been fortunate not to have been found out. I don't think he's sharing with anybody. If he were I think the million-dollar reward would spark some interest. And obviously that's not the case."

Muljat flips his hands open as if he were tossing confetti. "Hell, he's calling all the shots. He knows it, and that makes it that much more difficult. He's improved with age. I've never heard of somebody like this before."

The Unabom case is unique in U.S. criminal history. No serial bomber has operated for so long without an apparent motive. The only comparable case is that of George Metesky, a 54-year-old New Yorker who terrorized that city during the Fifties. Metesky's bombs exploded in Grand Central Station, Radio City Music Hall, Macy's and a few other places. But no one was killed by the mild-mannered Metesky, a bachelor who lived with his elder sisters. Metesky explained his reasons for the bombings in a letter: He blamed a utility company for causing his tuberculosis. Police checked employment records at Consolidated Edison and discovered that Metesky had been knocked down by an escape of hot gas in 1931 and had been denied a disability claim. Eventually he was arrested and confessed to the crimes.

FC is much more mysterious, ingenious and deadly than George Metesky. According to serial murder experts, he is one of a kind.

It began on May 25, 1978, when a University of Illinois campus police-man found a parcel in the Engineering Department's parking lot on the Chicago Circle campus. The package, wrapped in brown paper, was addressed to E.J. Smith, an electrical engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. The cop noted the sender's name and address--Buckley Crisp, Northwestern University Technological Institute--and forwarded the package to Northwestern University in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. Upon receiving it, Crisp was baffled. He gave the parcel to Northwestern's police department, where an officer attempted to open the package. It went off. The cop suffered minor injuries.

Chicago police later discovered the bomb to be a crude device that used match heads as an explosive. They dismissed it as a nasty prank by a student.

A year later there were two more bombings. On May 9, 1979 an engineering student at Northwestern University's Technological Institute noticed what appeared to be some kind of testing device leaning against a wall outside a classroom. When he picked it up, it exploded. The student escaped with slight injuries.

On November 15 American Airlines flight 444, en route from Chicago to Washington, D.C., made an emergency landing after a device went off in the cargo compartment that contained the mail. Instead of exploding, it merely burned. Twelve passengers were treated for smoke inhalation. The device carried a Chicago postmark. Evidence from the ATF and FBI labs indicated that both bombs were made by the person who constructed the 1978 bomb. Given the materials used in their construction--odds and ends of pipe, metal and wood--ATF dubbed its perpetrator the Junkyard Bomber.

Seven months passed. On a hot summer afternoon in Lake Forest, Illinois, Percy Wood, president of United Airlines, went to collect his mail from the box at the end of the drive. Among the letters was a small package with a Chicago postmark.

Inside the package was a typed letter atop a new novel. Its blue cover was illustrated with a trawler passing in front of an iceberg. Once inside his house, Wood, who had just celebrated his 60th birthday, glanced at the letter. "I am sending you this book. I think you will find it of great social significance."

He put the novel on his desk and flipped open the cover. The main force of the blast went straight up, ripping apart Wood's left hand. The bomb had been placed in a hollowed-out rectangle cut into the pages of the book. While bagging the evidence from the crime scene, federal agents found the end cap to the pipe itself. On it, two letters were clearly etched: FC.

The Wood incident was a display of the bomber's cunning. The method of delivery--a polite letter enjoining Wood to read the enclosed book--demonstrated a chilling sense of humor, a penchant for mystery. It also showed the lengths to which FC would go to ensure that his bombs would be triggered. And it made it clear that FC's targets were people. But why Wood?

After investigators had eliminated those who had personal or business relations with Wood, suspicion fell on disgruntled former employees, angered passengers or anyone who had a gripe with United Airlines--or with any other airline.

But other possibilities would later emerge. Aside from the obvious connection between the bomb on American Airlines flight 444 and his position with United, Wood's background suggested links to other FC bombings. Wood was an engineer--as was the target of the first bomb. He attended Stanford and received an engineering degree from the Boeing School of Aeronautics. FC would later mail one of his devices to a division of Boeing.

More than a year passed before FC was heard from again. This time he had relocated to Salt Lake City. On October 8, 1981 a maintenance man spotted a strange box in the hallway of the University of Utah's business administration building. Because a rash of bombings had recently occurred in the Salt Lake City area, the worker notified police. Upon rendering the bomb safe, investigators discovered the initials FC.

The next device was mailed from Provo, Utah. It arrived in the office of Patrick Fischer, a computer science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The package had been forwarded from Pennsylvania State University, where Fischer had taught two years earlier. Fischer's secretary, Janet Smith, unwrapped the paper to find a wooden box. When she opened it, she was thrown back from her desk by the explosion. Among the blast debris: the initials FC.

On July 2, 1982 Dr. Diogenes Angelakos, an engineering professor at the University of California, saw what appeared to be a student project--a (continued on page 146)Scariest Criminal(continued from page 128) metal cylinder studded with gauges and dials--resting against the wall of the coffee-break room in Cory Hall. Dr. Angelakos lifted the apparatus and it tore apart his hand and arm. When he was finally released from the hospital he was no longer able to perform simple functions--cooking, cleaning, changing the bed linen for his ying wife. FC, meanwhile, had left a tantalizing clue, a scorched scrap of paper that read: "Wu--It works! I told you it would. R.V."

On May 16, 1985 a wooden box arrived at the Boeing plant in Auburn, Washington. It was addressed to the Fabrication Division. Postmark: May 8, Oakland, California. It was shunted around the plant for several weeks before it finally came to rest on a shelf. It remained there until a workman took it down and tried to open it. The workman pried open one corner and didn't like what he saw inside. The bomb squad arrived, rendered the device safe and found the initials. The batteries in the bomb had weakened during the month it had sat on the shelf. FC had been thwarted by industrial inefficiency. It was only the second time one of his bombs had failed to explode.

Patrick Webb, a 20-year-veteran FBI bomb specialist, heads the Bureau's Counterterrorism Squad in San Francisco, where he has been based since 1974. He has investigated more than 100 bombing crime scenes and staged another 200 at training schools over the past two decades.

"You have to be careful with FC's devices," Webb says. "The mail bombs are pretty secure. But with the placed devices, he has to arm them and make them live. So there's some risk in carrying these things and placing them so that they will function. You have to be paranoid and cautious to do this. I wouldn't want to carry them around with the batteries hooked up. You would have a hard time making it up those stairs in Berkeley with a live bomb. Your balls would have to be big. It's a dangerous game."

Webb believes the bomber has experimented over the years, perhaps reading publications that cater to survivalists, neofascists and assorted Weather Underground wanna-bes. His reading list might have included The Poor Man's James Bond (volumes I-II), The Anarchist Cookbook and Improvised Munitions Black Book.

"He may select features out of these publications. He takes a little from menu A and a little from menu B. He puts them together and has his device.

"But the creative part was making it look so innocent. I'm thinking here of Hauser. The notebook...."

May 15, 1985. Seven days after the Boeing device was mailed from Oakland, John Hauser, a graduate student at UC--Berkeley, walked into Cory Hall. At that time, Hauser was a captain in the Air Force and had been invited to apply for a slot as a NASA astronaut. He describes what it's like to open a bomb:

"I was working in a research lab on the second floor of Cory Hall," recalls Hauser from his home in Boulder, where he is an engineering professor at the University of Colorado. "The room was maybe ten feet across, 20 feet long. There were a few tables with computers on them.

"A friend of mine came in and we were talking. It was around lunchtime. After he left I saw a little plastic box on the table behind me. There was a three-ring notebook sitting on top of it."

The research laboratory was reserved for graduate students. No more than ten students would normally have access to the room.

"So I thought, Is this Joe's or is it Mike's?" Hauser continues. "I lifted the notebook and noticed that it had a rubber band around it, attaching it to the handle of this plastic box. I noticed the paper looked for the most part blank and that the latch on the box was sort of undone."

Hauser is remarkably composed as he recalls the moment that shattered his life. "I went to open the box with my right hand. At that point something detonated the bomb.

"The explosion threw my arm back 90 degrees," says Hauser. "My first thought was: Why did they do that? It was such a shock. I grabbed my arm. Looking around, I could see some of the batteries on the floor. Things were really torn up. I stayed up on my feet. The blast made the heavy steel table look like a washbasin."

Hauser recalls the sensations that passed through him at that moment. "It felt like all the nerves in my right arm were on fire. You know how your arm feels when you bang your elbow on something? Take that and put it in every nerve of your arm."

Today Hauser's fingers, what's left of them, are almost totally absent sensation. The thumb is useless. A three-by-two-inch portion of his right arm is missing. "They removed one piece of metal that was two inches long and a quarter of an inch wide, a piece of the pipe that had drilled its way down to my elbow.

"I wore my Air Force Academy ring on my right hand." Hauser holds up his partial digit. "The bomb shot that plus my finger into a plaster wall with such force that it made an imprint. On the wall you could see the curvature of the stone and actually discern the word Academy."

There was nothing personal to this one. It was a site-specific bomb that was left for whoever became too curious. Hauser was just unlucky. But FC knew it had to be somebody in the graduate school of engineering. Seven of his bombs were mailed to specific persons and seven were left at specific sites. He didn't pick these individuals and places out of a hat. One fact is clear: FC does not care if his victims are maimed, blinded or killed.

Dr. James McConnell should know. McConnell was the author of a standard college psychology text, a specialist in biochemistry and behavior modification and a professor at the University of Michigan. On November 15, 1985, six months to the day after Hauser was ripped apart, Dr. McConnell was at his home in Ann Arbor with a graduate assistant. The two men were going through the day's mail. One large manila envelope with a Salt Lake City postmark came with a cover letter requesting that McConnell please review "this thesis, which should be of interest." After reading the letter, McConnell's assistant opened the envelope. The blast injured both his arms and his abdomen. McConnell was not injured.

Twenty-six days later, Hugh Scrutton stepped out of his store in Sacramento and picked up the fatal paper bag.

FC was quiet for a year after Scrutton's murder. He appeared in Salt Lake City in February 1987 at the rear of Caams, Inc., another computer store in yet another strip mall.

He apparently walked up to the back entrance of Caams, Inc. holding the device--two two-by-fours glued together and studded with bent nails. It looked like a piece of construction trash. FC set it down carefully in the parking space right behind the Caams door. When he straightened he was looking right into the eyes of a woman on the other side of a window. She sat at her desk and stared at him. FC then turned and walked away without the slightest trace of nervousness. The woman didn't think about the encounter until the bomb went off 45 minutes later when the owner of Caams kicked the armed debris out of his parking spot. The blast injured his foot and calf.

After learning of the incident, federal investigators arrived and interviewed the woman. She described a white male, 25 to 30 years old, nearly six feet tall with blond or sun-bleached hair and a ruddy complexion. He had a thin mustache and wore a hooded jacket and tinted glasses. He appeared calm, even after she made eye contact with him.

Almost immediately after the explosion and interview, a sketch of FC was broadcast. Car rental outlets and motels throughout the Salt Lake area were checked, and police were placed on alert. But no one turned up anything. It was as if FC had disappeared.

Six years went by with no word or bomb from FC. A few agents believed it was only a matter of time before he resurfaced; most speculated that their bomber was either dead, out of the country, in prison on an unrelated charge or in a mental institution.

For the FBI and the ATF 1993 was a hellish year. It began with the Branch Davidian siege in February and moved on to the World Trade Center bombing. Unabom was a low priority--until June.

On Tuesday, June 22, 1993, Dr. Charles Epstein, a world-renowned geneticist and professor at the University of California--San Francisco, pulled the strip tab on a padded mailer while he was seated at his kitchen table. It was a violent explosion. Neighbors heard it. Epstein recalls a flash and a bang. The blast threw him back three feet against the wall. Several of the fingers of his right hand were torn off, and his right arm was broken.

FBI Special Agent Webb was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on his way to his daughter's recital when he got the call. "I got to Epstein's probably a half hour after it went off. Five in the afternoon. It had blown out the windows in the kitchen and tipped over a table that was six feet across and three inches thick. Just rolled it right over. Blood all over the place. Epstein was able to get out to the street, where a carpet cleaning crew was packing to go. They wrapped his wounds in towels and then called the paramedics.

"He also suffered penetration through his abdomen and a loss of hearing. He used to play the cello very well, I was told. That's over."

On Thursday, June 24, Dr. David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale and the author of a computer language called LINDA, opened a similar package in his New Haven office. After it exploded Dr. Gelernter stumbled from his office, down the stairs and into the street. He staggered to the university clinic a block away, blood gushing from his chest and right arm.

That same day The New York Times received a letter that read, in part: "We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC. A newsworthy event will happen about the time you receive this letter. Ask the FBI about FC. They have heard of us. We will give information about our goals at some future time."

A nine-digit number was on the letter to "ensure the authenticity of any future communications from us."

The number turned out to be a Social Security ID issued to a man who had recently been paroled from a California prison and who was residing in the northern part of the state. Unabom investigators were unable to make a direct connection between the former inmate and the bombs. It seemed to be another dead end. "Although more than one individual could be involved," says Terry Turchie, current head of the Unabom task force, "all indications are that it is a single person."

The best--and only--evidence comes from FC's bombs. He avoids sophisticated technology and fashions his bombs without electronic switches, heat sensors or motion detectors. He doesn't use timers.

"As for triggering," Webb explains, "you have to do something to make it go off. Something that pops or swings or pulls."

Like a mousetrap snapping shut. Two wires suddenly come together, which ignites the nitro stew in the pipe.

"Nitro-based explosives will break up the pipe," says Webb. "Smokeless powder will just rip it along the seam and flatten it. Black powder will blow out the end caps. Potassium chlorate and sugar will never cause it to break up. C4? You end up barely finding the pieces. These are high-intensity explosions at 21,000 feet per second. When molten metal cools it gets real sharp on the edges. His bombs are somewhere in the middle."

FC crafts his weapons with care and patience. Evidence shows that he spends considerable time taking them apart and putting them back together. Over and over again. They must seem almost alive in his hands as he slides the wood, metal and springs between his fingers, sharpens and polishes slivers of steel, cases his pipes with handwrought aluminum. He ensures that they will be opened or touched in just the right way and disguises them so that they will fit into their environment easily. All this time and attention and skill is devoted to one goal: to kill and maim.

Mary Ellen O'Toole is a profiler with the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. An agent for 13 years, she currently works with the task force, updating the profile she helped develop last fall with fellow profilers Jim Wright and Joe Chisholm.

"The motivation for the bombings when he started may not be what's motivating him now." Agent O'Toole speaks with a soft, deliberate cadence. "As time goes on with any series of violent crimes, the person gets better at what he does.

"I think we all agree this guy has some unique characteristics. When he's finally identified, one of the most compelling features will likely be his apparent normalcy to those who thought that they knew him.

"He is patient, very much in control and deliberate in his planning. Control is important to this person. You see, those who know him would probably describe him in the same way.

"This is not somebody who would seek to call attention to himself. He would internalize rather than externalize his emotions. But there would be someone close to him who either suspects or is actually aware of his activities. It's that person who we hope comes forward."

"I think initially he had a cause for doing it," says Tony Muljat pensively. "But right now? I think it's him against the world, the world being law enforcement. He's going to see who can outdo whom. He works sporadically. Between 1982 and 1985, nothing. In 1986, nothing. Between 1987 and 1993, nothing."

He lets his wide shoulders fall against the back of his chair. "I can see him moving away from academic targets. I think he will broaden his horizons and go into a lot of different areas.

"We've had 4000 to 5000 leads and we've followed them all. We've developed possible suspects and they've all washed out. Nobody's talking because nobody knows. He fits the environment wherever he may be. He doesn't stick out. But if I ever come across this person, I'll know it. I feel that inside."

Back in Sacramento, Bob Bell also obsesses on FC. The fact remains that of all the bomber's victims, Bell's case was the homicide. He takes it personally. It's not the feds' victim, it's Bell's. The case works him as keenly as it did when he stood over Hugh Scrutton's body nine years ago.

"We've looked at the calendar a thousand times. We've looked at academic calendars. We've looked at moon charts. There are hundreds of theories. We have no idea what triggers him. If we understood his motive we would understand his trigger mechanism. The profile is just obvious stuff. You don't need a profile to know two motives are power and control. He's been playing with us for all these years, specifically with the FBI. He's been having a ball."

Bell slows down to reflect. "I'm a homicide detective. When we have possible suspects, we talk with them one-on-one. That's the way you find things out. But the FBI likes to put suspects under surveillance. They will watch somebody for six months without talking to them. We don't work like that, and they don't do homicides. I always wondered, had the initials been released and a lot of the details, what would've been his activity? Maybe he would be getting his message out sooner. And maybe we would've gotten to him.

"I've seen all the devices," Bell explains, "the Scrutton device and all the others since 1980. He constructs devices that enhance the power of the bomb and of metal. There are several layers of metal on the pipe. According to the bomb experts, the explosive material he uses is nitro-based, very powerful. These bombs are designed to kill. It's just luck that a fragment hasn't killed somebody besides Scrutton."

Bell then offers a metaphor. "He did undergraduate work until RenTech. Then he graduated with the death of Hugh Scrutton. Now he's doing postgraduate work.

"But," Bell says, "the fact of the matter is, he will continue to place devices. He is going to kill again. There's no doubt about it. We don't know when, but it will happen. He's not going to stop now."

"He put the novel on his desk and flipped open the cover. The main force of the blast went straight up."