Kaczynski’s Cabin Arrives in Sacramento

The dark, grimy little cabin built by Theodore Kaczynski in the wilds of Montana arrived in California on Friday, destined to give jurors in the Unabomber trial a window into the defendant’s mind.

The oversize flatbed truck that hauled the cabin across 1,100 miles of highway rolled into Mather Field outside Sacramento, escorted by police and followed by a crowd of reporters and cameras.

The unusual rolling exhibit, shrouded in a black tarp and marked by a “Wide Load” sign, had been trailed along its route by a caravan of the curious.

Kaczynski’s defense team paid to move the small shack, eager to show jurors the claustrophobic atmosphere in which their client confined himself for more than 20 years.

“In our view, the cabin symbolizes what had happened to this PhD Berkeley professor and how he had come to live,” said defense attorney Quin Denvir. “When people think about this case, they think about the cabin.”

“You’ve heard of the word ‘cabin fever.’ This guy had cabin fever for some 20 years,” said defense team member Dennis Waks, who escorted the cabin on the last leg of its trip.

Prospective jurors who were questioned over the last four weeks have spoken of the cabin. Some said they were haunted by the idea of anyone living in such deprived conditions.

The FBI wrested Kaczynski from the cabin in April 1996 after he was identified by his brother, David, as a suspect in the Unabomber attacks.

Inside the cramped, cluttered hut, investigators say, they found bomb-making equipment, a live bomb, a draft of the Unabomber’s manifesto and a typewriter that matched the instrument on which the manifesto was written.

The homemade structure had neither running water nor electricity. The only heat was provided by a small wood-burning stove.

Denvir and co-counsel Judy Clarke plan to argue that Kaczynski suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has perhaps had it since adolescence. They will use the cabin as evidence of his mental deterioration.

Prosecutors say the cabin was a bomb-making factory where Kaczynski huddled with pieces of wood, nails and chemicals, constructing the destructive devices that would kill three people and maim many others.

It was also in the cabin that he allegedly wrote the manifesto, exposing his rage at technological advances of the modern world.