Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, says in court papers that he is under investigation in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings in the Chicago area that killed seven people.
In documents filed in federal court in Sacramento, Kaczynski said the FBI in Chicago wants samples of his DNA to compare with DNA profiles connected to the crime, in which someone put potassium cyanide in Tylenol capsules.
Kaczynski said prison officials in Colorado visited him three weeks ago with the FBI’s request.
Kaczynski, 69, who is serving a life sentence at a “supermax” prison in Florence, Colo., wrote that “the FBI wanted a sample of my DNA to compare with some partial DNA profiles connected with a 1982 event in which someone put potassium cyanide in Tylenol.”
Amateur sleuths have posted theories online for years suggesting Kaczynski, whose parents lived in the Chicago area, may have been involved in the poisonings. But his handwritten letter to the court is the first sign that federal investigators may be seriously considering the possibility.
Kaczynski made the claim in a 10-page letter filed last week in an attempt to stop part of a federal auction of his possession, including his handwritten manifesto and his hoodie and sunglasses. Kacdzynski said some of the possession could prove his whereabouts and activities in 1982.
“I have never even possessed any potassium cyanide,” he wrote to the court.
FBI officials in Chicago did not respond to a request for comment, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento filed papers Monday opposing a halt to the auction.
“Kaczynski has not been indicted in connection with the Chicago Tylenol investigation, and no such federal prosecution is currently planned,” the government’s motion stated.
The prime suspect in the case has been James Lewis, who wrote letters to Tylenol demanding $1 million to stop the killings. He served a 13-year sentence for extortion but has never been charged with murder. In 2009, FBI agents and state police searched his condominium in Cambridge, Mass.
Seven people — four women, two men, and a 12-year-old girl — died in 1982 after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that had been purchased from drug stores and groceries in the Chicago area. Someone had opened the capsules and replaced some of the acetaminophen with cyanide and returned them to the shelves.
The murders caused widespread panic and led to tamper-resistant wrappings becoming the norm on food and medical products.
The auction of Kaczynski’s possession was ordered by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. to generate at least a portion of the $15 million in restitution Kaczynski was ordered to pay his victims, did not rule on Kaczynski’s request by Wednesday morning and the auction began as planned.
Items on the auction block were seized in 1996 from Kaczynski’s one-room cabin in the Montana woods that served as his base of operations for an 18-year bombing campaign that killed three people (two in Sacramento) and injured 23 others around the country.
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One Response
a biography about him said his racist pediatrician tied him to a bed where he couldnt move at all for MONTHS when he was an infant citing an illness that didn’t exist or something…,
why wasnt there any charges or lawsuits against his pediatrician?