The Montana wilderness did not turn Theodore Kaczynski into a maniac with an urge to kill. He was like that years before he gave up indoor plumbing for a hermit's life.
That's the take of government prosecutors, who today released a 30-page sentencing memorandum that quotes extensively from the convicted Unabomber's own writings. The documents, most of which are new, claim that the 55-year-old, Harvard-trained mathematician learned to hate as a teenager, thirsted for vengeance against a horde of enemies, and plotted killings as far back as his graduate school days in 1966.
Moreover, federal lawyers, pointing to his journal and an autobiography, contend that Kaczynski wasn't driven so much by a love of nature over concerns against technology but was instead simply in the mood to kill.
"I act merely from my desire for revenge," Kaczynski wrote in April 1971. "I believe in nothing.... I don't even believe in the cult of nature worshippers or wilderness worshippers."
Kaczynski is quoted in the documents as saying that he was driven not by "hot rage, but by a cold determination to get my revenge."
Kaczynski pleaded guilty in January to 12 federal counts that included the bombing deaths of three people. His agreement will allow him to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
While the sentence already has been decided, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Unabom Task Force said that the sentencing memorandum was prepared and released "so that the public may have a full accounting of Kaczynski and his crimes."
Judge Garland J. Burrell is set to formally impose Kaczynski's life sentence on Monday.
