Copyright 1994 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
December 13, 1994 Tuesday, Final Chaser
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A8
LENGTH: 369 words
HEADLINE: HUNT FOR BOMBER FOCUSES ON SF AREA
BYLINE: San Jose Mercury News
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
Frustrated federal investigators are focusing their reinvigorated search for an elusive serial bomber on the San Francisco Bay area after learning that a package bomb that killed a New Jersey advertising executive Saturday was mailed from San Francisco.
"He (the bomber) certainly has familiarity with the Bay area," Jim Freeman, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Francisco office, said Monday at a press conference. "Whether he is a full-time resident, I don't know."
Residence is merely one of many things investigators still do not know about the bomber, who has killed two people and hurt 23 others in 15 attacks since 1978. They also do not know his name, his motive or his next target.
Dubbed the "Unabom" case because most of his victims have had university or airline affiliations, the bomber also has targeted people within the computer industry. But never before has the bomber been known to attack someone in the advertising industry.
Thomas Mosser, newly appointed general manager and senior vice president at the New York advertising firm Young & Rubicam, was killed Saturday when he opened a package the size of a videotape that had been sent to his mansion in North Caldwell, N.J.
Although compact in size, the bomb was so powerful that it blew a large hole in a kitchen counter, where Mosser, 50, had paused to open the package before taking his children out to buy a Christmas tree.
Mosser's wife, two daughters and a neighbor's child were home at the time of the blast but were not hurt.
The bomber's trademark - the initials FC, which he has carved onto the components of several bombs - have not yet been found among the debris from the blast, according to Freeman. But he said other forensic evidence convinced investigators that the package was sent by the same person responsible for the earlier blasts, including one that severely injured Charles Epstein, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, in June 1993.
The seeming lack of connection between the bombing targets is one reason the computer-assisted investigation has collected "millions of bits of information" without identifying a suspect, Freeman said.