Copyright 1994 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (London)
December 13, 1994
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 331 words
HEADLINE: FBI OFFERS $ 1M IN HUNT FOR BOMBER WITH HI-TECH HATE
BYLINE: Ian Katz In New York
BODY:
ONE of the most baffling cases of recent times has re-surfaced after it emerged that a prominent advertising executive killed in an explosion at the weekend was the latest victim of a brilliant bomber with a vendetta against modern technology.
Federal investigators say the device which killed Thomas Mosser, executive vice -president of Young and Rubicam, bore all the hallmarks of the bomber codenamed Unabom because of a string of attacks mostly against university lecturers stretching back to 1978. The FBI is offering a $ 1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
Mr Mosser, aged 50, was reported to have been decapitated after opening a videotape-sized parcel at his New Jersey home on Saturday. He was the second person to die in the 15 bombings which also injured 23, maiming several.
A team of FBI agents has criss-crossed the country hunting the bomber since his first device exploded on the campus of Northwestern University in Illinois, injuring a security guard. Since then his victims have included academics prominent in the fields of computer sciences, genetics and psychology as well as targets linked to the airline industry.
Based on one sighting and other shreds of evidence, investigators believe he is a reclusive white male in his thirties or early forties with knowlege of university life. He is also an explosives expert, fashioning bomb parts by hand to make them harder to be traced.
It is thought his attacks are part of a Luddite campaign against technology. The FBI says his bombs are usually engraved with the initials "FC", thought to stand for an obscene remark about computers.
Last year the New York Times received a letter purporting to come from the bomber. It said the attacks had been carried out by "an anarchist group calling ourselves FC" and promised "a newsworthy event". Shortly afterwards a Yale computer scientist and a University of California geneticist were injured in separate blasts.