Copyright 1994 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
December 14, 1994, Wednesday, FIVE STAR Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 9A
LENGTH: 431 words
HEADLINE: COLLEGES ON ALERT AFTER MAIL BOMB SOURCE: Compiled From News Services
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
Security was intensified across the country Tuesday at universities targeted by a mystery bomber who authorities say claimed his latest victim over the weekend.
At Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where one person was injured in 1979 when a package bomb exploded, all professors and employees were asked to contact campus police if they receive a suspicious package, said a spokesman, Chuck Loebbaka.
Ed Tate, spokesman for the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the school had taken the same action as Northwestern and had sent an alert via campus mail.
The bombing has prompted about 500 calls to an FBI hot line, said FBI agent Gloria Anderson in San Francisco, where the bomb task force is based. The latest bomb was mailed from San Francisco.
The FBI still had no leads in the death of the latest victim, advertising executive Thomas J. Mosser. Mosser was killed Saturday when he opened a videotape-sized package at his posh home in suburban New York.
The FBI believes Mosser, of North Caldwell, N.J., was the latest victim in a series of 15 bombings by a man the bureau has dubbed the "Unabomber," short for "university/airline bomber" because his earlier targets worked at universities or for the airlines. Officials speculate also that the bomber may have lost his job to a computer, leading him to pick victims with ties to high technology.
Two people have been killed and 23 injured since the first bomb exploded in May 1978 at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The FBI has a longstanding note on the Internet global network of computer systems telling users they are the kind of people targeted.
"Internet users are precisely the type of individuals that . . . have been recipients of explosive devices attributed to Unabom; scholars and researchers," the message says.
The Internet message was posted before a computer scientist at Yale was injured when a parcel he was opening exploded on June 24, 1993.
The Internet message offers one clue for readers - a note, possibly written by the bomber as a reminder to make a telephone call: "call Nathan R - Wed 7PM." The task force believes "Nathan R" may be associated, perhaps innocently, with the bomber and may have received a phone call from him on a Wednesday before a June 1993 bombing.
Officials believe the bombs are the work of a lone white man in his late 30s or early 40s, based on analysis of the bombs, letters sent to some victims ahead of the parcels and a glimpse of a suspect kneeling beside an object moments before it exploded in Salt Lake City in 1987.