Copyright 1995 Southam Inc.
The Gazette (Montreal)
April 28, 1995, Friday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. C13
LENGTH: 423 words
HEADLINE: FBI agents searching Frisco machine shops in Unabomber case
BYLINE: AP; SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
FBI agents scoured area machine shops yesterday for clues in the Unabomber case, trying to determine whether the bomber used any of the shops to make explosives, a federal investigator said.
The investigator - a Unabomb task force member - would not say why agents suspect that the Unabomber might have used one of the shops.
The San Francisco FBI has temporarily reassigned 100 agents to work on the task force that is poring over old and new clues in the 17-year-old case. FBI director Louis Freeh has agreed to put an additional 50 agents on the case.
The latest blast, on Monday, killed Sacramento timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray, 47, as he opened a package addressed to a former employee of the Timber Association of California.
"From what we can see, it seems the most powerful yet" in the string of 16 bombings since 1978, said Robert Barnett, head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office here.
ATF investigators were still trying to determine what explosives were used in Monday's attack.
The bomb was encased in a wooden box similar to the bomb that killed New Jersey advertising executive Thomas Mosser in December, Barnett said.
All told, the Unabomber has killed three people and injured 23.
The bomb that killed Murray was mailed along with four letters from the Oakland area one day after the Oklahoma City bombing.
The FBI has not made public the names of the recipients of two letters, or revealed the contents.
Of the other two, one letter critical of "industrial society" went to the New York Times. The other went to a Yale University computer- science professor badly injured in an earlier bombing.
Also yesterday, the FBI denied TV reports that agents were searching for former Symbionese Liberation Army member James William Kilgore as a possible suspect in the case. Kilgore was a bomb-maker for the SLA, the group responsible for kidnapping Patty Hearst. He went underground in 1975 and was never caught.
This is not the first time authorities have stepped up efforts to crack the case that has stumped investigators for 17 years. In December, after a package bomb Mosser at his New Jersey home, the FBI assigned additional investigators to the case and appealed to the public to come forward with tips.
But with the appearance of four letters sent by the self-professed anarchist last week, agents are more confident than ever that they will catch him, said Jim R. Freeman, FBI chief for San Francisco.
WITH REPORTING by San Francisco Chronicle