Kaczynski: 4 Life Sentences -- Unabomber Victims Present Emotional Testimony Of `Vicious Acts Of Terrorism'

SACRAMENTO - Dr. Charles Epstein gently laid his mangled hand on the shoulder of a fellow Unabomber victim, seconds after a judge sentenced Theodore Kaczynski to spend four lifetimes in prison.

"It's all over," Epstein said softly to a tearful Jan Tuck, sister of slain timber lobbyist Gilbert Murray.

Only minutes before, Epstein - a geneticist researching Down's syndrome who was injured when he opened a package bomb - had stared into Kaczynski's eyes and called the 55-year-old former math professor a coward.

He ridiculed Kaczynski for agreeing to a plea bargain rather than going ahead with a trial that would have served as a forum for his anti-technology creed. It also could have ended with a death sentence.

"In the end you showed you would rather save your life than risk your neck for the cause you say you believe in," Epstein said yesterday.

The sentencing was never in doubt: U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. gave Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years, as set out in a plea bargain reached in January.

The plea spared Kaczynski the chance of a death penalty and a trial in which his lawyers planned to portray him, against his will, as deranged.

Given a chance to address the court, Kaczynski briefly complained that the government put false and misleading statements in its sentencing memo.

In that memo, released last week, the government said Kaczynski wrote in his journal that his "motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge."

But in court, he said he would explain his motives later. Until then, he said, "I ask only that people reserve judgment on me and the Unabomber case."

The Unabomber, so named because he targeted university professors and airlines as well as others in an anti-technology terrorist campaign, killed three men and injured 29 others in 16 attacks between 1978 and 1995.

The attacks ended with the capture of Kaczynski at his Montana shack in April 1996. He was caught after his brother notified the FBI that Kaczynski's letters resembled the Unabomber manifesto published in The Washington Post.

The plea bargain covered the three deaths and the maimings of two scientists. As part of the plea bargain, Kaczynski acknowledged responsibility for all Unabomber attacks.

He will be sent to a high-security federal prison.

"The defendant committed unspeakable and monstrous crimes for which he shows utterly no remorse," Burrell said, adding that he feared Kaczynski would try to kill again if not closely watched.

He called Kaczynski's crimes "vicious acts of terrorism."

Before Burrell spoke, six Unabomber survivors came forward to present a tableau of grief, pain and anger which held the jammed courtroom spellbound. Most of them sat in the witness box face-to-face with the man they addressed as "Ted" and denounced as the personification of evil.

Angriest was Susan Mosser, whose husband, advertising executive Thomas Mosser, died on Dec. 10, 1994, in an explosion of nails and razor blades just a few feet from where she was playing with their daughter Kelly, then 15 months old.

"Lock him so far down that when he dies he'll be closer to hell where the devil belongs," she told the judge.

Kelly - whose baby blanket Susan Mosser had wrapped around her dying husband - came in and sat on her mother's lap as the judge pronounced sentence.

"I lost my innocence to this man, and I fight daily to find the carefree happiness . . . that was taken from me," sobbed Gary Wright, who suffered permanent physical injuries from a bomb he opened in 1987 in Salt Lake City. He still finds shards of shrapnel in his skin.

David Gelernter, a Yale University computer scientist who lost part of a hand, sent a written statement in which he said Kaczynski should have been put to death.

He and other victims praised Kaczynski's brother, David, for going to authorities. Theodore never looked at his brother.

Nick Suino, injured by a Unabomber package in 1985, had advice for the victims and families who filled three rows of the courtroom.

"Revenge is an illusion," he said. "It is a dark flame that consumes you. . . . Put revenge behind you and embrace the goodness of life."

When it was over, David Kaczynski stood outside the courthouse and offered the regrets his brother would not.

"To all of these good people, the Kaczynski family offers its deepest apologies," he said. "We are very, very sorry."