Kaczynski Wanted Sex Change -- Report Says He Became Killer In Frustration

SACRAMENTO - A prison psychiatrist's report on Theodore Kaczynski, released yesterday, said the Unabomber's frustrated desire for a sex-change operation set him on the path to being a killer.

The report, compiled in part from interviews with Kaczynski in his Sacramento County jail cell and from his own writings dating back to the 1960s, detailed Kaczynski's fantasies about mutilating a girlfriend, killing psychiatrists and having a sex-change operation.

Kaczynski wrote that his 1966 visit to a psychiatrist to discuss his desire to become a woman was a major turning point in his life. He left the doctor's office without speaking of his fantasies, consumed with a visionary new hatred, according to psychiatrist Dr. Sally Johnson.

"I no longer cared about consequences and I said to myself that I really could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring, irresponsible or criminal," Kaczynski said.

The report, sealed since January, was released by U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell over defense objections following a legal challenge by the San Francisco Examiner and CBS News.

Johnson diagnosed Kaczynski, a former Berkeley mathematics professor and backwoods hermit, as a paranoid schizophrenic, but said he was competent to stand trial.

Kaczynski's mental state was a crucial issue during his trial, which ended in January when he confessed to being the elusive Unabomber, whose homemade bombs killed three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995. He was sentenced to life without parole at a prison in Colorado.