Unabomber Museum Exhibit Opens in Nation's Capital

The Harvard-educated child prodigy who became known to the world as the Unabomber is the subject of the newest exhibit at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C.

An online auction of personal effects that belonged to Evergreen Park-raised  earlier this year, and about $2,000 worth of paraphernalia was bought by the museum to furnish an exhibit depicting Kaczynski's workspace.

According to Janine Vaccarello, chief operating officer of the museum, the space gives a realistic view of where Kaczynski created several bombs, made plans and wrote documents during his nearly 20-year mail-bombing rampage.

"We recreated this workbench-style exhibit" Vaccarello said of the exhibit, which includes a timeline of Kaczynski's life and is located in the Crime Scene Investigations/Forensic section of the museum.

The exhibit includes several saws, blades, scales used for making bombs, passport photos and "a hand-written note from (Kaczynski) that's taped to a scale," Vaccarello said, showing the correct calibration of the scale.

"He created everything by hand so he had the need for several different styles of saws, whatever he could use to make things ... he relied on his own woodsmanship to survive," Vaccarello said.

While giving visitors a peek into the life of one of the most notorious killers in U.S. history, the exhibit's main focus is on forensic linguistics—a writing technique investigators ultimately used in tracking down Kaczynski after receiving a tip from his brother, David Kaczynski.

"His brother read the manifesto, which was published in The Washington Post, and said it sounded like his brother's writing style," Vaccarello said.

What gave Kaczynski away, she said, was a quote he was infamous for: "You can't eat your cake and have it too. To gain one thing you have to sacrifice another." After reading that, David Kaczynski confronted the FBI and it led to his brother’s capture in 1995.

Perhaps one of the most important components of the overall exhibit experience, Vaccarello said, is how one of the most expensive and longest investigations in the history of the U.S. came together.

"It was really important to show how many sources came together to solve this case," Vaccarello said.

She noted that The Washington Post and The New York Times split the cost of running the eight-page insert of Kaczynski's manifesto. According to her, the museum exhibit shows how the FBI, competing media, and David Kaczynski worked together to solve a crime against humanity.

"Law enforcement extends to the community ... every person makes a difference, and we need to show that," Vaccarello said. "By all forces coming together, it saved more lives, because he planned on continuing to kill people."