How much would you pay to own an axe used by “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski? Actually, it wasn’t meant to be a rhetorical question. In fact, we will soon find out how much money that axe will fetch when it (along with a host of other personal items) goes up for auction to help pay restitution to Kaczynski’s victims.
A U.S. federal judge has ordered the sale of the mail bomber’s property through an online auction. Items up for bid include journals, typewriters and books seized from Kaczynski’s Montana cabin. Proceeds from the sale will go toward a $15 million restitution order to pay victims and their families.
Among the items some auctioneers are predicting will fetch the highest bids include Kaczynski’s personal writings. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the former math professor who withdrew from society wrote some 22,000 pages about his anti-technology beliefs and his anti-social feelings. Other personal items, slated to go on the auction block include hand tools, shovels, saw blades, knives, bows and arrows, axes, clothing, typewriters and a briefcase containing his degrees from the University of Michigan. Kaczynski’s bomb-making materials and weapons won’t be put up for auction.
Federal agents seized all of the items set for auction during a raid of Kaczynski’s property in 1996. The raid came as the result of Kaczynski killing three people and injuring more than 20 with homemade bombs he sent through the mail from 1978 to 1995. He also threatened to blow up airplanes. In 1998 Kaczynski struck a plea bargain that sentenced him to life behind bars at the super-maximum-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado, known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
The date of the “Unabomber” auction has yet to be scheduled.
Initially I wondered who would want to own anything as bizarre as the Unabomber’s personal writings, not to mention his hand tools and clothing, but I suppose it is going to a good cause…
Would you consider purchasing anything?