SACRAMENTO -- Checks totaling more than $225,000 raised from an auction of items belonging to the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, will be distributed among four of the serial bomber's victims, a federal judge has ordered.
U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell ordered the disbursement of $225,735.56 in a document filed last Tuesday in Sacramento, Calif.
The funds were earned through a government-held online auction that ended June 2, and featured items including the typewriter Kaczynski used to compose the manifesto he sent to The New York Times and The Washington Post (which sold for $22,003) and the infamous hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses depicted in an FBI sketch of the Unabomber suspect (which sold together for $20,025). His personal journals sold for the highest amount, $40,676.
Kaczynski, who is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado, pleaded guilty to a 17-year bombing spree that killed three people and injured more than 20 others. Kaczynski mailed his homemade explosives to targets including airlines and universities.
The money raised will be distributed among four of Kaczynski's victims:
--Susan Mosser, widow of advertising executive Thomas Mosser, who was killed in 1994, will receive $185,177.23.
--Connie Murray, widow of Sacramento forester Gilbert Murray, who was killed in 1995, will receive $33,648.05.
--Gary Wright, who was injured by a 1987 bomb, will receive $3,545.47.
--Lois Epstein, wife of University of California, San Francisco, physician and researcher Charles Epstein, who was severely injured by a 1993 bomb, $3,364.81.
In August 2010, Burrell ordered the auction of Kaczynski's belongings, which were seized from the remote Montana cabin where Kaczynski was arrested in 1996. Kaczynski had tried in court to block the auction, but was unsuccessful in his attempts.
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