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U.S. Marshals Auction Unabomber's Personal Effects

DETROIT (WWJ) - The U.S. Marshals Service plans to auction off 60 items next week that belonged to the man known as the "Unabomber" - Ted Kaczynski.

The items were seized during a search of Kaczynski's cabin in the Montana woods following his 1996 capture--and each item played a role in the FBI's investigation.

The auction will run from May 18 to June 2. The online catalog, which will include approximately 60 lots of property, will go live at www.gsaauctions.gov beginning May 18.

Items to be sold include personal documents, such as driver's licenses, birth certificates, deeds, checks, academic transcripts, photos, and his handwritten codes; typewriters; tools; clothing; watches; several hundred books; and more than 20,000 pages of written documents, including the original handwritten and typewritten versions of the "Unabom Manifesto."

U.S. Marshal Albert Najera said there is some irony surrounding the auction.

"I'm thinking it's not just a little irony, it's a lot of irony here in that Ted Kaczynski railed against technology and its impact on society and on civilization. And now we are using that very technology to auction off artifacts of his life," Najera said.

According to Najera, proceeds from the auction will be used to compensate Kaczynski's victims and, in a very small way, offset some of the hardships they have suffered.

Kaczynski, who once attended the University of Michigan, will be turning 69 years old this month. He's serving a life sentence in a federal Colorado prison after pleading guilty in 1998 to setting 16 explosions that killed three people and wounded 23 others in a string of bombings from 1978 to 1995.

The FBI nicknamed Kaczynski the "Unabomber" for his early targets, which were universities and airlines.

Photos of selected auction lots are available at www.flickr.com. The catalog, photos and descriptions of all the lots will be available at www.gsaauctions.gov when the auction goes live on May 18.

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