Is it possible for a close-up killer like the Zodiac to have metamorphosed into a long-distance killer like Kaczynski? Chapter 12 of Douglas Oswell's The Unabomber and the Zodiac demonstrates that not only was such a transformation possible, but in Kaczynski's case was perhaps inevitable, and certainly not surprising.

Kaczynski Letter to the Editor of the Brainerd (MN) Daily Dispatch, June 12, 1970. The letter would have been composed at some point around June 5, when, according to the letter, Kaczynski was "passing through" Brainerd, approximately 525 miles from his then-current domicile in Lombard, Illinois. The letter and its placement of Kaczynski in Brainerd corroborate the information presented by Dr. Sally Johnson in her court-ordered psychiatric evaluation of Kaczynski, that he spent the summer of 1970 "look[ing] for wilderness land in Alaska." These sources place hiim at a considerable distance from his home and moving toward the western United States three weeks prior to the mailing of Zodiac's June 26, 1970 Mt. Diablo Letter.

Recently the Chicago Tribune published an image of an anonymous letter purportedly sent by the Unabomber to a Salt Lake City attorney in 1988, shortly after the bombing at CAAMS computer store that permanently injured victim Gary Wright. The text of this letter, with redactions, is as follows:

[Address redacted]

[Salutation redacted]

By pure chance I was sitting in a Salt Lake bar next to a very distraught gentleman who claimed that you with your legal crap have been giving him a super bad time, of which, mostly unnessesary harrassment. You are quite a scoundrel! I would assume that you delight in giving many people similar treatment.

I have met many super [redacted] like you and I have my way of taking care of them. I have taken it upon myself to help this fine gentleman.

I would seriously advise you to get your act together and quit screwing up peoples lives unnessesarily. If not, I will be delighted to give you the BOMB treatment when I come back to Salt Lake summer of 1988, and rid the world of a super [redacted].

When I contact my new friend summer of 1988 and he tells me you have kept your nose clean you will have nothing to fear. In other words, your fate is in your own hands!

If you doubt my urgent message, just check with my latest victim at CAAMS Inc. he is also a super [redacted].

This missive would appear to comprise yet another of Kaczynski's "red herring" missives, designed solely for the purpose of misleading authorities as to his whereabouts and his educational level. Given Kaczynski's known predilections, there is little chance that the meeting between him and the "fine gentleman" actually occurred.

The general tone and grammatical usage within this letter are exceedingly similar to a pair of suspicious correspondences received by newspapers following the 1966 Cheri Bates murder and the 1969 Paul Stine murder, respectively:

Comparison of an undated, handprinted Kaczynski letter with the purported Zodiac "Citizen" Letter of 1974. Note the extremely similar (in most cases identical) character formations, margin alignment, linespacing, letterspacing, jumping baseline and character heights. Note, too, the similarity in phrasing between the Citizen Letter and Kaczynski's New York Times missive of 1995: "... this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best ...." in the former and "We strongly deplore the kind of indiscriminate slaughter that occurred in Oklahoma City event" in the latter.