Copyright 1994 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Chicago Sun-Times
December 13, 1994,TUESDAY,Late Sports Final Edition
SECTION: NEWS;Pg. 6
LENGTH: 372 words
HEADLINE: Attack Puts Colleges Here on Alert
BYLINE: By Phillip J. O'Connor
BODY:
Chicago universities Monday alerted faculty members, students and employees after a mail bomb, traced to a bomber who previously made four attacks in the Chicago area, killed a New Jersey advertising executive over the weekend.
Chicago-based agents from the FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau and Postal Inspection Service who are members of a national task force investigating the bomber were also on alert.
The bomb apparently was made by a serial bomber, code-named Unabom, who began his bombings in Chicago in 1978 and then expanded nationwide.
Saturday's death brought the bomber's toll to two dead and 22 injured in 15 attacks. The bomber originally targeted university personnel, computer businesses or aircraft companies.
Northwestern University spokesman Chuck Loebbaka said, "We are issuing an advisory to use caution in opening packages that seem out of the ordinary. This will be faxed to all departments and residences."
Similar precautions, including computer mail messages and printed notices, were used to warn staff at the University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago, DePaul University and Loyola University.
Jerry Singer, an ATF spokesman, said there has been speculation the bomber may once have lived in the Chicago area.
The first bombing was on May 25, 1978, when a stamped package, addresssed to a Troy, N.Y., professor from a Northwestern instructor, was found by a woman in a parking lot at Taylor and Morgan near the UIC engineering school.
She gave it to Chicago police, who took it to the Northwestern professor. When he said he did not know anything about the package, a Northwestern security guard opened the package in the Technological Institute building, and it exploded, injuring him.
On May 9, 1979, a Northwestern graduate student opened a cigar box-size container, once again at Northwestern's Technological Institute, and it exploded, injuring the student.
Twelve people suffered smoke inhalation on May 15, 1979, when a bomb exploded in the cargo hold of an American Airlines Boeing 727 during a flight from Chicago to Washington. Former United Airlines President Percy Wood was injured at his Lake Forest home on June 10, 1980, when he opened a package.
GRAPHIC: See also related story.