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Kaczynski investigation continues in Mont. and Calif.

Federal investigators are searching both Theodore Kaczynski's past and his mountain cabin for information linking him to the Unabomber's trail of destruction.

U.S. attorneys from California, New Jersey, Montana and Utah are scheduled to meet today in Washington, D.C., to discuss where to hold the trial.

Tony Bisceglie, the Washington lawyer who acted as an intermediary between Kaczynski's brother, David, and the FBI, said he would hold a news conference at 10 a.m. today in Washington, D.C. The Kaczynski family will not attend the news conference and will not speak with reporters, he said.

The Sacramento Bee has reported that officials are leaning toward Sacramento as the site because two of the killings were there.

Former attorney general Dick Thornburgh said it is unlikely the case would be tried in state court, as California Gov. Pete Wilson has requested.

"The track record of criminal cases in the federal court is somewhat better than it is in most state courts, and I think the department and the attorney general will be much more comfortable having it tried in federal court," Thornburgh said yesterday on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley."

Thornburgh said today's meeting also will focus on whether Kaczynski should be charged with most or all of the Unabomber's crimes.

Information about Kaczynski's activity in California, the location from which several of the Unabomber's packages were sent, is also surfacing.

In a letter obtained by The Michigan Daily, University of California, Berkeley chairman J.W. Addison wrote Kaczynski's University thesis adviser Allen Shields of his unexpected resignation from the California university.

"He submitted his resignation last year quite out of the blue," Addison wrote. "He said he was going to give up mathematics and wasn't sure what he was going to do."

Addison referred to Kaczynski as "almost pathologically shy" and remarked on his reluctance to socialize with others in the department there.

Addison's letter, dated March 22, 1970, was a response to Shields' inquiry about Kaczynski.

Kaczynski was taken into custody near Lincoln, Mont., on Wednesday and is being held without bail in a Helena jail. He has been charged in federal court with possession of bomb-making materials.

The charge is intended to keep Kaczynski in custody while investigators build a case against him for the Unabom attacks that killed three people and injured 23 in nine states over the past 18 years.

As federal agents searched for proof that Theodore Kaczynski left his Montana cabin to mail bombs, two people said yesterday they had seen the hermit in Sacramento, Calif. -- in the area where the Unabomber mailed his last four bombs.

Frank Hensley, a desk clerk at the Royal Hotel, next door to the bus depot in downtown Sacramento, told The Associated Press he saw Kaczynski in the neighborhood or staying at the hotel almost annually during the last five years.

-- Daily Staff Reporter Laurie Mayk contributed to this report.

usually in the late spring or summer, Hensley said.

"If it wasn't for all this, I'd be expecting to see him about now," Hensley said, referring to Kaczynski's recent arrest.

At a Burger King restaurant next to the Sacramento bus depot, manager Mike Singh said he saw Kaczynski a few times in recent years. On one occasion, Kaczynski was carrying an armload of books, Singh said.

"He said he was doing research and he had a breakfast sandwich," he said. "He looked like one of those bums who come in in the morning and have a sandwich and cup of coffee and walk out."

FBI spokesman George Grotz confirmed that agents were investigating whether Kaczynski had traveled to the Sacramento area.

Federal investigators tracking Kaczynski's movements are trying to learn how the former math professor, who had no visible means of support, could get to other states where the Unabomber's bombs were mailed or left.

They reportedly are checking whether he rode buses to those states; two bus line employees in Montana told the AP that Kaczynski was a passenger numerous times.

Hensley said FBI agents approached him in March, showing him Kaczynski's photo.

"I recognized him right away," he said. "I remembered his face."

Hensley said Kaczynski stayed at the hotel two or three times in the late spring or early summer, and his stays lasted no longer than a week. He said he didn't recall the years he stayed in the hotel.

"I could tell he had at least been through high school," he said. "He was quiet and intelligent."

Hensley said FBI agents collected registration cards from the Royal and three other hotels in the neighborhood under the same ownership.

The agents were searching the Royal records for a guest registered by the last name of Konrad, Hensley said. He said they did not explain why.

The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday that federal agents in mid-March searched a shed at the Kaczynski family home in the Chicago suburb of Lombard, Ill., and found matches, traces of gunpowder and half-empty containers of compounds used in making explosive devices.

The newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said agents also determined that Kaczynski was in the Chicago area when the first four Unabomber devices were planted or mailed from there in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The first bombs contained either wooden match heads or gun powder. One of the devices contained both, the Tribune reported.

The shed search yielded potassium and phosphorus, as well as traces of gunpowder and several boxes of wooden match sticks manufactured in the late 1970s.

Kaczynski's brother, David, led authorities to his brother after he found old writings of Theodore's that resembled the Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto in the family house in suburban Chicago.

David Kaczynski initially tried to get prosecutors to agree not to seek the death penalty against his brother, The Sacramento Bee and Newsweek reported. Prosecutors refused and he eventually turned over his brother's writings.

-- Daily Staff Reporter Laurie Mayk contributed to this report.