Blasts From the Past

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

Charles Epstein was sitting at the kitchen table when his daughter Joanna brought in the padded brown envelope with the day's mail. He saw nothing unusual about the package, but when Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, opened the package, it exploded. Rushed to the hospital, Epstein lost several fingers on his right hand, broke an arm and suffered severe abdominal injuries.

Two days later, David Gelernter, an associate professor of computer science at Yale, received a package at his office in the college's computer-science center. It blew up in his hands. Wounded in the abdomen, chest, right eye and hands, he ran downstairs to a nearby university medical clinic, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

At first the timing of the bicoastal explosions seemed only coincidental. Then pieces suddenly fell into place. The serial bomber behind a 15-year-old chain of misdeeds was back.

The perpetrator is believed to be responsible for 12 previous bombings -- the first in 1978 -- that have killed one person and injured 19. Six of the 12 involved parcels that exploded on college campuses, among them Northwestern and Vanderbilt. The last attack prior to this week, in Salt Lake City, Utah, in February 1987, may have sent the bomber underground after a witness described a man with reddish-blond hair, a thin mustache and ruddy complexion dropping off a burlap bag that later exploded outside a computer company.

"We figured he was dead or in jail or in the appropriate facility," says Milt Ahlerich, a New Haven, Connecticut, FBI agent, "but he's back in a big way, which is all the more maddening." Ahlerich says the bombs' construction linked the new cases to the old perpetrator. "The intricacies of the devices are unique, and experts see the similarities from device to device." Ahlerich says all were pipe bombs but refuses to give specifics.

Other telltale signs included a letter mailed to the New York Times just before the Yale bombing. "We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC," the note read. "We will give information about our goals at some future time." Authorities say earlier attacks were also linked to the initials FC.

The new cases revive the dormant Unabom Task Force, named for the attacks on universities and an airline. It includes elements of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and the Postal Service. In 1991 investigators compiled a psychological profile based on the chronology and location of FC's targets as well as the materials used in the explosive devices. The bomber is a white male, obsessive-compulsive, with low self-esteem stemming perhaps from physical flaws. He grew up in or around Chicago and was employed in low-level work. The investigators believe he is meticulously organized and loves making lists. The bombings compensate for his need to express his aggression. "There are a variety of theories we're following, but the big question is the motive," Ahlerich says. "It's not known." No one, though, believes he will stop on his own accord.

With reporting by Richard Behar/New York and Elaine Shannon/Washington