27 years after arrest, Ted Kaczynski still holds Montana's - and the nation's -attention

Dave Shors remembers April 3, 1996, beginning like any other day in the newsroom of Helena’s Independent Record. But not long after the work day began, a bit of news trickled in: agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation were staking out a cabin near Lincoln. Shors, then an associate editor at the newspaper, sent a reporter and a photographer an hour north to check it out.

As the day wore on, a rumor began to spread around town: The feds had the Unabomber in their sights.

“Unabomber” was the nickname given to a long-wanted domestic terrorist who, starting in 1978, committed 16 bombings a...