Photojournalism students celebrate their scoop in this photo from the Montana Journalism Review in Summer 1996. From left to right: Derek Pruitt, Bruce Ely, Greg Rec and Steve Adams.

Persistent Pursuit
UM photo students scoop the pros

By  Louis Montclair

Ten years after taking some of the most sought-after photos of the Unabomber, photographer Bruce Ely still has yet to take a photo that would change his nickname in the photojournalism community: one of the “Unabomber Boys.”

Now working at The Oregonian in Portland, he shoots many other subjects, mainly sports.

The April 15, 1996 issue of Newsweek with Derek Pruitt's photo on the cover. (click photo to enlarge)

He recalled a time last year when he was shooting the Seattle Seahawks at the NFC Championship game and met an AP photographer. She shook his hand. “Oh, you shot the Unabomber?”

On April 3, 1996, former University of Montana journalism professor Patty Reksten received a call from the New York Times. A photo editor asked if she knew anyone who could take some photos of the Unabomber suspect captured in Lincoln that morning.

Ely was already shooting the story for the Missoulian. Reksten found students Steve Adams and Derek Pruitt and gave them the New York Times assignment. The three drove off for Lincoln, hoping to catch a glimpse of the serial bomber who had eluded authorities for years. The hour-and-a-half drive passed quickly that early spring morning.

Fellow student Greg Rec, who was freelancing for The Denver Post, was on another assignment and heard the news when he got back to the journalism school about 2 p.m. He followed the others to Lincoln, driving over the the speed limit in his overheating Subaru.

The students arrived in Lincoln and joined 15 other photographers at the roadblock set up at the turnoff to Ted Kaczynski’s cabin while the FBI searched the property.

Deciding to wait, they soon saw federal officers driving out of the property in a white Bronco.

All the photographers went into action. Someone was visible in the back seat through the window, and everyone was trying to take the same picture for their news agencies.

As the Bronco drove away, the students decided to follow, not knowing where it was heading.

The trail eventually ended in a parking lot at an office in downtown Helena. Theofficers parked the Bronco. They escorted the prisoner across the lot, across the street, and across the view of a few lucky cameras.

Photo by Eleena Fikhman

Bruce Ely, a staff photographer The Oregonian in Portland, was a student at UM when he photographed Ted Kaczynski just after his arrest.

Ely remembers feeling nervous as he prepared to shoot. His camera flash was brand new, off eBay, and he had never used it before.

The UM team swarmed around the Unabomber and shot frame after frame of history. No other photographers from any news agency were there at that moment, and no other news agency had photos of him in handcuffs. The team walked away with pictures of the Unabomber that nobody else had – Kaczynski in his natural state. His ragged clothes, shaggy hair and unshaved face would be splashed across countless news publications before the week ended. Other photos would show up from other photographers later, but none were like the images captured by the UM photographers. They had a unique treasure on their hands.

But that would come later. First things first.

The young men drove to Helena’s daily newspaper, the Independent Record, and tried to persuade the staff there to develop their film. Staffers were hesitant at first but eventually gave in and saw the images these young photographers had. The photo staff helped them transmit the photos to the New York Times, which had bumped its deadline to midnight, Eastern time, to get a photo of Kaczynski.

Post-Star photo by Mary Lutz	Photo by Mike Greener
Derek Pruitt, now chief photographer at The Post-Star in Glen Falls, N.Y., took a picture that landed on the cover of Newsweek magazine.	John Youngbear has started a Web design business in his hometown of Lame Deer, Mont., on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

Journalism is a small world, and word spread pretty fast about what they had on film. Soon newspapers and agencies from all across the nation were calling the budding photographers, all wanting images of the Unabomber.

The students called professors and other photographers to discuss the sudden demand for their photos. In the end they decided to sell to the Sygma photo agency, now Corbis.

Of the 10 frames Ely took, one was in focus and it was perfect. Auto focus was still pretty new on cameras  and unreliable.

Pruitt's photo of the disheveled Kaczynski made the cover of the April 15, 1996 issue of Newsweek.

Together, the team made more than $10,000 each off the photography. Ely bought a car. Rec paid off his student loans.

For their work in covering the huge event, they would forever be known as the “Unabomber Boys.”

The next day, more photographers from UM showed up hoping to catch a glimpse of Kaczynski through their cameras.

John Youngbear, a junior then, had been out partying the night before and slept through the first day of events. The next day, he heard of Kaczynski’s capture at school.

AP photo by John Youngbear

This photograph of Ted Kaczynski taken by UM student John Youngbear on April 4, 1996, was seen in newspapers and magazines around the country.

Excited, he called the AP Bureau in Helena and asked if they needed help in covering the story. Bureau Chief John Kuglin told him to come to the office.

Youngbear, along with fellow student Terri Longfox, left Missoula in a beat up “rez car,” with bald tires and a tattered, torn and taped roof. The engine was acting up. Youngbear kept praying it would last.

When they got to Helena, they were assigned to different locations to “post,” or hang out, and wait.

Youngbear and Longfox caught their first glimpse of Kaczynski at the federal courthouse. As the federal marshals drove up to the courthouse, the journalists flocked around the vehicle. Flashbulbs popped and shutters clicked constantly, it seemed, as Kaczynski was escorted into the courthouse.

Figuring they were going to use the rear entrance, Youngbear stood by the stone steps next to the door.

As the federal agents approached, the pool of photographers and flash bulbs moved toward the door where Youngbear was, blocking him against the door and giving him a view no other photographer had.

Youngbear remembers looking up and making eye contact with Kaczynski before taking the picture. He looked angry, Youngbear said.

He aimed.

He pointed.

He shot.

“My autofocus was going crazy,” he said.

After shooting several frames, Youngbear and Longfox rushed back to the AP bureau and a runner developed their film. Word got to Youngbear fast that a frame was perfect and it was going on the AP wire that day. Even so, he was still surprised at what happened the next day. He received an e-mail from a friend in Detroit who saw his photo on the cover of USA Today.

Heart racing, he rushed to Garden City News in downtown Missoula and found a copy of the paper. There was his byline in black, and his photo, running huge above the fold.

Later, he saw it on the covers of other major newspapers at the Journalism School library. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and many more ran his photo big and bold. Newsweek used it inside the magazine.

As famous and as widely distributed as it was, Youngbear’s photo was never seen by his family or friends until he showed it to them. The Billings Gazette, their local paper, was covering the Freemen standoff in Jordan and devoted its pages to that story.

Photo by Eleena Fikhman

Patty Reksten, director of photography at The Oregonian, taught photojournalism at UM at the time of the Unabomber's arrest. The work of her students was published in major news magazines and newspapers across the country.

After 10 years, the photographers still work in the field of journalism. Youngbear runs the only newspaper on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Ely works at The Oregonian and Rec works for the Portland Press Herald in Maine. Steve Adams works at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Derrick Pruitt at The Post-Star in Glen Falls, N.Y.

“I’ve shot bigger things, better things,” said Rec. “I went to Iraq twice, I was there when a suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded 70 others, but in the national photojournalism circle, I’m still known as one of the Unabomber Boys."