Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four consecutive life sentences Monday after the wife of a victim urged the judge to lock the defiant terrorist "closer to hell."
U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. gave the 55-year-old former mathematician the sentence called for by a plea agreement that resolved charges related to three deaths and the maimings of two scientists.
"The defendant committed unspeakable and monstrous crimes for which he shows utterly no remorse," Burrell said, adding that he feared Kaczynski would try to kill again if not closely watched.
Earlier, Kaczynski complained that the government had lied about his commitment to the Unabomber's anti-technology philosophy.
Kaczynski began the hearing by walking to a podium at the center of the courtroom and saying that the government, in court papers filed last week, was "discrediting me personally."
But the wife of one of his victims had urged Burrell not to listen.
"Lock him so far down that when he dies he will be closer to hell," Susan Mosser said.
As part of the plea bargain, Kaczynski acknowledged responsibility for all 16 Unabomber attacks between 1978 and 1995. He will be sent to a high-security federal prison, possibly in Lompoc or in Colorado.
In the prosecutors' sentencing memorandum, the government quoted extensively from Kaczynski's journals, in which he wrote of a deep hatred of people.
The Unabomber had demanded that his 30,000-word treatise on the evils of technology be published. But in his journals, the government said, Kaczynski scoffed at any supposed environmental ideals.
"I believe in nothing," Kaczynski wrote. "I don't even believe in the cult of nature-worshippers or wilderness-worshippers. (I am perfectly ready to litter in parts of the woods that are of no use to me - I often throw cans in logged-over areas)."
Of his killings, Kaczynski wrote: "My motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge."
But speaking in a high-pitched voice, Kaczynski said the sentencing memo contained "false statements, misleading statements." "By discrediting me personally, they hope to discredit my political ideas," he said.
Kaczynski asked people "to reserve their judgment about me and the Unabom case until I have a chance to respond." He said he would further reply to the government filing at length later.
The first victim to speak Monday was Mosser, whose husband, advertising executive Thomas Mosser, was killed by a package bomb sent to his northern New Jersey home in 1994.
She ticked off a list of household items - batteries, razor blades, pipes, nails - that were turned into deadly weapons by the Unabomber's hands.
"Hold it in your hand when it is exploding, and you have unbearable pain," she said.
She told how her then-15-month-old daughter had watched her father bleed. "No, no, no, not my daddy!" Kelly Mosser cried, according to Susan Mosser.
Geneticist Charles Epstein, who was maimed by the Unabomber, scoffed at Kaczynski's claim of the moral high ground. Kaczynski must not have believed too strongly in his anti-technology campaign, if he was unwilling to risk the death penalty by going to trial, he said.
"You saved your own neck. But you did everything, and more, and you did it in cold blood," Epstein said.
Kaczynski's 18-year bombing campaign changed the way Americans mail packages and board airplanes, and at its height in July 1995, virtually shut down air travel on the West Coast.