KACZYNSKI PLEADS NOT GUILTY.

Byline: Mark Katches Daily News Sacramento Bureau

In his first California courtroom appearance - not far from where the last Unabomber victim died - a silent Theodore Kaczynski pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that could carry the death penalty if he is convicted of being the elusive serial killer.

Sporting a large bandage near his right eye, Kaczynski, 54, was arraigned in a federal court proceeding that lasted all of two minutes. He was not restrained, and he did not speak in the courtroom, which was packed with more than 100 media representatives and spectators.

``We would ask that we enter a plea of not guilty,'' his federal public defender Quin Denvir told U.S. Magistrate Peter Nowinski.

Federal prosecutors are charging Kaczynski with only four of the 16 bombings blamed on the mysterious Unabomber, who waged an 18-year campaign of terror killing three and injuring 23.

During his brief appearance, Kaczynski appeared alert as he strode briskly into court wearing a wrinkled olive green shirt, beige pants and blue deck shoes.

The bandage covered a cut he sustained after slipping on the stairs while being moved from the first to the second floor of the federal court building, Denvir said.

The reclusive Kaczynski, a former University of California, Berkeley, math professor, looked more the part of a relaxed scholar than the disheveled, shaggy mountain man arrested in the Montana wilderness April 3.

About an hour after his court appearance ended, Kaczynski was taken by police escort back to the Sacramento County Jail. He is staying in a cell that is close in size to his Montana cabin but has amenities - such as running water and a toilet - that he had lived without in the woods.

Kaczynski was arrested by federal agents who burst into his backwoods cabin after being tipped off by his brother, David Kaczynski, who noticed similarities between his brother's early writings and the Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto.

Kaczynski is accused of mailing the bombs that killed computer store owner Hugh Scrutton in 1985 and timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray in 1995. Both men were from the Sacramento area.

Murray, the Unabomber's last fatality, was killed in his office 11 blocks from the courthouse where Kaczynski will stand trial.

In the indictment, Kaczynski also is charged with the 1993 explosions that seriously injured researchers at Yale University and the University of California, San Francisco.

Kaczynski is being charged now only with crimes involving bombs that were mailed to or from Sacramento. Federal investigators still are investigating other possible charges relating to the other cases.

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