(January 25) -- The heart of how the U.S. government treated the trial of Theodore Kaczynski can be found in the docket report kept by clerks at the Sacramento courthouse where his trial abruptly ended on January 22.

The first item in the report -- the government's indictment against Kaczynski -- was filed on June 18, 1996. In the nineteen months since, hundreds more documents were added to the pile.

These papers outlined prosecution and defense strategies, possible evidence in the case, repeated failed attempts to get Kaczynski to undergo psychiatric checks by the government, and more recently, transcripts of Kaczynski imploring U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell to keep the defense team from following their strategy of showing the truly disturbed mental state of the man who days ago admitted to being the Unabomber.

But the report stops abruptly just after document number 523, simply titled "Plea Agreement as to Theodore John Kaczynski."

After tracking the Unabomber for eighteen years -- plus another year and a half of legal wrangling -- the Feds got their man. And they got him to admit to his crimes.

"This is one of the shorter plea agreements I've ever seen," says San Francisco defense attorney Alan Ellis, a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers who specializes in plea bargains. "It's pretty much an open plea -- you plead guilty, you will get life. There are no ifs ands or buts about it. Do not pass go, do not get $200."

That's just what Kaczynski agreed to. He spared himself a potential death sentence, and the rest of his days will be spent in a federal prison with comforts he denied himself in his rural Montana shack. He can thank his defense team for saving him from injection. Many feel that the defense, led by veteran public defenders Quin Denvir and Judy Clarke, did the best they could in a situation where the prosecution had an airtight case and their client wasn't playing with a full deck. ("I think they did a superb job, but I wouldn't expect anything less of those two people," says Ellis, who knows both.)

"It's clear that he will get a life sentence without the possibility of release," Denvir told Court TV. The government could also fine Kaczynski over $3 million, but Denvir doubted Kaczynski would be fined at all -- since he has no money.

And while the Unabomber (he will presumably have to adopt that name, coined almost two decades ago by the FBI, since he admitted his guilt) will more than likely keep writing about his deadly deeds and pouring out the contents of his unique mind on paper, the plea states that he will never be able to get a cent from his writings.

It does, however, save him from all the federal charges against him, including a three-count indictment in New Jersey he would have faced regardless of the outcome of the abortive Sacramento trial.

Yet even at the hearing where he pled guilty, Kaczynski took one more shot at the lawyers who saved his life in the face of overwhelming evidence.

"You know that I have had certain dissatisfaction in my relations with my counsel," he told Burrell as he made the official plea.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 15, but it is largely a formality. Unless he withdraws his plea before then, it appears the book on Kaczynski is on the last few pages of the last chapter.

Among other things, the plea bargain removed any possibility of an appeal. Bargaining talks were reportedly stuck over the issue of whether Kaczynski would have the right to appeal the ruling that allowed federal agents to conduct an initial search of his rural Montana cabin. That is no longer an option.

Local prosecutors in New Jersey, Connecticut or California could bring charges against Kaczynski, but New Jersey officials already said they had no plans to do so, and it is unlikely the other states would make an attempt.

"A D.A. wouldn't want to touch this case with a ten-foot pole," says Ellis. "When you have a crazy client who wants to proceed pro se [representing himself], you're in uncharted waters."

Kaczynski had also wanted a commitment that he would not be placed in a federal mental facility, but the decision about where he will live out his days rests in the hands of a few officials at the Bureau of Prisons. Even Judge Burrell can do no more than give a recommendation.

Kaczynski could end up at the federal psychiatric ward in Butner, NC under the care of Dr. Sally Johnson, who found him competent to stand trial, but he will likely end up in one of the government's maximum security facilities. The murders he committed and the length of his sentence almost guarantee it.

Johnson's report on Kaczynski that officially declared him a paranoid schizophrenic is believed to have the straw that broke the back of plea negotiators who were holding back on closing a deal.

And that deal, while it may be anti-climactic, was probably the best way the justice system could have handled a man like Ted Kaczynski.

"A trial that might have been a mentally ill man defending himself for his life is not something I think anybody relishes," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

It was also the best that Kaczynski's estranged family could have hoped for. His brother David, who gave the FBI clues that led to his brother's arrest, felt betrayed because the government wanted to kill Ted Kaczynski when they promised in return for David's cooperation that they would spare Ted's life. Now they have.

David Kaczynski called the plea bargain an "appropriate, just and civilized resolution" to the havoc that tore apart his family and the lives of the Unabom victims and their families.