by Dave Shors
May 1: Chris Waits begins 4-year logging contract in roadless area near the Continental Divide.
May 15: John Hauser is injured by a bomb at the University of California at Berkeley.
June 13: A package bomb mailed to Boeing in Auburn, Washington, is discovered and disarmed.
November 15: Nicklaus Suino is injured by a package bomb mailed to University of Michigan professor James McConnell.
December 11: Hugh Scrutton is killed by a bomb near his Sacramento computer store.
1986
Chris Waits’ logging equipment is vandalized.
1987
Betty Waits encounters Kaczynski in McClellan Gulch.
February 20: Gary Wright is injured by a bomb left near a computer store in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Kaczynski is spotted in Salt Lake City. Unabomber sketch is made.
1988-1992: Unabomber inactive
1993
June 22: Charles Epstein, a geneticist at University of California at San Francisco, is injured by a bomb sent to his home.
June 24: David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale University, is injured.
Lincoln area, early 1990s: A family’s cabin is vandalized and mining equipment is destroyed. Chris Waits’ mining equipment is vandalized.
1994
December 10: Advertising executive Thomas Mosser is killed by a bomb sent to his home in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
1995
April 24: California Forestry Association President Gilbery Murray is killed opening a mail bomb at the Association’s headquarters in Sacramento.
June 24: Manifesto mailed from San Francisco, California.
September 19: “Unabomber Manifesto” published in Washington Post.
1996
April 3: Kaczynski is taken into custody by federal agents.
April 3-14: Cabin search warrant served and Kaczynski arrested.
April 5: Kaczynski is charged with possessing bomb components and held without bail.
June 18: Sacramento federal grand jury returns a 10-count indictment against Kaczynski.
October 1: New Jersey indictment for Thomas J. Mosser’s death.
1998
January 14: Defense files motion to disclose information about the secret shack.
January 22: Court case is closed.
May 4: Kaczynski is given an airtight sentence and ordered to pay $15,026,000 to his victims.
The Discovery
Frigid northeast winds swept the spirit of winter through the heavily timbered Western Montana valley in the first bitter storm of the season. The jet stream was shifting south on cue, tracking right over the small mountain community of Lincoln, invigorating and adding energy to cold arctic air as it moved south out of Canada like a slow-moving mass of molasses. As dawn turned the mountain sky dismal on November 22, 1996, twenty-eight inches of snow already blanketed the ground. The freshness and fierceness of a mountain winter were in the air.
Breathtaking, the tallness of this place. First, the winding climb along 60-degree slopes. Then the soaring conifers, eighty- and hundred-foot lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir stretching into the gray mountain sky. A stranger here would be chilled by the shade, made dizzy by the altitude. But those who live and work in the mountain community feel sheltered and protected.
I had criss-crossed these mountains since early June, plotting methodical grids, searching for something important, very important. The FBI Unabom Task Force knew key evidence lay hidden in the mountains surrounding Ted Kaczynski’s home, but they had packed up and left about the first of September, frustrated and confused by the sheer size and complexity of the country. Initially after Kaczynski’s arrest as the suspected Unabomber on April 3, agents concentrated their evidence search on his one-room cabin and 1.4 acres just off the west end of the old logging road that led up into Florence Gulch near the graveled Stemple Pass Road. But soon the probe widened to thousands of undulating acres lying east of the crescent-shaped Upper Blackfoot River Valley.
During those summer months, rumors had spread like a searing forest fire driven by hot, dry August mountain winds. Did the mountain hermit leave behind explosives hidden in forest caves and old deserted hard-rock mine tunnels? Had he built an elaborate bunker system where he tested and stored the homemade devices responsible for killing three and injuring twenty-three others between 1978 and 1995? Had he hidden pipe bombs in the pristine forest, deadly booby traps ready to maim or kill unsuspecting humans or animals? Many mysteries were yet to be unraveled in the mountains near Lincoln, Montana.
When Ted bought his 1.4 acres four miles southeast of town in 1971, he also bought access to a million acres of mountainous terrain. That’s part of the Montana culture, an allure reflected in the local newspaper, the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch, where, in the real estate section, you can almost always find an ad offering “Timbered acres, small stream, bordered by Forest Service land.” When you buy 1.4 acres bordered by public land near Lincoln, you also buy access to the public lands that stretch all the way to the Canadian border almost 200 miles to the north. The FBI agents understood the “timbered acres” and “small stream” parts of the Montana culture. It’s not much different in suburban Chicago or San Francisco. But the “bordered by Forest Service land” had given them fits.
Kaczynski lived that part of the local culture like a religion. His small acreage and one-room, 12-by-10-foot primitive cabin, with a wood stove but no electricity, was on a jumping off spot to an isolated primeval world of rippling streams, westslope cutthroat trout, mule deer and regal elk. Parts of this world haven’t seen a human soul since the last of the gold miners deserted their sluice boxes in the late 1920s. Many segments of fragile earth here have never been scuffed by a Vibram sole. These days, the only trails are forged by deer or elk moving from their ridgetop beds past towering outcroppings of granite folds and Precambrian sedimentary argillite, reddish in color, to open parks for their moonlight browsing and to small streams for a drink of the earth’s purest water. For a hermit-like man looking for total isolation, this was the spot.
It was back in mid-June when I first realized the FBI investigation had broadened from the intense search of Ted’s cabin, root house and garden area to the surrounding mountains. A small plane, flying low on numerous occasions, an aircraft that I didn’t recognize as being one from Lincoln, tipped me off. The continuing fly-overs were puzzling. Who was in the plane, and what were they looking for? The pilot was flying extremely low, even though he must have been well versed about the dangers of mountain thermals and downdrafts from the 7,000-foot ridgetops that could pluck the wings right off his small plane or slam it into a densely forested mountainside in an instant.
Suspicion turned to irritation when they moved up my gulch. One afternoon the plane circled four or five times over an area where I had some heavy equipment parked. What was going on?
SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1996 [CHRIS WAITS JOURNAL]
I talk to Butch [Gehring, who lives and operates a sawmill near Ted’s cabin] about planes flying low up my gulch. I wonder what they’re doing. I ask Butch if it’s him, he says no. He says that the agents are searching for something and that he thinks that there are firearms involved. He doesn’t know. Mentions cliffs, water dries up in the fall, rockslide, diagonal rock, herbs in vegetation. I say I bet whatever it is, it’s up here.
I talked to Butch and after he explained who it was and what they were doing, I was relieved. I had even started to wonder if I was being investigated as an accomplice.
The aircraft moved once again to another area, north and east of my gulch, and then the flying stopped altogether. Had they found what they were looking for? Most likely not. The terrain was far too rugged to yield secrets to agents in a plane that far overhead.
My theory that the search by air had been unsuccessful was confirmed during the next few days as I saw FBI vehicles parked in different areas along the Stemple Road and the surrounding gulches while agents searched on foot. I even saw a small
boat sticking out of the back of one of their pickups—even though there are few waters for boating in the area.
MONDAY, JUNE 17, 1996
FBI is out. I see them out looking for some hidden kind of cache, stash or something. I talk to [FBI Special Agent] Dave Weber and [U.S. Forest Service Officer] Jerry Burns. I see them around all over Stemple. I tell Dave how much Ted accessed the gulch and all the time he spent there. No reaction to reveal info. Jerry, Dave and a woman visit my house. Dave seems interested in returning. I wonder. I offer to help. They ask to go up the gulch. I say I would take them.
One afternoon while I was out working in the yard, Jerry Burns and Dave Weber drove up in Burns’ white Ford Forest Service pickup. When they got out I noticed a woman I didn’t recognize was with them; she stayed in the truck (I found out later she was Weber’s wife, Sue).
Eager to find out what all the searching was about, I approached them, ready to offer my help. Dave asked me if they could go up the gulch. When I asked why, he said he wanted to talk to the person who owned the machinery. I replied, “You are talking to him.” Jerry knows I own the whole gulch and everything in it. I then said they were welcome to go up and that I would take them. They seemed less interested after I said I’d go along.
Jerry asked several pointed questions about one drainage in particular. I said there wasn’t any machinery there.
I had gotten to know Weber that year, and Burns and I go back many years. We had even worked together at the Forest Service in the mid-70s. So I probed deeper, trying to dislodge a few more details about the object of the intense search. I dropped a few clues, but got little response. Our discussion seemed vague; nothing was confirmed.
I understood the integrity of the case couldn’t be compromised, but I told Dave if we could trust each other I was sure I could help. I went on to say Ted spent a great deal of time in this gulch. It’s all private but he had permission to be here. He used to cross Stemple Road, drop over a small ridge just below the house and then head up the gulch.
Dave appeared interested. He was polite and said he would return at a later date. I didn’t know what to think. Dave thanked me for taking the time to talk to them, then they departed.
Now even more keenly curious about their interest in the gulch and the real object of their search, I was determined not to waste any more time, and planned to go out the following day and begin my own search. Maybe after I found something the agents would take me more seriously.
TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1996
I am suspicious and go up the gulch alone and start looking for I don’t even know what. Go up the main gulch. Meet Ted’s lawyers at the center [Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, in Lincoln] for an interview in afternoon. They say Ted would like me to visit him.
As June started to turn to July, I spent every spare moment in the woods. The first days were discouraging. Then I started to pick up subtle but definite signs of Ted’s habits. Alongside a steep game trail I sighted chest-high blazes carefully cut with his hatchet into two lodgepole pines. From the appearance of the scarred cambium and the bark curled back into the cuts, the blazes looked about twenty years old.
Several days later, on June 25, I walked through a beautiful and secluded spot. A small spring—with water so clear each gray and reddish stone that made this natural mosaic was visible—flowed under my feet. Moss clung to every inch of the forest floor, light green and puffy proud about its existence. It was like an unspoiled section of coastal rain forest. The roots of Englemann spruce and Douglas-fir searched, exposed like heavy, muscular spider legs, for a firm hold in the boggy bottom; chest-high ostrich plume ferns carpeted the forest floor.
Just above the mossy spring I found a hidden, but well-used, campsite and a hollowed-out log Ted had used as a bed. The log cavity was a perfect fit for his lean 5'9'', 140-pound frame. He didn’t pack an ounce of fat; any city softness was worn away years ago on these mountain trails. Buried behind the log were a small plastic tarp, used as a cover when the thin mountain air chilled toward evening, and an aluminum cooking pot. A large, hard, red Douglas-fir stump just six paces from a spot where Ted would build his fire had been a great source of starter and kindling; hatchet marks showed where he had split hundreds of splinters from the stump. Dry and saturated with pitch, they would easily ignite with a match. There wasn’t an obvious firepit. Ted had always been careful to cover any signs of his presence, especially in firemaking. To an untrained eye the many bleached-out deer bones scattered about would look like the remains of animal kills. But on close inspection the knife and hatchet marks of a hungry meat hunter were evident. I even found part of a broken arrow lying in the brush just down from this spot. The tip was broken off.
Below this campsite, near a game trail, I found a stash of firewood chopped into various lengths, piled together and covered with a large piece of fir bark; a nice supply of dry firewood for someone caught out in a storm. A red pine squirrel also had chosen this spot to hide his winter supply of pine cones. In preparing his larder, the squirrel had moved Ted’s fir bark cover and exposed hatcheted ends of the limbs and poles that caught my eye as I walked along the trail. Ted had learned his back-country lessons well, and he obviously could live for extended periods in the woods.
This must have been a hunting camp; a most perfect and private place, the kind of place Ted loved.
Ted spent plenty of time in my gulch. I often saw him, even when he didn’t see me, walking along a heavily wooded trail above the old mining tailings on the lower mile of my land. I hadn’t cared, he’d been my friend and neighbor for twenty-five years. He had permission to be there, but he was the only one who had that permission.
SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1996
Went back up gulch to the end where it forks. I take Butch with me. I show him firewood cache and campsite. We hike up to some cliffs and caves. We find where some caves have been cleaned out and enlarged. Nothing major found. We talk about case all day.
In mid-July, I found two caves Ted had used, slender natural breaks in argillite outcroppings that opened into comfortable caverns big enough for a rough bed of pine boughs. Toward the back of one cave I found candles, canned food and empty cans with jagged, sharp, open lids. Whenever Ted ate fruit or vegetables from a can, he opened the top with a hunting knife he always carried, leaving a dangerous-looking lid, still hinged to the can. When finished, he would toss the can into his campfire, which often was started with the torn-off label. He would burn the cans until they were quite charred; a charred can will rust and decompose rapidly, especially when buried. Then he’d go to great extremes to bury the cans in the firepit and cover everything with soil and pine needles. Whenever I found one of these old firepits, I’d dig into it and find ragged, sharp topped, burned cans. They were one of his signatures, as personal as his fingerprint. I unearthed these cans wherever Ted stayed on my place, even under loose floorboards of an old miner’s cabin I own about a mile above home. I searched the cabin because I had seen Ted there often and knew he had camped there overnight.
Even with these finds, there were many, many days of fruitless searching. I would sight an occasional blazed tree, but the haphazard trail markers were a mystery. None of the clues seemed to interlock, none seemed to develop into a pattern.
SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1996 [WAITS JOURNAL]
Dave Weber stops by to visit with a couple of agents. I show him some wild vegetables. Dave won’t tell me even what they are searching for. I tell Dave that I have been doing my own search all summer and I wish I knew what I was looking for. I say if we have trust I can help. Dave asks for my notes. I refuse. I show him wild carrots. No response. Dave says he got the word. He can’t talk about the case.
SATURDAY, AUG. 17, 1996
Continue search. I wish I knew what I was looking for. It must be really something good because the agents are still out searching. Haven’t had any communication with agents for almost a month.
SUNDAY, AUG. 18, 1996
Whatever the agents ar
e looking for I still think that it’s up here in the gulch. Continue on the east side of the main gulch. This is discouraging, but I know how much Ted was in this gulch. It has to be here. I won’t give up no matter what.
In late August, I explored some of the rock outcroppings along the ridge. On August 31, I found two blazed trees one third of the way to the top. What did they mean? Maybe they marked a drop-off point or a place to turn off. In my journal I noted: “If the clues diagonal rock, rock cliff or rock slide mean anything, they all fit. Maybe I’m getting closer.”
If I was getting closer, so was winter. In my journals, I noted several futile searches of caves and crevices during September.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 28, 1996 [WAITS JOUNRAL]
Take the ridge trail to the top and come out. Find some newer blazed trees about 15 years old. They have to be Ted’s—no one has been up here for years. I remember following Ted’s tracks this way.
On Tuesday, October 1, I was running a dragline three quarters of a mile above home. When I shut down about 5:00 P.M. there was a loud blast in the direction of the ridge that echoed down through the gulch. The explosion sent my mind racing in speculation and changed the tenor of any exploration. No one was in the gulch. I knew that. The only entrance into the five drainages is a narrow throat guarded by our home, and the only access is a rutted, ten-foot-wide mountain road some eighty feet east of the house. Anyone ignoring the no trespassing signs would have been seen. Or, my wife Betty’s dogs would have sounded a hard-to-ignore alarm.
What if a deer, elk or small animal had triggered a booby trap? What if Ted had a secret cache or a cave, with a bomb set on a time-delay switch to implode the entrance after, say, six months of his absence? I knew booby traps and bombs were probably hidden in the woods. They could be anywhere. I had been searching with great caution. Now the stakes were higher, and I would be even more careful.