Unabomber

by Dave Shors

  But he had been tricked out of his cabin and arrested before he could set his escape plan into motion. Now Ted could do little to prevent the revelation of his secret life.

  FBI agents were returning to Lincoln intending to link his journal writings to physical evidence found in the secret cabin and various hunting camps and caches buried in the woods, and thus thwart any defense that his journals were nothing more than the fiction of a fertile and literary mind.

  On the morning of Monday, July 21, 1997, I awoke after a restless night, knowing agents were airborne and on their way to Montana. My stomach was jittery. I was anxious to see and try to decipher the mysterious maps Ted had drawn. Dave Weber and Max Noel had talked more than once about these hand-drawn sketches and their significance.

  I was convinced, because of all his hiking trips and time he had spent in the hills, Ted knew the country around our homes better than any man alive—except me.

  Dave had described some of the details from Ted’s maps and drawings during our phone conversations. Even though the locations were ambiguous—the rock cliffs, talus slopes and large rocks Ted used as landmarks could be almost anywhere—I could call to mind several locations to fit each particular description.

  Ted had used his cache system much like the old-time miners and mountain men who settled the West, burying ammunition and survival supplies in strategic locations safely hidden from animals and other humans. In case memory failed him, cryptic diagrams could lead him to any of the caches where he could grab rifle shells or non-perishable foodstuffs and quickly be on his way.

  Dave said some of the drawings were marked with fallen trees and logs; others noted the dimensions of small trees. That bothered me because during the ensuing years the logs could have rotted away and the small trees and saplings would have grown considerably.

  Only time would tell what natural changes might make the discoveries more difficult. One thing for sure, the cliffs, talus slopes, and streams would remain reliable and important clues.

  Dave phoned Monday night and said he and Max were in Lincoln, had checked into a motel room and would be out in the morning.

  The first task at hand was to take them to Ted’s secret cabin. There they would use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to get an exact fix on the location. They’d have to set up the device and take the reading a short distance from the cabin because the GPS required a window through the tree canopy to take sightings off three satellites. The nearest suitable opening was probably 100 to 200 feet east of the cabin.

  All through the night, Ted’s journals, maps, and drawings flashed through my mind. As I lay there far too excited to sleep, I kept going over questions I wanted to ask and any information that I should share with Dave and Max.

  Max already knew about the books and some other things that were missing from my home and I hoped he could tell me if they had been recovered at Ted’s cabin. Butch Gehring also said Ted had gotten away with one of his books and we both were curious if we would recover our property.

  Tuesday morning, I poured a second cup of coffee and checked over hiking gear one last time before the agents arrived. I expected them early, and sure enough, as I finished lacing my hiking boots I looked out the window and there they were, driving up to the house in a rented burgundy Ford Explorer.

  Max and Dave got out of the car. They were alone and that was a surprise. They had wanted to limit the number of agents who came along but Joel Moss and Terry Turchie had talked like they would join the search, eager to see the secret cabin.

  Max said something had come up so Joel and Terry weren’t able to make it.

  We shouldered our day packs and without further delay headed up the mountain, planning to reconnoiter near the secret cabin and scout some of the rocks and cliffs nearby that first day.

  As I started up the old mining road I felt like a Boy Scout leader with a troop trailing behind; Max and Dave, always curious, asked questions continuously about the flora and fauna around us. It was apparent after only a short distance we would have fun, which would lighten the mood of the serious task at hand.

  Max was keenly interested in the plants and asked the identity of any he saw. He wanted more than the plant’s name, both common and scientific; he also wondered if each was edible, palatable or had medicinal value. In addition to satisfying his personal curiosity about the mountain plants, he wanted to learn as much as possible about the numerous species Ted had mentioned in his journals.

  Both Dave and Max were enjoying the trip into the majestic western Montana mountains. Dave talked about how good it felt to get out into the field after sitting behind his desk for so long.

  As we dropped over a small ridge and moved down along a stream bottom, Dave asked if there were any bears around, either black or grizzly.

  I laughed and described a huge pile of bear scat, possibly left by a grizzly, that was right behind Ted’s secret cabin the last time I was there.

  Dave said he was glad he was packing his trusty, custom-built, .44 magnum, to use as a noisemaker if nothing else. Max was carrying his service revolver. With all their firepower in the woods it had seemed appropriate to leave my .357 magnum Ruger pistol at home holstered.

  You rarely need a gun in the mountains anyway, since predatory animals in the wilderness are much less a threat than the two-legged predators found in some of our cities. But when the agents asked if they could carry their guns, I replied certainly, if it made them feel better.

  The farther we hiked the more comfortable I became with the two of them, especially Max. Dave and I had spent a considerable amount of time talking, both in person and on the phone, so we had established a rapport, but Max and I had conversed only a few times.

  Max was much more cautious about what he said. This was understandable, and I recalled how my friend Butch had said Max asked him what kind of guy I was, if I was “solid” and could be trusted.

  As the summer morning wore on, the peacefulness of the mountains helped everyone relax and open up a little more.

  I started to learn new details about the case.

  We came to a small clearing and stopped for a short rest. I asked Max if he had found any wire in Ted’s cabin that might match what had disappeared from my storage areas.

  He replied it was very possible because Ted experimented with many different types of electrical wiring in the construction of his bombs. But he disguised the wire and other bomb components, using sneaky tricks to keep investigators confused.

  Early on, Ted had wired his bombs with a common two-conductor “zip cord,” the type commonly used for lamp and low-power appliance cords, Max said. But Ted altered the cord to throw the FBI off track and made it nearly impossible to trace by removing two or three strands from, for example, a 14-gauge, 16-strand wire, which transformed it into a type of cord no factory produced.

  Max went on to say that after Ted ran out of two-conductor zip cord, he procured some extension cord wire, the type with three or four colored conductors encased in a black rubberized sheath. It was unlikely anyone would ever be able to trace the cord, but Ted didn’t take any chances. He removed each black, white, green, etc., conductor from the outer sheath and altered them in the same manner, by pulling strands of wire. These deceptive actions demonstrated Ted’s meticulousness in covering his tracks.

  Max said a section of this black extension cord wire was found inside his home cabin and that, other than the missing strands, it matched perfectly the wire used in some of Ted’s last devices.

  I thought of the huge supply of surplus wire stored up my gulch. During the last thirty years, I had accumulated a half dozen large boxes of used wire, ranging in size from small automotive strands to wire large enough for welding leads.

  Ted certainly could have taken whatever he wanted, unnoticed. I told Max and Dave about the wire and Dave said he would like to get some samples to see if they might match the different types found in the devices.

  Once again that sick feeling came over me as I
thought about all the ways I had unknowingly provided the means by which Ted carried out his acts of destruction.

  As we hiked along the mountainside Dave started to describe certain large rocks and cliffs that were landmarks for Ted’s buried caches and asked if I might be able to find them.

  The caches, I was soon to find out, hid Ted’s 30-30 rifle, many rounds of ammunition for all his weapons, food items, survival gear, and possibly bomb parts.

  We neared the last extremely steep pitch just below Ted’s secret cabin and paused so Dave and Max could catch their breath. While they rested I started to tell them about Ted’s campsites I had found and the times and places I had seen him up my gulch when he hadn’t seen me.

  We were standing there within a hundred feet of the cabin, but they had no idea we were so close. I had told Dave more than once that “if you miss Ted’s secret cabin by a hundred feet or more then you’ve missed it.”

  Then I told them how close we were, but as they scanned the mountainside they didn’t believe me.

  We moved several more steps up the slope and then the ghostly image of the horizontal logs in a vertical world of tree trunks started to take shape. It was clear both Max and Dave were excited. The moment of discovery raised their adrenaline level and helped them move quickly up the last steep incline to the small ledge and the front of Ted’s hideout.

  They both smiled broadly, relishing the conquest as we reached the front door of the cabin and the end of their year-long quest.

  As we removed our gear and set up for the work at hand, we had to wonder how horrified Ted would feel if he knew his secret site was in the hands of the very law enforcement people he had taunted in the past. As recently as April 1995, Ted had made fun of the FBI in his letter to The New York Times. “Clearly we are in a position to do a great deal of damage,” he wrote. “And it doesn’t appear that the FBI is going to catch us any time soon. The FBI is a joke.”

  While Dave removed the GPS from his pack, Max decided to explore the perimeter. I stayed with Dave, eager to ask him more questions.

  He looked for a spot on the forest floor to set up the GPS and he quickly understood the paucity of locations for a window through the tree cover large enough to get a multiple-satellite fix.

  By the time we settled on a small grassy opening east of the cabin, Max had vanished. Dave moved the GPS, a compact olive green rectangular unit with built-in dual satellite tracking rods, several times before he settled on a spot where he could align his sightings.

  I continued to quiz Dave about the maps and other documents they both were carrying in their packs. Finally he looked up from the GPS and said: “Go ahead and read the notes for yourself.”

  He pointed to a black loose-leaf notebook inside his pack.

  I couldn’t believe what I had in my hands as I leafed through copies of dozens of journal documents penned by Ted that had been organized in the binder.

  My mind was locked on the pages while I mentally catalogued and memorized each one.

  Dave concentrated on setting up the GPS as I read. I even gained a little extra time because the GPS was a new model and he wasn’t sure how it operated, aggravated by the fact he had left the instruction manual in their Lincoln motel room.

  As I studied Ted’s documents describing the buried caches, it was impossible not to notice the meticulously detailed and descriptive legends included with each hand-sketched diagram. Each tree and sapling surrounding a cache was identified by species and measured to within a quarter of an inch. Ted not only measured and noted the depth of the hole he dug to hold an ammo box, for instance, but he also precisely measured the distance from the top of the container to ground level after it was placed in the hole.

  Then he carefully inventoried the ammo box’s content in minuscule detail. Food was identified and then equated into the caloric intake needed to sustain a person in the wilderness.

  The basic human needs and the staples stored in the cache were calculated to within 1/100th of an ounce or gram, “3 bags flour, each containing 2 days’ ration of flour at 5.33 oz per day, being 75% whole wheat, 25% white flour, total 32 oz. flour.” He used mathematical symbols to describe stored food amounts, e.g.: “1 bag milk (= [approximately equal to] 6.7 oz.).”

  Ted also kept track of every round of ammunition for each of the four calibers of gun he owned, not only the live rounds in his possession, but every spent cartridge as well.

  He never fired unless he thought it was a sure shot, whether at a running rabbit at night or a standing coyote at long range. He kept a tally of his ammo supply, how each round was used and whether it was a hit or miss. That information was entered into mathematical equations so he could track percentages of success and failure and the cost of each round per caliber.

  JULY 14, 1975 [KACZYNSKI JOURNAL]

  One morning I went down from my camp to the lower areas to look for deer. While sitting on a stump to rest, I heard some noise in the woods, and then a large cow elk broke out into a logged over area—followed by 3 coyotes! The elk was clearly upset—but the coyotes left off the chase probably having concluded that that big old elk was too tough for them, and stood around as if trying to decide what to do next. I tried a shot at one from a long way off—didn’t want to try to sneak up too much since coyotes are so sharp. I thought I ought to hit it, but I missed, probably because the rifle went off before I was ready for it. The trouble is that the .30-06 has a lighter trigger pull than my .22. Unconsciously following my practice with the .22, I put a certain amount of pressure on the trigger before I was quite ready to fire. Anyway, I got all depressed again, over wasting a 30¢ cartridge like that.

  [FROM KACZINSKY’S SPANISH-LANGUAGE JOURNAL, TRANSLATED BY LANGUAGE SERVICES UNIT. WORDS IN ITALICS WERE ENGLISH IN THE ORIGINAL.] JUNE 23. [1981]

  It was maybe 4 weeks ago I shot a ground-hog; (ground-hog; i.e., yellow-bellied marmot), near my cabin.

  I shot it at the head; knocked it out and got blood at the site; but before I could get it, he recovered enough to go to the burrow. Although I spent a lot of time digging the burrow, I could not get it….[Expletive]! This puts my average (average) under 90%; I mean, my average since last August. So, without a doubt, I will raise my average again…

  I was amazed when I read further and noted the detailed information regarding the ammunition Ted had stashed in one of his buried caches or carried with him. He not only recorded the number of rounds for each caliber, but also the grain weight and composition of each bullet, e.g.:

  KACZYNSKI’S HANDWRITTEN AMMUNITION INVENTORY

  74 rounds 180 grain .30-06, 12 rounds 220 grain .30-06, 10 rounds 150 grain .30-06, 5 rounds 170 grain .30-30.

  If that wasn’t enough, he went on to describe the type of bullet as well, e.g., bronze point, silver tip, soft nose, etc.

  The more I read the more the inconsistency of Ted’s life unfolded. Here was a person obsessed with neatly organizing and assigning mathematical detail to everything around him, yet the design and construction of his root cellar, for example, was a feeble attempt at construction. It lacked signs of even the most basic building skills, resembling more a child’s fort than an important structure necessary to store and protect food.

  Time seemed to stand still as I studied the documents. But then I was nudged back to reality as I looked up and noticed Max taking our photograph from a spot slightly below us.

  Max walked through the lodgepole tree trunks to the GPS and he couldn’t say enough about the beauty, solitude, and tranquility of my gulch. It was apparent he fully understood the reasons Ted had spent so much time up here. What a contrast to their hectic lifestyle living and working in San Francisco. I couldn’t imagine trading places with them.

  Dave and Max were invited to come back any time. They both said they’d love to return with their wives for a vacation after the Unabom saga concluded.

  After Dave obtained the GPS coordinates we all moved back to the secret cabin, set up my tripod, and prepared to take pictures of th
e cabin with all three of us standing in front of it.

  As we stood there the agents joked and exchanged lewd remarks, which shocked me, ranging from one suggestion that we all drop our pants and “moon” Ted from his secret cabin, to other options much worse.

  I wanted no part of the whole affair and was even less impressed when the conversation shifted to speculation about how Ted might accept the presentation of some “special photographs” if they were anonymously sent to him in his prison cell.

  To me, it wasn’t that Ted didn’t deserve a taste of his own medicine, but rather that I didn’t approve of lowering myself or the agents to his level.

  The more I learned about Ted and his secret agenda of hatred and revenge the harder I found it to understand him and also the motivation of a small number of Lincoln people who were forming Ted’s “bleeding hearts club,” corresponding with him on a regular basis and projecting him as a gentle and misunderstood genius. They were either blinded to the truth or refused to look at it. I wondered what their feelings would have been if a spouse or child had been Ted’s victim.

  After posing for pictures in front of the cabin and studying some of the more important evidence inside, we talked about moving on to a couple of Ted’s campsites and returning to the cabin at a later time. They felt it would be time well spent, allowing Max and Dave a chance to become more familiar with the terrain while looking for new clues.

  We dropped straight down the mountain searching for sites that fit the descriptions in Ted’s drawings.

  The more we hiked and talked together, the more I learned about Ted’s writings and the containers he used to conceal things. They ranged from waterproof steel ammunition boxes to glass and plastic jars and bottles.

  Most of these caches were dug deep, a foot and a half or more beneath the forest floor, e.g., “Depth of hole in which cartridges are buried, 18”. Distance of uppermost part of jars from surface of soil, about 15".”