Unabomber

by Dave Shors

  The sneaky shot certainly fit Ted to a “T,” and when I informed Dave just how quickly the crime scene could be reached from the secret cabin site, his suspicions grew. Even though proving Ted shot the miner wouldn’t add to the sentence he faced, it would be comforting for people around Lincoln to know the case had been solved.

  But Max had already made up his mind the field search was coming to a close that day and there would be little time for us to look for the 30-30. Almost as if to settle any argument, Max started to read from Ted’s journal pages, which mentioned another cabin, an old miner’s shack that the agents had found during the summer of 1996.

  The discovery, a few gulches to the west, had been one of their few field successes that first summer after the arrest, but it proved to be a hollow victory because Ted had mapped the cabin as nothing more than a reference point and possible emergency shelter.

  We made one final sweep of the area around the secret cabin with a metal detector, this time in a larger perimeter. The agents used a random method that was pretty much hit or miss and we found nothing more that was earth-shattering.

  I wasn’t the least bit discouraged, though, because as we searched we talked and I was continuing to learn more about Ted and the case.

  I was shocked, but not totally surprised, when Max said Ted had often shot at airplanes and helicopters overhead. The rumors that had circulated in Lincoln in the past were true.

  Ted had even made special excursions into the mountains with the intent of shooting a helicopter or plane.

  CODED-JOURNAL ENTRY

  EARLY AUGUST I WENT AND CAMPED OUT, MOSTLY IN WHAT I CALL [NAME] GULCH, HOPING TO SHOOTUP A HELICOPTER IN AREA EAST OF [NAME] MOUNTAIN. PROVED HARDER THAN I THOUGHT, BECAUSE HELICOPTERS ALWAYS IN MOTION, NEVER-KNOW WHERE THEY WILL GO NEXT, TALL TREES IN WAY OF-SHOT. ONLY ONCE HAD BEHALF [SIC] A CHANCE. 2 QUICK-SHOTS, ROUGHLY AIMED, AS COPTER CROSSED SPACE BETWEEN-2TREES. MISSED BOTH…. FORGOT TO MENTION, ON TRIP-WHERE I SHOT AT HELICOPTER, I CHOPPED DOWN WOODEN-POWER LINE POLE, [NAME] CREEK AREA.

  It was obvious that the more time I spent with the agents the more I learned about the Lincoln mysteries of the past twenty-five years.

  On one hand I felt good that Ted had been removed, so there would be no further damage or violence here. But on the other hand, the more I learned the angrier I became. I found myself begging Max for an opportunity to be alone with Ted in his jail cell for even five minutes, knowing it would never happen.

  They humored me, saying they wanted Ted to be alive and healthy when he was tried for his crimes. I was joking, anyway, but I had to wonder what the cowardly Ted would think if I was placed in his cell. If nothing else, it would lead to some interesting conversations.

  If Ted didn’t approve of my occupation or had concerns about it, why didn’t he have the guts to discuss things with me? Actually, he would have found I shared many of his views and concerns about the environment, and would have loved to talk about the issues.

  But as I mulled over his secret years and acts in Lincoln, it became apparent his motivation to carry out his acts of terrorism really had little to do with saving Mother Earth. His true motivation was nothing more than hatred and revenge.

  His self-conceived superiority even extended to a feeling that hunting should be banned. Of course, he hunted daily and killed scores of forest birds and animals for sustenance.

  SEPT. 11, 1975

  I just heard 2 shots, a few minutes apart, maybe 1/4 mile away; something light, but heavier than a .22 I’d say. Made me nervous lest they see the smoke from my fire (no chance of their finding my camp otherwise). Makes me about ready to join the ban-hunting crowd, just to keep these disgusting twerps out of the woods. Of course I’d hunt anyway.

  We finished at the secret cabin site, packed up our gear after taking a few last photographs and headed down the mountain. As we walked along the game trails toward home, I was perplexed that Dave and Max hadn’t packed up any of the evidence and taken it with them. I didn’t say anything, though, and felt satisfied about the week’s work.

  Everyone would like to have found more evidence, but considering the time parameters, I was especially pleased about all the new things I had learned. We had worked together well and they knew all the sensitive information was safe with me; I wouldn’t be responsible for a leak that could jeopardize the trial.

  I told Max and Dave that I wanted to continue the investigation on my own and wondered if it would be possible to procure some of Ted’s journal entries to assist me. I had plenty of information to continue the search. I had already written down our daily conversations almost verbatim and had redrawn most of the maps and landmarks from memory. They hadn’t realized that was part of my nightly routine.

  I explained my motivation was to find hard evidence to corroborate the things about our friendship and Ted’s use of my gulch I had talked about from the start, especially since my character was being assassinated by Ted and his few sympathizers who were calling me a liar.

  Max and Dave understood and said they would see what they could do. I didn’t want them to jeopardize their jobs since I knew about the non-disclosure statement each had been required to sign.

  When we arrived at their vehicle Dave surprised me with a gift, a full-color, computer-enhanced satellite photograph of my gulch and much of the country surrounding me.

  After loading their gear, Max and Dave said they wanted to drive down and make a quick stop at the area where I stored wire, solder, pipe, copper tubing, and electrical switches, among many other things.

  As we got out Dave showed me another one of Ted’s intriguing hand-drawn maps. It charted, starting in the fall of 1971, all his foot routes through the mountains. I was astounded to see all the places Ted had hiked in the various drainages of my gulch. It was another piece of irrefutable proof that Ted had spent an incredible amount of time living and hiking in the gulch.

  We dug through the various boxes of electrical wiring and other materials as the agents looked for something that might match evidence recovered in Ted’s cabin or that he used in his bombs.

  I mentioned the gold and the black sand found in Ted’s home cabin, and wondered if it was the material pilfered from my sluice box a few years earlier.

  If I could just see a few flakes of gold and a small amount of the black sand, I would be able to identify its origin.

  Max and Dave were intrigued when I went on to tell them that placer gold and the black sand that accompanies it have individual characteristics as unique as fingerprints.

  They thought it would be interesting if I could see the gold and tell where it came from, but that wouldn’t be possible since nearly all the evidence taken from Ted’s home cabin was still back at the FBI crime lab in Washington, D.C.

  They examined the contents of the last box of wiring and found several pieces that caught their eye. Ted obviously could have used some of the material, they said, since it was the same type of wire. He garnered what he needed from dozens of places and much of it would never be traced to its origin.

  We headed down to the house. When we got there Dave pulled out several more presents—a couple of FBI glass mugs and two ballpoint pens with “FBI” embossed on them.

  They encouraged me to continue the search and keep them informed.

  It was almost anticlimactic, watching them turn onto the Stemple Road and roll out of sight toward Lincoln. We had waited all summer for this exploration, and now it was over.

  I was back on my own. Armed with a plethora of new information, I could hardly wait to get back out there.

  My first order of business would be to return to the secret cabin, gather up all the evidence and protect it before it deteriorated further.

  I wasn’t sure why the agents hadn’t taken anything with them, but I had a theory. Maybe the prosecution thought they could circumvent the laws of discovery by not gathering any of the evidence.

  Certainly Ted’s defense lawyers would return to talk to me before the trial. What
would I tell them? I just hoped I wouldn’t get caught up in the middle of charges of failure to disclose evidence.

  It was aggravating and puzzling they’d go to such efforts to find evidence to corroborate Ted’s journals and then not want to take it and process it for the trial.

  Interviews and Trial Strategies

  Flattery won’t buy you much in a mountain community like Lincoln, especially if you’re a stranger. Small-town people get right to the point.

  “How’s the weather?”

  “It’s 20 below zero on the old barn thermometer this morning. The dogs won’t even go outside.”

  Talk all you want about the splendid scenery in the Upper Blackfoot Valley, the rustic charm of the town of Lincoln and its stores, the friendliness of the people, but it won’t buy a cup of coffee at Lambkin’s.

  Any conversation laced with profuse compliments immediately draws a suspicious look: “You want something?”

  That’s pretty much the way it went in those months of late 1997 during the final interviews as both sides prepared for Ted’s trial. Attorneys and experts were in Lincoln, and there were plenty of compliments being handed out, sometimes almost to the point of embarrassment, as the defense tried to learn about the strategies of the prosecution, and vice versa.

  After agents Max Noel and Dave Weber returned to California, I continued my field investigations whenever possible, trying to solve the remaining mysteries in my gulch. Dave and I both shared a keen interest in gathering every possible detail relating to Ted’s life in the Lincoln area and his survival methods in the uninhabited wilderness.

  We talked on the phone regularly. When Dave referred to Ted’s plan to escape to Canada, I thought Ted was well aware other criminals had been quite successful evading the law in Montana’s high country. Two cases received extensive coverage in the Montana press during Ted’s Lincoln years.

  The most notorious was that of the father-son duo of Don and Dan Nichols, who kidnapped twenty-two-year-old world-class biathlete Kari Swenson July 15, 1983 while she was on a training run in the mountains near Big Sky Ski Resort.

  During a rescue attempt the next day, she was shot in the right lung by Dan Nichols, and a rescuer was shot and killed by Don. They dumped the wounded Swenson, who had been kidnapped to be the “mountain bride” of Dan, the younger Nichols, out of a sleeping bag and left her for dead at the camp.

  Don and Dan then evaded a small army of law enforcement officials—in helicopters and planes, and on foot and horseback—for the next five months in the rugged Madison Range in southwestern Montana. They were finally arrested near Bear Trap Canyon along the Madison River as winter set in.

  A second case involved the murders of Lincoln-area ranchers Kenneth McLean and his wife, Marion, in September 1977.

  Andrew Sunday and his small entourage of ruffians from Nebraska had stolen horses and tack from the McLeans’ beautiful resort ranch east of Lincoln and ridden off into the mountains. The McLeans were shot and killed after they discovered the theft and tracked the group into an open meadow some ten miles away in the Alice Creek drainage.

  The horses were spooked during the shoot-out, so Sunday and his two companions took the McLeans’ pickup and fled. They were arrested several days later east of Spokane when they attempted to pick up a money order that had been wired to them. Ted surely noted their fatal mistake, knowing their chances of escape would have been much better on foot in the wilderness areas to the north.

  Ted must have been acutely cognizant of the Nichols’ superior escape plan. Lawmen found it almost impossible to apprehend fugitives Don and Dan in the rugged terrain. Ted, so cunning and well versed in wilderness survival, would be even harder to find.

  As the summer days shortened and another Montana winter loomed, I had to break off field work to build a new garage with guest quarters overhead.

  But the investigation had taken all my time and I wasn’t able to pour the concrete for the floor and foundation until August 19.

  We designed the garage as a two-story structure, almost like a small chalet. Since I had to fell and skid trees and mill out all the lumber on my one-man sawmill, the job ahead was huge, especially considering the mountain seasons are so unpredictable—winter can arrive to stay almost any time after the end of September.

  Nervous that I would be subpoenaed to testify, I kept asking Dave when the witness list would come out. Butch Gehring and I also discussed the trial every time we saw each other and both wondered what we’d be asked to do.

  I absolutely didn’t want to go to California to testify, but that wouldn’t be a matter of choice.

  Finally Dave said the witness list wouldn’t be released until November. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that should give me enough time to enclose the garage for the harsh winter. If it wasn’t sealed in by November, it’d be too late anyway.

  Dave also mentioned another piece of surprising trial strategy during that conversation. He warned me I might also be called as a defense witness.

  That brought to mind a sobering scenario: being grilled on the witness stand by both sides. I wasn’t afraid to testify, but I was nervous about a prolonged, drawn-out trial keeping me away from home during the winter months because Betty would have to manage everything at our remote mountain home alone.

  Dave and I continued our phone conversations several times a week through the early fall. He said he wanted to get back to Lincoln by himself so we could conduct more field work. We knew there were unsolved issues. Also, there was Ted’s secret cabin and all its contents.

  Dave said he wanted to pick up the evidence and wrap up the final details.

  At that time it wasn’t clear why he and Max hadn’t taken any evidence with them in late July. But whatever they decided to do, or not to do, the cabin and its contents were documented. Every item was safe and preserved for the short term at the cabin site.

  I called Dave in September to get his new address since the entire Unabom Task Force—its offices, computers, everything—had been moved to some anonymous offices located in the Sacramento federal building. They made the move as discreetly as possible to avoid media attention.

  On Thursday, October 2, Dave called and described a website, named “Soft Kill,” recently posted on the Internet. It gave names of people in Lincoln who had talked to the press or had been interviewed by the FBI. The website called for harassment of those listed. Dave said some threats had been posted. The site’s creator had been traced and arrested for obstruction of justice, he said.

  Nothing really was surprising anymore. There seemed to be no break in the ominous cloud that hung over us all as Ted’s legacy; new manifestations surfaced on a regular basis.

  I was furiously working on the garage, trying to beat the winter weather. Rain and snow flurries made roof work impossible on several occasions, but then a beautiful late fall high pressure system built over western Montana and I knew, even though working alone, that I’d be able to button up the roof and finish the framing and sheeting—if only the phone would stop ringing.

  As Ted’s trial neared, the media attention again intensified. There was one distraction after another.

  On October 14, Dave called and left a message while I was working on the roof. He caught me by surprise, saying government psychiatrists were on their way up to see me. He apologized for the short notice, but explained it had been planned that way so the press wouldn’t get wind of the visit.

  I returned his call, wondering when they would arrive, since I was trying to complete the roof and the weatherman was now predicting snow and colder weather that night.

  This might be the last nice day for roof work, but Dave didn’t have any more information other than to say the doctors were on a tight schedule and needed to interview Butch and me that day.

  I climbed back on the roof and screwed down waferboard sheeting until a rented Ford Explorer drove up into the yard a couple of hours later.

  Four people got out as I climbed down the ladder. Max No
el was the only familiar person. He was extremely cheerful.

  He introduced the others as FBI agent Kathy Puckett and two doctors, Philip Resnick and Park Dietz, both psychiatrists working for the government.

  Max spoke glowingly about the beautiful and unspoiled country and all the places we had explored during the past summer. Then he turned and asked if he could hike around and enjoy his time while the doctors conducted their interview.

  “Certainly, you know you’re welcome,” I replied.

  With that Max disappeared and the rest of us sat down outside. It was a beautiful late fall afternoon, one of those almost-too-good-to-be-true days that usually ride the leading edge of an approaching cold weather system.

  Drs. Dietz and Resnick pulled out their tablets and pens and started the interview. I kept close mental notes of everything that was said.

  Agent Puckett said very little, and Dr. Dietz asked the bulk of the questions. He cycled through the questions on Ted’s apparent mental state, returning again and again to the same basic question phrased slightly differently: what were Ted’s “emotions” like when I first knew him and more recently, his “temperament,” his “demeanor.” Were his actions “open or secretive,” were they “paranoid”? Did he seem “irrational,” or “coherent” or “abnormal” or “unfriendly” or “withdrawn”? With each new phrasing, Dr. Dietz asked whether the change had been gradual or abrupt. Another series of questions pursued what “obviously upset him”: things I did or said, things others did or said, complaints Ted may have made about people or events around us, any time I saw him lose his temper.

  Dr. Dietz wanted to know about our conversations, also: four questions on the quality and occurrence of Ted’s eye contact (in general, while he spoke or I spoke, and how direct it was), his vocabulary, what we talked about and what he said that I found unusual, who initiated our talks and who dominated them.