by Dave Shors
The defense was trying to persuade U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell these offenses had nothing to do with the federal crimes for which Ted was being tried. The prosecution wanted them made public and entered into evidence to portray a pattern of violence and a propensity for killing.
Dave said there wasn’t a hint which way the judge would rule. So Cleary had to prepare two opening statements, one that included the unchargeable offenses and one that excluded them. The judge might make the ruling before the trial started, but Cleary and the prosecution had to be prepared either way.
Dave, sensing I was about to ask him my usual question, beat me to the punch and said, no, the witness lists had not yet been released. He promised to call as soon as he knew.
We both laughed.
Dave said he would call the following week when he returned to Sacramento.
Betty and I continued work on the garage and every day media phone calls increased.
Jury selection was under way and Dave had said the way the process was progressing, the jury should be seated by the first or at least the second week of December. I tried to avoid the phone and work on the garage as much as possible. Once again, real work helped get my mind off the upcoming trial.
The “Queer” Scale
On Monday, November 24, as I studied some of Ted’s journal pages and compared them to my field notes from the previous summer, I found few differences. There were cryptic diagrams of cache locations mapped with pertinent landmarks, trees, rocks, and streams, fodder for many days of exploration. These documents included additional information, but several important pages studied during our field trips were missing, including Ted’s hand-drawn map of all the trails and places he had explored.
The Montana winter had been coyly holding back, almost like a mountain lion on a talus slope sizing up its prey. But it was looming right around the corner, just like Ted’s trial.
In final attempts to save him from the death penalty, Ted’s attorneys were working furiously to reach a plea agreement with prosecutors. But U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno seemed steadfast, refusing to deal.
No one cared to argue Ted’s innocence or guilt. The case instead centered on his mental health. Was he an insidious calculating murderer who deserved the death penalty or a deranged madman desperately in need of confinement and treatment?
Ted seemed resolute; he wouldn’t take shelter from the storm, much as he often had defied nature’s harshest elements in the back-country mountains of western Montana. A defense of mental illness wasn’t an option in his mind, so he was trapped in a snare, like the small mountain rodents he often killed for digging in either of his Florence Gulch gardens. Yet he didn’t want to die.
While “Doctor” Ted directed his defense team from a California jail cell, I pored over many secret details of his years in Lincoln.
With a set of blank topographical maps spread out across the kitchen table, I methodically plotted every conceivable route and location; I was convinced my gulch held the answers to these final riddles of hidden caches. It was possible to zero in on the areas that looked like the best places to search.
That Wednesday I talked to Dave Weber. Events in Sacramento were confusing and fast-paced. Dave said media members were buzzing with new information; rumors surfaced almost daily, including a disturbing one that Ted’s secret cabin had been found.
I was surprised, and assured him the leak didn’t come from me. He said he knew that and was sure the loose lips were among their own people; one reporter mentioned photographs showing agent Max Noel, Dave and me standing in front of the cabin.
“I have all my pictures,” I said. Dave replied he had all of his as well. Max was the only other person with pictures and we were both sure he wouldn’t give any of his to the press.
Dave thought the whole thing would probably blow over. I knew otherwise.
Journalists are the best bloodhounds in the world and regularly put law enforcement investigators to shame. I knew that if the press had a clue about another untold aspect of the story, they wouldn’t rest until they had dug it out.
I worked through the weekend on the garage and took breaks to explore areas of the woods that seemed promising; the activity kept me busy, easily the best way to ignore media phone calls and avoid the fury building in Sacramento.
When I talked to Dave the next Monday, he mentioned that prosecutor Robert Cleary had seemed excited about “cleaning the board” and resolving the remaining mysteries, showing a pattern with the unchargeable offenses.
Dave asked if the fingerprinted brush handle, the rubber gloves, and clothing from the secret cabin were protected. I told him they were secure; I think he sensed all the important evidence was now safely out of the cabin, but he didn’t ask me where it was.
But later that week, when I again called Dave, he said Cleary now felt it might be too late in the game to add evidence to the case. It was still a possibility, Dave said, but the prosecution would have to look at things long and hard before making any decision.
The following week I tried to call Dave, who was out, and talked to a woman at the main desk instead. She switched me over to Max Noel. I excitedly told him I was pretty sure I had located an important buried cache site and asked if it should be dug up.
I was disappointed, mostly by the nonchalant tone in his voice, when he responded, “Well, that’s great if you think you can find it.”
He cut the conversation short; it almost felt like he didn’t want me to continue my exploration. Discouraged after Max’s negative reaction, I was determined to go out and find the cache and then I’d share that information with Dave, and Dave only.
As I sat inside near the fire during a couple of days of light snow and freezing rain, I studied and pondered the journal notes, which contained fascinating information about Ted’s devices, acts of terrorism, and secret life.
It was clear he had gone to great lengths to throw the FBI off track and avoid detection. His life was a montage of plotting, designing, building, and testing bombs, all with one goal in mind—to kill. Then he made every conceivable effort to conceal his identity so he could kill again.
Not only were his devices built with home-mixed metal alloys and solder, wiring that was altered by removing strands, and parts obtained from scrap piles, but also he applied even more devious methods in his attempts to trick the FBI and to make sure no bombs or packages would lead them back to his home cabin.
Among the more than 200 books found in Ted’s home were volumes on chemistry and electrical circuitry, and there also was a FBI manual on fingerprinting. The manual was his graduate-level textbook on the process, and taught him how to avoid detection.
Ted learned his lessons well, evident from all those years he remained free in the Montana wilderness while people suffered and died.
For starters, he carefully wore rubber gloves any time he worked on a bomb. You have to wonder how many devices he constructed at his secret cabin, where all the pairs of rubber gloves were found. Then, to remove any fingerprints, he hand-sanded every part that went into his bombs and every piece of copper tubing used for his hand-made detonators.
FROM KACZYNSKI BOMB NOTEBOOK
The tube should be worked over with fine emery paper to remove any fingerprints—wiping is not enough. Even if your own prints are not on the tube, store employees’ prints may enable FBI to trace tube to store where it was bought.
As Ted packaged his armed devices, he carefully wrapped, sealed and weighed each one so he himself could apply the proper postage in stamps, rather than allowing a post office to weigh and meter the parcel, which could be traced
But the stamps weren’t just any stamps. He didn’t want to take any chance they might be traced either, so he went to great extremes to soak every one in a homemade solution to remove any potentially incriminating marks. Then he’d apply a glue. He chose every stamp carefully and refused to purchase any stamp that was embossed.
NOTE FOUND WITH STAMP CONTAINER
/> These stamps are CLEAN and do not bear the impression of this writing. They were purchased from a vending machine in one of the two Missoula post offices between March 1995 and May 1995. They have been treated.
Ted took the added precaution of wearing disguises when he mailed a device or purchased any materials.
His measures to deceive and mislead any investigators were layered like a cat’s cradle.
He placed a human hair found in a Missoula bathroom inside one of his devices, knowing if it was discovered by FBI agents as they studied the shards of the exploded bomb, they would have a field day testing and studying it. He chose hair with a different color and texture than his own.
FROM BOMB NOTEBOOK
A while back I obtained 2 human hairs from the bathroom of the Missoula bus depot. I broke one of these hairs into two pieces and I placed one piece between the layers of electrical tape I used to wrap the wire joints inside the package. The reason for this is to deceive the policemen, who will think that the hair belongs to whoever made the device.
When he broke the hair in half, he saved one piece to use in a later device.
Ever methodical, Ted compiled a chart of pros and cons.
PLUS MINUS
1. Confuses them about hair 1. May make them suspect we’re not from CA.
2. Removes their idea we may have brown hair 2. May make them suspect we wore wig
3. May make them doubt false verbal clues
Ted’s deception wasn’t relegated solely to the physical. Like a multi-level chess game, he constantly was trying to outwit the FBI in the psychological arena as well, twisting information used in his letters to enhance his smoke-screen, writing as if several people or a group were responsible, rather than an individual, or by implying that he resented people with advanced degrees so agents wouldn’t look to the academic world for suspects.
FROM BOMB NOTEBOOK
In a letter say that, “scientists consider themselves very intelligent because they have advanced diplomas (advanced degrees) but they are not as intelligent as they think because they opened those packages.” This will make it seem as though I have no advanced degree.
The very essence of his subterfuge can be seen in a letter sent to Yale University computer scientist Dr. David Gelernter, who was injured by one of Ted’s bombs in 1993.
FROM LETTER TO GELERNTER POSTMARKED APRIL 20, 1995
…People with advanced degrees aren’t as smart as they think they are. If you’d had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn’t have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source…. any college person can learn enough about computers to compete in a computer-dominated world. Apparently, people without a college degree don’t count….
As usual, this piece of correspondence was written as if several people were responsible so authorities would think it was a terrorist group at work (FC, Freedom Club). At one point, Ted came up with an idea that he should write a letter to “Dear Abby” in Spanish, referring to his membership in the “Freedom Club,” the supposed group behind the Manifesto.
Ted’s explosive mixtures found in his cabin were often prepared from common objects—first matchheads, then black powder from shells and bullets, and then from common household chemicals, making them untraceable.
He was constantly at work developing mixtures that ranged from flash powder to incendiary thermite, which he carefully stored in containers with numerical identifying labels. Ted even prepared and built his own detonating caps; the mixtures used in the caps were logged and numbered as well.
Ted kept careful, laboratory-like records of his experiments—“Igniter charge mixture #8,” “Tube mixture #5”—a practice ingrained during his days in academia.
His experiments extended to ingenious devices used to house his bombs, including books that exploded when opened, gas cans that would detonate upon lifting the handle, a bomb disguised as a stack of research papers, electrical testing equipment, or even a road hazard.
Kaczynski the scientist carefully tracked materials and methods he used in bomb-building.
It seems he left no stone unturned, though he apparently overlooked one important item—the DNA left in saliva from licking glue on envelopes. But even the DNA samples frustrated the FBI, since they did little good until a suspect was apprehended.
On Monday, December 15, Dave called and left a message since I was outside. He missed me the next day as well. On Wednesday, we finally made contact and he said rumors about Ted’s secret cabin had resurfaced and the two of us discussed possible leaks.
It became apparent the leak was in Sacramento. Dave explained some people in law enforcement can’t keep information to themselves; they become those “unnamed” or “reliable” sources often quoted by the media.
The whole process was starting to frustrate me and I let him know as much the next day when we talked again.
To make matters worse, it seemed like I was being accused of the leaks by a few in charge. At one point I even said to Dave I was going to stop helping them because of the distrust and manipulation brought on by some of his superiors.
It also was upsetting that the FBI had never offered to reimburse me for film, processing, more than $500 worth of long distance phone calls, plus countless hours spent on the case, including some sixty days helping them with field investigations.
I felt I was being used. If the FBI could hold a party at a local steakhouse after Ted’s arrest, then they could be more appreciative of all I had done. I told Dave I was tempted to take everything I had and knew to the press.
He encouraged me not to, and he knew I wouldn’t.
“You can trust me,” he said. “The FBI hasn’t always treated people the way they should and have taken some bad press because of it, but we’ve tried to change that.”
Dave was sincere, but I wasn’t so sure about the people in command.
I told him when I solved the remaining pieces of the case that I might just keep the items and not even send them more pictures.
“Don’t do that,” he replied. “They are still interested in the help only you can provide.”
Dave encouraged me to send copies of any bills and a list of hours and days spent working for the FBI and said he would try to obtain reimbursement. I didn’t have much faith that would happen since I barely had received a thank-you from anyone other than Dave.
After we hung up, I studied Ted’s hiking-trail map. Even though I had caught glimpses of the map during our field work in July, it was astounding to be able to carefully study all the miles Ted had covered, and how he had hiked virtually every accessible area around our homes, everything that wasn’t a sheer vertical cliff. He left few places unexplored.
Looking down at the paper I could visualize every trail, ridge, and gulch he had crossed and could almost see a bearded and long-haired Ted standing there in the forest, protected by a poncho, a pack on his back, oblivious to the sleet and snow.
While leafing through some of Ted’s other documents, I began to understand the unusual structure of the journals themselves and how they were organized.
His writings were voluminous, to say the least. More than 22,000 pages were found in his cabin after the arrest, all organized in three-ring binders and spiral notebooks. They chronicled his entire life from early childhood to the time of his arrest. Much of his work about lifestyle—what he ate, details about the weather and country—was written during his early years in Lincoln; it tapered off in the ‘80s and ‘90s when he was spending much more time building better bombs, testing them, then delivering them.
Ted’s early life was described in an unpublished autobiography, which documented every important aspect up to the age of twenty-seven.
That’s when he started to keep a daily journal, which early on was written in great detail. His notebooks quickly became his constant companion and best friend as he carved a n
ew life for himself as a mountain hermit. He carried on conversations with himself in them, expressing his feelings, frustrations and most of all, his plans for revenge upon society.
Ted’s daily journal entries described where he hiked, camped, and what he ate, and elaborated his views about everything from philosophy to environmental issues.
As his precious papers and journals grew in volume, he developed a library-like system that organized everything from his autobiography to secret documents written in sophisticated numerical code, a code that Ted the mathematician had devised.
This substantial library of his own work was divided and organized into series and volumes, including his autobiography; then Series I, Volumes #1 to #7; Series II, Volumes #1 to #6; notebooks with bomb experiments, tests, and diagrams; a notebook containing entries written in his own numerical code; and a notebook written partly in Spanish to disguise “misdeeds”: vandalism and illegal hunting activities.
This was a fairly academic way to organize his documents, which contained the bizarre and twisted stories of a serial killer. Much of the writing was extremely dangerous and sensitive if ever seen by outside eyes. Ted realized that and knew in the military they deserved at least a “CLASSIFIED” or “TOP SECRET” stamp. Top secret didn’t appeal to Ted, though, so he devised his own system, classifying his writings according to his “Queer Ratings,” based on the sensitivity of the material, and were assigned as follows:
Queer #1—embarrassing but not dangerous;
Queer #2—embarrassing, not dangerous, but past the statute of limitations;
Queer #3—embarrassing, not dangerous, past the statute of limitations, but very bad public relations;…
Queer #10—Most sensitive, embarrassing, incriminating, and dangerous.