Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski

by Waits, Chris

  FROM FBI INVENTORY

  L-9—Black pepper can containing several metal pieces and a plastic bottle labelled "Strychnine Oats"

  It had been so long since I had even thought of those oats. As Butch listened to the story, I shuddered to think how easy it would have been for someone to prepare a lethal cocktail or a deadly snack of meat and oats to feed to an unsuspecting dog.

  Things were starting to make sense. Some answers were surfacing in the wake of Ted's arrest. I still wondered how anyone could be so totally and remorselessly cruel.

  The Lincoln Mysteries

  Eighteen thousand pounds of Gat diesel power pulled a half-dozen eighty-foot lodgepole pine logs with a winch across the forest floor. It was early afternoon in a heavily timbered area just west of 6,376-foot Stemple Pass, and one of Montana's major environmental controversies was being played out under the watchful eyes of Ted Kaczynski. Ted, perched across the way on Windy Point, seemed extremely interested in what was going on, watching the equipment and my crew hard at work.

  He had arrived about 10 A.M. and sat quietly in the trees as the 475-horsepower diesel came to life with a deep-throated roar and a cloud of black smoke. At full throttle it generated enough power to move a small house off its foundation and then crush it under its twenty-inch-wide steel tracks.

  It's not a gentle machine, but this wasn't gentle work.

  Montanans have struggled for decades over how best to manage their public land and its resources. Should the mature trees be harvested, milled, and cut into lumber, and then used to build homes in Helena, Billings, and all points east and west.^ Should this huge storehouse of natural resources provide wood to the rest of the world.^ To some, the price of harvesting is too great. To them logging crews can disrupt the natural scheme of things—everything from habitat to watershed—cutting roads and entire forests, leaving mountainside scars that last a generation while the trees regenerate. To them, wilderness and protected areas managed for recreation preserve this land for future generations. To others, the future is now and the forest is a renewable resource. Logging provides important jobs and materials needed by people throughout the country. They say logging isn't nearly as damaging as the natural cycles of fires, winds, and floods.

  n

  That's an on crsiniplification of an often passionate conflict. But on this particular day anv dissatisfaction about my logging job had long ago been settled during public hearings conducted by the Forest Service, which had solicited and approx ed bids on the work at hand.

  It was 1985 and I had successfully bid on the very large Forest Ser ice contract to log 4 million board feet of timber and build more than six miles of specified roads into a virtually roadless area near Stemple Pass just a few miles from my house.

  It was just one of the major changes taking place in the Stemple area around led and me at the time.

  I was excited to secure a contract for work so close to home, a job that would last at least four years. Meanwhile, my friend, and Ted's neighbor, Butch Gehring, had purchased a sawmill and set it up just a few hundred yards from Ted's cabin. I bought a sawmill a year earlier and had been cutting lumber for an addition at my home. My mill was a small one-man outfit; Butch's was more of a production-size mill he planned to operate full time.

  One day not long after Butch had his mill up and running, he heard a different sound coming from the Allis-Chalmers diesel engine, which had been in excellent running order. He immediately shut down and tried to figure out what was causing the strange noise.

  He was startled and angry to find that a white, heavy, sandy material had been poured into the fuel system. He could feel the sharp grit in the diesel fuel as he rubbed it between his finger and thumb.

  Later, as we had a long talk about what had happened, he described the material and said he was thankful the engine hadn't been destroyed. He asked what I thought it might be; he was sure it wasn't sugar.

  I told him that I'd bet anything it was white crystalline barite. I immediately thought of barite when Butch described the sand as being very dense and heavy and that it resembled sugar, but was coarser.

  Barite is uncommon around Lincoln and I told him I know of only one place where it can be found—in my gulch.

  White barite sand has settled to bedrock along with black sand and garnet sand we usually see when looking for gold. Barite is easily mistaken for quartz except for the obvious weight difference. With a high specific gravity, its heft feels more like lead than quartz. Its density and heaviness allow low-grade barite to be used as drilling

  mud for oil rigs, because it will travel downward easily. Higher grades are used in manufacturing paint and glass. If ground up and introduced into an engine, the results would be disastrous.

  Butch was furious, and we talked about who might have done it. Right away he suspected Ted. Butch said he and Ted didn't always see eye to eye, and he felt Ted had a motive, and he didn't trust Ted.

  I agreed there was motive—Ted surely didn't like having the sawmill and its noise so close to home he could hear it all day—but I still didn't think he would sabotage the mill. As a neighbor he wouldn't want to draw attention to himself.

  I reminded Butch that if the substance was ground barite, it would greatly limit the number of potential suspects because the person would have to know where to find it and also have a good knowledge of minerals. Unfortunately, Butch had thrown the gritty fuel away, so nothing more could be done.

  As the summer passed, I completed the first two miles of road on my job and started logging. I added several new pieces of equipment to my fleet: a Kenworth truck with a lowboy trailer, another crawler dozer to skid logs, and a motor grader to blade roads.

  I started to see Ted frequently while I was working. I'd see him sitting on an opposite hill scrutinizing our work, but I didn't think much of it, assuming he was curious about the various kinds of equipment and how it was used in logging.

  I even gave him a ride home from the job site one afternoon and he didn't say anything derogatory. At one time I had considered offering Ted a job, but I remembered Butch telling me how Ted had walked off the job after just a few hours. Since I was working on a tight contract schedule I decided not to risk it, not wanting to break in a new man who might quit right away. Also, I didn't want to chance a potential work conflict with Ted that might even strain our friendship.

  The changing of the seasons is subtle in a lodgepole forest without deciduous reminders. As summer turns to fall, first you'll notice the shorter days, then how quickly the high mountain air chills as the sun sets. I planned to log all winter, so when I heard the first bull elk bugling in search of mates, I knew it was about time to prepare my line skidding machine with the large drums spooled with hundreds of feet of steel cable. I'd attach the cable to logs and skid them uphill

  across the snow to a landing where they could be loaded and hauled to the sa\ mill.

  I saw Ted much less during the winter months that year, but he'd still show up once in a while to watch our work. That winter I completed the first three logging units within the first mile of road built the pre'i()us summer. Each logging unit contained about 200,000 board feet of lumber, enough raw^ material to build a small subdivision.

  Spring was especially welcome since my crew and I had worked many days in the -10° F. and -20° range; other days were so much colder we weren't able to work at all. It was a winter of heavy snow, making it difficult to keep the roads open. After the spring thaw in 1986 I went back to road building and completed the first three- to four-mile stretch. Then I moved my equipment to the next site to begin building the last road required by the agreement, a three-mile jaunt into a roadless area virtually next to the Continental Divide Trail.

  That summer another local Forest Service contract was awarded and it included a short, one-mile road to be built between my road and the top of Stemple Pass. I had declined to bid on this much smaller job, knowing I already had my hands full with nearly 3 million board feet yet to log o
n both roads.

  After that contract was awarded, the successful bidders asked me to help w ith their road construction. Since things were moving pretty smoothly on my job, I consented and did all of the road grading for them.

  Gates w ere installed on all of these roads, per contract requirement, and I was glad, considering all the recent acts of vandalism in the Stemple area. So far I had been lucky, with only one incident w^here people cut firew^ood out of my log decks, ruining the lengths and costing me about $1,000. It could have been much worse.

  I w^as thankful none of my machines had been hit, especially after learning that a state-owned motor grader parked near Lincoln had been badly damaged. Its hydraulic hoses had been chopped up and its windows and gauges had been broken, along with other damage.

  As lucky as I felt, I began to wonder who would be next and hoped it wouldn't be me. I didn't have to wait long to find out.

  Actually, I had been feeling much safer since we were working more than a mile from the main Stemple Road. Far behind my locked gate, we w^ere totally out of sight.

  Then one morning while I was working on the upper road, a crew member who had been skidding below with one of my Cats drove up in his pickup. He stepped out and approached with a stern look on his face. As he neared, a large lump stuck in the pit of my stomach and a sick feeling came over me.

  He said I needed to come down to the Cat to check it out. It had lost engine oil pressure and he was lucky to get the machine back to the road.

  The first thing I noticed at the Cat was some equipment was missing, including shovels, a fire extinguisher, and other fire suppression tools required on everv' machine. My operator said the items had been gone when he came to work.

  Surely, whoever took the equipment had tampered with the engine. My apprehension turned to extreme anger and I swore I would break every bone in the body of whoever was responsible. All I had to do was catch him.

  The engine had been nearly destroyed; the rods, crankshaft, and most other moving parts were ruined. When I finished repairing the Cat, the parts bill exceeded $13,000, and if that wasn't enough, the down time cost me even more.

  This was the work of someone who knew the Cat was back there. My confidence in having my equipment parked out of sight, far off the main road and behind a locked gate, had been misplaced. The site had made it more private for the criminal to accomplish his dirty work.

  What was sobering and frightening was that the person was becoming even craftier. My operator informed me he had checked his machine carefully as always. I knew he had; he'd been working for me for some time and we had a routine we followed before start-up.

  While overhauling the engine, I examined it carefully and discovered the perpetrator had cleverly poured an abrasive down the dipstick hole, thus bypassing all protective filters. The abrasive, upon close scrutiny, appeared to be a fine, heav>; white sand.

  I remembered Butch's episode the year before. Instead of answers, this only prompted more questions. I still couldn't put things together since I was thinking the material used had to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere far awav.

  But was it? Or was I just too blind to see what was becoming more and more obx ious? It couldn't be Ted, the friend I totally trusted?

  Lincoln, usually a peaceful mountain community, first started to develop a much darker edge during the second half of the 1970s. No one could really explain the curious and often dangerous events, but some strange new force was in the air.

  My first brush with the unexplained had occurred in 1975. My younger sister, Anne, and I planned a camping trip for just the two of us prior to her marriage that year. I took her to one of my favorite camping spots about a mile up McClellan Gulch to spend her last weekend as a single young w oman. We felt it would be a perfect opportunity to talk about her life, and for me, as her older brother, to give her the best advice I could about her future.

  We took along my dog Jo-Jo, a four-year-old black Lab cross. I set up our tent late Friday afternoon on a flat spot just above a firepit surrounded by a circle of rocks. I had built it several years earlier and used it frequently.

  As the early-summer afternoon turned to evening, I gathered wood for our campfire. After cooking a supper of steak, fried potatoes, and camp beans, I stoked the fire and banked it to last well into the evening.

  The bed of coals, now deepening, glowed a dark ruby red and flickered in the night air. Nights in the mountains can be quite cool even during the summer. We moved closer to the fire as we talked. Jo-Jo lay nearby with his head resting on his paws.

  Suddenly w ithout w^arning a rifle shell exploded in the coals. First one, then another and another.

  At the first loud report I screamed to my sister to lie flat on the ground so she wouldn't be hit by any shrapnel. I too hit the ground and both of us were protected by the rim of rocks around the firepit. Jo-Jo ran to the tent and hid inside.

  W^hen the shells stopped exploding I carefully scattered the coals and doused the remains of the fire. Miraculously neither of us was injured.

  It w ould be many years before I would understand why this incident occurred. The one thing I did know at the time was someone had deliberately placed live ammunition deep within the campfire bed, so that the rounds would explode the next time a hot fire was built.

  But why? Was this an early warning to stay out of the upper areas of my gulch?

  Aug. 7 (8?) [Kaczynski journal]

  ...I had tacked up the hide of the first deer I killed on this trip. I found the hide was gone. I don't know whether a bear or a coyote took it to eat, or whether a human found it. But I don't know what a human would be doing in such a steep, overgrown place, or what they would want with the hide. The possibility of a human going through there outside hunting season is disturbing. If that place is not secluded enough, what is?...

  In summer of 1975, a small trailer sat near an old mine in Fields Gulch, a large area that lies just west of McClellan. Talk around Lincoln was that miners intended to reopen the adit of the Black Widow Mine and begin a new venture from the old workings. They successfully re-opened the portal, entered old drifts that hadn't caved in and then began to clear the caved-in portions of the tunnels.

  The trailer that served as quarters for the men was parked a short distance away. After taking a few days off the men returned to find their portable dwelling completely trashed. Everything inside was broken and scattered about, and many items were missing. No one was ever caught.

  Another mine was vandalized the following summer. The Gold Dollar only a quarter mile from my home had been worked off and on over the years, and I knew the men currently operating it and a small placer site nearby. When I stopped by to visit one day, one of the men asked if any of my machines had been tampered with recently. I replied that they were all okay. He said their compressor truck had been vandalized, and that someone had poured a lot of sugar into the tanks, and had done other damage. I promised to keep a sharp eye out from now on, and check their machines when they were away.

  Not too long after that, another acquaintance told me that his truck, parked in the woods a couple miles from my house, had been sugared while the owner was away from the site. Later that fall, there was similar news from a few miles to the east, at Rochester Gulch.

  Late one afternoon in 1975, I decided to walk alon^ an old trail east of Rochester Gulch to the top of the mountain, circle around and then come out at an old mine on the other side. I had followed this trail plenty of times in the past, either on foot or on my motorcycle. I had seen other motorcycles in the area from time to time, but with the old access over Poorman Creek washed out, I hadn't ridden the trail since at least 1972.

  More motorcycles had been in the area recently; you could hear the high-pitched buzz of their tightly wound engines echoing for miles in the mountain gulches. I was curious how they were getting up to the trail. After spotting what appeared to be a new trail next to the timber that cut from Stemple Road straight up the mountain to the edge
of a grassy hill, I decided to check it out.

  I crossed Poorman Creek near the old access road and hiked up to find where it seemed the new trail would intersect w ith the old one. I found the spot and could see there had been a lot of use; the trail was deeply rutted and eroded into the mountain. Once grass is killed by motorcycles going straight up a fifty- to sixty-degree slope, erosion is not far behind. Runoff from rain and snow washes out the straight and steep trail quickly and easily. The old access trail had never had that much traffic—very few people knew^ about it—and it followed a more contoured route.

  Looking up the mountain, I w as surprised to see that the new trail not only joined and crossed the old one, but then it cut a new path straight up the ridge. This new breed of mountain motorcyclist obviously wasn't going to waste any time following switchbacks or contours. Their method was quick and straight tow^ard the top. Now^ I knew^ where all the cycles roaring past my house were headed. I decided to follow^ the new trail to its end.

  I had always known that if a few trees were removed, a motorcyclist would be able to ride to the top of the mountain. Once on top he could ride miles across the ridges, east and w^est. Was this w here the new trail w^ould lead.^

  I climbed about a quarter of a mile to a verv^ steep, almost vertical slope where the trail went through the trees just before it broke out into a large, grassy meadow on the mountainside.

  Walking through the trees I pulled up short. A half-pace away was

  a small but strong wire stretched across the trail at neck height in a most dangerous place. The wire was oxidized, not shiny, and was nearly invisible. Pulled taut, it was firmly wrapped around a tree on each side of the trail in a location where the path narrowed amid numerous trees. The deadly trap was strategically placed where it would be impossible to steer a bike quickly clear, even if the rider saw the wire. The steep section of trail added to the danger. Powering uphill, a rider would build speed to make it to the grassy meadow; going down would be disastrous as well, since it would be almost impossible to stop the quickening pace of a cycle. The wire was capable of lopping a rider's head cleanly off.