Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski

by Waits, Chris

  When the high water dropped in the spring of 1991, we went down to the Northwest dragline that I had left near the creekside spot where we had worked some years before. We planned to do some more min-

  ing. This was one of my more secure machines, with all the cab's doors and windows equipped with locks.

  As we approached the dragline I noticed that the door and window on the blind side, away from the road, had been severely cracked from being pried open. After unlocking the doors and entering the cab, I spotted a large rock lying on the floorboard.

  A sick feeling came over me, much like the one I experienced a few years earlier. What would I fmd.^ It appeared as though someone had started to pound on the engine parts with the rock when apparently he quit and ran off, unable to finish the destruction. Perhaps a vehicle coming along the road startled him.

  After a very close inspection I was grateful to find only broken windows, bent doors, and other minor damage.

  We decided to haul the dragline home. It wasn't worth risking a whole machine just to do a little placer mining. The culprit had succeeded in shutting down our operation, as small as it was. It goes against my grain to give in, but I couldn't sit up there every day and night just to catch someone, especially since I didn't have a clue if or when he might return.

  The winter of '92 passed slowly. Without my late father-in-law, working in the woods seemed hollow. The magic was gone without him to share the labor. For years I had dreamed of the day when I'd be able to quit logging and road construction and take only smaller jobs I could handle alone, allowing more time for the mining Leonard and I both enjoyed so much.

  That spring I bought a screening plant and an additional conveyor to add gravel production to my businesses, since I would complete all the year's construction and logging contracts within a thirty-day period. The time was right to cut back on the heavy and intense mountain work. It had been good to me, but it was a hard life and had taken a toll on my health.

  Betty and I spent many nights talking about our future before we decided I shouldn't take any more large logging and road construction contracts.

  After I wrapped up my last logging job, I hauled the heavy equipment home for the last time, excited about starting a scaled-down life. I screened gravel for driveways, septic systems, erosion-control

  rip-rap, and other uses. Once a<2;ain, I was able to do a little placer minini^.

  Ted continued to hike into my o^uich on a regular basis but we spent less time talking, except for occasional greetings. I felt sorry for him because the peace and solitude he craved was almost impossible to find near his home cabin, where noise and development were escalating.

  You could sense that frustration in his appearance alone, reflected in a slow but sure decline from the early '90s on. He started to look thin and unhealthy, and I could tell he spent little if any time cleaning himself. He presented an eerie figure, appearing more and more like the forest animals, except they spend considerable energy preening and grooming themselves.

  In the summer of 1991, Robert Orr, manager of the Lincoln Telephone Company, and Betty's brother, told me about Ted's bitter complaints that the pay phones in town often "stole" his money. These pay phones were among the rare models that required you to dial the number before depositing the money, w^hich was still only a dime. The instructions were clearly posted, but for some reason Ted just didn't get it, and continually had problems making calls. Finally he wrote a formal letter of grievance to the Montana State Commerce Department's Consumer Affairs Division.

  Ted became even more withdrawn, quieter, almost lethargic, as if his life was winding down. This continued right up until I last spoke to him about a month before his arrest.

  The longest conversations I had with Ted during 1993 took place at a couple of local yard sales, those small community melting pots where just about everyone digs through their neighbor's junk to discover some little treasure.

  The first sale was held in late spring. May or June. My long-time neighbor, Roy Hall, had died. He had lived almost directly across from me along the Stemple Road since 1969. His widow, Leora, was preparing to sell the house and move closer to one of their sons in Oregon.

  Betty and I were there talking to Leora and other neighbors when Ted walked across the lawn and into the garage, and started to study almost every item on the sale tables.

  I tried to talk to him, but as usual he wouldn't say much with other people around. A few^ minutes later I saw him walk outside to look at

  Tlieodore J^ KaczynsicL HCE 30 Box 27 Lincoln. MT 59^39 July 9, 1991

  Kontaaa State CGramerce Department

  Consmaer Affairs Unit ^£CPS/Cr%

  M^2k 9 th. Avenue ^ *^

  Helena WT 596Q1 ^^^ ^ 9 799/

  Dear Sirs: Oiv. '^^

  I haue a complaint about the Lincoln Telephone Corapany of Lincoln,. Hontana^ I da not know whether this is the right gav.ernment ag-ency to which to direct a complaint about a tJeii^phaae company; if it is nat^ I would appreciate it very much if you would inform me what atate or federal agency oversees tha operation of telephone companies and receives complaints: about such companies.

  •The problem is- that some of the Lincoln Telephone Company' s pay phones malfunction in such a way as. to steal the caller' s quarters. Ton put a quarter in and it gets iammed, or it doesn't register, and the coin release doesn't v^ork, so that either you can't, put the call through and your q^uarters are lost,, or else the call does go through and you've put into the phone 250 or 500 more than the price of the. cal 1 >. This problem has persisted: for sever^ years ^

  Over the past few years I have repeatedly complained to the Lincoln Telephone Company about the condition of their pay phones; once in. person at the company's office and several times over the phone to their operators^ But the malfunctioning phones are still in place and are still robbing the public of quarters►

  The worst offender is the phone at the corner of Highway 200 and Stemple Pass Road (phone number 562-928V)^ This phone has

  malfunctioned and stolen quarters from roe more than 50% of the times I have tried to use it. (I still try to use it sometimes because it is the only pay phone I know of in Lincoln from which one can make a call with reasonable privacy^) The phone company knows that this phdme consistently malfunctions and steals quarters, yet they neither repair it nor replace it^ Thus they are consciously defrauding the public►

  I have aiso had trauble, though only occasionally,- with the phone on the outside wall of the Blackfoot NTarket in Lincoln Cphonje number 3^2-929.1 )►

  Clearly the phone company has an- ob3jLgatioa either to replace defeatlv.e pay phones, or to. repair them effectively and permanently ,, or to remove them aitogather^

  Thank: you very much for your atten.tian. to this problem^

  Sincerely yours^. Theadore J^ Kladsynski

  items in the yard so I followed and told him about some of the good buys I noticed.

  Ted showed me a cast iron fr^ pan he found for two dollars, which made him quite proud. I agreed it was a steal for the price. He moved to a table where the family's old silverware lay in bundles, each containing about ten pieces for fifty cents.

  As he looked through the silverplate I showed him some nice and much newer stainless steel flatware for the same money. He said he really preferred the old silverplate and bought several bundles.

  I never would have thought of the silver again except for another yard sale encounter several weeks later in Lincoln. My wife, sister-in-law, and I stopped, and there was Ted again. Just the fact he

  was there didn't intrigue me, but what he bought—another big bundle of old silverplate—was mystifying. He must have carried off at least thirty spoons and other utensils.Why did he need it.^

  I wasn't able to come up with an answer from Ted. I just scratched my head, knowing there must be a logical reason for his purchases. One thing I did know, Ted wasn't entertaining large groups at dinner parties. Years later, I would learn that the Unabomber had a us
e for silverplate.

  FROM FBI INVENTORY

  MB 157—One white plastic bag, containing one small, round, cardboard "Quaker Old Fashioned Oats" cannis-ter, containing one aluminum foil envelope/pouch, containing "Flash Powder"; handwritten notations on top of cannister "Spoons" and "Ekp. [i-/V; experiment.'^] 220" (crossed through)

  That summer it rained almost daily, making work difficult. Fall brought the nicest weather we had experienced for months, and I was fmally able to start placer mining, working gravel with my large washing plant to separate the gold from the loose material. The water washes away lighter gravel and smaller stones, leaving behind concentrates of heavier materials and the gold.

  I became involved in other projects so I left some of the concentrates in the plant until a later date when I could separate the finer gold, a time-consuming process, from the remaining gravel.

  An early winter cold spell froze the material containing the gold in the sluice box of the washing plant. Fd have to wait until spring. That didn't really bother me because everything seemed secure behind my house and almost a mile from public access.

  A long hard Montana winter followed, the first where I wasn't out plowing roads, logging, and trying to juggle contract work during the nicer days. Spring brought high water, which in turn slowed my return to gravel production as I waited for the swollen streams to flow back within their banks.

  One morning as I checked my gravel equipment, getting it ready for spring work, Betty walked up the gulch and returned with sur-

  prising news. She said someone had managed to sneak up the gulch and steal the concentrates from our washing plant, taking gra el, gold, e erything, leaving the box swept clean.

  It was apparent my gulch wasn't invulnerable anymore, and after a close inspection I found many other items missing; I had no idea how long some of them had been gone.

  From various storage sites, a mysterious combination of things had been stolen, including many with little value: yellow nylon ropes once used to tie up dogs; the top pipe of a collapsible plant-stand; four-inch aluminum vent pipe, two or three two-foot sections; an 8-by-12-foot blue tarp, various science magazines, including .S'r/>;/////V American and Omuh waterproof matches; a number of books, including a copy of The Blasters Handbook', maps that had been stored in a pickup; food items from our camper; a length of aluminum irrigation pipe; ammunition cans; and many other smaller things.

  I had been lax for many years. I didn't even lock my house doors when I was gone. It was time to change my habits.

  Then I started to think about other missing objects and acts of vandalism that I had dismissed during the last twenty years. I remembered a pickup parked up Fields Gulch during the mid-'70s that was found with sugar in the gas tank; several snowmobiles and other vehicles that had suffered the same fate; hunting camps that had been torn up, the food stolen; and many other missing items that were reported to local deputies.

  Lincoln always has seemed like a proving ground for sheriff's deputies, highway patrolmen, and other law^ enforcement officers. The turnover is high, with people transferring in and out quickly. This had to affect any continuing investigation into the Lincoln-area crimes. One officer would get a possible lead and then be transferred out, with his replacement left to start from the beginning.

  In looking back, the same dilemma plagued the Unabom Task Force. Investigations that cover a long time-span, whether they are cases of vandalism or bombings, can be the toughest ones to crack because of personnel turnover, especially when the criminal proves to be exceptionally sly and, most of all, private.

  Even though Ted and I didn't visit as much, he was always around in the gulch and I noticed changes in his habits. In the mid-1990s, he

  became careless in leaving obvious tracks in the gulch, crossing wherever convenient instead of walking off main trails and jumping the creeks in hidden spots. In the past, I knew he tried to hide the amount of time he spent there, but I always knew when he was there and I didn't care. Knowing how private he was I felt he was more comfortable that way, so I left it alone.

  I saw and spoke to Ted for the last time during the winter of 1996, near the end of February, not much more than a month before his arrest. It wasn't far from where I had met him for the very first time.

  He was out on his bike for a quick afternoon ride to get groceries during a short break in a long siege of bitter, snowy weather. I was on my way to Lincoln and saw his tracks heading toward town.

  I picked up what I needed and on my way back spotted him about two and a half miles south of town. I pulled up alongside and asked if he wanted a ride.

  Ted was friendly, but said he didn't have far to go and it would be too much trouble to unload his pack, put his bike into the truck and then reverse the process at his mailbox.

  I said okay, and asked him how he had been. After he replied "okay," and "thanks," I drove away.

  He was very thin and haggard. He was having a hard winter.

  As I look back at our last meeting in the shadows of the mountains so important to both of us, even knowing his crimes, I can't help but have a sense of melancholy. His burdens must have been immense to be manifested with such violence.

  Our first and last meetings weren't much different, even though almost twenty-five years separated them.

  The Arrest

  The winter of'96 was proving to be one of the toughest we'd seen in years. By early March, when the calendar promised spring wasn't far away, more than 200 inches of snow had fallen in McClellan Gulch. Seven miles to the northwest, downtown Lincoln looked like a Siberian village with nearly three feet on the level and head-high snowbanks beside many roads and sidewalks.

  During a twenty-one-day stretch in January and February, the mercury in our thermometer, hanging just outside the front door on an aspen tree, never found the energy to climb above zero.

  The only short break, when the sun momentarily poked through the gray, soupy cloud-cover that clung to the sides of the mountains surrounding the Upper Blackfoot Valley, came that late-February afternoon w hen I had seenTed for the final time.

  No wonder he looked so weary, considering he had spent such a severe winter in his primitive cabin with only a small wood-burning stove for heat. On many bitter nights that winter, when our wood stoves were burning red hot, I had wondered if Ted might be huddled in his root cellar to keep warm; at least there the temperature would be a constant 40°.

  March wasn't providing us much of a break, and many days greeted me with snow, cold and wind as I traveled the Stemple Road to teach a full roster of piano students at my building in Lincoln, my repair shop for the prior tw^enty years.

  During the fall of 1995, I had been inspired to clean out the 45-by-75-foot building and turn it into a music center. Using lumber cut at my one-man sawmill at home, I framed in a stage across the back of the building, then sheeted it with finish flooring. After remodeling some of the side rooms, there was still floor space for about 200 seats

  for recitals and performances. The seats were donated by Helena's Grandstreet Theatre after I helped reprogram the theatre's Roland keyboard and remove old carpet and the seats during a remodeling project.

  I had been teaching a few students at home for many years and the remodeled building enabled me to handle additional students, much more conveniently and efficiently. Since I'm also a piano and organ tuner-technician, the center provided ample space to work on, rebuild, or refurbish several instruments at a time.

  The building now was called "Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts"; I often joked this modest building was the "real" Lincoln Center because it was in the very center of Lincoln.

  Teaching piano students has always been a labor of love, since the piano and music have been important in my life since my earliest recollections. I played trombone in the school band, and drums for a small musical group during my teens and twenties. I also sang, and one year was named best male vocalist in the Helena junior high school.

  During a trip to Li
ncoln to teach a day of lessons, in late March, I saw a couple of shiny new vehicles pass by, heading up Stemple Road. They looked out of place. It wasn't that new vehicles were so strange, but they didn't belong to anyone living up there. It was the wrong time of year for hunting, and winter recreation was winding down. After hunting season, Stemple Pass road receives very little traffic, except during the times of peak winter activities, usually weekends and holidays, when snowmobilers and cross-country skiers love to traverse the wide trails and open parks along the Continental Divide. Many winter days we'll see only the snowplow, which keeps the pass open, the mailman, and maybe one or two other vehicles go by our home.

  I just figured these outsiders were sightseers on a ride through the mountains.

  I was somewhat anxious when I arrived at the center, since a snowstorm was moving in, so I got right to the task of teaching the five grade school children scheduled for that afternoon. When the last student of the day finished his lessons, I immediately locked up and headed home, trying to beat the storm.

  After supper, while I was sitting in my favorite chair going over

  ///

  music for the next day's lessons, the phone ran<>;. It was my ^ood friend, Bobby Didriksen, with some intri^uin^ news.

  He said a stranger stopped at the hbrary while he was there and asked the library worker questions about some of the old mines in the mountains around Lincoln.

  Bobby was across the small room looking at a book when the librarian pointed at him, saying he could help since he was the president of the Upper Blackfoot Valley Historical Society, and he also had lived in Lincoln his entire life, more than seventy years.

  The man introduced himself to Bobby as John Grayson, a mining enthusiast eager to learn about and photograph some of the old mines in the area. That in itself wasn't so unusual, but what piqued Bobby's interest w^as Grayson's claim that he was particularly curious about mines in the Stemple Pass area near Baldy Mountain and McClellan Gulch.