Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski

by Waits, Chris

  Then he asked if there were any small steel ammo cans inside the cabin, which really made me wonder just what else the FBI expected to find hidden in the mountains.

  None that I saw, I said, but they could be encased in the snow still inside the cabin.

  That evening Betty and I hiked up the creek bottom about a mile and a half, and found the snow and ice were melting slowly.

  It was almost impossible to concentrate on anything else during the next few days. Dave and Max had aroused my curiosity with hints of ammunition cans, secret cache locations, and maps from Ted's journals.

  Dave called Thursday morning, May 15, and said Max had received the single cabin picture I sent. Trained in his job to be perpetually suspicious. Max promptly took the photo to Dave's office and asked if it was the same cabin Dave had seen a picture of.

  "Yup, that's it," Dave replied.

  We continued to have almost daily phone conversations and with each there was new information. It was like slowly turning the focus ring on a telephoto lens, changing the image from a total blur to one of enticing detail.

  On Tuesday, June 3,1 had finally received the photo reprints and mailed them to Dave, along with another set of maps, an initial list of cabin contents and the diagram of objects inside the cabin. I had called Dave the day before to inform him everything would be in the mail the next day.

  Max called Wednesday and said he had determined the yellow latex gloves were purchased in Salt Lake City. The Skaggs Alpha Beta name wasn't around long, he said, because the company sold out to a larger chain after being in business a short time. But the store's brief

  period of operation and the purchase of the t^;l()es coincided with a particular time when led was known to ha'e been there.

  Max said the original item numbers, bar-coding, and place of manufacture and sale were irrefutable, things Ted couldn't explain away in court.

  Dave and I continued to talk almost daily. During one of our conversations he told me the prosecution had built a scaled-down, but true-to-life model of led's home cabin to use in the trial. The model had a side wall that could be removed to reveal everything inside, including Ted's work bench, bed, wood box, stove, shelves, and storage areas, even the small attic. I wondered if they would build the same type of model for the secret cabin.

  By mid-June the FBI team decided they couldn't make it back to Lincoln until Monday, July 21. Max said it was the first day everybody could get away.

  Several days later I suggested to Max that he should let Dave come up alone and get started with the investigation. He was irritated at the mere suggestion.

  On June 24, I called Dave and told him another package was in the mail, including pictures of rock caves, campsites, firewood caches, and tree blazes located along some of Ted's trails, along with a map pinpointing their locations in the gulch.

  A week later Dave called and said the package had arrived. As we talked I could sense there was something he wanted to share, another mystery that hadn't been solved. I had learned to read him pretty well and had become adept at paying attention to my intuition since the agents were always guarded about sharing facts.

  So during the rest of that day I went back over my notes, looking for a clue to this newest mystery.

  My 1996 journal entry caught my attention. The June 15 entry described a conversation with Butch when he had said the agents were looking for these clues: "Mentions cliffs, water dries up in the fall, rock slide, diagonal rock, herbs in vegetation, and that maybe firearms are involved."

  Firearms had to be the key. So the next evening when Dave called we started to talk about what the agents wanted to accomplish during their time in Lincoln.

  In the middle of the conversation I said to Dave we needed to take time to recover Ted's gun.

  Dave said yes, most assuredly, then suddenly stopped, knowing he had been caught off guard. He told me to say nothing about the gun because it would get him into trouble. I assured him I wouldn't.

  He then went on to talk about the six guns Ted owned, including his homemade zip gun, and how all had been recovered except his 30-30 rifle.

  Agents were sure Ted had used the weapon in a Lincoln-area shooting crime many years earlier. Even though the statute of limitations had expired, Ted was now the suspect and they were trying to close the books on that case.

  Ted had written in his journals that he had at times placed his 30-30 rifle in a special container and hidden it out in the woods. So looking for that would be another part of our work when agents arrived.

  I finished my last map, gathered a new batch of photographs and mailed them off on Monday, July 14. This would be my last correspondence with the FBI before they arrived in Lincoln on the following Monday.

  Dave had managed a quick trip to the area on July 7 and 8 to interview a couple of vandalism victims who had owned cabins near Lincoln and to go flying with a government pilot to take aerial photographs of my gulch and the surrounding mountains. He never did touch ground in Lincoln, but I waved as they flew overhead.

  On Sunday, July 20, Dave made one last telephone call to me, saying they would depart the following morning. He'd call me Monday evening to make plans for the next day.

  The agenda was full and I looked forward to helping the agents, because they were strangers in a strange land. And we were getting a late start.

  m

  Caught in His Own Trap

  Often described as a lonely hermit, Ted Kaczynski had a penchant for recording details of his life in journals and also in small spiral notebooks he always carried tucked in his shirt pocket. It was as if he were fulfilling a basic human need to communicate, to tell someone about his life's deeds in succinct and descriptive handwritten notes, even if it were only himself.

  As FBI agents and prosecutors read through the thousands of documents recovered in his Florence Gulch cabin, they knew those acknowledgments penned in his own hand would prove his undoing in a court of law if they could uncover corroborating evidence.

  The journals were a dream for them, but had to be a nightmare for Ted. There would be little defense of his acts of terrorism, especially if prosecutors could link what he wrote to actual physical evidence and testimony from people who knew him.

  Ted never intended to have his thoughts and writings fall into the hands of the enemy. According to federal agents, he had a detailed escape plan that included an incendiary- bomb in his cabin loft to burn and destroy the structure and its contents at the first sign of trouble. He could trigger the demolition before he fled by pulling a cord that led from the device located by his bedside near the front door, behind which there was a rifle always loaded and ready for a quick escape.

  From Florence Gulch, he could hike the short distance to McClellan Gulch and his secret cabin, which was a gateway to the rest of the world. There he could change clothes, cut his beard if he wanted, and grab food and ammunition from several nearby buried caches. Then, while investigators sorted through the burning remains of the home cabin, he could escape undetected into thousands of acres of wilderness through the rugged Rocky Mountains north into Canada.

  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, 1997,1 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 b
etter 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 "Fed's seeret cabin. There they would use the (jlobal 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 (jPS 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 w ith 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 w ere 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 w ould 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 w ithout 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 fiora and fauna around us. It was apparent after a only short distance we would have fun, which would lighten the mood of the serious task at hand.

  Max w^as keenly interested in the plants and asked the identity of any he saw; He wanted more than the plant's name, both common

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  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 bolstered.

  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 wirin^z; in the construction of his bombs. But he disfz;uised the wire and other bomb components, using sneaky tricks to keep investigators confused.

  Early on, Ted had w ircd 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 factors^ 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 w as 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 w anted, 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 w^hich 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 w^as 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 secr
et 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 cjuiz Oaxc about the maps and other documents the both were carryin
  He pointed to a black loose-leaf notebook inside his pack.

  1 couldn't belie e 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.