Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski

by Waits, Chris

  I knew by his talk and mannerisms he had a college education, but he never shared any details, and he never mentioned he had been a math professor. His past and his family always seemed unimportant to him.

  It's amazing what you can learn from people though, even if they don't want you to know. For instance, Ted often came into my Lincoln shop and I'd work on his bicycle. His chain was always squeaking, and after oiling it for him, I'd instruct him to keep it oiled because all the dust on the gravel roads would wear it out.

  "I don't have any oil," he'd reply.

  It was apparent from that comment he had no machines; no lawn mower, gas water pump, generator, etc. Every machine takes oil.

  One time during the mid-'70s, an elderly couple who owned a summer cabin several hundred yards southwest of Ted's cabin brought their orange International 4X4 pickup into my garage in Lincoln for

  work. I repaired the carburetor and then dehvered the truck to their cabin on a test drive. The day was beautiful, it was midsummer, so I decided to hike the short distance to Ted's and visit him. That first time I approached his cabin shadowed by the forest canopy, a com-peUing, uncomfortable, uneasy feeling came over me, one I had every other time I went there. It was like someone was watching, or that I was in a foreboding and secret place where I shouldn't be. Ted wasn't home and his door was padlocked, so I promptly left.

  Tuesday, March 20, 1979 [Chris Waits journal]

  Long, cold winter, lots of snow. I wonder what kind of runoff we'll have. Maybe flood this year. Haven't seen anyone on Stemple for months except for Roy. Come to think of it, haven't seen Ted for the longest time—maybe since last summer. Maybe he moved. Hope he's O.K....

  Once during the late '70s I didn't see Ted for well over a year. I didn't know what to think. Had he moved away.^ Maybe he was hurt. Who would know.^ He could be lying up there somewhere in the mountains. By this time Butch had built a log home just northwest of Ted's cabin and while I was there looking at a spring, I thought I better check on Ted. I didn't make it over that day, but planned to go as soon as I could. Then, just two or three days later, I saw Ted out walking. I stopped and visited with him and said: "You've been gone a long time. I haven't seen you around."

  He agreed, but that was the end of the conversation.

  When Ted stopped at my Lincoln shop just to visit I felt almost honored, because I never saw him go anywhere except to conduct business, such as buying groceries.

  But for him to stop, conditions had to be just right. The big garage doors at the front of my white, concrete block building along the Stemple Pass Road 100 feet south of Lincoln's main street had to be opened wide, and I had to be alone. It became quickly obvious our visits had to be one-on-one. If someone stopped while Ted was there, he'd be gone like a puff of smoke, disappearing even in the middle of a sentence. At first it seemed like odd behavior, until I gradually concluded that he was extremely shy and guarded around other people.

  Ted would enter the garage, but nexer stray too far inside, usually staying close to the big, open doors, while Td weld or repair equipment.

  I remember one discussion we had about gardening when Ted started to talk about his vegetables. He liked to grow carrots, onions, parsnips, other root crops, and potatoes.

  Knowing he had no power, plumbing or pump, and that his garden was uphill from his spring-fed stream, I asked him, "Ted, how do you water your potatoes.'^"

  "I carry water up to my garden in buckets," was his reply.

  "Doesn't that take a long time, and isn't it a lot of work.^" I asked.

  "I have plenty of time, and the work doesn't bother me," he said. By then he had grown a beard, w hich w^as full but didn't extend much above his mouth line or too far down his neck.

  Ted raised an amazing garden, especially considering the climate the Lincoln area offers at almost 5,000 feet above sea level. Heavily timbered mountain gulches are not noted as garden spots. But Florence Gulch had a reputation among the old-timers as a place where they could grow things that wouldn't make it anywhere else in the Lincoln Valley. During the 1950s a man named Jack Parks lived in a cabin built in the late 1930s just above Ted's place. Parks was able to grow^ huge pumpkins in his garden. My wife, Betty, still remembers seeing them as a young girl w^hen her family went to visit Mr. Parks.

  There seems to be a natural inversion created in Florence Gulch, one of those mountain idiosyncrasies no one can really explain. My theory is the w^arm air that rises from the valley floor becomes trapped in the gulch by cool air above, at the foot of Baldy Mountain. The result is far fewer killer frosts than elsewhere and thus, a longer growing season.

  But growing anything, anywhere around Lincoln, even in Florence Gulch, is still a challenge. The high mountain valleys can be nipped by frost any month of the year, plus there are plenty of animals to contend with. Ted had a tough time keeping rodents, rabbits, and other small animals away from his crops. Deer were a problem, too, but he had much better success in fencing them out. It required nearly a constant vigil to keep the small animals at bay. At night he often sat atop a pyramid-shaped stile that crossed his eight-foot-high fence, spot-

  lighting and shooting small garden invaders with his .22 at his lower garden.

  After Ted expanded his garden and started a second plot to the southwest of his cabin, he had enough extra vegetables to start drying them to keep and eat during the long Montana winter. Then he needed a place to store his dried food where it would keep, and wouldn't be eaten by animals.

  One afternoon as I was driving him home from Lincoln, our conversation shifted to root cellars and how to construct them, a page out of the basic survival notes of the old-time Lincoln homesteaders. We discussed several designs, but the one I recommended was similar to a mine adit: an underground horizontal tunnel leading into a hillside, the tunnel reinforced with timbers, and with a wooden entrance and door. Such a tunnel would be labor intensive, but inexpensive to build, much easier and cheaper than building with rocks or concrete blocks. I suggested that with a proper door, and if the tunnel reached far enough into the hill, not only would food keep without freezing, but it would also be a good place to keep warm even during the most bitter cold weather. Even at -50° F., the temperature inside such a cellar wouldn't drop below +40°.

  Ted didn't really give me much feedback about my suggestions, so I didn't know which method he would choose, or if he would even build a root cellar. But I did try to give him as much advice as possible, because I knew his construction techniques were crude at best.

  When I finally saw the entrance to his root cellar, I was hiking on a nearby hill just to the southwest of Ted's cabin surveying some timber I had heard might be logged. After walking through the stand of trees, noting which might be worth harvesting, I dropped down to Ted's.

  I couldn't believe my eyes. His new root cellar entrance was built from every type of scrap lumber imaginable. No care was taken to saw angles on any of the boards and slabs of wood, and the many holes and spaces between the boards were filled in and covered with tinfoil, plastic scraps, sections of corrugated roofing, and pieces of aluminum, anything he could find.

  I had never seen construction like that in my life, but I didn't say anything about it to Ted, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

  After looking at the root cellar entrance in the hillside, I crossed the creek and went to his door, which was located on the east side of the cabin. It was padlocked. Feelinii; that same () erw helniin^iz; sensation of uneasiness a^ain, I left.

  Ted's cabin had its shortcomings, too, een though it was built much better than the root cellar and its entrance. His cabin, originally painted a brick red color, had no eaves on either gable end, and just inches of oerhang on the sides. Green asphalt roofmg, which covered the roof in horizontal rows, folded over the roof line onto the gable ends where it was attached with an almost solid row of roofmg nails. The pitch of the roof was steep enough for the area's heavy snows, but with no eaves, the snow that slid off would pile up agai
nst the sides of the cabin and the moisture would eventually rot the wood; the only possible benefit being that the snow would act as insulation around the base of the cabin in extremely cold weather. Since the cabin wasn't connected to a foundation but was propped on Sakrete pillars, the space under it wasn't properly insulated so snow against the building probably served a useful purpose. The cabin had only tw o small windows, one on the south and one on the north; the north window was placed much higher than normal, just under the roof's edge. An aluminum pipe ran through the wall of his cabin to the garden on the west side, a convenient means of funneling his human waste to fertilize the garden.

  Ted had trails every^w here around his cabin, well traveled paths leading off in all directions. A large, gnarled old Douglas-fir growing out of an outcropping of rocks at the northwest corner of his land was used as an observation tree. He climbed branches to reach a point twenty feet above the ground where the limbs were cut away; enabling him to see anyone approaching from the lower end of the gulch. Ted had numerous observation points in trees and rock outcroppings throughout the forest.

  As much as Ted loved the woods and nature, the thing that always surprised me when I was around his place was all the junk lying around: bottles, cans, plastic jugs, a huge garbage heap of burned cans, and every other sort of thing.

  The trash didn't make sense. It was out of place, not unlike the dark, almost sinister side of his character that I saw on rare occasions

  in later years, and only at times when he wasn't aware I was nearby. Ted was careful and calculating when he was around people. The few who knew him in town—the librarian, store clerks, the mailman— knew only the side of Ted he wanted them to see: quiet, but always friendly and cordial. For a long time, I was fooled, too.

  I never told a soul other than Betty about this dark side, and she never told anyone other than me about things she noticed that didn't fit Ted's carefully managed persona.

  I was in a unique position to learn things about Ted nobody else could know. He loved my gulch and the total privacy it offered him. Betty and I were the only ones who knew how much time he spent up there. Even when I didn't see him walking along the timbered trail above the old tailings piles on the west side of the gulch, I knew he was there because the dogs, who were penned up near the trail, would bark until we went outside to quiet them. Also, when we let them out to run every morning and afternoon, they'd race excitedly up the trail, barking and following his scent.

  Our dogs could smell him, and they hated him. He hated them as well. It seemed like all animals reacted aggressively toward Ted.

  There were a lot of times when Ted spent more days up my gulch than he did at his home cabin. I never mentioned this to anyone. I didn't want to get into a situation where people would say, "You let Ted up there, why won't you let us in.^" There were a few people, like Butch, who knew they were welcome. But Butch never asked to go up my gulch.

  Ted was always articulate, spoke intelligently, and had a good vocabulary, but it wasn't something he'd ever flaunt. I enjoyed visiting with him, always feeling like we had a lot in common.

  He liked classical music as far as I could tell. I almost always had it playing in my pickup cassette deck, and he seemed to enjoy it when I gave him a ride. He never mentioned a favorite, but seemed to like the minor-key Beethoven sonatas. It was apparent he had a musical background, but he never told me he had played trombone in the school band. I also had played trombone in the school band.

  Ted knew music was a huge part of my life, and even though he knew I was a classical pianist and piano tuner-technician, I never got to play for him; I would have enjoyed that. Another common denom-

  inator I learned about later was that we both spoke Spanish. As boys, we both had started coin collections.

  Vc had a lot in common. We both used Latin names for plants and animals, we both liked histors; exploring and searching the country, and we both were fascinated by the ways nature could provide for a person's every need. Propagation of wild plants and vegetables and cross-breeding them with domestic varieties to make them more palatable was a shared interest, as was the use of wild herbs, like yampa and chives, in our food.

  I almost never saw Ted stray far from his measured and controlled demeanor. I never saw him euphoric, whimsical, elated; he never laughed uncontrollably, acted happy-go-lucky or anything even close. His occasional chuckle or light giggle always seemed to be more of a sneer, or sarcastic laugh, but it w^as always very controlled.

  I've never seen a person—obviously so full of anger—who had so much control over his emotions. His mood would become even more solemn as the years w^ent by, something that w^as very noticeable.

  ril never forget a conversation we had in 1982. I had just bought two books, Electronic Nightmare by John Wicklein, and Puzzle Palace by James Bamford. There also had been articles in Scientific American and other science publications I received monthly, that discussed in detail new^ surveillance techniques and street-to-satellite monitoring. All this material included discussions on how a person could be photographed in great detail from a satellite, and how^ a digital w atch could be detected on a person, even if it w^as worn underground.

  Ted's reaction to this technology wasn't passive. In fact, this was one of the few times in the early years w here he was visibly disturbed. His knotted eyebrow^s and extremely serious look were clear indications he was diametrically opposed to this Orw^ellian 1984 invasive surveillance.

  Later, I would learn that four years previously he had written*:

  Jan 24, 1978 [Kaczynski joirnal]

  ...There is a psychosurgical operation that relieves

  * Transcriptions of entnes from Ted's jounuils and other xi^ritings have been edited to remove offensive language, xirhich is found throughout the text, and have omitted the names of srceral Lincoln people, to protect their privacy, along xcith certain geographical locations. Ted's spelling, punctuation, and emphases have been maintained.

  people who get angry too easily. They stick electrodes in your brain and burn out the gizmo that produces the emotion of anger. Of course, I would rather be miserable, or dead, than be relieved by that humiliating method. If I think I have a good reason to be angry at something, then I want to be angry, even though // may make me miserable.

  He was such a deep thinker that even when he smiled I felt as though it was measured and not just because he was happy. It was as if the smile, its size and duration, had been planned. Ted became more withdrawn as the years went by, especially in the '90s. Yet he would always wave to me no matter what the weather or where he was. One time he waved so hard he lost track of where he was going, hit a pothole and crashed his bike. He picked himself and his bike off the dusty road and went on his way.

  Ted's clothing varied little during his years in Lincoln. He usually wore shirts and denim jeans. More often than not his second-hand clothes, probably from the Salvation Army or some thrift store, were too big.

  Frequently he wore a hooded sweatshirt, usually either dark blue or dark green, with a drawstring around the hood and pockets in front. When it was cold, he wore a green canvas army coat

  over the hooded sweatshirt. The sweatshirt hood would hang down over his back when it wasn't covering his head. He always carried a Mead pocket-sized notebook and pencil in his shirt or coat pocket. On rainy days he'd wear one of three ponchos, colored olive green, ,clear plastic or medium brown. The ever-practical Ted also used his poncho for dry temporary cover, stretching it over a pole or horizontal branch. He had a bright yellow plastic rain coat with a button front, but he seldom wore it, preferring more muted natural colors.

  He also experimented with making useful items.

  NOTEBOOK

  48-1142

  3 1N,a5JN.

  15/

  44" SHEETS

  [i ROM Ka(:/inskvs SPAMsn-L.wca AGK JOl rnai., translai-Ki) Hv Language Skr icks Vsvv] Jan. 14 [1982]

  My gloves arc fingers made from marmot skin they have suited me we
ll last year and they have suited me well this winter until now. The skins are strong and resist survive [sic] to friction better than I thought; although they have been repaired a few times, generally at the seams. But I hae observed that by tanning with smoke it does not turn out well that survives forever the wetting and drying. In the beginning, when the gloves were wetted, upon drying they would be almost as flexible as before they were wetted. But I would wet them almost every time that I used them, and little by little they would begin to turn stiff upon drying...

  This may sound like a man living in harmony with nature, but later I learned the truth was quite different. Even though Ted was the intruder in the wild country, he demanded that the natives act as he wished them to.

  Kaczynski journal

  July 18: [1974, written at a camp away from home cabin]:... More woodrat trouble last night. A rat kept running over me, tugging at the blankets, etc., and so kept me awake half the night. Couldn't get a shot at it, because it disappeared every^ time I stuck my head out of the blankets to look. Worse, I found in the morning that it had chewed up my knife sheath so badly as to pretty well ruin it. I have set 2 deadfalls, w ith figure-4 triggers, baited with raisins, sugar, and oil, in the hope of catching that rat tonight. If I catch the [expletive] a/ive I will see that it dies a slow, painful death....

  July 19: Last night the rats chewed a piece out of the edge of my blanket and tarp, and ruined another piece of string. But I caught one in one of my deadfalls—worked

  like a charm. Most regrettably, this rat was spared the auto-da-fe, because the rock smashed its face so that it died soon. Bait was partly eaten on other deadfall, but I don't know whether rats or ants ate it. I have set up the deadfalls again. This time I have foxed the ants, I hope, by putting insect repellent on the stick they'd have to crawl over to get to the bait. In a short time I will learn what rat tastes like. Ha! Revenge is sweet! Later: According to Kaphart, it is the testimony of gourmets who survived the siege of Paris that cats, rats, and mice are the most misprized of all animals from a culinary point of view. If domestic rats are up to woodrat standards, I quite agree. That rat was [expletive] good eating. Provided about as much meat as a red squirrel.