Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski

by Waits, Chris

  itors, his time didn't start until 2:30 P.M. and that would be a ^ood time to talk to him. She continued by briefing me on the strict protocol for isiting Ted.

  After hanging up the telephone, I nervously changed clothes and headed to Helena, timing it to arrive a little early. While driving up the steep hill along Broadway that leads east out of the Capital City's main street. Last Chance Gulch, and nearing the jail, I was filled with apprehension, still wondering if this was the right thing to do.

  To make matters worse, even though I parked in a lot a block from the jail, a CNN producer spotted me as I walked toward the entrance on the north side of the detention center.

  Throngs of media members were back in Helena because Ted was about to be shipped out to Sacramento, where he would at last be indicted for the Unabomber crimes and held for trial in federal court. Television cameras were set up across from the jail on the courthouse lawn. The actual time Ted was to be moved had been kept a secret, but nobody wanted to miss the opportunity to possibly get some additional footage of him being moved from the jail.

  As I walked along the sidewalk, the CNN producer directed her camera tow^ard me. The camera swung around and began to roll, following me to the jail's front door. Other reporters immediately noticed the activity and several follow^ed me to the jail door, asking questions like, "Are you here to visit Ted.^" and "What are you going to say to him.?"

  It w as unnerving. I tried to be polite but refused to talk. I had the overwhelming feeling it would be better to be somewhere else, anywhere but there.

  After following the entry procedure, I waited in a narrow room until 2:30 and then walked over toward the door that led to the prisoners' visitation room. Just then a deputy opened the door and Ted was sitting there behind a glass wall talking to another Lincoln man, who was just getting up from a chair, ready to leave. He had arrived just a few minutes before, as I sat in the waiting room, and had talked to Ted about five minutes.

  Another deputy walked over to me and said new orders had just been received: Security had been heightened because of Ted's pending departure. A written request had to be submitted by Ted and then

  cleared by a federal magistrate before anyone could see him during the rest of his time in Helena.

  I explained Ted had requested to see me through his lawyers and that all that should have been taken care of before my arrival.

  They told me they had no written authorization from Ted or the magistrate and I would have to come back later; rules were rules.

  I left the jailhouse confused, with the CNN crew following me all the way to my car.

  The whole scene was upsetting and the more I thought about it on the fifty-mile drive back to Lincoln the more I started to feel like it had been a trick set up by Ted. He called me to the jail, calculating it would be a roadblock in my dealings with the FBI. If it were a setup, then Ted's lawyer Betsy had been tricked as well, because she certainly hadn't known that morning I would be turned away.

  The wheels of my mind were spinning furiously. With jailers and FBI agents watching Ted's every move, they would surely interpret my visit as friendly and want to keep their distance.

  But why wouldn't he see me.^ Maybe he was trying to distance himself from me and discredit my story.

  His ploy most likely had something to do with all the time he had spent in my gulch, I thought. Just two days earlier the FBI agents had made it clear to me they were expending a great deal of effort searching various areas around my home on Stemple Pass Road.

  Or maybe I was making too much of Ted's gamesmanship and there was another explanation.

  When I got home I called Betsy. She was just as confused as I was, and couldn't explain what had happened. She said she would find out, call me back, and set up the visit for the next day. But I didn't hear from her the rest of that day.

  I knew from Betsy's conversation that she was unaware of a hidden motive. But did Ted possibly set me up to draw the agents' attention away from me and my gulch.^

  The following morning, Thursday, June 20,1 phoned Betsy's office. She told me I couldn't see Ted. No explanation was given, but I could sense her confusion as well. I reminded her Ted was the one who asked to see me. But she wouldn't tell me anything further.

  That Sunday, Ted was driven to the Helena Airport and then spir-

  itcd aw ay to Sacramento aboard a small jet operated by federal marshals. When he landed at Mather Field, he was moved in a black, armored four-wheel-drive Suburban in a seven-vehicle convoy to a special federal unit at the downtown jail near the federal courthouse.

  'lliat same day, the producer from CNN showed up at my door and I fmally agreed to give her a short interview. That decision would turn out to haunt me as well, even though I said nothing new.

  The interview, I found out later, was another major factor in the FBI agents' breaking contact with me that coming summer. They had it in their minds that anyone who talked to the press, or with Ted, couldn't be trusted with inside information.

  I was sick of the whole mess. Being pulled from one side, then the other, was frustrating to say the least. But then being ostracized by both sides just didn't make any sense.

  The FBI was hot on the trail to find evidence to convict Ted of being the Unabomber, with the death sentence in mind. I was convinced at this point my gulch held key evidence, something he desperately wanted to hide. Then agents suddenly pulled away, showing little interest in my gulch or me, and concentrated their efforts in the public lands and old mine areas north and east of my gulch. I felt Ted had accomplished just what he had wanted.

  Then, in what seemed like a senseless move, I was sideswiped from a direction I least expected.

  On July 9, a letter arrived from a person who had been close to me and whom I had worked with and respected a great deal. Butch Gehring and I were visiting in the yard w^hen Betty came out of the house, livid after opening the letter and reading it.

  It said I didn't even know Ted and that I had "sold my soul" to take advantage of his misfortune for my own benefit. The letter said Ted denied ever knowing me and that he had instructed the woman who wrote the letter and the other two named in it to tell everyone in Lincoln that he had never known me.

  It w^as a strange tw ist and it certainly tightened the cap on my theory that Ted was trying to distance himself and discredit me.

  The letter made me more determined than ever to find out about Ted's secrets that I was so sure were tucked away in the mountains behind my house.

  But it was still hard for me to understand how the trio, especially the writer of the letter, could ever believe I was a liar and Ted was a pillar of truth.

  He had succeeded in finding pawns to make this attack, but the chess game was far from over and his ploy would backfire. The FBI would come to understand his tactic, assuming it really amounted to an admission of guilt on Ted's part.

  Even though at first I took things hard, the whole jail episode and letter had a positive ending. At times I had almost felt like I had betrayed our relationship not only with the media, but also with the prosecution; his betrayal released me from the loyalties of friendship. Now I could be free of regret, as I helped the FBI in every way possible.

  I was now mentally armed and determined to spend whatever time necessary to help agents uncover Ted's secrets in my gulch.

  The Secret Cabin and the FBI

  Ted Kaczynski didn't realize it, but he had spurred me on with new determination and energy to spend every spare moment the rest of summer 1996 exploring my gulch. But the task was more difficult than looking for the proverbial flea on a long-haired dog's back.

  Whatever the FBI had been searching for was overshadowed by the immensity of this Rocky Mountain region. I truly believed I had the edge. During the past twenty-five years, there were so many things I had learned about Ted and his habits that the agents could never know or understand.

  So when they seemed unreceptive to any overtures, I buckled down to the task at hand and began
my own search in earnest. Each excursion into the woods was carefully plotted on topographical maps so no area would be overlooked. It was intense and at times discouraging work, but I never considered giving up.

  I had been ready to put the search on the back burner for winter that late afternoon of November 22, when some strange force pulled me through the deep snow to discover Ted's secret cabin.

  I barely remember my trek back down the mountain that night, other than a last fleeting glance at the cabin's ghostly image in the dark, still discernible against the snow, and then opening the door at home and proclaiming to Betty that I had found it.

  That evening another severe winter storm system was being slammed up against the spine of the Continental Divide just a few miles above our home. Another two feet of snow during the next few days would make a return hike to the cabin daunting, but I had to get back as soon as possible to see the cabin in the daylight and to take pictures.

  I was determined to do it even if it meant snovvshoeing the entire way after the weather cleared. It would be more than a week before that would happen.

  Dec. 1, 1996 [Waits journal]

  I finally get to climb back up the mountain and go to Ted's secret cabin. Very tough trip. Take a couple of rolls of pictures. I saw many items inside. My first look inside during daylight hours. I didn't dare go inside in case of booby-traps or stepping on evidence. Can't wait till spring. Still wonder how to tell the FBI. I wish [agent] Dave [Weber] would call. Snow is waist deep now. I wonder what else is in there.

  An incredible mosaic was coming into focus as the long Montana winter threw its heavy white cloak over the mountains near our home. At the center of the images was the secret cabin. Surrounding it were the many fragments of Ted's blurred life both in Lincoln and as the Unabomber, which were gradually starting to make sense.

  But it was the cabin that haunted me. Every day I re-examined the photographs taken on the last trek through the deep snow where its stark outline was like a thumb-smudge of brown paint on an artist's landscape of snow and tree trunks. The small, log structure sat comfortably on a 40-by-40-foot shelf, cut like a stairstep in the steep mountainside, and looked out over three drainages and thousands of acres far below. From the looks of the hatchet cuts in the log butts, the cabin had been there at least twenty years. Its front door, covered by faded and ripped dark green plastic, was economical in size—a mere 24 inches wide by 54 inches high—but the view was majestic, looking between the widely-spaced trunks of lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir forest.

  How many nights had Ted slept on the shelf-bed, built from small logs laid like matchsticks on a two-by-four frame across the back of the cabin.^ Was the makeshift stove, a five-gallon Phillips 66 oil can with a crudely cut front opening and sliding tin door anchored by a piece of wire, really big enough to keep him warm.^ When did he last drink wild herb tea from the gold-colored mug that still sat beside the stove on a flat hearth stone half covered by snow that had swirled in

  through cracks between the logs? How many grouse and deer roasts had he cooked at the nearby fire pit, which was surely a soot-filled grave for his burned, jagged-lidded tin cans?

  The cabin, with its slanted roof and six-inch, bark-covered logs crisscrossed at the corners, was etched into my mind. Its role in Ted's life wasn't as clear, but that would change.

  I knew from the moment of discovery it was more than a place where Ted camped out. It was surely a hideout or an escape shelter where he could look out but no one could look in, either from the air or the ground, unless they walked within fifty feet.

  That winter would prove to be especially tough. Not because the weather was so bad, even though it was another season of extreme cold and heavy snows, but because I had to wait until spring to get back up there.

  Before I left the cabin that first day of December 1996,1 had carefully rolled up the light blue denim pants, w hich had been pulled half through the rear corner of the roof by rodents, and tucked them under the top of a lodgepole pine that had fallen on top of the roof during a summer windstorm. The pants were in good shape, not chewed by the small animals too badly, and I didn't want them to be damaged further.

  Not know ing w hat else was inside, I w^anted to preserve any evidence as well as I could until I took the FBI to the site in the spring. I knew the cabin and its contents would be important in the trial. The discovery^ phase of the investigation had involved positioning and surprises on both sides. Ted's home cabin had even been moved off its cement blocks, loaded on a flatbed and then trucked under the cover of a green plastic tarp to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls in the middle of the night on the previous May 15. It was being stored until it could be trucked to the trial site.

  The immediate security of the secret cabin wouldn't present a problem because another storm had moved in quickly. The freshly fallen snow, combined with gusting winds, had obliterated my tracks; even down in the bottom of the gulch the snow looked undisturbed.

  The only real hurdle that remained was how to tell the FBI about the discovery.

  I hadn't had any contact with agents since they visited me at home

  on Saturday, July 20. But they occasionally called or visited Butch Gehring after they left the area about three months earlier.

  Butch and I talked at length about the best way to tell them. We finally decided he should ask the agents to contact me and then I would tell them the entire story.

  Butch and I kept in contact on a regular basis. I saw him at least once a week because I taught his daughter piano each Monday afternoon at the Lincoln Center. And whenever the FBI called he always let me know.

  During the first half of December, Butch talked with agents on several occasions, but they never contacted me.

  Each Monday Fd ask if he had heard from them and he'd reply that he'd had a call from an agent or a visit from Special Agent Max Noel and had told them repeatedly, "You better call Chris," or "Have you called Chris yet.^"

  He'd ask if I'd had any response.

  "Not a word from them yet," I'd say.

  Dec. 16, 1996 [Waits journal]

  Talked to Butch. I asked if he had said anything to the FBI. Butch said Max had called and he told Max, "Better call Chris," "Better get hold of Chris," but he didn't tell Max about the secret cabin. Maybe they will call me now.

  Max started to get irritated about the repeated prodding to call me even after Butch gave him a strong hint I had discovered something important. But Butch and I decided, irritating or not, the tactic would eventually work; if for no other reason they would grow tired of the nagging to "call Chris."

  The winter was proving to be as bad as the previous one, Ted's last cold season in Lincoln before his arrest. I hoped we weren't entering a cycle of hard winters. By mid-December the snow level was already over my head in many places, especially where the wind had drifted it into smooth white mounds with wave-like crests where plumes of white powder would swarl and settle.

  The holiday season, then January and February, passed with little happening in the case. I was aware of the legal positioning behind

  the scenes as both sides prepared for'led's trial, but in Lincoln things had (jiiieted dow n considerably.

  But I was confident the FBI would return in the spring, knowing their field work hadn't been a hundred percent successful. There were still many unanswered cjuestions.

  1 turned to calendar watching, noting each passing day, and I found myself especially interested in weather reports and checking the snow level each evening. I busied myself with my piano students and preparation for their annual spring recital. But during their renditions of Beethoven's "Fiir Elise" or Mozart's "Sonata in C Major" it was hard not to let my thoughts drift back to the remote ledge and cabin.

  Maybe there would be an early spring. But March came in like a lion with no spring thaw in the forecast. The first chinook winds, warming gusts that sweep down along the mountains, couldn't break winter's grip and we w^ere destined to be locked in for at least another
month.

  It seemed as though I would never get back up there.

  Betty was eager to go as well, and w^e often passed long winter evening hours speculating about what we might find and theorizing about the important role the cabin had played in Ted's hidden agenda.

  I had spent hundreds of hours trying to fit the pieces together and, slowly, Ted's secret life both in and outside of Lincoln was beginning to show flashes of color. I had become obsessed with the case and had filled dozens of legal tablets with information obtained since the arrest—key items from my own experiences, the stories of my neighbors, and information from the media, the prosecution and defense teams.

  One evening while poring over every detail listed in the "Unabom Chronology;" certain facts and dates started to look different, almost like an optical illusion that suddenly makes sense.

  I was trying to link key details from the bombings and the chronology to certain situations in and around Lincoln. That winter I found five such correlations.

  Chronologically, the first w^as that my journals noted that Ted had disappeared from the Lincoln area during the late spring of 1978, and was gone for at least a year. I didn't see him anywhere and assumed

  he had moved away. He didn't show up again until the summer of 1979. Now I learned that he had been in his home state of Illinois.

  During this time, the Unabomber's first and second bombs were mailed from the Chicago area. The first was found on May 25, 1978. A package turned up in the Engineering Department parking lot at the Chicago Circle Campus of the University of Illinois. It was addressed to an engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

  The package had a return address of a professor at Northwestern's Technological Institute. The package was given to the addresser, who then turned it over to the Northwestern University Police Department because he had not sent the package. On May 26, the parcel was opened by a police officer who suffered minor injuries when the bomb detonated.