EVERY LAST TIE: THE STORY OF THE UNABOMBER AND HIS FAMILY

8/20/2019 EVERY LAST TIE: THE STORY OF THE UNABOMBER AND HIS FAMILY

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T H E S T OR Y O F T H E U N A B O M B E R

A N D H I S F A M I L Y

D AV I D K A C Z Y N S K I

Afterword by James L. Knoll IV , MD


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T H E S T O R Y O F

T H E U N A B O M B E R A N D

H I S F A M I L Y

D A V I D K A C Z Y N S K I

. ,

2016


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© 2016 Duke University Press All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ♾

Designed by Heather Hensley

ypeset in Arno Pro by seng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaczynski, David, [date] author.

Every last tie : the story of the Unabomber and his family / David Kaczynski.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index. 978-0-8223-5980-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-7500-5 (e- book)

1. Kaczynski, Teodore John, [date] 2. Bombers (errorists)—

Family relationships—United States. 3. Capital punishment—

Moral and ethical aspects—United States. I. itle.

6248.23533 2016

364.152′3092—dc23

[]

2015019794

.

: , 1952


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— For Sylvia Dombek —


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Hard to believe

that the past is

completely gone, not

a closed room that

we might one day

reenter accidentally,

without anticipation,

the same way we

came in before.

Ten how can we

fail to experience

the room’s emptiness,

the lack of walls,

the weather?

—DAVID KACZYNSKI


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CONTENTS

xi

1. Missing Parts

1

2. Life Force

31

3. Ghost within Me

61

4. North Star

81

Afterword

by James L. Knoll IV, MD

105

137

139

Photo gallery appears after page 60.


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PREFACE

1995 , my wife, Linda Patrik, sat me down

for a serious talk. She put her hand on my knee. I could hear stress

in her voice.

“David, don’t be angry with me,” she began. I expected her to tell

me about something that was bothering her, perhaps some habit of

mine that she found irritating. Linda could be blunt. I’d learned to

appreciate her direct approach. It didn’t leave me guessing what my

life partner thought or needed.

“Has it ever occurred to you, even as a remote possibility,” she con-

tinued, “that your brother might be the Unabomber?”

At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “What?”

She repeated her question, and I felt a mixture of consternation and

defensiveness. Tis was my only brother she was talking about!

I knew ed was mentally ill, plagued with afflictive emotions. I’d wor-

ried about him for years. I’d entertained unanswered questions about


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xi i — PREFACE

his estrangement from the family. But it never had occurred to me that

ed was capable of violence. So far as I knew, he’d never been violent.

At that time, the hunt for the Unabomber was the longest-running,

most expensive criminal investigation in the history of the . Overseventeen years, the shadowy Unabomber had sent through the mail

or placed in public areas sixteen explosive devices that had claimed

three lives and injured dozens more, some seriously. Within the last

year, the Unabomber had killed two people—Gilbert Murray, a for-

estry industry lobbyist, and Tomas Mosser, an advertising execu-

tive. Te Los Angeles airport had recently been shut down after it

received a threatening letter from the Unabomber. Meanwhile, theUnabomber had sent a seventy-eight-page manifesto to the New York

Times and theWashington Post and demanded that it be published, or

else more bombs would be sent to unsuspecting victims.

At first I assumed Linda had let her imagination run away with

her. She pointed out that although the manifesto had not yet been

published, it was being described by media sources as a critique of

modern technology. She knew my brother had an obsession with thenegative effects of technology. She mentioned that one bomb had

been placed at the University of California at Berkeley, where ed was

once a mathematics professor.

“Tat was thirty years ago!” I countered. “Berkeley is a hotbed for

radicals. Besides, ed hates to travel. He has no money.”

“But we loaned him money, didn’t we?”

I didn’t like the way the conversation was developing. Te human

mind can take any fixed idea and patch together evidence to support

it. Tat’s what I thought was going on. But I wondered why Linda had

focused such attention on my brother.

“If the Unabomber’s manifesto is ever published, would you at least

read it and tell me honestly what you think?” she pleaded.

Well, I could do that much. In fact, reading the manifesto might

be the best way to allay Linda’s fear. At that stage, I wasn’t capable of

imagining that the Unabomber and my mixed- up brother could be


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PREFACE — xi i i

the same person. I’d had extensive correspondence with ed; I knew

how he thought and how he wrote. Surely after reading the manifesto

I’d be able to say to Linda, “It’s not him!”

A month later, when I read the newly published manifesto, Indus-trial Society and Its Future , I found that I couldn’t in good faith tell

Linda it wasn’t written by my brother. Nor could I tell myself that it

was written by him. I’d been an English major, a lover of literature. I

assumed that a person’s writing would be as distinctive and identifi-

able as their voice. But if it was indeed ed’s “voice” that I heard in the

Unabomber’s manifesto, it came to me muffled through thick layers

of dread and denial.Over the next two months, we read the manifesto repeatedly and

made careful comparisons with letters that ed had sent me over

the years from his one- room cabin in rural Montana. Sometimes I

thought I was projecting my worry, seeing what I feared to see, since

Linda had planted a strong suggestion in my mind. At other times I

thought I might be in denial, unable to see the painful truth because

I lacked the wherewithal to deal with it. Yet the day came when I finally acknowledged to Linda that she

might be right. “Hon, I think there might be a 50–50 chance that ed

wrote the manifesto.”

Now our question Is Ted the Unabomber? led me to a seemingly

endless series of other questions and concerns: What will this do to my

brother? What will this do to my mother? (I thought they both might

die.) What will this do to us—to Linda and me? What kind of life will

we have if it turns out that my brother really is the Unabomber? And, of

course, the most urgent and compelling question: What should we do

with our suspicion that we know the identity of the most wanted criminal

in America, a serial killer?

ed’s arrest, in April 1996, our home in

Schenectady, New York, was surrounded by the media. Tey hounded


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xiv — PREFACE

us. Tey somehow gained access to our bank records. Tey dug

through our garbage. Tey called our unlisted numbers. Tey besieged

our friends and relatives with interview requests. A picture of our little

cabin in southwestern exas showed up in the New York Times. Tesame U.S. government that had promised us complete confidentiality

turned into a leaky sieve of information about the Kaczynskis. It felt

as if we had not a shred of privacy or dignity left.

At first it looked like the media were trying to dig up dirt in answer

to their questions. What kind of family would produce the Unabomber?

What kind of person would turn in his own brother?

Te early stories were floundering, scattered. A late- night come-dian dubbed me the “Una-snitch.” But eventually a narrative began

to take shape. Te New York Times , in an editorial titled “His Brother’s

Keeper,” characterized me as a moral hero, someone willing to ex-

change family loyalty and personal happiness for the lives of people

he didn’t know. Te press calmed down and decided to more or less

respect our boundaries. Linda and I soon embarked on a new and

equally desperate mission: to try to save my brother from the deathpenalty.

invasions of our privacy, the media never truly

“saw” us. Te emerging story was reductionist, flat, even somewhat

trite in its characterization of the two brothers, one bad, one good.

Linda’s crucial role was first downplayed and then eliminated from

the narrative entirely.

If the media really wanted to identify a moral hero in our saga, it

could have discovered heroism in a couple rather than in an indi-

vidual. Or it could have discovered that, far from being the leader

of a righteous quest for truth, I was a reluctant follower. Te leader

of the righteous quest was Linda, who probably had to assume that

role, considering my deep attachment to my brother. But these truths


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PREFA CE — xv

are complex, incompatible with the media’s need to tell a simple tale

pitched to readers’ expectations.

Te purpose of this book is not to set the record straight. Rather,

my intention is to tell the one story that I’m uniquely situated to tell by exploring my memories of the family I was born into—a family I

see as both unusual and typical. Te more I delve into these memo-

ries, the more clearly I see that I am made of my relationships, and

the more deeply I appreciate our profound interconnectedness within

the human family.

Te memoir that follows is a contemplation inspired and energized

by a mixture of loving memories and painful outcomes. May it be ofsome benefit!

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EVERY LAST TIE: THE STORY OF THE UNABOMBER AND HIS FAMILY

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