Since it worked out, as promised here’s chapter 2 of the yet untitled Unabom book:
Chapter Two – It begins!
When you are falsely accused, it is like being punched in the stomach and then kicked in the head. – Author Ken Abraham
Considering its eventual impact on my life, I have virtually no recollection of the ATF agents who showed up at my parents’ front door that warm 1978 July afternoon. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t yet a target and I’d convinced myself I could convince them that Greg had nothing to do with it.
In fact, the thought of Greg as some sort of vigilante serial bomber bent on vengeance was so ludicrous that my first thought was, why not talk to these guys? What did I have to lose? That’s the price one pays for being foolish enough to turn 19.
Back in 1978, law enforcement were the good guys. I was raised on Dragnet, Adam 12, The FBI with Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and my favorite, Hawaii Five-0 with the impossibly intense Jack Lord, none of whom would begin to consider making a false accusation. We weren’t exactly criminal masterminds, either. The closest Greg, I, or any of our friends came to some sort of crime spree was the occasional speeding ticket.
And let me tell you, that “truth, justice, and the American way” template couldn’t have been a poorer frame of reference to apply to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, an agency perpetually on the lookout for the next big bust that never materializes.
The agents slowly described how Ted Kaczynski’s first fully addressed and postage applied device was discovered by a passerby in a University of Illinois at Chicago parking lot – a campus neither Greg nor I had ever visited.
Pursuant to the return address, the device wound its way back to Northwestern University’s Technological Institute and material sciences department professor Buckley Crist. When neither he nor his staff recognized the package addressed to RPI engineering professor E. J. Smith, they called campus security who foolishly opened it, detonating the device.
I say “foolishly” because, though the fabled homegrown radicals of the ‘60s had faded by 1978, fanatic remnants like the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and a slew of eco-terrorist groups remained quite active. And those factions made up for their diminished size and status by accounting for 50 to 60 domestic bombing incidents a year well into the mid ‘70s.
Thankfully, Ted hadn’t yet mastered his craft and the matchstick head device, something a high school sophomore might make, caused only minor burns, cuts, and temporary blindness.
That brings us to the singular conundrum of the Unabom case as it applied to us. Without this ultimately accidental connection, the feds wouldn’t have as much as batted an eyelash at us and we’d have 19 years of our lives back. It’s the kind of misdirected happenstance that some of the best thrillers are made of. Think Marathon Man, The Fugitive, North by Northwest, The Green Mile, and Brazil, to name a few.
The ATF, and every other ensuing agency, fervently believed they were onto something because Greg’s mother Audrey worked as a secretary for the professors in the NU material sciences department. That included Buckley Crist. Meanwhile, Greg had come home early from RPI after asking professor E. J. Smith for an incomplete so he could get back to his standing summer job.
Worse yet, Greg was the only Chicago area student in any of Smith’s classes, so the ATF had convinced themselves they were closing the deal that day. It was the stuff your worst nightmares are made of. Lucifer himself couldn’t have come up with a more twisted scenario.
Though I vehemently argued those connections were sheer coincidence that day, even I began to doubt that possibility as the case wore on.
The agents’ elephant-in-the-room dilemma was they had no motive for this “attempted” mail bombing. And they certainly had no explanation for why the parcel was discovered stamped but unsent, 20 miles away in a Circle Campus parking lot. The dialog between the agents and myself went something like this:
Me: Going with your theory, why would Greg want to send a bomb to his engineering professor?
Agent: Because he gave him an incomplete.
Me: (with a rather quizzical look) Professor Smith didn’t give him an incomplete, Greg asked for an incomplete.
Agent: Why would anyone ask for an incomplete?
Me: Because RPI ain’t cheap, his last final exam was two weeks out from the previous one, and he wanted to get back to his job in the Evanston Forestry Department to make money.
Agents: (dead silence as if someone just let all the air out of the room.)
Me: And if for some godforsaken reason he was going to bomb one of his professors, why would Greg drive all the way to the U of I at Chicago to drop a bomb off in a parking lot and just leave it there?
Agent: Because he got scared.
Me: Scared of what?
Agent: Of getting caught.
Me: Of getting caught mailing a package?
Agents: (more dead silence)
Me: Greg isn’t an idiot. Why would any rational person, who was “scared of getting caught,” put such obvious “clues” leading directly back to him on a bomb to one of his professors who did exactly what he wanted?
This led to yet more dead silence because the agents clearly hadn’t considered any other possibility but their own – as odd as that possibility was. The FBI would eventually come up with an “explanation” for those “clues,” but the ATF either hadn’t discovered the Dungeons & Dragon “connection” yet, or they didn’t think it was important.
And that’s exactly where the case should’ve ended. When the agents left with more questions than answers, I was convinced that was the end of it. It certainly wasn’t the first, or last, time I was dead wrong.
The second the front closed door behind them, I bolted to the avocado green touchtone phone mounted on our kitchen wall to dial Greg’s number as fast as my jittery fingers could fly. I don’t remember if I got a busy signal or no answer, but the call didn’t go through and I’m still surprised I never considered that Greg was being interviewed by the ATF at the same time.
Since I knew he wouldn’t believe what just happened, I grabbed my keys and wallet, dashed out to my faded blue AMC Ambassador, and headed up to north Evanston.
That would turn out to be my second big mistake.
