On the death of Ted Kaczynski

I believe in nothing. – Ted Kaczynski

I rarely set out to violate my former newspaper editor Rick Nagel’s caution against turning inward for a column, but this may be the rarest of occasions. How many of us can say we were an integral part of the largest and most expensive manhunt in U. S. history? Of course, how many of us would want to be able to say it?

Despite my best intentions, and whether I liked it or not, I was inexorably drawn into Unabomer (there is NO “b” at the end of that term) Ted Kaczynski’s orbit for 18 grueling years, 16 of them as the main suspect in the investigation. We won’t review it all here, but if you’re interested in the backstory, please listen to this amazing Pineapple Street Studios podcast covering my friend Greg’s and my inadvertent involvement in what would eventually turn into the Unabom case.

I firmly believed that telling my 27-years-after-the-fact story had finally provided the elusive closure on that interminably strange period of my life. But even though I knew Ted had been transferred to a federal medical prison facility in North Carolina with terminal cancer, I wasn’t prepared for how his death would affect me.

Other than the fact he killed and maimed innocent people for purely bullshit personal reasons, I harbor no animosity towards Ted because he wasn’t the one who implicated us. That was the ATF and FBI, who at the outset, ran a shockingly shortsighted and incompetent investigation. I’m convinced Ted was never aware of my existence, and even if he was, he wouldn’t have spent ten seconds considering his impact on it.

It’s that bizarrely distant yet relentless connection that makes Ted Kaczynski’s death so difficult to process.

My first thought was it would finally bring a sense of closure to the victims and their families, but I know that it won’t because it never does. Then, with all due respect to those who were so horribly affected, I found myself hoping that Ted finally found the peace in death he never found in life. There’s no excuse for what he did and his psychological wounds were often self-inflicted, but Ted Kaczynski was the epitome of the tortured soul.

He didn’t choose to be born as the kind of mathematical genius that allowed him to skip various grades before he was accepted at Harvard at age 15. One of his classmates said, “They packed him up and sent him to Harvard before he was ready. He didn’t even have a driver’s license.” Talk about a keen perception of the obvious.

Though Ted would’ve stood a far better chance in today’s more autism aware world, I still cringe whenever I read a news story about some hapless kid graduating from college at 14. They will never emotionally catch up.

There’s also a wistfulness for never pursuing the opportunity to interview him. I knew it wouldn’t happen, but for some inexplicable reason I maintained the notion that our unusual attachment would grant me access. But Ted only spoke seriously with one journalist after he was captured, and he offered nothing new when he did. After all, the entire Ted Kaczynski premise was that he was never capable of relating to anyone.

He was dead on about technology’s deleterious effects on humanity, but just like the proverbial twice-right broken clock, that concern was utterly incidental to his drive to exact revenge on a society that, in his words, had entirely let him down. His “I believe in nothing” quote pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

Sitting well out on the autism spectrum myself, I’m convinced that Ted wasn’t mentally ill as his brother David and so many professionals indicated. I worked with schizophrenics for five years and Ted’s introspective capacities belie that paranoid diagnosis. He also came within inches of “rehabilitating” himself back into society by going back to school and issuing no bombs between 1988 and 1992. Paranoid schizophrenics cannot exert that kind of control over their disease without some serious medication.

Aside from his 167 IQ, the major difference between Ted and myself is that I understand how the autistic rabbit hole always beckons, so I’ve managed to avoid getting sucked down it to the point of no return. Ted wasn’t so lucky.

Ted’s technology theories were too measured and logical to be the disjointed ramblings of a schizophrenic. Further proof of his sanity is how he brutally dismissed the disaffected folks who tried to turn him into some sort of ecological and Luddite anti-hero. Like he said, he believed in “nothing.”

Moving on from Ted, I will admit there’s still some residual anger at being swept up an 18-year investigation that so drastically co-opted and upended my life. So much for the having nothing to hide theory, right?

When he saw that Ted died at 81, a Facebook friend asked me, “They thought you were THAT old?” “No,” I replied, “The idiot profilers thought Ted was that young.”

FBI profilers, and to a lesser degree, psychologists, are the biggest frauds and charlatans on planet earth. Despite getting it wrong at every turn, they still tried to take credit for Kazcynski’s capture. I’d put my faith in astrologers, psychics, and Trump supporters long before I’d consider anything an FBI profiler had to say.

As I continue ponder this possibility, I find myself wishing my friend and retired FBI special agent Joe Doorley was alive to help process this death. Though it was a Sisyphean task, Joe and I spent untold hours discussing every aspect of the Unabom investigation in an effort to make  some minimal sense out of it. I’ve come to realize our verbal journey was far more important than any destination, but we did manage to come to one conclusion.

And that was “But for the love of a good woman,” as Joe always put it, Ted never would’ve embarked upon his murderous crusade. The term “Unabomer” would never have entered the collective consciousness. I know it sounds simplistic, but we remained steadfast in that belief. Much like the slightest gravitational tug can materially change the trajectory of a massive asteroid, the trajectory of our lives often hinges on the smallest of details.

So, I suppose my closure is there will never be closure. Ted Kaczynski’s death is just another step in processing a portion of my past that resists any form of processing. And I’m still not sure whether this piece is an exercise in self-indulgence or an effort to share the lingering effects of an experience that only two people on the planet will have ever have to endure.

I’ll leave that up to you.