http://articles.philly.com/1996-04-07/n ... -kaczynskiTracking An Enigma In The Unabomber's Words And Profile Can Be Found A Number Of Intriguing Parallels To The Man Arrested In Montana Last Week.
This article was written by Inquirer staff writer Mark Bowden based on reports from staff writers Jodi Enda, Faye Flam, Jeffrey Fleishman, Daniel LeDuc, Michael Matza and Carol Morello. This article contains information from Inquirer wire services
POSTED: April 07, 1996
Few people waded all the way through the densely reasoned 35,000-word Unabomber manifesto jointly published last year by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Most of it was a droning recitation of cranky social philosophy and condemnation of ``the system.'' But reread the manuscript in light of the arrest Wednesday of Theodore J. Kaczynski, and one paragraph leaps out:
``The system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the real world.''
It is, perhaps, the voice of a lonesome, compulsive, disillusioned academic who never fit in. It is, the FBI suspects, the voice of Ted Kaczynski.
A brilliant young math student, driven to excel, Kaczynski finished high school in Illinois in three years and graduated from Harvard at age 20. Instead of ``active contact with the real world,'' he spent a decade in intense, solitary academic pursuits.
He explored and mastered some of the most obscure terrain in modern mathematics, only to quit abruptly in 1969, telling colleagues he intended to do ``social work.'' He left to confront the real world with his bare hands, living alone for the next quarter century in a primitive cabin high in the Montana woods.
If personalities have signatures, then the brief, strobelike glimpses we have of both the Unabomber and Kaczynski are strikingly similar. To the FBI, the Unabomber is a solitary, angry, arrogant intellectual who displays an almost ornate excess of precision in his ideas, his writing . . . and his bombs.
It is this precision that so fascinates those who have been hunting him for 18 years. He is an intellectual serial killer, one who purports to have killed three people and injured 23 others with delicately fashioned bombs to further his eccentric ideals.
Federal agents have not charged Kaczynski with the bombings. They have discovered in his remote cabin materials for bomb-making, and equipment, such as a manual typewriter, that could link him to the Unabomber. And there is plenty about the math professor-turned-mountain man that appears to fit the murderer's distinct profile, from his handwriting - elegantly neat with large flourishing letters - to his ideas.
``When he presented a math proof he presented more detail than really needed,'' according to Peter Duren, a math professor at the University of Michigan who knew Kaczynski as a brilliant young mathematician in 1968.
Talking about the Unabomber, Christopher Ronay, the retired head of the FBI bomb unit who spent years on the case, said last year: ``He fashions [a bomb] into more detail than is necessary to make the thing work. The craftsmanship is identifiable, just like you might recognize a Renoir from a Monet.''
Kaczynski was the first of two sons born to Theodore R. and Wanda Kaczynski. He was born in 1942, and grew up in Evergreen Park, Ill., a working-class suburb on the southwest edge of Chicago. His brother, David, was born seven years later. Their father worked at a sausage plant, and their mother left a job as a teacher to concentrate on educating her sons. Both parents were active in liberal social causes, and were described by one Evergreen neighbor as ``pacifists.''
Kaczynski's childhood home is a brick and frame Cape Cod like many others in Evergreen Park. It has yellow and white aluminum awnings and sits a couple of houses away from a large park.
The emphasis on learning in the Kaczynski household may not have been ``heavy pressure,'' but it clearly was the family's preoccupation. Wanda read to her sons from Scientific American magazine, organized clubs for her sons and other neighborhood children to discuss art, science and history over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Neighbor Dorothy O'Connell remembers Ted Kaczynski at about age 10, showing her the book he was taking along on a family vacation. It was Romping Through Mathematics from Addition to Calculus. O'Connell encouraged the boy to fish with his father, but he said, ``I have to learn this.''
She remembers him as a polite but withdrawn child.
``He didn't talk much . . . ,'' she said. ``He wasn't the type who went out and played ball. He was always studying.''
`A SERIOUS FAMILY'
``He never played with the other kids,'' said LeRoy Weinberg, a veterinarian who lived behind the Kaczynskis. ``I remember saying at the time that he may be brilliant, but I'm sure glad he's not my kid.''
Weinberg describes the Kac-zynskis as ``a serious family. . . . They read books all the time.'' Many of their vacations were visits to colleges and universities.
All that preparation paid off when Ted Kaczynski - remembered as the brightest student in high school - won a scholarship to Harvard. But his academic excellence isolated him socially. Few old classmates recall much about him except that he was ``smart,'' and good with his hands.
``He wasn't exactly gregarious, but he was extremely articulate,'' Dale Eickelman, Kaczynski's friend in his early teenage years and now an anthropology professor at Dartmouth College, told the Southtown Economist, a suburban Chicago newspaper. ``I remember Ted was very good at chemistry. . . . He had the know-how of putting together things like batteries, wire leads, potassium nitrate and whatever, and creating explosions.''
As boys, they made explosions in fields and in garbage cans, crafting small bombs out of household products and items bought at the hardware store.
Kaczynski entered Harvard in 1958 as a whiz kid and a misfit. He was a shy 16-year-old freshman, two years younger than his classmates, the son of Polish working-class parents at a university populated by the sons of the wealthy and prominent.
Trailing his progress through Harvard now, almost 38 years after he entered, is like tracking a beachcomber who left only the faintest impression on the sand. In interviews, former professors and classmates recalled his face from the freshman photograph broadcast after his arrest, but little else.
`SHADOWY'
``You remember the students who were particularly pestiferous or the ones who were very, very good,'' said Andrew Gleason, a retired professor of mathematics. ``He didn't fall into either of those categories. He didn't write a senior thesis, which most of our really good math majors do.''
``I would see him at meals. But he didn't interact with us. I think he was as shadowy in college as he has been since,'' said Gregory Rick, a physician in Stillwell, Kan., who, like Kaczynski, lived in Eliot House, a four-story, red-brick dormitory with soaring clock tower and blue-green cupola.
Named for a former Harvard president, the horseshoelike dorm is built around an iron-gated courtyard at the edge of the Charles River. It's a place where several hundred students go their separate ways each day, then reunite for meals in a wood-paneled dining room laid out with large rectangular tables, a central fireplace and two enormous chandeliers.
In the early 1960s, when Kaczynski was there, it had a reputation as the preppy house. Once a month or so, students put on tuxedos for dinners with visiting dignitaries. ``It was a golden time,'' recalled a member of Kaczynski's class.
Not for Kaczynski. He wasn't just quiet at Harvard; he became actively antisocial.
``He'd almost run from people,'' recalled Patrick McIntosh, Kaczynski's roommate for three years in a fourth-floor, seven-room suite carved from former maids' quarters. Harvard set different prices for different rooms, and this was Eliot House's low-rent district.
``He'd walk rapidly to his room and slam the door even though we were in midsentence trying to say hello to him,'' recalled McIntosh, now an astronomer in Boulder, Colo. ``None of us had the maturity or the time to pursue the reasons why. There wasn't anything that threatened any violence or evoked fear. We just worried that this guy wasn't quite right.''
McIntosh said that Kaczynski often sat alone at a big table in the dining hall and quickly excused himself if people joined him.
``I thought he was intense,'' the former roommate said. ``He didn't talk about his thoughts, his family, his friends. He'd answer questions with as little information as possible. . . . In retrospect there were signs. The extreme reclusiveness. Anybody that deliberate in avoiding relationships needs help.''
Another roommate, Wayne Persons, now a computer specialist at the University of Maine, recalled that Kaczynski's room was a constant, sometimes reeking, mess and that his trumpet playing - and habit of rocking noisily in his desk chair for hours - were frequent annoyances.
``Basically, he didn't interact with us at all. I can't remember him being involved in anything,'' said Persons.
``The one thing I do remember is that he never smiled. He was very grim-faced,'' said classmate Frederick Boersma.
Kaczynski graduated in 1962 with a bachelor's degree and enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to continue his work in mathematics. It was here that he began to display his brilliance.
In the manifesto, critical of modern scientific pursuits, the Unabomber wrote:
``Most scientists work on highly specialized problems that are not the object of normal curiosity.''
It's a fair description of the field Kaczynski entered: boundary functions, mathematics at its most abstract.
``There are those of us who work on things that apply to the real world, and others that are way out there,'' says mathematician Dennis DeTurck of the University of Pennsylvania. ``Kaczynski was pretty far out on the edge.''
During the 1960s, mathematicians were puzzling over certain formulas that only made sense within some fixed boundary. On the boundary, things didn't add up.
``If you came to the boundary by a different route, you would get a different answer,'' explains DeTurck. ``It was sort of like finding different elevations on the same spot, depending on whether you got there by the inland or the coastal route.''
Such esoteric concerns were tailor-made for someone smart, intense and solitary. That profile fits many in serious mathematics.
``You don't have to deal with people, or even make observations of nature,'' said Don Lewis, head of mathematics at the National Science Foundation.
Peter Duren, who served on Kaczynski's dissertation committee, said he was a very unusual student, given to perfection.
``In giving a mathematical proof, he would fill in all the intermediate steps in an argument. He would be extremely precise and not leave anything to the imagination,'' Duren said. ``Normally, mathematicians, when they write out a proof, will assume that the reader is able to fill in the intermediate steps. That's the way his mind worked - he had to have everything spelled out in complete detail.
``He was often, in class or after class, asking for justification for this step or that step of an argument. He wanted every detail . . . He was really outstanding.''
He also stood out. At a time of political radicalism, of long hair and antiwar rallies and defiant nonconformity, Kaczynski wore a suit and tie to class. It seemed the only thing he cared about was math.
``He was not reclusive at that time,'' Duren said. ``I wouldn't describe him as shying away from people. He was perfectly comfortable talking about mathematics. He would often seek me out or other people to clarify mathematical detail. I don't have any memory of talking to him about anything else. He was sort of one-dimensional. Most of the students are able to relax, have parties. I don't think he was able to do that. I don't think he told jokes. I don't think he had time for that. He was very serious, a little bit, not exactly, abrupt, but he didn't want to waste time.''
Most students pursuing a doctorate lean heavily on their adviser. Kaczynski sought help from no one. His thesis was his private project from beginning to end.
``It's really unheard of,'' said Duren. ``I don't think he really wanted help. He didn't want any interference. He wanted to do it by himself.''
And he did it three times. He abandoned his first effort when he discovered that a student at another university had done something that overlapped his idea. He dropped his second after he discovered what Duren called ``a small oversight, a technical detail that most people wouldn't have worried about.''
Finally, Kaczynski wrote his dissertation on boundary functions. It was judged by the mathematics department to be the best thesis of the year. That and the six papers he published in mathematical journals, a rare accomplishment, won him a job as an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1967, when he got there, the math department at the University of California recruited only the very best. There were other young professors seeking a limited number of tenured jobs, but Kaczynski had already outstripped his competition.
His teaching methods did not win raves. ``Kaczynski's lectures were useless, right from the book,'' one student wrote in an assessment. ``He absolutely refuses to answer questions by completely ignoring the students.''
Even so, Kaczynski was a star.
Then, one day in March 1969, he abruptly announced his resignation. John W. Addison Jr., chairman of the department, was surprised.
``He said he was going to give up mathematics and wasn't sure what he was going to do,'' Addison recalled. He tried to talk Kaczynski out of it.
``I don't remember many interview sessions like that with other people,'' Addison said. ``We wouldn't have encouraged this guy to stay on if he wasn't any good.'' But it was no use.
Addison explained what happened in a 1970 letter to Kaczynski's dissertation supervisor at Michigan:
``He submitted his resignation last year quite out of the blue. . . . He said he was going to give up mathematics and wasn't sure what he was going to do. He was very calm and relaxed about it on the outside. We tried to persuade him to reconsider, but our presentation had no apparent effect. Kaczynski seemed almost pathologically shy and as far as I know he made no close friends in the department. Efforts to bring him more into the swing of things had failed.''
Kaczynski had spent his childhood and young adulthood in single-minded pursuit of academic success. He had carved out a career in the most esoteric regions of modern thought. And then he decided it was all a mistake.
THE HILLS OF MONTANA
In the manifesto, the Unabomber writes that the primary source of modern man's alienation and unhappiness is that he no longer must fend for himself. His basic needs for food, shelter and clothing are met so long as he plugs into ``the system,'' and performs his appointed task obediently.
``Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people.''
A few years after leaving Berkeley, Kaczynski appeared in the hills of Montana, far from all semblance of modern society. He built himself a wooden cabin, 10 feet by 12 feet, with a pitched roof and a black pipe chimney. It has no electricity or running water, and is heated by a wood stove. Eschewing the automobile (which is condemned at length in the manifesto) he became known to the residents of Lincoln, the nearest town, as the mountain man on the bike.
He had no wristwatch or clock in his cabin. He used to stop by once a day at the house of neighbor Wendy Gehring and ask what time it was, until one day she told him, ``Time to buy a watch.''
Kaczynski could have found no better place to preserve his privacy. Montana has wide open spaces, few people - and very few police. The Montana ethos is that you don't dig into your neighbor's business unless it interferes with your water rights.
There were numerous recluses living alone in Lincoln's outlying forest. If folks thought Kaczynski was an odd duck, he was not the oddest. So when census taker Joe Youderian visited his cabin in 1990, and saw it had no electricity or running water, was heated with a wood stove and furnished only with a bed, table and two chairs, he could nevertheless say there was ``nothing to make him stand out.''
When Kaczynski came to town, it was always for a purpose. He shopped at D & D Food Town and the Blackfoot Market, usually to stock up rather than to pick up a few sundries. At the Grizzly True Value Home Center, he bought garden gloves and seed, tools such as a handsaw, and batteries.
In the manifesto, the Unabomber took pains to make it clear that the revolution he advocated was not against the government: ``For the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society.''
And Kaczynski was a good citizen. According to county records, he was prompt in paying property taxes on his cabin. His tax bills for the five years from 1990 to 1994 were all paid on time. They ranged from a low of $110.59 in 1992 to a high of $169.74 in 1994. Authorities say they don't know where he got the money.
Scraping out such a life was the kind of struggle the Unabomber describes as essential in the manifesto. Kaczynski foraged for wood and chopped enough to keep him warm during Montana's long winters. The short growing season and rocky soil were good only for growing root vegetables such as carrots, potatoes and parsnips. And for those, Kaczynski had to constantly battle with hungry deer and rabbits.
In the manifesto, the Unabomber wrote:
``To attain autonomy [we] must get off that leash. . . . Freedom means being in control of the life and death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's environment.''
Authorities suspect that in addition to scraping out a living, Ted Kaczynski was also making bombs.
The Unabomber's first bomb, a mail bomb, exploded May 25, 1978, at Northwestern University near Chicago, injuring the security guard who opened it.
The bombs got bigger and more sophisticated. They were cunningly fashioned out of handmade parts made from commonplace items. Most featured delicately polished wood, fancy tooling and the signature ``FC,'' for Freedom Club.
In Lincoln, residents noticed that the mountain man on the bike occasionally left town. He'd hitch a ride with the local postman into Helena, where he'd stay in a cheap hotel. The postman would pick him up a few days later. In return, Kaczynski occasionally would give him a bag of parsnips from his garden.
Federal authorities suspect that from Helena, Kaczynski may have taken bus trips to the locales from which the bombs were mailed, staying at homeless shelters.
On Dec. 11, 1985, a bomb killed Hugh Campbell Scrutton, owner of a Sacramento, Calif., computer store. Three more severe injuries followed, as the Unabomber sent exploding packages to another computer store and two prominent scientists.
On Dec. 10, 1994, Thomas Mosser, a New York City ad executive, was killed by an exploding package.
On April 24, 1995, a package bomb from ``FC'' killed Gilbert P. Murray, president of the California Forestry Association.
Then came the manifesto.
``In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people,'' he wrote, laying out a detailed argument against modern technology, and calling for a return to primitive living.
``Permanent change in favor of freedom could be brought about only by persons prepared to accept radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of the entire system. In other words by revolutionaries, not reformers.''
Appearing in shackles before a federal judge in Helena on Thursday, Kaczynski looked pale and thin in the loose-fitting orange prison jumpsuit, his long hair unkempt and his rough beard flecked with gray. He faced the courtroom with a cocksure demeanor, like some wild prophet come down from the mountaintop.
And in the few words Kaczynski spoke in the courtroom, there was a hint of the ornate precision of those old mathematical proofs . . . and, the FBI says, of the Unabomber's deadly handiwork.
When the judge surmised that the scruffy defendant would be unable to afford his own lawyer, the answer wasn't just ``yes,'' or ``correct.''
Kaczynski said, crisply, ``Quite correct.''
Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 4:24 am