Madman in the Woods ////// 597 | Forensic Files

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[Music] foreign [Music] thank you for joining me here in the garage today I'm excited to talk about
your new book madman in the woods it's quite the interesting story it's quite the interesting life that you had really
kind of scary when you think about how close you were to well the madman in the woods life next door to the Unabomber
Jamie is here to talk about her childhood and growing up next to Ted Kaczynski as casuals this is Jamie and
as short and simple to put it you grew up next to a serial killer yes I sure did I grew up
um just less than a quarter of a mile away from Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber and um sometimes when I say a quarter
mile people are like oh that that seems actually kind of far but it's rural Montana and so you have to really think
about the landscape there and um you know and and just to give you a small amount of background
my family purchased about 9 000 Acres um of Ranch Land decades before Ted Kaczynski came to
Lincoln and in 1971 my grandfather sold 1.4 acre to Ted and David Kaczynski and that 1.4 acre was on The Fringe of
our Ranch Land and so since 1971 to 1996 when Ted was arrested our family and Ted Kaczynski basically
were sharing a backyard and me specifically for you know most of my childhood you're quite a bit younger
than Ted so um you're only living next door to him for what about 15 years is that right yeah
you're very close I was born in 1980 and so he was arrested in 96 I was 16 years
old when he was arrested and describe this area for us the uh the the land that your family owned and of course the
1.4 acres that Ted and his brother owned so the area I am from Lincoln Montana is very rural like it's a it's about a
thousand residents give or take depending on the season the town is very small it has a blinking
stop light not even red and green it's so you can imagine um you know that it's very very tidy
wear TED specifically lived was close to four miles from the Tiny Town of Lincoln
very isolated rural area surrounded by pine trees and when he bought that land in 1971
there were very few people living out there and so obviously that really did appeal to him as the years went on there
were a couple more neighbors here and there but um really there there weren't it wasn't
very populated so my my family my dad of course um you know as as seemingly fellow
mountain men do was always looking out for Ted and trying to help Ted because that's kind
of how the community worked and you know because of that they did form it almost
you know it seemed on the surface a friendship in those very early years so you know the the place is very rural
but the community is very tight-knit and so my you know my father really tried to
care for Ted in um in the way that he would care for any other neighbor yeah Ted was a very
interesting guy a very odd character to to really well you know when we covered the Unabomber case a while back a year
or so ago and I really dove into who he was and try to get an opinion on his personality and his
makeup even you know thousands of a thousand miles away and all these years later and really just what I could pull
off of pages and not so much the experience you had where you met him face to face on multiple occasions and
lived next door to him essentially but the vibe I always kind of got Jamie was that here we have this guy that yes he
he moves out you say rural but you know like I live in a rural area of Ohio to call your area Rural and mine rural in
the same sentence would be Insanity because uh to me like you guys are living out in the middle of nowhere
pretty much and for this guy to move out into the middle of nowhere it gives you
this Vibe like here's this dude that wants to just run away from everybody else that
he hates Society he hates all that in society entails and he wants to be by himself he wants to be left alone but at
the same time I'm glad that you bring up what you did with your father and and the way that the mountain men would work
and they would check in on one another and I imagine your father's going over there every couple of days or just
dropping by when he happens to be in that corner of your guys's plot of land and saying hey Ted how's it going you
know any problems you know you just kind of check in with each other as neighbors
would in any area but but it's more important here in this area because you're talking about a situation where
somebody could God forbid they have a a health situation and pass away they could not be noticed for for days or
weeks if nobody's there to check on them if not longer but with Ted I always kind
of got this vibe that even though he's once in seams on the surface like he desires this hermit style of life I do
think just like every other human being though he was someone that needed some kind of interaction with others and
and actually desired it even if he would tell us otherwise I think he actually desired human interaction and really
probably was starved for some type of meaningful friendship that he just didn't have and and that maybe he didn't
allow himself to have and you met him face to face and your father knew him am I close to being right here yeah
actually I think you're pretty spot on especially in the what I call the early years for me so the late 70s early 80s
that is when Ted Kaczynski was still coming over to our family's home for dinner he he held me as a baby and
and asked to hold me um you know there were still late night card games between him and my parents
and it in my book and Mad Men in the woods I do really try to uncover that like was that
was it a cover for Ted was it was he trying to create this Persona of being this you know normal neighbor or did he
really still at that point have a desire for connection and and I don't know if we'll we'll ever
really get to the bottom of that answer but I I either there's still a part of me that really does believe that he he
still he still needed that and even as the time went on when you know he was deep into his reign
of domestic Terror you can read his journals and sort of see that as well because he's writing every single day
and and when I say journals they're basically stacks of notebooks that were found in his cabin but he is detailing
everything about his day you know what he's eating what he's hunting what he's reading
um and of course his crimes as well but when he writes it's as though he's writing to an audience
and that also has always made me think that it was his own way of some sort of almost communication with the outside
world the only the only safe way he could do it it was almost a mimic like he's writing somebody a letter rather than
keeping a personal Journal exactly exactly it was some sort of and connection um in communication with others even
though it really wasn't and that's interesting too that he was doing that and I was aware of the these Diaries I
kind of pictured him as being something a little bit different but um but didn't
do a whole lot of research into those particular Diaries so that's interesting to hear and that to me in some ways
reflects the typical behavior of a solitary man you know uh we we will see that similar behavior from inmates where
they're locked up for long periods of days so the of the day so they will write down and journal things that you
and I would not you know what what I had for lunch uh what time lunch was what books I was reading and so on and so
forth It's all these little my new insignificant details of their day but it's a way to pass the time and to
record the time in a way and but he's doing it in a way that that it would be almost that he's presenting it to an
audience or that he he's he's communicating with someone and I think that goes back to what I was thinking
and what you're hitting on there that I do think in a way as as alone as he seemed to want to be on the surface
again I I do think he was starved for real relationships I don't know that he had the ability to to have them or to
have any type of lasting meaningful relationship it's almost like uh his personality was his own prison while
writing the book I did I connected with David Kaczynski his brother of course and
I mean that was that was one perspective that I found obvious for obvious reasons
very interesting and he you know kind of said the same thing especially with the
with the isolation that Ted chose he was really just stuck in the Echo chamber of
his own mind and um you know who knows if that continued isolation um fueled him even further with with his
campaign did you meet his brother David before the rest of the world knew what Ted was up to no I didn't so Ted and um
his excuse me David and his parents had come out to Lincoln in the early 80s for
a few visits um but we actually did not did not meet them and did not see them but
um you know Ted definitely destroyed that relationship and the last time that kaczynskis came out
was the mid-80s and after that you know Ted decided that he didn't want anything
to do with his family so we did not we did not know them and there were very strange encounters as a child with with
Ted and many times he would come to our home and knock on the door and ask what time it was what day it was
and so I would tell him and his reason for many of those um encounters would be because he needed
to go pick up his brother from town and it was it was really interesting because
when I was writing the book and talking with David I had told him about that and he was
like oh that that's definitely very strange because the last time I came to visit you know was the mid-80s and this
was definitely happening past that into the 90s and so that always made me really wonder too and something that I
wrote about as well is if he still in in part of his mind had the desire to see his brother
because it was such a strange thing to say or again if it was just a cover because he needed to know what time it
was truly because he was potentially catching the bus um to go plant a bomb so yeah very very strange things from my
childhood once we you know as an adult can really look back and uncover what was truly going on
yeah that's interesting it's it's either a a cover or like you said he still had
the desire to to be close to his brother who we know he was close with at one point in his life and we know that David
helped him build the Shack or whatever we want to call it that Ted was living in that's interesting about kind of
having a cover for catching the bus to to plant these bombs but we do know that Ted was riding his bike into town on
occasion to for the Post Office you know like where where I live and where most people live there's there's a a
wonderful lady or man that drives around in a little truck and hands out the the
mail and puts it in the mailboxes and such but and these smaller communities we you have to go to the Post Office not
just to send something out but to retrieve your own mail and so Ted would go to he would ride into town on his
bicycle to pick up mail drop off mail and uh I believe he was visiting a small small a very small library that was in
town yeah so Ted would go flinkin actually did have a male on on the road outside of his home
with his name on it but he also you're right he did also have a P.O box and in reading some of the letters the
correspondence between him and his parents his mom specifically there were some times where Wanda Kaczynski his
mother had sent dried fruit or you know some sort of Provisions in a package to him and the box was too large to fit
into his mailbox and so they held it at the PO at the post office and Ted would have to go down there ride
his bike or walk down and it enraged him I mean reading reading the scathing words was really
actually pretty difficult um to see what he would write to his own mother but I mean looking back now you
can see I mean obviously it's the Unabomber so there's you know there's a little mix of whatever's going on there
with some potential mental illness and um the isolation so it's easy to see where the words are coming from
but anyway he would have to walk or ride his bike into town and go to the post office but he would also
take time to go into the Lincoln Library he would sometimes go into um the grocery store or Garland's Town
and Country as it was called back then which was like a general store um and at those locations he did have
people that he would sit and talk to he had found you know just a few people in town that he was comfortable conversing
with but it was very very few as much as he refused to believe that he was crazy and
you're calling him the madman and I actually believed that he was very deep in psychosis by the time that he was
apprehended it's difficult to I think it probably started rather young maybe in his teens or early 20s and I think it it
becomes a slippery slope that you just keep falling down a little bit more and I know understand that every case is
different but I'm looking at Ted specifically and I just wonder with the uh you know oh I have to pick up my
brother if it was more of it could have been his his mental illness kicking in of you know
retrieving mail or or hoping to retrieve something from his brother in town talk
about some of his you know you said he'd come over and play cards I would imagine
it's difficult playing cards against someone with a genius level IQ um talk about some of your interactions
with him at the house what do you remember in your young childhood sharing a meal with the Unabomber I
would imagine as a as a young girl you're probably sitting there watching dad and Ted talk about you know all
sorts of things so when Ted Kaczynski was coming to our home for meals still I was a baby so I
don't remember those um visits but in writing the book I got to sit down with my mom and
um you know she was able to really detail what that looked like and what that felt like
which was very compelling because you know in those early years as you were saying you know through the years
he was probably deep into his psychosis when he was coming by and asking the time and such but when he first came to
Lincoln he made it very clear in in these journals that his motivation for choosing this lifestyle
was Revenge even in 1971 so that was still very present but he still had the appearance of
the Berkeley Professor a bit he didn't you know he didn't quite look like the man that was pulled from his cabin in
1996 completely disheveled with his clothes rotting off and you know stood on his face
so in the early years when Ted would come over it was he was always a bit strange and I you know that my first
memories of him I don't when I really truly look at them I wasn't scared I wasn't there was there was no fear
present when he was at the house or um you know when he came over to help my dad and things like that
but definitely as the years went on those visits became much more alarming and did your parents try to keep him at
a distance at some point yes they did in you know my so my mom and my father did
get divorced in the 80s and my dad remarried and my stepmother was not didn't have quite
the relationship with Ted as my mom did and so there was definitely a change in that Dynamic when Ted would come over it
just wasn't quite the same he wasn't coming over for dinner at that point he was you know there I talk about in
the book there was a day where he actually worked on my dad's sawmill and my my stepmother Wendy was
his boss and it made for um a pretty difficult day of labor for for all of them the dynamic definitely changed in
our you know in our family over the years um and you know Ted wasn't Ted wasn't quite as friendly with my parents and
there were plenty of disagreements between my father and Ted especially in the 90s as you know as as
Ted's reign of terror continued and of course as as his mental illness probably deepened so we talk about disagreements
with your father and Ted but there was some strange things going on that at the time probably seemed very strange and
maybe random but then later knowing who Ted actually is you have to have your suspicions that
maybe Ted was involved or or the the the soul uh perpetrator of some of these items so
let's let's talk about two strange of events in particular would be there was some kind of sabotage at your your
father's Sawmill which I I believe that was covered in one of the maybe the Netflix special
and then your this is incredibly terrible but your your the family dog your family dog uh was poisoned at some
point yeah so there were plenty of um acts of sabotage in the Lincoln area that I uncovered while writing this book
and of course I can't say for sure that Ted was responsible for all of them but there were a few
definitely that um he admitted to and one of those yes was the sabotage of my father's Sawmill
it was sanded which just means that you know somebody had put sand into the gas tank and um we didn't know at the time
who that was my dad initially had he did have some suspicion that it may be Ted and had confided in one of our neighbors
like oh I just I don't he said I don't trust him I don't know why and the neighbor Chris you know was like oh Ted
couldn't do that think about it like he's just an eccentric hermit my dad finally kind of accepted that and moved
on I will be honest when yes when he was arrested of course we were like oh you know that was most likely Ted but I
didn't know that it was absolutely 100 percent Ted Kaczynski Intel participating in the Netflix documentary
and hearing the interview that's on that Dock and Ted is is bragging about it and
admitting to it and saying you know that he I think he calls my dad an [ __ ] and says something like I have this
neighbor Butch Gehring who's an [ __ ] or something like that and uh you know my my goal was to put him out of
business and so hearing that and hearing what you know what he did could finally you know provide some like
concrete closure and you know I'm my dad has passed away and I I really wish that
he was able to hear that because it would have have really you know confirmed a lot of a lot of his
thoughts through the years I mean obviously the arrest was a big wake-up call for everybody and
um had solved some some mysteries for sure but that specifically wasn't uncovered until the documentary aired so
yeah that was one and then there was another pretty horrific event I mean when um
when I was writing this book I had interviewed other neighbors and was hearing all of these horrific stories of
other pets in the area being poisoned and pets being stabbed and horrible deaths and such our dog had been our dog
Wiley had been poisoned and had a pretty slow death but at the time the veterinarian had confirmed that it was
strychnine that the dog had ingested and as horrible as that was um you know and there I definitely
had um some I I guess concerns that it was Ted Kaczynski you know there was strychnine found at
his home when um the FBI searched the cabin it wasn't again until I was writing this that I found a letter that
Ted admits to killing a dog a neighbor's dog that was sneaking into his garden at night I I
think that was I mean it was a difficult moment for me for sure because I know this sounds
really odd but knowing uh a killer as a child is I mean to put it lightly of a very
strange experience and a hard thing to reconcile as an adult because I I do have these softer memories of him and I
saw him through this different lens and I trusted him as a little kid and finding these things out and knowing
seeing the concrete evidence of really what he was capable of and really what danger we were in living so close to him
um was was just a really hard part of this whole process [Music] [Music] now is the perfect time to start Babel
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slash garage Babble language for life [Music] thank you [Music] all right let's get back to Nick's
interview with Jamie the author of madman in the woods talking about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski yeah I can hear
the the inner struggle that you had there and it's something that I can't you know nobody can take away from you
or or nobody can relieve you of that but it's something I really wish that it's one of those situations where that's
what separates you from Ted That's What Separates Me and You and a whole bunch of other people from somebody like Ted
where you have enough compassion in your heart and empathy that for somebody that you can
look back on somebody as terrible as this man is and as horrible his as his deeds were and as evil as he was
that you can still you still look back and go he wasn't always bad or there was some
good in him or or there was something that you saw that wasn't Pure Evil and he he would never feel that way for any
of us right and so it's it's hard to really kind of wrap your head around that but when we talk about the
destruction to your father Sawmill and the a dog being poisoned maybe he poisoned other dogs as well you
know Ted was so he his makeup especially the older he got to me was just somebody
that was so incredibly jealous spiteful and hell-bent on Revenge I think it rings true when we hear him say years
later oh this man that I lived next to he was an [ __ ] and I and I happily uh put sand in in The Sawmill and and and
and tried to take down his operation because that's who he is he's hell-bent on Revenge and he he personally feels oh
I bested that man I won in the in the end I won even though I didn't play fair even though I played dirty and oh by the
way we were in some weird competition that this other guy was even unaware of and I
was jealous of him for reasons that he would never even know or understand but oh in the end it doesn't matter because
I won I bested him that's really to me what a lot of his destruction and chaos and death that he caused was all about
and and so many people and this we talk about difficult to wrap your head around
so many people you see them on the Internet go oh if anybody would take the time to read his Manifesto you would
realize how brilliant and how smart and forward-thinking this guy was and I've read the manifesto and the whole time
I'm sitting there thinking yeah he sent bombs to people and and with total Reckless regard for any human life we
are lucky that he will only killed the number that he killed the number could have been so much higher just just based
off a circumstance that was out of Ted's control and so you sit there and you read his Manifesto and you go this guy
is a walking contradiction to everything that he put in these papers there's no Brilliance there nobody's arguing that
he has 167 IQ but I would argue what kind of real Brilliance and beliefs did this guy have other than the core of it
all at the core of it all I see a a weak man who has no self-respect and has shunned himself from his family by his
own choice but blames his family that he doesn't fit in with them just like he blamed your family that he didn't fit in
with you he's hell-bent on jealousy and revenge and in spitefulness to that that
led him down this horrible dark destructive path now the other thing too though you you mentioned that there were
weird meetings in the woods with Ted or or hearing strange noises at night yeah there was um multiple events when
um I was really small that I I was about five when it first started happening I was laying in my bed
and my bedroom faced kind of the Mountainside and behind our home there were some old cars
um my dad had an old Oldsmobile he was planning on fixing and his boat and various
um pieces and parts for The Sawmill and things like that and that was very close
to my bedroom window and I would start hearing something outside of my window and it
wasn't it wasn't an animal I knew that much I would hear like rustling I would hear
metal clinging against each other I would and I started to hear very light whistling I would always sleep with my
bedroom window open because even as a little kid I really loved the the wind and the smell of the Pines I
started waking up to this these noises outside and I was terrified and I would run into my dad's bedroom
and yelled you know there's a monster outside and my dad of course would be like oh no it's just your overactive
imagination climb into bed and I was like no dad there's really somebody out there and I think he did appease me a
few times and would like walk over to my room and be like no nobody's here you know and come back in as you do with
little kids but you know as Ted writes in his journals he was foraging for scraps and pieces to put in his bombs
and and much of the reason he was untraceable for so long because he wasn't buying supplies anywhere they
could be traced for his bombs he was finding the majority of the metal and of course wood that he was using around his
home knowing that now as an adult and knowing that I was hearing really I was really hearing a monster outside my
window was um I I think it was just a real Moment of clarity for me and I finally as an adult I I could kind of
put that to rest and and two like know that I was I was right and I knew something was amiss I but you know I was
just a kid so that you know although a a scary experience um you know was it was really kind of I
suppose empowering for me as an adult to write about it and know that that I that
I had the intuition um to know that something was wrong so yeah that was that was one experience
and then there was another one as I was much older it was actually just the year
prior to Ted's arrest that I I was taking a walk through our Woods which I did all the time and
um you know I I was rounding a corner almost collided with Ted and here we are both alone in the woods together
and he is much more at this point like the man that you saw being pulled out of his cabin in 1996
you know he's describe him a little bit for us yeah so he's completely disheveled he's got you know holes in
his clothing he's got soot he always had stood on his face dirt under his fingernails but at this point his his
eyes were really bulging he um just seems like almost you know agitated and frantic
his just demeanor was completely different from kind of the shy reserved eccentric hermit that I initially had
known as a little kid um and so just his appearance was much more frightening you know there was gray
in his beard his hair was sticking up all over the place and you know that of course at this point I understood a bit
more about the world around me than I did when I was four and so being alone in the woods with him was frightening on
its own but also there was just something about him that really scared me at that point and
you know it's just one of those those moments where the hair on the back of your neck is sticking up and you know
you're scared for for a reason um it's intuition and so you know we both said hello as best as possible
turned around he went back his way I went back to my house and the entire time I was running back to the home as
soon as I knew that he couldn't see me anymore or thought he couldn't see me and was looking over my shoulder to make
sure he wasn't behind me um so that was one of those other you know really frightening experiences as
an adult looking back on that and thinking how differently that could have gone I mean he was he was killing he was
maiming he was you know he had been um a domestic terrorist for for almost two decades at that point
you talk about being scared you're meeting him in the woods and now forgive me for a little bit I might use
a little language that we don't want but uh you know one of his journals one thing
that struck me when researching Ted in his crimes in his life and his lifestyle a little bit was in one of his
journals and I don't know if this was made up for the media or if this is real and you may know but it was referenced
that he at one point was sitting in the woods with his rifle considering shooting
the neighbor's daughter I think he even says something extremely vulgar like I I
thought about killing the [ __ ] or or shooting the little [ __ ] was he talking
about you and is that true do we know if that's true hey so you're right about that and
um I do talk about that in Mad Men in the woods it was one of the more difficult things for me to write about
and the the way it happened is that yes Ted was in the woods with his rifle and um in
that 10 by 12 cabin on in Lincoln Montana he did have rifles he had a pistol that he had made himself
and as you as you know when he was arrested he also had a bomb that was packaged and ready to be sent so there
were plenty of terrifying things within that cabin and within those woods and on
one particular day Ted was out um in our again our shared backyard with his rifle
and since our land surrounded his my stepmother and my little sister who was only two at the time was they were out
doing some chores and kind of reseeding the ground and my stepmother just felt something she felt something ominous she
she felt a presence and you know you're in the in the middle of the woods and you think you're in Montana it's maybe a
mountain lion there's a predator of some sort so she grabbed her daughter got her
in the truck and they left well she didn't think about this um again until after Ted's arrest and in
those journals which my my especially my father was very involved in the investigation but
they were able to read some of those and my stepmother remembers reading that Ted had a rifle pointed on
her and yes he was kind of vacillating between my stepmother and my little sister who's a
toddler really contemplating killing them and yes you're right so while he's looking
through the scope and thinking about you know killing close range he's in his journals later talking about
if he killed the you know [ __ ] won then [ __ ] two would be left on the Mountainside I mean just the way that he
talks about it is horrific and for obvious reasons that was really really difficult to to write about of
course of course and and I mean it doesn't get any scarier than that now your father we have him playing a role
in taking down Ted we have FBI agent Max Knoll says that your father was the eyes and ears
of a portion of their investigation can you tell us about your father's role and
and maybe anything you witnessed or or learned about after the fact yes this the unibom case
um was you know very sensitive for for many reasons but because of Ted's isolation and because
of the environment he lived in he's surrounded by trees he's surrounded by mountains and
trees and and hardly anybody lives out there he knew he being Max Knoll knew that
he was going to need some help and my father ended up being that person and of course the FBI had to First determine if
they could trust my father and that didn't take that didn't take very long it just took a conversation my dad ended
up yes being kind of the eyes and ears because any other person around the cabin
would have raised suspicion during that time when Max Knoll was planning the investigation and you know really trying
to figure out how they were going to arrest this man it was you know they were looking back on Ruby Ridge and Waco and
they didn't want they didn't want any casualties they didn't want you know Ted to be killed and they didn't want
obviously the FBI to be harmed and so they had to be really strategic and um my father was as you said the eyes
and ears he would report back to Max you know if there was smoke coming out of the chimney or if
um there were footsteps coming out of the cabin things like that in the beginning uh and then
um as the investigation continued the FBI was having a really difficult time getting images
um even aerial images and so um you know my dad actually went and walked the grounds walked
around Ted's cabin with his handheld video camera and taped the terrain for the FBI in preparation of the arrest so
they knew exactly what it looked like so that that was definitely as even my dad
would admit uh a very scary part of the investigation because my dad knew at that point they had shared with him you
know they they slowly um kind of told him what they were suspecting Ted of but it initially it
was they were just looking into Ted Kaczynski for writing some threatening letters and then it did come out that in
fact they thought he was the Unabomber so my dad knew at that point when he was walking around Ted's cabin with this and
you think about in the 90s what a handheld video camera looked like it wasn't like your small little iPhone
and so he's walking around the serial Killer's home in the middle of the woods where he and he knows that he has rifles
he hunts he doesn't know all of the contents of his cabin but he was terrified and but he knew that he
had no other choice and um he couldn't see one more person hurt so he did it yeah and Jamie I want to thank you so
much for talking with us about your wonderful book your fascinating book madman in the woods the uh life next
door to the Unabomber I there's really dozens of things that we could go into that you do go into in your book and
it's a fascinating read so I want to congratulate you on that one thing I want to leave a little bit of a
cliffhanger for everybody out there in listener land is um I'm sure everybody will be dying to
know what happened when you wrote to Ted in prison after his arrest but we won't
give that answer here today instead why don't we tell everybody where they can find this incredible book yeah well
thank you for the kind words on the book I really do appreciate that my book can
be found basically anywhere you buy your books any brick and mortar that you like
to shop at but also of course online Amazon Barnes and Noble and then of course my
website as well jamiegearing.com wonderful thank you again for joining us and congratulations on the book and I
hope to come back and talk to us again sometime thank you so much [Music] foreign
[Music] madman in the woods fascinating stuff Colonel do we have any recommended
reading for the beautiful listeners of course we do here captain we're going to be recommending madman in the woods life
next door to the Unabomber by Our Guest Jamie as a child in Lincoln Montana growing up her family shared their land
their home and their dinner table with a Hermit with a penchant for murder and that of course was Ted Kaczynski the
Unabomber check out her book her fantastically intriguing book madman in the woods life next door to the
Unabomber you can find that great title and many more on our recommended page at
truecrimegarage.com join us back here in the garage next week and until then be good be kind and don't litter foreign
[Music]

Madman in the Woods ////// 597

Part 1 of 1

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Unfortunately serial killers and terrorists are in a lot of ways similar to the rest of us but of course with drastic differences. But one of the ways that they are like the rest of us they have family, friends and neighbors. This week we are joined in the Garage by someone who knows this much better than any of us. Jamie Gehring grew up a friendly neighbor to both a serial killer and terrorist. Ted Kaczynski better known as the Unabomber eluded capture and terrorized us for 17 years while the FBI tried desperately to track him down. Meanwhile he was making and sending bombs from a small shack in Lincoln, Montana. Join us for a cold beer and some intriguing conversation with someone who grew up right next door to hell.

Beer of the Week - 7 Years by Breton Brewing Company

Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 bottle caps

This week’s recommended reading is Madman in the Woods by Jamie Gehring

Join in the conversation on our blog at www.truecrimegarage.com

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Brief Summary

Jamie Gehring discusses her childhood next to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and her new book about those experiences.

Key points

Growing Up Next to Evil. Jamie shares her chilling childhood experience living next to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
The Complexity of Isolation. Exploring Ted's need for connection despite his hermit lifestyle.
Strange Encounters with Ted. Jamie recounts her unusual interactions with Ted Kaczynski as a child.
The Sand in the Gas Tank. A mysterious act of sabotage leads to suspicions about Ted Kaczynski.
Horrific Events Uncovered. The author reveals the tragic fate of pets in the neighborhood, hinting at Ted's involvement.
A Frightening Encounter. An adult reflection on a childhood meeting with Ted Kaczynski in the woods.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You grew up next to a serial killer.

Jamie reflects on her childhood living near Ted Kaczynski.

3:49WatchOct 20, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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