The Unabomber /// Part 2 /// 483 | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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thank you on July 22nd 1993 an employee at the University of California is injured
after opening a package that exploded in his kitchen the package was mailed to his home this is world renowned
geneticist Dr Charles Epstein he was severely injured in the attack just two days later Captain a prominent computer
scientist from Yale University receives a bomb in the mail and lost several fingers when he opened up the package in
December of 1994 a package was received at the home of Thomas Moser in North Caldwell New
Jersey Thomas Moser was an executive at the public relations firm Burson marsteller Thomas opens the package and
is killed immediately now this is Bomb number 15 if you are keeping score at home
on April 24th 1995. a male bomb was sent to William Dennison at his office however
Denison who the package is addressed to is actually the former president of the California Forestry Association located
in Sacramento so the new president is the one who actually receives this package this is
Gilbert Murray he opens the package and he is killed immediately so now what we have here
Captain is two bombs in a row that are both deadly our attacker seems to have perfected his craft which has to be
scary for the FBI because what we know in his previous attacks is not just sending bombs to individuals but the
bombs that he put on the flight flight 444 and if that bomb would have went off we're talking about casualties almost up
to a hundred people and so if he's able to then go hey well this is working instead of going after single
individuals again I'll go after the Arab lines again and if they don't stop it I mean you're you're talking about a
massive devastation Captain I want to get into some Communications that have been going on
through the course of this investigation and these attacks now there was a letter
that was sent to the San Francisco Examiner in 1985 and I actually have in my notes here that a letter at some
point was received by the San Francisco Chronicle as well I don't have that date
in front of me but one thing interesting to our listeners they will remember the
San Francisco Chronicle from the Zodiac case that's where he sent most of his Communications
now in this letter back from 1985 the author is explaining what FC stands for so I'll just read the first couple
sentences of this letter and what it says here is that this was a hand written letter and it says to the San
Francisco Examiner the bomb that crippled the right arm of a graduate student in electrical engineering and
damaged a computer lab at U of Cal Berkeley last May was planted by a terrorist group called Freedom club we
are also responsible for some earlier bombing attempts and it goes on to list some of those attempts and it also goes
on to State how some of the bombs were constructed to try to prove that we are in fact who we say we are yeah and then
also they reminded everybody that the first rule of Freedom Club is to not talk about Freedom Club as well as the
second rule of Freedom Club as well now there was some communication with the New York Times
from this same terrorist group that's identifying themselves as terrorist group FC in their Communications with a
Warren Hodge of the New York Times this letter was in 1995. again explaining just like we said with the previous
letter what the group stands for what they're responsible for and descriptions of
bombs proving we are who we say we are what's interesting about this scenario with both of these situations
with the the letter to the San Francisco newspaper and then the New York Times one thing that the FBI was doing in
their investigations was they were able to really pinpoint and determine where the mail bombs that were actually sent
through the mail were shipped from where where someone dropped them into the mail
they found that the majority of the communications as well as the majority of the bombs that were mailed were
mailed in the San Francisco area so what they believe in their investigation is that they are looking
for someone who lives in or around the greater San Francisco area now we have another scenario and this
comes from the 1995 letter to the New York Times what they see on the letter is indentations like someone had wrote
something on another piece of paper on top of this letter or this envelope that was sent to the New York Times
through some analysis they're able to determine what what was written and it was written call Nathan R Wednesday 7 pm
now the FBI is desperately looking for a Nathan R because they believe that this
evidence suggests to them that the Unabomber made a mistake he accidentally wrote over top of his
letter and now they need to find a Nathan R because a Nathan R may have received a
call on a Wednesday at 7 pm at some point from the Unabomber who made a note to themselves call Nathan R Wednesday 7
pm they are making a national hunt for everyone named Nathan r with the last initial last name initial of R yeah or
possibly Nathan R is connected to this Freedom Club their second objective once they track down every Nathan R and ask
them the simple question of do you know who the Unabomber is or do you who called you on a Wednesday at 7 pm so so
on and so forth yeah or sometimes they ask them to straight up are you a piece of [ __ ] they thought you know what if
it's not Nathan last name that starts with R once we've cleared all them let's start
looking for Nathan middle initial R right the problem with this is there's a lot of Nathan ours out there first of
all and second of all not all these guys want to talk to you you know your law enforcement agency and you're saying hey
we need to ask you a couple questions you're going what are you doing contacting me I don't know what it is
that you're talking about get the hell out of here especially if you're nowhere near the San Francisco area I wonder if
there was any communication within the FBI to go well we have now communication from
this FC possibly an individual or a group all the communication is coming from San
Francisco our communication with the Zodiac was coming from San Francisco there's now
communication between this Unabomber or FC towards newspapers just like the zodiac
is it I wonder if there was conversation within the agency to go is this somehow
connected to the Zodiac my guess would be that when you have this many agents working on a case in a case that's uh
has a span of this many years that you probably have all kinds of speculation and theories especially early on in the
case when you have really no evidence at all of anything going on other than this
FC calling card that's being left with each bomb so remember the communication with
Warren Hodge of the New York Times what we then have are several threatening letters that are sent to
persons that would later be receiving bombs or at least the threat of possibly receiving a bomb and I'll read one but
there were multiple of these and this one says Dear Dr Roberts it would be it would be beneficial to your health to
stop your research in genetics this is a warning from FC Warren Hodge of the New
York Times can confirm that this note does come from FC which is bizarre because this is a
complete different approach to some of the attacks later that we're seeing in the 90s compared to what we saw in the
late 70s and 80s where there is in fact a communication in advance and a threat that is sent out saying stop what you're
doing here's our threat we are FC and oh yeah this guy Warren Hodge he can confirm
that we are who we say we are because we've already communicated with him at the New York Times come on we'll learn
later is by the 90s the mid 90s that the FBI is going to have a list of about 2 000 suspects yes
um in April 24 1995 that was the last deadly bomb that was received again it was at the California Forestry
Association exactly two months later on June 24th 1995 copies of a three a copies of a 35
000 word essay titled industrial society and its future by FC were sent to the New York Times The Washington Post and
Penthouse Magazine again very similar because it's sending to three different Publications
and then also very similar like what the Zodiac did to say hey publish these ciphers
publish this Manifesto right and what you have here Captain is basically it's this very lengthy Manifesto of
what the author deems to be the industrial society and the damages that it's doing to our society and to our
freedoms and so on and so forth but also saying you know we are FC we are the freedom club we are this terrorist
organization who has been terrorizing America for well over a decade now now if you publish our essay and I think
there was even the words in there publish or perish meaning if you don't publish this we're going to ramp up our
attacks and oh yeah we've been deadly as of late we've killed the last two people
that we've attempted to kill now we can ramp up these attacks if you don't submit to our demands which is
publishing this essay or if you do publish it well we will desist from terrorism if this demand is
met there was of course a lot of controversy over the idea do we give in to this
terrorist demand of printing their essay in the papers I believe it was titled industrial society and its future what
you end up having happen here is this great debate that is going on behind the scenes
do we publish or do we not publish yeah and really what we want to have happen here the FBI is going to have the final
say so they are going to tell these Publications if they can publish or not however
these things were sent to three different periodicals so we have the New York Times And The Washington Post that
really says that you know we are going to go off of the FBI's recommendation boy and look we we have a debate going
on with inside the agency because like we were talking about earlier last week um off the Record if you will that they
did these uh strategies with the Zodiac and never caught him so the people that are saying hey let's we need to publish
this because this is going to bring other people out to to possibly be able to identify this group or this
individual and there's other people coming back and going hey it didn't work with zodiac so
how are you so certain that it's going to work with this Unabomber's Manifesto it didn't work with zodiac but the
interesting thing is that the majority of the time when these especially when it's a Serial offender
that when they start communicating the communication is what often leads to their capture
and so you have this you have this confusion going on of oh we don't give in to terrorist demands but oh this also
might be this might be our spearhead for our investigation to finally catching this
guy so the Penthouse Magazine look they're they're looking to become newsworthy I
guess right they're saying okay times they're going to defer to the FBI the post is going to defer to the FBI we're
going to publish it here at Penthouse Magazine yeah they said no more with the tatas the tatis and the tatas we're
gonna we're gonna go right after the industrial society well they were going to continue doing exactly what they were
doing but they they knew this thing's going to sell a lot of papers so a lot of magazines
and so of course they wanted to post it and this is public information this is being released to the the ongoing talks
of whether to publish or not are up front and center and the public is aware of what's going on it's just sad that
but their editor wanted to call it the Unabomber manifisto well the thing here is though now we have an
issue of the author of the industrial society and its future they're going well this was kind of a
good game plan by the author in my opinion because you have two quote-unquote respectable
too respectable Publications and one that's not respectable and he or the author or whomever it was
or this group or what have you they want this Manifesto to be printed in an upstanding publication the New York
Times The Washington Post or both but it's kind of cool that they leverage this against those two by sending it to
someone who was probably just willing to print it to sell papers sell magazines and so when you see that this debate is
going on in front of the American public now you have the you have the author or
authors come forward and say okay look we agreed that we would stop our terrorism we would stop the bombings if
this was printed however if it's not printed in the two newspapers or one of the two newspapers
and it's only printed in Penthouse Magazine because it's not an upstanding publication well we reserve the right to
send one more deadly bomb one more deadly attack and then it can be posted in the
Penthouse magazine and we will stop our terrorism then our acts of terrorism then but they realize with the three
different Publications was we should we should print this in the Washington Post
because it's going to be easier for us to monitor uh it had it had a less of a footprint as far as where the Washington
Post was received by readers right when you say they you mean the FBI the FBI has to put some strategy some strategy
into this idea of do we post or not well because they know that once they post it
that this individual is going to want to read this and so they figured well maybe
we could catch him that way by wanting to read his work in the paper right so what you have is a
double-pronged attack the authors the this group FC Freedom Club they picked these three Publications well
the New York Times is well distributed everywhere across the entire country The Washington Post it's distributed
across the entire country but there's fewer Outlets to purchase and pick up the actual paper
Penthouse Magazine I would assume is distributed across the country but again fewer Outlets to pick up the magazine
and you're exactly right Captain they determined that in San Francisco in the greater San Francisco area where we
think this guy is uh living there was only I believe one place that you could purchase the Washington Post
in that greater San Francisco area so they're like cool on the day we will agree to print
this Manifesto but where it's like the Delphi press release the Delphi press conference that we saw a couple years
back where they made the announcement in advance this is when we are doing this trying to
draw the killer trying to draw the attention from the killer to that location on that specific day
so now we're going to announce yes we will print it it will be printed in the Washington Post only and it will be
printed on September 19 1995. so author FC you now know when you should be ready to go purchase and pick
up your newspaper they're going to monitor that location in San Francisco with the idea of
photographing and questioning every individual that buys a copy at that newsstand or what have you on September
19 1995. it's a two-pronged approach to their investigation to draw out the killer one either he does show up in the
San Francisco area and purchase a Washington Post newspaper on said day and they lure him out that way or B they
print the manifesto somebody that knows FC can identify them by their words and by their writing can contact the FBI
and say I think I know who you're looking for right and I also think there's some identifiers in there that
the FBI saw right and you would have that in really any type of writing especially something that's 35
000 words yeah I mean there's a lot to sift through there there's a lot to consider but not just the identifiers
that you're pointing out here but it's also the ideals yes I mean this is that's what this manuscript is it's it's
a list of ideals of how this person believes that the future is going to be affected by the Industrial Revolution
and and everything going on with technology and nature versus technology and so on and so forth
that someone will probably at some point recognize the mission of FC or Freedom Club
and understand that because again we go back to yesterday's trailer when we talk about the psychological
makeup of this individual it's really patting yourself on the back about that that uh trailer aren't you
well if he's anything like the mad bomber what Dr Brussel determined was that this
would be a grudge holder that this person would have certain delusions and would have certain ideas
that they might be able to act normal and set those aside until it comes up somewhere
in conversation or until they bring it up somewhere in conversation and this their ideas would be discussed with
others well also with this Manifesto I mean right away to me it's like this person has a higher level of
intelligence he's speaking of ideas uh one of the great Eleanor Roosevelt quotes is great
minds discuss ideas average Minds discuss events and small minds discuss people and he's not essentially doing
that in this Manifesto he is presenting these ideas uh and these problems that he sees facing the whole of society but
not blaming individuals I I respect your opinion but I'm going to have to disagree he's not talking about
individuals specifically but he kind of lumps people together and categorizes people as certain things and
references them in that manner and he does reference events as well to kind of back up his claims or his beliefs yeah
but I also think some of Juan you can see is intelligence too there's a lot of futuristic predictions
I think now a lot of stuff that is being talked about now and so that's why I think people are going to wait maybe
this guy wasn't a complete madman even comparing this Manifesto to you know 1984 George Orwell's 1984. maybe he
lumped people into very standard groups but he's not going after one individual or multiple individuals and saying all
this is their fault that's correct um anybody I I don't know if you've read it or not Captain but again
I I have a bit of a different take probably on this than some people that I've seen give their opinions on well
there's there's also two versions because he updated it so there I think there's one that's like 126 pages
and then one that's less than that yeah so I'm just going off of the one that was printed in the paper on
September 19th 1995 when he's making the threats um yeah it's uh yeah it's you can obviously tell that it
was written by an intelligent individual or group of individuals and it's but at
the end of the day to me it looks like the ramblings of an Angry Young Man um I I didn't find anything particularly
brilliant about the the thoughts of the future of society or lack of freedoms that us as individuals may have in that
Society it I mean it's nothing there's no predictions or thoughts in there that would be any more brilliant than George
Lucas's Star Wars or stuff that we've seen in sci-fi uh books comic books and TV throughout
the decade right but I think I I think that's lesson lessening these ideas I mean
maybe he just came out with these ideas in 1995 but he's talking about the way he thinks Society is going to
work with artificial intelligence and that stuff that's we're just now talking about
in the public atmosphere like in the last five years and so yeah I mean I but I think the
work of uh George Lucas and and the creators of like Star Trek and the things that they were able to think of
how they thought their future would go those were genius ideas and so if you compare them to
that I think you'd have to say some of these thoughts are genius level ideas agreed agreed as said I
believe it's obvious that the uh there's some intelligence there from the author
I just don't find it to be anything super unique he's not the only one thinking of some of these ideas now what
this does do though is it does have the desired effect because we start getting a lot of people
coming forward saying oh I know somebody that talks like this I know somebody that has said similar ideas I know
someone that writes like this so on and so forth what we end up having Captain is a
husband and wife will eventually come forward and this will be David Kaczynski and Linda Patrick
and the way that this goes down is Linda Patrick decides she is going to read this Manifesto knows that it's going to
be published decides that she is going to read it she reads it and she informs her husband David she says this sounds
to me a lot like your brother [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] we're back cheers mates cheers to you
Colonel and cheers to everybody for the the nice birthday wishes yesterday I appreciate it and cheers to the people
in the back all right we brought up David Kaczynski and his wife Linda Patrick the way this
comes about here is Linda Patrick tells David I think that this author of this Manifesto could be your brother it
sounds a lot like how your brother writes this is really interesting because Linda
Patrick had never technically met David's brother Ted right he just would write them quite often he would write
them some nasty letters and a lot of the letters are about David now being married to Linda and how much
Ted does not like Linda and how much Linda has changed his brother David and he never met her for the worse that's
right that's hilarious yeah well he's the ultimate Grudge holder um and so Linda it does take some
convincing to her husband David that the writings are similar and in fact David ends up finding an essay that
Ted had written years before that actually is listing out a lot of these same ideas that are presented in the
what is dubbed by the FBI the Unabomber Manifesto eventually David is convinced that his
brother should be looked at he's concerned because you have things like Ruby Ridge that went down where the FBI
surrounded a home and they had guns inside a gun a gunfight breaks out and we now
have people dead as a result of Ruby Ridge he was worried the same thing could happen with his brother his
brothers living out in the middle of nowhere and Lincoln Montana and a tiny little cabin and he's got guns in his
little cabin got really annoying after like the fifth or sixth person as I'm researching this case said little Log
Cabin this is not a log cabin this looks more like a shed and there's no running water and there's
no I believe there's no electricity as well no he's [ __ ] in the floor inside this cabin wow
to put it as bluntly as possible gave me some warning I'm trying to finish my sandwich he could have bothered to build
an outhouse at some point maybe he did and decided to move it inward I don't know but anyway
it was too cold his [ __ ] was freezing so he had to [ __ ] inside but see David is he's at like a
Crossroads man because he's got to decide do I suggest that my brother could be he's not can 100 convinced right that
Ted is in fact the Unabomber the Most Wanted serial killer in the country at the time he's not 100 convinced
does he make this suggestion to the FBI or look if if he's wrong and Ted is innocent and some type of
gunfight breaks out Ted could end up losing his life if Linda is right his brother Ted could send out another
bomb and kill somebody even though he said hey I'll stop if you print this you can
never take a a threat at its word especially from terrorists yeah I think what's interesting here is
that they can they contact a lawyer and they end up contacting a linguist to basically go over what they think they
are seeing and both the lawyer and the linguists confirm it and say no look we think this is the same individual and we
need to go to FBI with this eventually and it doesn't happen overnight captain again a lot of debate a lot of things
going on behind the scenes here but eventually the FBI does become convinced that Ted Kaczynski is in fact the guy
the problem that they have with Ted Kaczynski being Prime Suspect being the perpetrator is that it actually goes
against a lot of the stuff that they collected against the Unabomber he doesn't live anywhere near San Francisco
right the guy doesn't even own a vehicle he's [ __ ] in his house the other thing too is he doesn't fit the profile
he's a little older than the profiles would suggest I do want to throw this out there there were dozens of profiles
put together about the Unabomber including John Douglas that were not at the end of the day didn't turn out to
be great profiles but also the physical description that was given by the witness that saw the man placing the
package in the the parking lot right had the age wrong had the hair color wrong so there's a lot of reasons to look at
this guy and go I see what you're saying that the language is similar but are we
going to go and get this guy simply based off of language and no physical evidence at all zero physical evidence
so much so that it looks difficult that this guy could be our guy yeah but what they do now because because they have a
name is they can then go well what is Ted kaczynski's past and where how did he get to this point where he was living
in this cabin isolated I'm all alone and they're going to start to see reasons that will tie someone
like Ted to a lot of these attacks first off he has a history his childhood he lived in the he lived in the Illinois
in the state of Illinois right more specifically around Chicago we know that one at least one or two of
the attacks were chicago-based attacks at the age of 16 Ted enters Harvard University he graduates from Harvard in
1962 he is accepted to the University of Michigan for a graduate program to study
mathematics well I mean well let's not glaze over the fact that he was in a three-year long experimental
psychological experimental study at Harvard when he was 16. right not trying to glaze over that just pointing
out what they will look at with his past that's known to them by knowing his name
and how it connects to some of these attacks so we do know that University of Michigan was one of the targets what
they're learning here is look this guy is this guy is smart at one point test IQ of like 167 or something like
that so he's capable of making these bombs and then he goes like you said to Michigan and then also then goes to uh
Berkeley California so now we have connection to Berkeley California as well yes and um
1967 is when he moves from the University of Michigan out to University of California Berkeley there he will be
a teacher he's going to teach math at Berkeley and then in 1969 he resigns from the math department at Berkeley
yeah he moves back home with his parents for about two years but during that time
period him his brother and I I believe his uh father as well they all help him build this Shack in Montana yeah it was
1971 when he purchased 1.4 acres in South Lincoln Montana and he and his brother start to build this cabin but at
the same time captain in 1971 Ted completes an Untitled essay on the evils of Technology
this will be again similar to that of the industrial society in this future once the FBI is convinced that this
could be their guy that this should be their number one suspect you got to look at him and clear him before you can move
on they decide to start surveillance on Ted and his cabin in Lincoln Montana shortly
afterwards Captain Theodore John Kaczynski was arrested by the FBI in April of 1996. he's arrested at his
cabin in Montana and of course he is accused of killing three people and injuring over 20 people
in 16 separate bombings between the years of 1978 and 1995. I mean yeah this is some of the
biggest news uh the capturing of the Unabomber in 1996 some of the biggest news of 1996. you also have Princess
Diana and Charles getting a divorce you have mad cow disease in the UK and then obviously you have JonBenet Ramsey's
killing later on in that year and as you pointed out earlier Captain one of the issues they had with Ted was
they had 2 000 they being the FBI had 2 000 suspects in this case and Ted Kaczynski was not listed in that top
2000. you have to applaud his brother and his sister-in-law for coming forward and saying hey
um because yeah maybe your brother's writing you some strange letters here and there but he's not hurting anybody
and Ted had no History of Violence that his family knew of and and actually the opposite one of the things
you know Ted had a severe hives when he was a kid and he was isolated in the hospital when he was younger before his
little brother was even born but one of the things that his mother said was he always
had a the way he treated animals especially animals that were in caged he had a real empathy for them which you
normally don't see I mean you hear a lot of times with like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey
Dahmer and things like that cruelty to animals at a young age and he had the opposite of that well he may not have
had these deadly desires until later on in his life and probably I think he probably had some of this
before that experimental stuff that was going on at Harvard but I think that really pushed it further along it
certainly didn't help the young man I'm going to argue with you because there there's no sign of that and he was Avid
with journaling and I don't think there's any record of him having any homicidal thoughts until he got to
Michigan which would have been years after the experiment and he and he says three year long experiment which was
done by Henry Murray at Harvard that it was the worst experience of his life but he doesn't think that the
experiment changed the outcome of Ted kaczynski's life or not right I don't think that it did I think he's
absolutely right in saying that I'm saying I don't think it helped if no it doesn't if he was having any kind of
issues or problems before that this certainly would not have helped this young man and many people have pointed
out that look there were other people that were subjected to the same experiment and they didn't go on to blow
people up they didn't they want to be 16 years old that and that's what I'm pointing out that's different set of
circumstances here he he's younger on on all on every level imaginable emotional
intellectually and developmentally you know it and so on I mean look I mean he just to go over his history a little
bit you know he scores high on this IQ test they skip in one grade a couple uh grades go by then they end
up skipping him another grade uh he did some summer classes so then that's how he got to Harvard at the age of 16. but
your your family lives in Chicago and they're sending you across halfway across the United States to go live by
yourself and he just wasn't ready but again there is no record of any homicidal thoughts
or even I believe Suicidal Thoughts until after the experiment to me that is proof I mean one of the things that you
hear constantly when you're looking up Ted Kaczynski is that uh you know Harvard isn't responsible for any of
these actions and none of these deaths should be at a place at Harvard's door and I I argue completely against that I
mean a year after these experiments he is in Michigan talking to therapists about homicidal thoughts I think it's
direct correlation and again if if you had any evidence of it beforehand then I would say maybe it didn't change the
outcome of this kid's life but I I think the this experiment was um you know and again it's also stated
like as fact that this experiment was like mko Ultra and that's not true we don't know for certain what this
everything that took place with inside this experiment so Ted himself is saying that it didn't
affect him or he doesn't think it affected him I think it did affect him and also what he's getting wise to is
how much information they have against him but how all that information is connected to the cabin so now his
thought is if I can get you know the information from the cabin thrown out then I could walk out of here
scot-free yeah he doesn't really get them to he doesn't trick them into presenting the evidence to him they make
the mistake of presenting the evidence to him because they want to get a confession from Ted Kaczynski because
they do not have that great of a case against this guy so they're really hoping to get him to sign on the dotted
line and confess to all of these attacks and the murders and you're right though quickly and they
don't have a good case against them because they have thousands of pieces of evidence against them then why are they
going after a confession I understand that they they had lots of evidence against the guy they wanted a
confession from Ted Kaczynski well because there was no direct evidence to anything
like the actual bombs or anything there's no fingerprints on those bombs and so all they had was these these
diagrams and these these notes but that what I'm saying is they had thousands of
pieces of those correct but he very quickly realizes during the interrogation process that they are
presenting their evidence to him and yes he's going to flip it and use it against
them and tell them you know you based your search warrant off of linguistics that is that's just a word that's just a
term that you kind of made up this is not something that has been used in previous search warrants yes I guess
pseudoscience right so if you're going to use that if I can get this search warrant tossed out then that evidence
that you collected from my cabin from my shed will be tossed out as well and then
you have nothing yeah and I think also some of this is maybe not so much that he goes free I'm
sure he doesn't want to be caught or be put in prison but I also wonder how much
of this uh attitude that he has about this is trying to protect his belongings and
his life work for the last several years yeah well some of that is built into this because
the natural defense here would be an insanity plea or an insanity defense right and
the problem with that is well if he avoids the death penalty and says hey I'm insane and that's my defense that we
put together well then what did any of this stand for it was supposed to be built around this
whole mission this whole agenda of him in the freedom Club well what does this Mission even mean if the man who put it
together and orchestrated everything is an insane person well normally when we have these ramblings that we see from
these killers later that's what they are they're unintelligible ramblings or or rants or or however you want to
look at it and I I I'm not saying that you should read this Manifesto and agree with them
but I but I think what he is what he is saying is is also a little unique and the reason why is because most people
say look technology is happening and you either have to jump on board or you don't and he's making he's making the
statement hey technology will happen but only if we allow it and maybe we need to
pick and choose what we allow as far as technology goes and so to your point I think Ted
Kaczynski is really worried the easy way out is go hey I was insane but then this Manifesto that I worked on
for years people just dismiss it as the ramblings of somebody that's insane and they're not even going to take the time
to read it yeah I would think that that was his one of his many concerns my my own personal opinion of his Manifesto of
that manuscript is it it sounds like the you said unin intellectual ramblings of
a raving mad man this is the intellectual ramblings of a Madman it's yeah I think that's a good way to put it
it's there's certainly some Brilliance there again you can tell it was written by an intelligent entity maybe I'm a
little Askew in my thoughts and and uh comprehension and perception of the document itself because I know who wrote
it where if you were looking at it blindly not knowing who or what group wrote it maybe you would think of it a
little differently but one thing that I think kind of torqued me off a lot when researching this case was these
morons online praising Ted Kaczynski for this manuscript and saying how brilliant
the man is and how brilliant the manuscript is and even to the point of people going
you you guys are just ignorant you can't see it one day you'll realize he was right
he was right are you freaking kidding me well no he's not again I think a lot of
those individuals have to start the conversation with forget every action that he did and then
just look at this paper as a whole I think the the paper as a whole degrades most of us as human beings
it's that's what I question how many of these people posting their thoughts and opinions in an approval appraisal of
this document actually bothered to read it yeah but it degrades African-American
people it spends a good majority of the document talking about the over sociable
people the the left people it's grouping a whole bunch of batch of people together and then criticizing them and
what in the end are we losing Ted we're losing our freedoms what are our freedoms when you look at it we all are
slaves to something at the very core of our Essence and our being we all have to eat we all have to pay
taxes these things that you might perceive us to be slaves of in the future yes I get that that's a threat
but Freedom really is of course it's a physical thing but it's also it's also a state of mind
my my version of Freedom might not be the same as Ted kaczynski's no I understand that but I that it's a
lot easier for us as Americans to sit there and say that we are free um and you look at what's going on in
China with like the Muslims and and then basically in internment camps over there and ask them how free they
are and how free that Society is so but he's attacking my society and he's condemning my Society that's where
I have a problem you know what Ted I want the freedom to open up my mail without my hands being blown off
no I understand that but I I think what they're I think sometimes when these authors are
are saying look these are threats and these are things that the that Society needs to wake up to
and I think there's look there's a lot of times we were talking the other day I watched the Jake Paul fight
it it was some of the lowest form of entertainment that I've seen in my whole lifetime it was is almost
embarrassing and then you start wondering is this the way Society is going and uh 1.5 million views one of the highest
pay-per-view buy-ins for any boxing event and and so I think he I think he's questioning society as a whole and and
why are people spending so much time on their computer or spending so much time in front of their TVs when there's maybe
more important stuff to be thinking about if that makes any sense no it makes a lot of sense I think what I what
I see here Captain is it looks to me like somebody who did he he did in fact have these ideas he did in fact have
these concerns but he used them as almost a rationalization for what it probably was that he ultimately wanted
to do he wanted to punish the society that didn't accept him he wanted to harm those who did not accept him he could
not well hold on and here's the problem too is society did not reject him he actually rejected Society correct I
would argue on in your defense I would argue the people that are looking at this Manifesto and saying you have to
forget about the murders well you shouldn't you can't and and that's not that's that's not part of the equation
you know Ted Kaczynski likes math part of the equation is that in order to get heard you decided to attack other
people's freedoms so an Accenture a hypocrite on top of that you didn't write this letter
you use technology used a typewriter it might be a a small form of a of type of Technology but it was Tech at the time
it was Tech at the time and you bought a little more than an acre and then you started seeing real estate
being developed and and you came up with this the again to attack innocent people
that did nothing to you I I feel totally different about Ted Kaczynski if he attacked Henry Murray right that
experimented on him for three years but what happened to the kid that had empathy for the caged animals
what happened to that guy well and he chose terrorism to as a platform for his message to teach the rest of us to
educate the rest of us he was a freaking teacher at a University at a well-respected university two of them he
had a platform yeah he had a platform where he could teach everyone and you know what it
makes me think of when when he was an active teacher and all these other teachers out there
and then compare compare that to the crazy man living in a cabin out in the middle of Montana
it's like Martin Luther King Jr and James Earl Ray you had two guys that had two completely
different sets of ideals they chose completely different methods in the way to deliver and express their
thoughts and concerns to the public yeah and um but but here's where here's where I feel bad for Ted
Kaczynski it's because I think a lot of times we start questioning with Ted Bundy with
I mean look I mean it's you know it's 4 20 uh Columbine Adolf Hitler who you start questioning the chicken or
the egg are these people just born evil or were they created to be evil and this is one case that I could say I
lean towards the idea that Ted was created to be evil like maybe they didn't know that that was going to be
the side effect of the experiment but I think that was the outcome of the experiment
and that that's angers me because one I mean 50 million dollars spent by the FBI 50 million dollars of our our
taxpayer money spent to try to catch this psycho how much money have we spent on his uh
trials and his appeals and and his incarceration and his communication with the outside
world how much have we spent on this guy and and and he might have been created by
experiments at Harvard one thing that's really interesting too here Captain is you have the Kaczynski
family his mother and his brother who said yeah at some point in his you know when
he's 16 17 18 years old we started to realize that there was something wrong with Ted
however we didn't fully understand what it was we kind of just chalked it up to oh he's an oddball he's depressed he's a
genius we can't really understand him yeah some people said that Ted was like a walking computer that
that some people didn't even view him as human well he would say things that were
very uncomfortable to the people that were actually somewhat close to him as close as anybody could be to Ted
Kaczynski a man with very few friends if any at all but you know his brother and
his mother said that he would say things that you could tell were these were suicidal Expressions
homicidal type of expressions and ultimately the Nathan R lead that the FBI was looking for they never
identified a Nathan R tied to Ted Kaczynski or any other real aspect of the Unabomber case itself in fact two
there's two beliefs here of where that came from either the Ted Kaczynski himself did that on purpose to throw
them off or that it was simply something that happened in transit before the letter
got to the FBI that somebody else wrote a note over top of this letter so that lead really never led to
anything in the end captain at trial there was a lot of weird and difficulties with his trial itself and I
don't want to go too far into it because it it looked to me like the court system
basically wanted to say you're crazy but not crazy enough um it seemed a little weird on the whole
Insanity idea and of course as we already pointed out Ted originally did not want he was insistent that he was
not insane that what he stood for meant something what what his actions were stood for
something yeah and I don't know how heavily involved his brother was but I I do know
that there was talks with the FBI and his brother's lawyer about what would happen to Ted so I I want to I wonder
how much he uh helped steer The Narrative even during the trial well what he what happened was Ted was trying
to dismiss his attorneys very late in the court proceedings and the the uh judge was pretty much like no you're not
going to dismiss your attorneys this late we've been dealing with this forever right and if we throw them out
now you get a chance to start over your whole defense which could take a year or
two we're dealing with this now you cannot dismiss your attorneys and so ultimately Ted Kaczynski ends up
pleading uh giving the insanity plea to avoid the death penalty so he ends up being he ends up receiving several life
sentences to be served out at the adx Florence which is a United States Penitentiary administrative maximum
facility this is an American federal prison in Fremont County near Florence Colorado it
is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons so this is different than regular prisons here Captain this is a
division of the United States Department of Justice operates this prison this prison opened up in 1994 and is
classified as a super max or a control unit prison this meaning that it provides a higher more controlled level
of custody than even a Maximum Security Prison and if you look at the list of some of the other inmates that are
serving their time there as well as Ted Kaczynski it's some of the biggest names
out there it's a lot of terrorists to be honest with you it's a lot of foreign terrorists and domestic terrorists that
have been housed in there throughout the years as well as people who've committed
crimes of espionage on but at the end of the day no matter how smart Ted Kaczynski is I
mean that's what he is he's a American domestic terrorist in one of Ted's Journal passages dated sometime between
the Autumn of 1977 and early 1978 when the bombing campaign was just beginning and Ted Kaczynski was still an amateur
bomb Builder remember he's trying to become a better bomb maker a more deadly attacker
he wrote to himself quote I emphasize that my motivation is personal Revenge I don't pretend any kind of philosophical
or moralistic justification my ambition is to kill a scientist big businessman government official or the like I would
also like to kill a communist Ted Kaczynski wrote In 1980 that the bombings made him feel less angry quote
since committing these crimes reported elsewhere in my notes I feel better I am still plenty angry you have to
understand the blank remember these are coming from some coded journals you have
to understand the blank is that I am now able to blank to a degree and when his bombings were not lethal
when they were when they did not kill or they did not significantly injure the individual who opened up the bomb he
said that they were not a success that that bomb was a failure he was hoping that every bomb would blow off hands or
kill the person that opened up the package the only way for his work to be quote successful as Ted Kaczynski saw it
was to kill the person that opened up the package in July of 1999 this is an interview
article by David Bowman on salon.com the article is titled profiler and it's an interview with John Douglas Bowman asked
Douglas a follow-up to a follow-up question Bowman was asking about psycho killers in general and then asking has
there ever been this kind of killer that are a do-good killer angels of Justice Dexter types specifically have there
been any environmentalist psycho Killers who kill loggers or strip miners and Douglas gives his answer Theodore
Kaczynski the Unabomber thought he was doing that but when I started analyzing the case
Douglas said forget his hatred of Technology he don't give a [ __ ] he just wants to kill he enjoys killing and
wants to dominate and control there's the Oklahoma bombing that gets the front page two or three days later we have a
professor killed on the East Coast that's Kaczynski saying quote I'm the big guy here who's this Oklahoma City
bomber foreign thank you friends for joining us here back in the garage for another gripping
interesting story Colonel do we have any recommended reading this week this week
we are recommending every last tie the story of the Unabomber and his family by David Kaczynski in August 1995 David
kaczynski's wife Linda asked him a very difficult question do you think your brother Ted is the Unabomber he couldn't
be David thought but as the couple poured over the Unabomber 78-page Manifesto David couldn't rule out the
possibility it slowly became clear to them that Ted was likely responsible for mailing the 17 bombs that killed three
people and injured many more wanting to prevent further violence David made the agonizing decision to turn his brother
in to the FBI make sure you check out every last Tie by David Kaczynski you can find that title and many more on our
recommended page at True Crime garage.com and until next week be good be kind and don't let her
[Music]

The Unabomber /// Part 2 /// 483

Part 2 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

In the 1990’s the F.B.I. was hunting a serial killer they called the Unabomber. At the time he was the most wanted man in America. He some how managed to avoid detection and capture for over a decade. This week in the Garage Nic and the Captain explore and examine the case and the man who committed these terrible crimes.

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Brief Summary

The episode details the Unabomber case, focusing on Ted Kaczynski's bombings and his manifesto's role in his identification and arrest.

Key points

Welcome to True Crime Garage. Hosts Nick and Captain introduce the show and thank listeners.
The Freedom Club's Threat. A letter reveals the Freedom Club's responsibility for bombings and threats.
The Manifesto Dilemma. A debate ensues over whether to publish the Freedom Club's manifesto.
The Manifesto's Impact. The Manifesto sparks recognition from those who know Kaczynski, leading to a pivotal moment.
David Kaczynski's Dilemma. David grapples with the decision to report his brother to the FBI, fearing for his life.
The Arrest of Ted Kaczynski. In April 1996, Ted Kaczynski is arrested at his cabin, accused of multiple bombings.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

If he's able to then go, hey, this is working...

Discussion about the bomb attacks escalating.

4:49WatchNov 8, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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