Unabomber: In His Own Words (2020): Season 1, Episode 1 - Part One - full transcript
- I remember the guards brought
Kaczynski in
and he was in shackles,
and he was wearing
a white jumpsuit.
And he looked very small and...
I was, I was nervous.
Okay, so...
The killer called,
the Unabomber,
has terrorized this country
for nearly 18 years now.
In addition to killing
three people,
his attacks have wounded
23 others, some seriously.
- Ted Kaczynski is known
as "the Unabomber".
- Those kinda guys are rare
and they're terrible.
And Ted was terrible.
- This guy was a pop culture
icon.
I mean, people wanted him
to run for President.
- I love this one. This is one
of my favorites.
- The Unabomber to a lot of
kids was inspiration.
- He's inspired Hollywood
movies.
- And the blood will be on
your hands.
- Why would somebody try
to kill you?
Why would they do that to you?
- I was shocked by the...
the three years at Harvard
University in an experiment.
- It's perverse. It's sick.
It doesn't work.
But that's what Kaczynski
was subjected to.
- Well, I think it, it takes
a whole perfect storm
to create someone as violent
as my brother.
- He was a good friend.
It was as if he was in pain,
but I couldn't say why.
- I never would have thought
that my neighbor was sitting
in that little cabin
creating bombs
and killing people.
- It was the most expensive
investigation
in the history of the FBI.
Are you
the Unabomber?
- It was Linda who cracked
the Unabomber case.
- For me, it was easy.
We had to do something.
- Every journalist in the
United States, in the world,
would love to get the first
interview with Ted Kaczynski.
By his invitation,
he approached me.
My writing and his writing
were very similar.
He comes right out and says it.
No. It was
simply anger and revenge,
and I was...
was gonna strike back.
Try not to get blown up.
- You have an individual living
in a little cabin by himself
in essentially
a wilderness area
right outside
a very small town.
He doesn't have a car,
doesn't have electricity,
doesn't have power tools,
doesn't have a job...
- I figure he's one of those
guys holed up somewhere,
obsessing, reading every
article he can find
on the ills of society
as he sees them,
and, you know, pounding his
fist on the table saying,
"I gotta do something
about this."
And the kinda guy that
the neighbors say,
"He was a little torqued,
but he kept to himself.
Kinda quiet."
The cabin is 10 by 14
feet
uh, and is full of stuff.
His heat is provided only
by a potbelly stove.
It's smoky, there's soot
everywhere,
it's dark.
And he's been doing a great
deal of work in there.
Apparently, the work
to construct these bombs
has all been done in the cabin.
Good evening.
We begin tonight with an
emergency security alert
issued in California today.
The government says there is
a credible threat
that a passenger jet
may be bombed
from a man the FBI calls
the Unabomber.
He's causing all kinds
of havoc,
he's causing all kinds of
public concern.
Police are swarming
around the terminals
at Los Angeles International
Airport.
Airlines have stopped loading
the 200 tons of mail
that leave here daily.
It's being screened
at a nearby postal facility
for the possibility
of letter bombs.
- LAX is closed
and security goes to,
you know, DEFCON 4.
Security has been
heightened
and with it, anxiety.
The Unabomber's unique campaign
of terror started in 1978 -
in 16 separate bombing
incidents.
Three people have been killed,
another 23 injured.
He's been going on
for decades it seems.
The FBI is warning
everyone
to look out for unusual
packages.
- If it appears suspicious
in any way, shape, or form
then they should contact
their local police.
Nobody knows who he is.
It's, it's creepy. It's creepy.
- Not knowing is a hard thing.
I didn't know who this was
for nine years.
So, basically, you're dealing
with a ghost.
- It's a killer on the loose
and he's got a wide range
of targets.
- There's a tremendous sense
of public fear at this point
and there doesn't seem to be
any clear sign
that the task force is going
to be able to stop him
anytime soon.
- More than 100 FBI agents
are working the Unabomber case.
- It was the largest manhunt
in American history,
and it was estimated
to cost $50 million.
- Is he a terrorist
or a freedom fighter?
Is he a revolutionary
or a serial killer?
- What you have are the facts
of the case to work with.
If you can figure out the why,
you may be able to figure out
who's doing it.
- The interview I did
with Kaczynski
was the first interview
he allowed,
three years after
he was arrested,
and it was an historical
opportunity.
I struggle with this
because I don't know
exactly what happened to Ted.
I thought my brother was the
best human being on earth;
that he would change the world
and do a great deal of good.
- I didn't like the guy.
But Dave loved his brother
all the way through, I think.
And his mother, of course,
loved Ted as well.
But I didn't.
He may have been a nice person
at some point in his life,
but something happened
and he became a...
a killer.
- I've spent much of my life
trying to understand that.
I mean, why?
- The Unabomber's first bomb
ended up at Northwestern
University
based on a return address.
The return address on the
package was to a professor
in the technological institute.
The bomb was found in
a parking lot.
- It's got a label on it,
it's got postage on it,
it's ready to be mailed.
So why wasn't it mailed?
Why is it laying
in this parking lot?
We reconstructed it exactly
how it was,
and that's when we found
it wouldn't fit
through the door of the mailbox.
So, the bomber probably
built it,
got to the mailbox
and it wouldn't fit.
And then what do you do?
Well, you drop it and you leave.
- And it was retrieved by
an officer
from the, uh,
Department of Security.
It did partially detonate
which caused minor injuries.
- No one recognizes
this bomber.
No one has seen
this bomber's work before.
The bomber is clever,
but he's clearly not an expert
bomb maker.
- He's making these clumsy
bombs
with wooden ends to them,
using black powder
as a propellant.
He's using this kind of very
crude detonating system -
match heads.
They're not all that
sophisticated.
Bomb 2 was sent
May 9th 1979,
at Northwestern University
as well.
And this one was left
on a table.
- The bomb is built in
a cigar box.
Um, it's not terribly large.
It's simply left there for
whoever is going to open it
and someone eventually does.
It's got batteries and wires,
and the explosive mixture
is smokeless powder,
the sort of propellant
you would find
in a firearm cartridge,
and, in some cases,
match heads,
which have been meticulously
cut off of matches
to fill a tube or a container.
So that tells us, again,
that we're dealing with someone
who, at this point, is not
terribly sophisticated
in building bombs
and delivering them.
He's figuring it out.
- After bomb number two,
he wrote,
"I had hoped that the victim
would be blinded
or have his hands blown off,
or be otherwise maimed.
Well, live and learn.
I wish I knew how to get
a hold of some dynamite."
- Most criminals aren't able
to operate
in such a vacuum.
People know what they're doing,
either because they boast
about it,
or because they have people
around them,
or... for whatever reason,
they can't keep their
activities that secret.
He was able to. He lived in
the middle of nowhere.
- Here in rural Montana,
for someone to live off
the grid
and be reclusive, be a hermit,
it didn't raise any red flags
to us
because if you want to do
something like that,
then rural Montana is
the perfect spot.
- Ted was the kind of person
that you, you could meet
and you could know him
for 25 years, like me,
but never know any more real
details about him
than you did in the first
few years.
- All the neighbors got
like junk cars sitting around
and he'd just go
and help himself to...
whatever parts and pieces
he needed to make his bombs.
And it was like
he didn't even think
he was doing anything wrong.
- I have quite a large
boneyard,
uh, with everything that
anybody could need
to do pretty much everything.
There's hundreds
and hundreds of feet
of every kind of color
and gauge of wire,
and you're not going to miss
something like that.
Did I suspect Ted
of taking stuff?
No.
- I think it started when
I was about five years old.
I was terrified to sleep
in my room.
And I was hearing something
in the middle of the night -
footsteps, rummaging around.
I would run into my parents'
room and say,
"There's somebody out there."
And they would just be like,
"You're dreaming.
Go back to bed."
The third bomb
is a package
which is sent through the mail
and it ends up on an airliner,
on an American Airlines flight.
This one is different in
its design.
And it is designed to function
based on being triggered by
an altimeter,
an altimeter which is
constructed from a barometer
such as you might find in a,
a home weather station.
So, when the plane reaches
a certain altitude,
the device functions,
can cause an explosion.
- The FBI says an American
Airline 727
with 80 persons aboard
landed safely today
at Washington's Dulles
International Airport
after a small bomb exploded
in a mail pouch
in the cargo hold.
American Flight 444
en route from Chicago
landed without injury to any
of the passengers or crew.
- It's rather sophisticated
in the sense that the builder
has created an altimeter
and, of course,
where it was placed
had the potential to cause
mass casualties.
So it's,
it's incredibly serious.
- "The plan was
to blow up airliner in flight.
Unfortunately,
plane not destroyed.
Bomb too weak."
- At this point,
connections begin to be made.
US government recognizes
that they're dealing with
a serial bomber.
- He becomes known as
the Unabomber:
university and airline bomber.
That's what the, the FBI tags
the project as, Unabomber.
Uh, or Unabomb.
- Ted's mother would
send him money.
He would say,
"I've got some chest pain
and they say I should
have some tests,
but I don't have the money,"
and would, in a sense,
scam her into sending money,
which he would then use
to make, uh, bombs.
- Here's a guy who
is targeting victims
that he has no personal
relationship with.
It's unclear exactly
what the pattern is.
- The librarian,
who he befriended,
she was, unknowingly,
giving him books
which he used to target,
uh, people for his bombs.
- And it was a pretty
long list.
He was going to start
killing people
as soon as the weather
got better.
- We don't know
who's on the list.
You have to wonder,
"Am I next?"
- Some dots can be joined
but they are few
and a little bit fuzzy.
You have a bomber who's not
terribly skilled
at creating bombs
and is clearly spending a great
deal of time creating them
based on the... the parts
that he has to accumulate
from various places
or, in some cases,
make himself.
So, all of these things
tell you
something about the bomber,
but is it, at this point,
enough to lead to the bomber's
identity? No, it's not.
I assumed that he
might've been a, a GI -
that had had a real bad
experience in Vietnam -
coming home and just wanted to
be off in the woods by himself.
I saw him walking and uh...
you know, he had a little
knapsack,
hiking down the road.
So, I'll stop and offer him
a ride,
and he was very cordial,
and he said, "No, thank you."
- This is a bomb that's
different from the others.
This is in a hollowed-out book.
A book called "Ice Brothers",
by Sloan Wilson.
It is accompanied by a letter
and the letter is intended
to encourage him
to want to read the book.
So, the book has been
hollowed out
and turned into a box
to contain an explosive device.
Bleeding heavily
from cuts in his face,
left hand and leg,
Wood managed to walk next door
for help.
There was blood
all over his face,
and he had... his hand
was really bloody.
He was shocked that somebody
would do such a thing,
but he didn't-he had no idea
who it was from or why.
- You talk to someone who's
been blown up,
or who's had a loved one
blown up,
and it's awful.
That doesn't go away.
The fear and the anguish
and the trauma that gets burned
into their beings
by an attack like that
does not dissipate.
- Hospital officials say
that surgery
to remove bomb fragments
from his leg was successful
but Wood is expected to remain
in intensive care
for at least a few more days
under police guard.
"I feel better.
I'm still plenty angry.
I'm now able to strike back."
- The task force is being asked
to find solutions
to all of this
by catching this person
before he can do anything else.
The pressure was just
incredible.
- He's mailing things.
There are components that
get found at the scene.
Why haven't the clues led
to him yet?
- We have a lot of evidence
to work with.
We have bombs to work with,
we have a handful of letters
from the Unabomber.
A number of them have
Eugene O'Neill stamps
attached to them.
Is that a message? Does it have
some meaning to the bomber?
Or is that simply
what the bomber got
when he went to the postage
machine? We don't know.
Is there significance
to the fact
that these devices use
a great deal of wood
in their construction?
Does the bomber have some
interest in wood
or is it just happenstance?
- We're trying to figure
this thing out.
We're trying to figure out
where the clues might lead,
what people...
in the investigative community
already know.
Uh, it's very,
it's very frustrating.
- Criminals often operate in
the areas
in which they are most
comfortable.
The first devices are placed
in Chicago.
So, this is a person
who is probably,
if we're guessing
at this point,
probably from the Chicago area.
- Our family had moved
from a...
inner-city neighborhood
in Chicago
out to a home in the suburbs.
It was our first like
single-family dwelling.
You know my memories of
growing up
with my brother and my family
were very, very positive,
very warm memories.
This one I think...
I think is Dad, Ted and myself,
taken, I believe, at one of
our favorite hiking places,
a state park called
Starved Rock,
where they had some
lovely cliffs
that we would climb.
My father had really loved
the nature.
I think the love of nature,
I think, came to both of us
through Dad.
- Our family valued
intelligence,
success in school.
My brother had skipped a grade
and then went through
high school in three years.
He was at Harvard University
at the age of 16,
and I remember one of my
buddies telling another kid,
"Hey, Dave's brother's really
smart, he's in Harvard.
He's like another Einstein.
Well, maybe not another
Einstein, but..."
I said, "What do you mean,
not another Einstein?"
- He was a bit on the shy side,
but definitely not antisocial.
Once he got to know you -
not once you got to know him -
once he got to know you,
he could talk and talk.
And we were talking
about things
that weren't trivial,
they weren't bullshit,
they were just, they were about
what was right and wrong.
And Ted was concerned,
and was more savvy than I was,
about corporate
and, and governmental impact
on the environment and on...
and on us.
And some of the ideas
that he articulated later,
I distinctly have memories
of talking about.
- One roommate said that, uh,
if they went down to the dining
hall and...
saw him there and sat down
with him,
he'd just-they never saw
anybody finish his food faster
and without saying a word,
would just leave.
You know, so I felt hurt
at first
that, that he had just sort
of ignored
or, or obliterated
our friendship,
but I wasn't alone.
I mean, he was...
he was not just shy,
now he was really antisocial.
- Ted had come home
from school.
You know, I was getting
a little more intellectual,
reading more serious books,
and I had some ideas
and I couldn't wait to tell
my big brother about my ideas,
but it seemed like, wow,
he was very dismissive
of my ideas.
And he said, "You know, Dave,
real smart people have
a sadistic streak.
Almost all of them do."
I was a little surprised
by that,
but the behavior he showed
to me in putting down,
dismissing my ideas
was what he had encountered
at Harvard
when people were demeaning
toward him
when he-he expressed
his philosophy of life.
- When he resigned,
his department chair said,
"Gee, you know,
I want you to stay."
And Ted Kaczynski
wrote in his diary,
"This fool thinks I want
to remain at the university,
when all I wanted was a job
to save enough money
so that I could buy
a piece of land
to live in the wild."
- "Wow, Ted, great! Go for it!"
You know. "This is wonderful.
You're your own person,
you know, you're doing what--
You're living in the way
that you want to
rather than in the way other
people expect you to live."
- So back behind here
is the road in which Ted
would use
to leave his cabin
and walk or bicycle into town.
And every time
he would do that,
he would pass my father
Butch Gehring's sawmill
over here on the right.
The sawmill is very loud
and probably very disruptive.
It's almost like
a very loud humming
as a log would go through
the saw,
and so that was constant
all day long
while the mill was active.
Ted probably would have been
very irritated
to, to hear that noise.
- He sanded the sawmill,
putting sand into the engine
so that it just goes through
the entire, the entire unit
and shuts it down,
and they had to repair
everything
to be up and running again
and it was a huge cost.
My dad, well, there was
nothing, really, he could do.
He thought it could have been,
you know,
some kids playing a prank.
I mean, he just didn't know
who, who did it.
- There were those little times
when I realized that
there was a whole side
to this person that
I did not know.
I just shudder to think
how I had, uh, unknowingly,
helped him
do the things that he did
that were so heinous.
Ted was actually
at his home cabin
and some motorcycles went
riding real loud, real fast,
and he was livid, uh, furious.
- I mean, somebody
was very angry.
He didn't break the door in
to gain access,
he chopped a hole right
through the wall.
- He went in and just destroyed
their cabin
and then took a poop in
their tub
and, and left.
- He took a risk, you know,
looking back now,
of being caught.
The sheriff came
and talked to me.
He knew that I knew Ted
and he said,
"Well, do you think that
that friend of yours,
do you think he coulda
done that?"
And I said, "Oh, no."
I said, "He wouldn't do...
you know, he's got his quirks.
We all do."
And I believe I was
instrumental
in getting him removed
as a suspect.
- The FBI prides itself
on being able to solve
big crimes,
and a lot of the way they do
that is you get tips.
You get information coming' in.
It's not so much you knocking'
on doors.
You gotta know where
to knock on doors,
and they're not getting
the door-knock tips.
It's not coming to them.
It's driving 'em nuts.
- It's not unusual when a
serial killer's apprehended
that the police had already
interviewed him
once or even twice, all right?
They... you know, they have
an eye on a group of people.
Ted Kaczynski never showed up
on that kind of radar.
- One of the things that's very
interesting about Kaczynski
is the personal is political.
Everything that he's writing
about
and talking about in
the abstract,
is also... related to very
concrete experiences
that Kaczynski has had.
- It is frightening,
sometimes, you know,
terrifying,
to find out what he was doing.
- We had this logger
that was learning to log
with Belgian horses.
So, they're huge animals.
And, um, when he brought
the logs off the hill,
it tore up the grass,
and so, one day, Butch said,
goes,
"Seed that area up there."
And Tessa was maybe
three years old.
And uh, so,
I was up there seeding.
And the trees were about
3 feet high,
so she was just a toddler and
she would disappear into 'em.
And the hair on the back
of my neck went up,
and I thought it was
a mountain lion,
and uh... so I told her,
"It's time to leave."
But it turned out it was Ted.
He had a... a gun on her.
And I asked the FBI after
they figured out it was Ted,
he had written in his journals.
He had written something
about...
it would be easy to take
the little bitch out,
but then the big bitch
could get away.
Or if I shoot the big bitch,
then the little bitch would be,
um, left on the hill.
But it's too close to his home,
and that's, you know,
he didn't want to bring
attention to himself.
It's probably the only thing
that saved us.
- The next bomb
was October 8th, 1981,
and was found by a maintenance
worker
in the University of Utah,
and was defused.
So a bomb that is not detonated
provides a substantial amount
of evidence,
a better idea of how
it's constructed.
- The design is essentially
a can of gasoline
with a small pipe bomb
inside of it.
Apparently, the intent is that
the pipe bomb will explode
and create a large flame out
of the gasoline.
It doesn't function that way,
uh, because it's recovered
intact,
but it's very significant.
Apparently, he's branching out.
He has come to Utah.
He shows no sign of stopping,
there's no reason to think
he will stop.
And it's sort of a race
against time now,
whether he can be caught
before he does another bombing.
- Ted was sly
because we would think
he was holed up in his cabin,
but he was in Salt Lake.
He would come back
and stay in the woods
until he got all scruffy again,
and then we would see him.
I think he planned a lot
of that.
- So the device which is mailed
to Vanderbilt University,
which is not opened by
its intended victim
but by the victim's assistant,
is significant in,
in a couple of ways.
It's mailed from Utah,
so now we have another
connection to Utah.
It's also another design
in that it's a pipe bomb,
but the pipe in this case
is a P-trap,
a plumbing pipe that
you'd find under a sink.
So, it appears that the bomber
is still experimenting
with different designs.
Fischer was the
intended victim of a bomb
sent to Vanderbilt University
by the Unabomber,
but his secretary, Janet Smith,
intercepted the package,
opened it and was seriously
injured when it exploded.
- Your usual serial killer
is hunting for women,
hunting for young boys,
hunting for vulnerable people
in dark alleys
or lonely roads.
It's, it's not someone hunting
for... scientists.
That stands out.
- Unfortunately, despite years
of detailed investigative work
and the extraordinary talents
of the three law enforcement
agencies
represented on the Unabomb
taskforce,
we have no viable suspects.
- Pressure to solve the case
is coming from all quarters.
There's political pressure;
a lot of politicians
weighing in,
criticizing the task force
for not having solved the case.
You have all the victims
and all their families
who want to know why you
haven't solved this case yet.
What haven't we thought of?
What investigative technique
or program have we not
undertaken?
- He plans ahead carefully,
he selects his targets.
He is very forensically aware.
- The bomber is clever.
You can leave fingerprints on
any of the components,
you can leave fingerprints on
the inside of the tape.
There're simply lots of ways
to have your fingerprints
appear, and they don't.
There're also lots of
opportunities
to leave hair behind.
There's no hair found in
any of these devices,
nothing's stuck under
a piece of tape.
Professor
Diogenes Angelakos remembers
he was in the faculty lounge
of the electrical engineering
building,
when he saw a package sitting
on the floor.
And it took all
the flesh off these fingers
and left just the bones
in the upper part.
- "Frustrating...
that I can't seem to make
a lethal bomb."
- The 1982 Corey Hall device
contains a note.
It's a very short type-written
sentence:
"Wu," W-U, "It works!
I told you it would, R.V."
Now we have potentially a clue
or potentially an intended
red herring,
but it has to be run out
in either case.
You try to find people
named Wu.
Do they know anybody
who has initials named R.V.?
And if they don't,
we still will try to find
all the people in that area
who have, uh, the name R.V.
- You know, you could tell it
was a guy
who was intellectually
enjoying this,
and is not stupid.
Because a lot of criminals
are stupid,
or at least ignorant,
and they don't do things
like the Unabomber did.
They don't conduct their
campaign of terror
the way the Unabomber
is conducting
his campaign of terror.
- It makes you ask
where has this person gone?
What's happened now?
So, the possibilities
you have to consider
are that he's already
some sort of criminal
and perhaps he's ended up
in jail or prison.
It's just one more factor
to add to the picture
that you're trying to build,
the picture you're trying
to paint of this bomber.
- I happened to be up doing
some digging,
getting some gravel,
and I had-it was about
five o'clock.
I remember it vividly.
I was going home.
It was an explosion.
And I thought...
uh... the sound couldn't carry
from anybody mining
on the other side
of the divide.
It was a mystery.
It was a mystery that I,
I never did solve.
- Now the explosive mixture
changes to
ammonium nitrate and aluminum
powder.
You have to go to some
effort to create this.
In 1985, the Unabomber
reappears.
and he reappears in
a significant way.
'85 is a very busy year.
If it was possible to ratchet
up the pressure further,
it did.
I think fear is a...
is a good word
for what the public is feeling.
There doesn't seem to be
a clear pattern
that allows people to say,
"Well, it won't affect me."
So, there are very few people
in the United States
who can say,
"There's absolutely no chance
that I could ever encounter
the Unabomber."
Kaczynski in
and he was in shackles,
and he was wearing
a white jumpsuit.
And he looked very small and...
I was, I was nervous.
Okay, so...
The killer called,
the Unabomber,
has terrorized this country
for nearly 18 years now.
In addition to killing
three people,
his attacks have wounded
23 others, some seriously.
- Ted Kaczynski is known
as "the Unabomber".
- Those kinda guys are rare
and they're terrible.
And Ted was terrible.
- This guy was a pop culture
icon.
I mean, people wanted him
to run for President.
- I love this one. This is one
of my favorites.
- The Unabomber to a lot of
kids was inspiration.
- He's inspired Hollywood
movies.
- And the blood will be on
your hands.
- Why would somebody try
to kill you?
Why would they do that to you?
- I was shocked by the...
the three years at Harvard
University in an experiment.
- It's perverse. It's sick.
It doesn't work.
But that's what Kaczynski
was subjected to.
- Well, I think it, it takes
a whole perfect storm
to create someone as violent
as my brother.
- He was a good friend.
It was as if he was in pain,
but I couldn't say why.
- I never would have thought
that my neighbor was sitting
in that little cabin
creating bombs
and killing people.
- It was the most expensive
investigation
in the history of the FBI.
Are you
the Unabomber?
- It was Linda who cracked
the Unabomber case.
- For me, it was easy.
We had to do something.
- Every journalist in the
United States, in the world,
would love to get the first
interview with Ted Kaczynski.
By his invitation,
he approached me.
My writing and his writing
were very similar.
He comes right out and says it.
No. It was
simply anger and revenge,
and I was...
was gonna strike back.
Try not to get blown up.
- You have an individual living
in a little cabin by himself
in essentially
a wilderness area
right outside
a very small town.
He doesn't have a car,
doesn't have electricity,
doesn't have power tools,
doesn't have a job...
- I figure he's one of those
guys holed up somewhere,
obsessing, reading every
article he can find
on the ills of society
as he sees them,
and, you know, pounding his
fist on the table saying,
"I gotta do something
about this."
And the kinda guy that
the neighbors say,
"He was a little torqued,
but he kept to himself.
Kinda quiet."
The cabin is 10 by 14
feet
uh, and is full of stuff.
His heat is provided only
by a potbelly stove.
It's smoky, there's soot
everywhere,
it's dark.
And he's been doing a great
deal of work in there.
Apparently, the work
to construct these bombs
has all been done in the cabin.
Good evening.
We begin tonight with an
emergency security alert
issued in California today.
The government says there is
a credible threat
that a passenger jet
may be bombed
from a man the FBI calls
the Unabomber.
He's causing all kinds
of havoc,
he's causing all kinds of
public concern.
Police are swarming
around the terminals
at Los Angeles International
Airport.
Airlines have stopped loading
the 200 tons of mail
that leave here daily.
It's being screened
at a nearby postal facility
for the possibility
of letter bombs.
- LAX is closed
and security goes to,
you know, DEFCON 4.
Security has been
heightened
and with it, anxiety.
The Unabomber's unique campaign
of terror started in 1978 -
in 16 separate bombing
incidents.
Three people have been killed,
another 23 injured.
He's been going on
for decades it seems.
The FBI is warning
everyone
to look out for unusual
packages.
- If it appears suspicious
in any way, shape, or form
then they should contact
their local police.
Nobody knows who he is.
It's, it's creepy. It's creepy.
- Not knowing is a hard thing.
I didn't know who this was
for nine years.
So, basically, you're dealing
with a ghost.
- It's a killer on the loose
and he's got a wide range
of targets.
- There's a tremendous sense
of public fear at this point
and there doesn't seem to be
any clear sign
that the task force is going
to be able to stop him
anytime soon.
- More than 100 FBI agents
are working the Unabomber case.
- It was the largest manhunt
in American history,
and it was estimated
to cost $50 million.
- Is he a terrorist
or a freedom fighter?
Is he a revolutionary
or a serial killer?
- What you have are the facts
of the case to work with.
If you can figure out the why,
you may be able to figure out
who's doing it.
- The interview I did
with Kaczynski
was the first interview
he allowed,
three years after
he was arrested,
and it was an historical
opportunity.
I struggle with this
because I don't know
exactly what happened to Ted.
I thought my brother was the
best human being on earth;
that he would change the world
and do a great deal of good.
- I didn't like the guy.
But Dave loved his brother
all the way through, I think.
And his mother, of course,
loved Ted as well.
But I didn't.
He may have been a nice person
at some point in his life,
but something happened
and he became a...
a killer.
- I've spent much of my life
trying to understand that.
I mean, why?
- The Unabomber's first bomb
ended up at Northwestern
University
based on a return address.
The return address on the
package was to a professor
in the technological institute.
The bomb was found in
a parking lot.
- It's got a label on it,
it's got postage on it,
it's ready to be mailed.
So why wasn't it mailed?
Why is it laying
in this parking lot?
We reconstructed it exactly
how it was,
and that's when we found
it wouldn't fit
through the door of the mailbox.
So, the bomber probably
built it,
got to the mailbox
and it wouldn't fit.
And then what do you do?
Well, you drop it and you leave.
- And it was retrieved by
an officer
from the, uh,
Department of Security.
It did partially detonate
which caused minor injuries.
- No one recognizes
this bomber.
No one has seen
this bomber's work before.
The bomber is clever,
but he's clearly not an expert
bomb maker.
- He's making these clumsy
bombs
with wooden ends to them,
using black powder
as a propellant.
He's using this kind of very
crude detonating system -
match heads.
They're not all that
sophisticated.
Bomb 2 was sent
May 9th 1979,
at Northwestern University
as well.
And this one was left
on a table.
- The bomb is built in
a cigar box.
Um, it's not terribly large.
It's simply left there for
whoever is going to open it
and someone eventually does.
It's got batteries and wires,
and the explosive mixture
is smokeless powder,
the sort of propellant
you would find
in a firearm cartridge,
and, in some cases,
match heads,
which have been meticulously
cut off of matches
to fill a tube or a container.
So that tells us, again,
that we're dealing with someone
who, at this point, is not
terribly sophisticated
in building bombs
and delivering them.
He's figuring it out.
- After bomb number two,
he wrote,
"I had hoped that the victim
would be blinded
or have his hands blown off,
or be otherwise maimed.
Well, live and learn.
I wish I knew how to get
a hold of some dynamite."
- Most criminals aren't able
to operate
in such a vacuum.
People know what they're doing,
either because they boast
about it,
or because they have people
around them,
or... for whatever reason,
they can't keep their
activities that secret.
He was able to. He lived in
the middle of nowhere.
- Here in rural Montana,
for someone to live off
the grid
and be reclusive, be a hermit,
it didn't raise any red flags
to us
because if you want to do
something like that,
then rural Montana is
the perfect spot.
- Ted was the kind of person
that you, you could meet
and you could know him
for 25 years, like me,
but never know any more real
details about him
than you did in the first
few years.
- All the neighbors got
like junk cars sitting around
and he'd just go
and help himself to...
whatever parts and pieces
he needed to make his bombs.
And it was like
he didn't even think
he was doing anything wrong.
- I have quite a large
boneyard,
uh, with everything that
anybody could need
to do pretty much everything.
There's hundreds
and hundreds of feet
of every kind of color
and gauge of wire,
and you're not going to miss
something like that.
Did I suspect Ted
of taking stuff?
No.
- I think it started when
I was about five years old.
I was terrified to sleep
in my room.
And I was hearing something
in the middle of the night -
footsteps, rummaging around.
I would run into my parents'
room and say,
"There's somebody out there."
And they would just be like,
"You're dreaming.
Go back to bed."
The third bomb
is a package
which is sent through the mail
and it ends up on an airliner,
on an American Airlines flight.
This one is different in
its design.
And it is designed to function
based on being triggered by
an altimeter,
an altimeter which is
constructed from a barometer
such as you might find in a,
a home weather station.
So, when the plane reaches
a certain altitude,
the device functions,
can cause an explosion.
- The FBI says an American
Airline 727
with 80 persons aboard
landed safely today
at Washington's Dulles
International Airport
after a small bomb exploded
in a mail pouch
in the cargo hold.
American Flight 444
en route from Chicago
landed without injury to any
of the passengers or crew.
- It's rather sophisticated
in the sense that the builder
has created an altimeter
and, of course,
where it was placed
had the potential to cause
mass casualties.
So it's,
it's incredibly serious.
- "The plan was
to blow up airliner in flight.
Unfortunately,
plane not destroyed.
Bomb too weak."
- At this point,
connections begin to be made.
US government recognizes
that they're dealing with
a serial bomber.
- He becomes known as
the Unabomber:
university and airline bomber.
That's what the, the FBI tags
the project as, Unabomber.
Uh, or Unabomb.
- Ted's mother would
send him money.
He would say,
"I've got some chest pain
and they say I should
have some tests,
but I don't have the money,"
and would, in a sense,
scam her into sending money,
which he would then use
to make, uh, bombs.
- Here's a guy who
is targeting victims
that he has no personal
relationship with.
It's unclear exactly
what the pattern is.
- The librarian,
who he befriended,
she was, unknowingly,
giving him books
which he used to target,
uh, people for his bombs.
- And it was a pretty
long list.
He was going to start
killing people
as soon as the weather
got better.
- We don't know
who's on the list.
You have to wonder,
"Am I next?"
- Some dots can be joined
but they are few
and a little bit fuzzy.
You have a bomber who's not
terribly skilled
at creating bombs
and is clearly spending a great
deal of time creating them
based on the... the parts
that he has to accumulate
from various places
or, in some cases,
make himself.
So, all of these things
tell you
something about the bomber,
but is it, at this point,
enough to lead to the bomber's
identity? No, it's not.
I assumed that he
might've been a, a GI -
that had had a real bad
experience in Vietnam -
coming home and just wanted to
be off in the woods by himself.
I saw him walking and uh...
you know, he had a little
knapsack,
hiking down the road.
So, I'll stop and offer him
a ride,
and he was very cordial,
and he said, "No, thank you."
- This is a bomb that's
different from the others.
This is in a hollowed-out book.
A book called "Ice Brothers",
by Sloan Wilson.
It is accompanied by a letter
and the letter is intended
to encourage him
to want to read the book.
So, the book has been
hollowed out
and turned into a box
to contain an explosive device.
Bleeding heavily
from cuts in his face,
left hand and leg,
Wood managed to walk next door
for help.
There was blood
all over his face,
and he had... his hand
was really bloody.
He was shocked that somebody
would do such a thing,
but he didn't-he had no idea
who it was from or why.
- You talk to someone who's
been blown up,
or who's had a loved one
blown up,
and it's awful.
That doesn't go away.
The fear and the anguish
and the trauma that gets burned
into their beings
by an attack like that
does not dissipate.
- Hospital officials say
that surgery
to remove bomb fragments
from his leg was successful
but Wood is expected to remain
in intensive care
for at least a few more days
under police guard.
"I feel better.
I'm still plenty angry.
I'm now able to strike back."
- The task force is being asked
to find solutions
to all of this
by catching this person
before he can do anything else.
The pressure was just
incredible.
- He's mailing things.
There are components that
get found at the scene.
Why haven't the clues led
to him yet?
- We have a lot of evidence
to work with.
We have bombs to work with,
we have a handful of letters
from the Unabomber.
A number of them have
Eugene O'Neill stamps
attached to them.
Is that a message? Does it have
some meaning to the bomber?
Or is that simply
what the bomber got
when he went to the postage
machine? We don't know.
Is there significance
to the fact
that these devices use
a great deal of wood
in their construction?
Does the bomber have some
interest in wood
or is it just happenstance?
- We're trying to figure
this thing out.
We're trying to figure out
where the clues might lead,
what people...
in the investigative community
already know.
Uh, it's very,
it's very frustrating.
- Criminals often operate in
the areas
in which they are most
comfortable.
The first devices are placed
in Chicago.
So, this is a person
who is probably,
if we're guessing
at this point,
probably from the Chicago area.
- Our family had moved
from a...
inner-city neighborhood
in Chicago
out to a home in the suburbs.
It was our first like
single-family dwelling.
You know my memories of
growing up
with my brother and my family
were very, very positive,
very warm memories.
This one I think...
I think is Dad, Ted and myself,
taken, I believe, at one of
our favorite hiking places,
a state park called
Starved Rock,
where they had some
lovely cliffs
that we would climb.
My father had really loved
the nature.
I think the love of nature,
I think, came to both of us
through Dad.
- Our family valued
intelligence,
success in school.
My brother had skipped a grade
and then went through
high school in three years.
He was at Harvard University
at the age of 16,
and I remember one of my
buddies telling another kid,
"Hey, Dave's brother's really
smart, he's in Harvard.
He's like another Einstein.
Well, maybe not another
Einstein, but..."
I said, "What do you mean,
not another Einstein?"
- He was a bit on the shy side,
but definitely not antisocial.
Once he got to know you -
not once you got to know him -
once he got to know you,
he could talk and talk.
And we were talking
about things
that weren't trivial,
they weren't bullshit,
they were just, they were about
what was right and wrong.
And Ted was concerned,
and was more savvy than I was,
about corporate
and, and governmental impact
on the environment and on...
and on us.
And some of the ideas
that he articulated later,
I distinctly have memories
of talking about.
- One roommate said that, uh,
if they went down to the dining
hall and...
saw him there and sat down
with him,
he'd just-they never saw
anybody finish his food faster
and without saying a word,
would just leave.
You know, so I felt hurt
at first
that, that he had just sort
of ignored
or, or obliterated
our friendship,
but I wasn't alone.
I mean, he was...
he was not just shy,
now he was really antisocial.
- Ted had come home
from school.
You know, I was getting
a little more intellectual,
reading more serious books,
and I had some ideas
and I couldn't wait to tell
my big brother about my ideas,
but it seemed like, wow,
he was very dismissive
of my ideas.
And he said, "You know, Dave,
real smart people have
a sadistic streak.
Almost all of them do."
I was a little surprised
by that,
but the behavior he showed
to me in putting down,
dismissing my ideas
was what he had encountered
at Harvard
when people were demeaning
toward him
when he-he expressed
his philosophy of life.
- When he resigned,
his department chair said,
"Gee, you know,
I want you to stay."
And Ted Kaczynski
wrote in his diary,
"This fool thinks I want
to remain at the university,
when all I wanted was a job
to save enough money
so that I could buy
a piece of land
to live in the wild."
- "Wow, Ted, great! Go for it!"
You know. "This is wonderful.
You're your own person,
you know, you're doing what--
You're living in the way
that you want to
rather than in the way other
people expect you to live."
- So back behind here
is the road in which Ted
would use
to leave his cabin
and walk or bicycle into town.
And every time
he would do that,
he would pass my father
Butch Gehring's sawmill
over here on the right.
The sawmill is very loud
and probably very disruptive.
It's almost like
a very loud humming
as a log would go through
the saw,
and so that was constant
all day long
while the mill was active.
Ted probably would have been
very irritated
to, to hear that noise.
- He sanded the sawmill,
putting sand into the engine
so that it just goes through
the entire, the entire unit
and shuts it down,
and they had to repair
everything
to be up and running again
and it was a huge cost.
My dad, well, there was
nothing, really, he could do.
He thought it could have been,
you know,
some kids playing a prank.
I mean, he just didn't know
who, who did it.
- There were those little times
when I realized that
there was a whole side
to this person that
I did not know.
I just shudder to think
how I had, uh, unknowingly,
helped him
do the things that he did
that were so heinous.
Ted was actually
at his home cabin
and some motorcycles went
riding real loud, real fast,
and he was livid, uh, furious.
- I mean, somebody
was very angry.
He didn't break the door in
to gain access,
he chopped a hole right
through the wall.
- He went in and just destroyed
their cabin
and then took a poop in
their tub
and, and left.
- He took a risk, you know,
looking back now,
of being caught.
The sheriff came
and talked to me.
He knew that I knew Ted
and he said,
"Well, do you think that
that friend of yours,
do you think he coulda
done that?"
And I said, "Oh, no."
I said, "He wouldn't do...
you know, he's got his quirks.
We all do."
And I believe I was
instrumental
in getting him removed
as a suspect.
- The FBI prides itself
on being able to solve
big crimes,
and a lot of the way they do
that is you get tips.
You get information coming' in.
It's not so much you knocking'
on doors.
You gotta know where
to knock on doors,
and they're not getting
the door-knock tips.
It's not coming to them.
It's driving 'em nuts.
- It's not unusual when a
serial killer's apprehended
that the police had already
interviewed him
once or even twice, all right?
They... you know, they have
an eye on a group of people.
Ted Kaczynski never showed up
on that kind of radar.
- One of the things that's very
interesting about Kaczynski
is the personal is political.
Everything that he's writing
about
and talking about in
the abstract,
is also... related to very
concrete experiences
that Kaczynski has had.
- It is frightening,
sometimes, you know,
terrifying,
to find out what he was doing.
- We had this logger
that was learning to log
with Belgian horses.
So, they're huge animals.
And, um, when he brought
the logs off the hill,
it tore up the grass,
and so, one day, Butch said,
goes,
"Seed that area up there."
And Tessa was maybe
three years old.
And uh, so,
I was up there seeding.
And the trees were about
3 feet high,
so she was just a toddler and
she would disappear into 'em.
And the hair on the back
of my neck went up,
and I thought it was
a mountain lion,
and uh... so I told her,
"It's time to leave."
But it turned out it was Ted.
He had a... a gun on her.
And I asked the FBI after
they figured out it was Ted,
he had written in his journals.
He had written something
about...
it would be easy to take
the little bitch out,
but then the big bitch
could get away.
Or if I shoot the big bitch,
then the little bitch would be,
um, left on the hill.
But it's too close to his home,
and that's, you know,
he didn't want to bring
attention to himself.
It's probably the only thing
that saved us.
- The next bomb
was October 8th, 1981,
and was found by a maintenance
worker
in the University of Utah,
and was defused.
So a bomb that is not detonated
provides a substantial amount
of evidence,
a better idea of how
it's constructed.
- The design is essentially
a can of gasoline
with a small pipe bomb
inside of it.
Apparently, the intent is that
the pipe bomb will explode
and create a large flame out
of the gasoline.
It doesn't function that way,
uh, because it's recovered
intact,
but it's very significant.
Apparently, he's branching out.
He has come to Utah.
He shows no sign of stopping,
there's no reason to think
he will stop.
And it's sort of a race
against time now,
whether he can be caught
before he does another bombing.
- Ted was sly
because we would think
he was holed up in his cabin,
but he was in Salt Lake.
He would come back
and stay in the woods
until he got all scruffy again,
and then we would see him.
I think he planned a lot
of that.
- So the device which is mailed
to Vanderbilt University,
which is not opened by
its intended victim
but by the victim's assistant,
is significant in,
in a couple of ways.
It's mailed from Utah,
so now we have another
connection to Utah.
It's also another design
in that it's a pipe bomb,
but the pipe in this case
is a P-trap,
a plumbing pipe that
you'd find under a sink.
So, it appears that the bomber
is still experimenting
with different designs.
Fischer was the
intended victim of a bomb
sent to Vanderbilt University
by the Unabomber,
but his secretary, Janet Smith,
intercepted the package,
opened it and was seriously
injured when it exploded.
- Your usual serial killer
is hunting for women,
hunting for young boys,
hunting for vulnerable people
in dark alleys
or lonely roads.
It's, it's not someone hunting
for... scientists.
That stands out.
- Unfortunately, despite years
of detailed investigative work
and the extraordinary talents
of the three law enforcement
agencies
represented on the Unabomb
taskforce,
we have no viable suspects.
- Pressure to solve the case
is coming from all quarters.
There's political pressure;
a lot of politicians
weighing in,
criticizing the task force
for not having solved the case.
You have all the victims
and all their families
who want to know why you
haven't solved this case yet.
What haven't we thought of?
What investigative technique
or program have we not
undertaken?
- He plans ahead carefully,
he selects his targets.
He is very forensically aware.
- The bomber is clever.
You can leave fingerprints on
any of the components,
you can leave fingerprints on
the inside of the tape.
There're simply lots of ways
to have your fingerprints
appear, and they don't.
There're also lots of
opportunities
to leave hair behind.
There's no hair found in
any of these devices,
nothing's stuck under
a piece of tape.
Professor
Diogenes Angelakos remembers
he was in the faculty lounge
of the electrical engineering
building,
when he saw a package sitting
on the floor.
And it took all
the flesh off these fingers
and left just the bones
in the upper part.
- "Frustrating...
that I can't seem to make
a lethal bomb."
- The 1982 Corey Hall device
contains a note.
It's a very short type-written
sentence:
"Wu," W-U, "It works!
I told you it would, R.V."
Now we have potentially a clue
or potentially an intended
red herring,
but it has to be run out
in either case.
You try to find people
named Wu.
Do they know anybody
who has initials named R.V.?
And if they don't,
we still will try to find
all the people in that area
who have, uh, the name R.V.
- You know, you could tell it
was a guy
who was intellectually
enjoying this,
and is not stupid.
Because a lot of criminals
are stupid,
or at least ignorant,
and they don't do things
like the Unabomber did.
They don't conduct their
campaign of terror
the way the Unabomber
is conducting
his campaign of terror.
- It makes you ask
where has this person gone?
What's happened now?
So, the possibilities
you have to consider
are that he's already
some sort of criminal
and perhaps he's ended up
in jail or prison.
It's just one more factor
to add to the picture
that you're trying to build,
the picture you're trying
to paint of this bomber.
- I happened to be up doing
some digging,
getting some gravel,
and I had-it was about
five o'clock.
I remember it vividly.
I was going home.
It was an explosion.
And I thought...
uh... the sound couldn't carry
from anybody mining
on the other side
of the divide.
It was a mystery.
It was a mystery that I,
I never did solve.
- Now the explosive mixture
changes to
ammonium nitrate and aluminum
powder.
You have to go to some
effort to create this.
In 1985, the Unabomber
reappears.
and he reappears in
a significant way.
'85 is a very busy year.
If it was possible to ratchet
up the pressure further,
it did.
I think fear is a...
is a good word
for what the public is feeling.
There doesn't seem to be
a clear pattern
that allows people to say,
"Well, it won't affect me."
So, there are very few people
in the United States
who can say,
"There's absolutely no chance
that I could ever encounter
the Unabomber."