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Killer Thriller: The Unabomber Couldn't Get a Date. Did That Fuel His Killing Spree? · Legally Brunette

0:06
Speaker 1: Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Killer Thriller with your host,
0:10
Speaker 1: Elisa Donovan. Hey, everybody.
0:15
Speaker 2: Elisa Donovan here, and this is Killer Thriller. Today, we
0:19
Speaker 2: are going inside one of the longest and most extraordinary
0:22
Speaker 2: manhunts in FBI history and the television series that brought
0:26
Speaker 2: it to life. For 17 years, the Unabomber terrorized the country,
0:30
Speaker 2: killing three people and injuring 23 others while leaving investigators
0:34
Speaker 2: almost nothing to identify him. Then he did something that
0:38
Speaker 2: would ultimately help lead the FBI straight to him. He
0:42
Speaker 2: started writing. My guest today is James R. Fitz Fitzgerald,
0:47
Speaker 2: the retired FBI criminal profiler and forensic linguist whose analysis
0:51
Speaker 2: of Ted Kaczynski's language played a key role in identifying
0:55
Speaker 2: him and obtaining the warrant to search his remote Montana cabin.
1:00
Speaker 2: Fitz later served as a consulting producer on the Discovery
1:03
Speaker 2: series Manhunt Unabomber. Today, we are separating Hollywood from reality.
1:09
Speaker 2: What Manhunt got right, what it invented, and how Fitz
1:13
Speaker 2: used Ted Kaczynski's own words to help finally catch him. James,
1:18
Speaker 2: welcome to Killer Thriller. Thank you so much for being
1:21
Speaker 2: with me today.
1:21
Speaker 3: I would say it's a thrill to be here, but
1:23
Speaker 3: since it's in your title, I won't overuse the word.
1:26
Speaker 3: Thank you, Elisa, for inviting me.
1:29
Speaker 2: I really, honestly, this is not an exaggeration when I say.
1:34
Speaker 1: I am really.
1:36
Speaker 2: Just very excited to talk with you. I'm obsessed with
1:41
Speaker 2: what your job is essentially in general. So, but today
1:45
Speaker 2: we're obviously talking about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber and the.
1:49
Speaker 1: Series that you were a part of creating.
1:54
Speaker 2: So now we know that much of this series was fictionalized,
1:57
Speaker 2: including your characters, jailhouse interviews with Ted, but the series
2:02
Speaker 2: opens two years after the arrest of your character. living
2:06
Speaker 2: alone in a remote cabin. So were you actually living
2:09
Speaker 2: that way or was that the writers visually showing us
2:13
Speaker 2: how deeply you got into Ted?
2:15
Speaker 3: Lisa, all good questions. And there's been an interesting juxtaposition
2:21
Speaker 3: lately with that 2017 Discovery Channel miniseries, Manhunt Unabomber, and
2:28
Speaker 3: the one on Netflix now simply called Unabomber. Right. And
2:33
Speaker 3: you said it was much fictionalized. I always say, Of course,
2:37
Speaker 3: it was, Manhunt Unabomber was a fictionalized, somewhat fictionalized version
2:42
Speaker 3: of the real story, but they got a lot right too.
2:44
Speaker 3: And I was a consulting producer and I made sure
2:47
Speaker 3: of that. I argued with them about the scenes with
2:51
Speaker 3: Sam Worthington, interviewing Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Paul Bettany, the actor.
2:58
Speaker 3: And I said that never happened. But despite that, and
3:02
Speaker 3: to go specific to your question, No, I never lived
3:06
Speaker 3: in a cabin. If anything, I told the writers I
3:08
Speaker 3: have a beach house. Put me at the beach somewhere
3:11
Speaker 3: if you think I had to get away for a
3:13
Speaker 3: little bit, which I didn't. And they said, no, it
3:16
Speaker 3: wouldn't really fit our narrative. Because, of course, if you
3:18
Speaker 3: watch the opening scenes, it involves like a mailbox, a
3:22
Speaker 3: box going through the postal system, which interestingly, the new
3:26
Speaker 3: Unabomber movie started in a mailbox. So it's this movie
3:31
Speaker 3: coming out or that's already out as a bit derivative
3:33
Speaker 3: in that regard. But then the very next scene is
3:36
Speaker 3: this bearded guy living in the woods in a cabin,
3:39
Speaker 3: carrying a dead rabbit he just killed for dinner. And
3:44
Speaker 3: the audience, of course, was supposed to think that was
3:46
Speaker 3: the Unabomber. But no, in reality, it was the Fitz character,
3:50
Speaker 3: my nickname, Jim Fitzgerald. And then from that point on,
3:55
Speaker 3: the black car pulls up, the suits get out from
3:58
Speaker 3: the FBI, and they convince Fitz to come back. Highly fictionalized,
4:03
Speaker 3: never happened.
4:05
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you for clarifying that because I was a
4:07
Speaker 2: little concerned about your general well-being.
4:10
Speaker 3: I'll tell you though, Elise, the part of that series
4:13
Speaker 3: that bothered me the most, and I always correct people
4:16
Speaker 3: on this because they watch the series. I forget what episode, four, five.
4:24
Speaker 3: There's a scene where Fitz by Sam Worthington takes his
4:29
Speaker 3: two older boys to a movie.
4:31
Speaker 2: Yes.
4:32
Speaker 3: They're like 13 and 11, so they're not like their
4:34
Speaker 3: little toddlers. takes him to a movie and he gets paged,
4:37
Speaker 3: you know, on his beeper back then, kind of before
4:40
Speaker 3: cell phones, all of us anyway. And he runs off,
4:43
Speaker 3: makes a call and tells the boy, I'll be right back.
4:45
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to the office. Be right back.
4:48
Speaker 3: And of course you see him in the office with
4:49
Speaker 3: paper spread all around the floor, looking at this, looking
4:52
Speaker 3: at that. Then, you know, it goes on a few
4:54
Speaker 3: more minutes, maybe some split scenes. All of a sudden
4:58
Speaker 3: his wife comes in. Where have you been? What do
5:02
Speaker 3: you mean? The boys had to call me and pick
5:04
Speaker 3: them up at the movie. So in the movie, the
5:07
Speaker 3: Fitz character sort of abandons his two sons pre-teens. Again,
5:11
Speaker 3: they weren't like toddlers roaming the streets. But still, they
5:15
Speaker 3: could call mom and she came to pick them up.
5:18
Speaker 3: That never happened either. So to me, whenever I go
5:20
Speaker 3: in order, I didn't abandon my kids. I didn't live
5:24
Speaker 3: in a cabin. And no, I never interviewed Ted Kaczynski.
5:28
Speaker 3: No FBI agent did. But they had to put two
5:31
Speaker 3: A-list actors together in multiple scenes, make for a better storyline.
5:35
Speaker 3: And they, after a lot of arguments, me not returning
5:38
Speaker 3: calls for about a week, uh, during the, you know,
5:40
Speaker 3: the script writing process and me, you know, reviewing everything
5:44
Speaker 3: for facts. I, I, I finally had no choice. Uh,
5:48
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't have a right of, you know,
5:50
Speaker 3: script refusal as, uh, they say. And I tell people now,
5:54
Speaker 3: you know, uh, law enforcement people, if they're making a movie, miniseries, whatever,
5:58
Speaker 3: you may want to try to get something written in there,
6:00
Speaker 3: but you may not, they may not go with it
6:02
Speaker 3: either because writers and directors. production companies, they want the
6:05
Speaker 3: final say. And I get that too. So I always
6:09
Speaker 3: say 85% accuracy for Manhunt, Unabomber. Those three scenes are
6:14
Speaker 3: the main ones. And I reversed the numbers for Unabomber,
6:18
Speaker 3: the one on Netflix now, it's about 15% accurate. Oh, wow.
6:23
Speaker 1: Interesting.
6:24
Speaker 2: See, this is kind of the crux of the question.
6:29
Speaker 2: of how do you actually make a series or a
6:32
Speaker 2: movie about something that is, first of all, so public, but,
6:36
Speaker 2: you know, so devastating. And I do think, you know,
6:41
Speaker 2: in many circumstances, you do have to, there is some
6:45
Speaker 2: dramatic license that's taken, et cetera, and you kind of,
6:48
Speaker 2: have to, that's how you make a narrative that makes sense,
6:53
Speaker 2: you know, without having to, you know, unless you had a,
6:55
Speaker 2: you know, you could make a hundred part series perhaps
6:59
Speaker 2: that could be accurate, you know. So when you joined
7:04
Speaker 2: the Unabom task force in 1995, investigators had already been
7:09
Speaker 2: chasing Ted for, or they didn't know it was Ted,
7:12
Speaker 2: chasing this guy for 17 years. How much did you
7:15
Speaker 2: actually know about the man that you were looking for
7:18
Speaker 2: at that point?
7:19
Speaker 3: Yeah. And that's a good question. And I try to
7:22
Speaker 3: address that in my third book, A Journey to the
7:24
Speaker 3: Center of the Mind, book three. That's a four book
7:26
Speaker 3: memoir series. And I devote a long final chapter, 200
7:30
Speaker 3: pages to that. And I've always been a news junkie.
7:34
Speaker 3: So even when I was a young police officer in
7:38
Speaker 3: suburban Philadelphia, on lonely late night shifts, I'd get the
7:42
Speaker 3: local newspaper. And I'd be reading articles and, oh, here's
7:45
Speaker 3: this Unabomb guy again. Who the hell is this guy?
7:48
Speaker 3: And what does Unabomb even mean? Oh, that's right. University
7:50
Speaker 3: Airline Bombings. A lot of people weren't even born when
7:54
Speaker 3: the crimes were committed. The bombings were taking place. So
7:58
Speaker 3: I found I have to remind them that Unabomb is
7:59
Speaker 3: an acronym, University Airline Bombings. And so, you know, finish
8:07
Speaker 3: up my career there, join the FBI in New York
8:09
Speaker 3: City for seven years, and then– get promoted to profiler position.
8:14
Speaker 3: And John Douglas, the kind of the grandfather of profiling
8:17
Speaker 3: in the US, he's just retiring. I'm just coming on board.
8:21
Speaker 3: He gives in our training, we had a 12-week training block. Remember,
8:25
Speaker 3: we're all experienced special agents. Now we're supervisors, just promoted,
8:29
Speaker 3: but we have a 12-week academy to attend in all
8:32
Speaker 3: matters profiling. And one of those blocks was for two
8:36
Speaker 3: hours about the Unabob case. And John Douglas presented it
8:40
Speaker 3: and he was retiring like two weeks later. About a
8:43
Speaker 3: week after he retired, I get a phone call at
8:46
Speaker 3: the beach house that was never referenced in the Manhunt
8:49
Speaker 3: Unabomber series. And they said, Fitz, want to go to
8:53
Speaker 3: San Francisco for 30 days, work the Unabomb case? I said,
8:56
Speaker 3: I don't know too much about it, except what I've
8:58
Speaker 3: read in the media all these years. I know there's
8:59
Speaker 3: a manifesto coming out. And of course, the profile that
9:03
Speaker 3: John Douglas told us about a few weeks ago. All right,
9:06
Speaker 3: then you're going. So on the way out, they gave
9:08
Speaker 3: me a big three inch binder, kind of the days
9:11
Speaker 3: before we had little tablets that we could do everything digitally.
9:15
Speaker 3: And I carried it on the plane with me and
9:16
Speaker 3: I really brought myself up to that, the case as
9:20
Speaker 3: much as I could in a six hour or so
9:23
Speaker 3: flight from DC to San Fran. And that's when I
9:26
Speaker 3: learned everything I could. I read the manifesto, at least
9:28
Speaker 3: most of it. People forget there were 13 letters before
9:32
Speaker 3: the manifesto received that the Unabomber either sent to victims
9:36
Speaker 3: and had tricked them into opening up packages and they
9:38
Speaker 3: blew up in their face or letters that he was
9:42
Speaker 3: now sending to the media, the New York Times specifically,
9:46
Speaker 3: but some others, and just telling them his philosophy, his ideology.
9:51
Speaker 3: So I had a lot to catch up on, but
9:55
Speaker 3: that's when I found in the 1985 letter to Dr.
9:58
Speaker 3: McConnell at University of Michigan, I won't get into the
10:00
Speaker 3: weeds here, but I found a secret message in it
10:03
Speaker 3: that no one saw before. And I came to the
10:05
Speaker 3: Unabombe Task Force. I remind people, we're all FBI, but
10:09
Speaker 3: there's like 30,000 of us. I didn't know anyone out there.
10:11
Speaker 3: So I show up, oh, so you're the new profiler? Yeah,
10:14
Speaker 3: I'm actually brand new, you know, seasoned investigator. seven years
10:19
Speaker 3: in New York, 11 years as a police officer before that,
10:22
Speaker 3: but a brand new profiler. I said, and I'll do
10:24
Speaker 3: the profiling stuff, but did you see this hidden acrostic,
10:27
Speaker 3: which is a message that goes, it's written vertical, the
10:29
Speaker 3: first part of each paragraph. And I picked up on
10:33
Speaker 3: it and they said, we never saw this before. And
10:35
Speaker 3: from that point on, I was put in charge of
10:38
Speaker 3: all the language in the case, including the manifesto. I
10:42
Speaker 3: had a master's in psychology already, but nothing in linguistics,
10:46
Speaker 3: language science, anything like that. But they still said, Fitz,
10:50
Speaker 3: you're the one that runs the language stuff. And yeah,
10:52
Speaker 3: we'll get some profiling info out of you too if
10:54
Speaker 3: we need it. So that got me to work. I just,
10:57
Speaker 3: I all but memorized the manifesto, just reading it day in,
11:01
Speaker 3: day out. And that's when I found, not a hidden message,
11:04
Speaker 3: but paragraph 185, now very well known, if not iconic,
11:09
Speaker 3: you can eat your cake and have it too, where
11:12
Speaker 3: he transposed the two verbs. I said, ah, finally a mistake.
11:16
Speaker 3: Good job, Fitz, for finding that. What does it mean?
11:18
Speaker 3: I don't know. But if we find someone else out
11:21
Speaker 3: there that uses this exact expression with those verbs transposed,
11:26
Speaker 3: we've got a really big clue for us. And eventually,
11:29
Speaker 3: out of many other suspects that we had at the time,
11:32
Speaker 3: Ted Kaczynski was never the only suspect. But out of
11:35
Speaker 3: all the other suspects we had, I got some writings
11:37
Speaker 3: of Ted Kaczynski's, and I was already leaning in that direction,
11:42
Speaker 3: that he was the Unabomber. But then near the end,
11:45
Speaker 3: we finally found Another letter he wrote back in the
11:48
Speaker 3: early 70s, and at the bottom, you can't eat your
11:51
Speaker 3: cake and have it too. And that's when the lawyer
11:54
Speaker 3: signed off on the search warrant, the judge signed it off,
11:57
Speaker 3: and the rest is history.
11:59
Speaker 2: So in the series, I'm going to come back to
12:02
Speaker 2: what I was going to ask next, but based on
12:03
Speaker 2: what you just said, in the series, they really make
12:06
Speaker 2: that moment of waiting for the actual search warrant happen.
12:12
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pace to it and there's an urgency.
12:15
Speaker 2: And was that actually the way it was? Were they
12:19
Speaker 2: waiting and then going to get him?
12:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. I mean, we really felt, and again,
12:25
Speaker 3: if you read my book and it's a little bit
12:26
Speaker 3: of it in the 2017 Manhunt Unabomber series, they got
12:32
Speaker 3: a lot of right in that series too. I'm not
12:33
Speaker 3: here to bad mouth that series. Just take out those
12:36
Speaker 3: few scenes I mentioned. And they really do capture well
12:40
Speaker 3: dissension at some point in the UTF, including way back
12:44
Speaker 3: when the manifesto was first received at the New York Times.
12:47
Speaker 3: The FBI gets the original copy, like everything else he sent,
12:51
Speaker 3: or his bombs, no fingerprints, no DNA, the very early
12:55
Speaker 3: days of DNA analysis, no hairs, fibers, nothing that we
12:59
Speaker 3: could come up with. And I said, look, there's some
13:02
Speaker 3: not unique, but idiosyncratic writing styles here, He wants this
13:07
Speaker 3: thing published in the New York Times or some other outlet.
13:11
Speaker 3: And he said he'll stop killing if we do it.
13:14
Speaker 3: Let's do it. And I know there's been a lot
13:16
Speaker 3: of analogies in the last month or so with the
13:17
Speaker 3: movie 12 Angry Men, which was literally about a jury trial.
13:22
Speaker 3: But in this case, it was eight of us in
13:24
Speaker 3: a room. And I was the first person to say,
13:27
Speaker 3: we got to publish this thing. Remember, I'm an outsider.
13:30
Speaker 3: I'm not one of the San Francisco-based Unabombed Task Force
13:35
Speaker 3: management team members. But they did invite me in. They
13:37
Speaker 3: were very cordial in that regard, gave me say. And
13:40
Speaker 3: I'm the first one, when some people didn't want to
13:42
Speaker 3: have it published, giving in the demands of a terrorist
13:45
Speaker 3: and acceding to his wants and needs. And there'll be
13:48
Speaker 3: copycats all over the place. I said, there's enough distinctive
13:52
Speaker 3: writing in here. Someone will identify him. I really thought
13:55
Speaker 3: it would be a teacher, a professor, but I didn't
13:58
Speaker 3: roll out family member. And so we did publish it.
14:01
Speaker 3: And it took a while to get that information published.
14:05
Speaker 3: And then there are some people still not even sure
14:07
Speaker 3: it was Ted Kaczynski himself. And I said, no, based
14:11
Speaker 3: on the writings alone, it's it. And then we're dealing
14:14
Speaker 3: with a prosecutor in San Francisco, the U.S. Attorney's Office.
14:18
Speaker 3: And we're looking at everything we can with Ted Kaczynski.
14:22
Speaker 3: We have a team up in Lincoln, Montana, kind of
14:24
Speaker 3: observing him from afar. There was a hidden camera near
14:28
Speaker 3: his cabin. Very little movement on his part. There's like
14:31
Speaker 3: no bank records. He paid everything with cash. And this
14:34
Speaker 3: prosecutor was saying to me, Fitz, I like this language
14:37
Speaker 3: stuff you're coming up with. You're comparing the manifesto to
14:41
Speaker 3: the known writings of Kaczynski. There's some nice connections you're
14:45
Speaker 3: making here and associations, but it's definitely not enough for
14:48
Speaker 3: an arrest warrant, which you need a high probable cause
14:52
Speaker 3: because you're taking someone's freedom away from them, as it
14:55
Speaker 3: should be. But I don't think we have enough for
15:00
Speaker 3: a judge to sign a search warrant. You've got to
15:02
Speaker 3: find me something else. And the series portrayed it pretty
15:06
Speaker 3: well in that I'm still going through these. I'm the
15:10
Speaker 3: first one to see the documents that David, the brother,
15:14
Speaker 3: and Wanda, the mother, is giving to the FBI. The
15:17
Speaker 3: typewriters didn't match up with those documents, Unabombed Docs. So
15:21
Speaker 3: we had to find it in the language. And all
15:24
Speaker 3: of a sudden, my feet are up on a desk
15:25
Speaker 3: one day. I'm heading up the linguistic team. I'm going
15:29
Speaker 3: through these documents. I'm numbering them 130, 131, 132. I
15:34
Speaker 3: come to T137, read it. All right, just mark it off. Oh,
15:40
Speaker 3: there's some interesting stuff here. Very last line, blah, blah, blah, environment, technology,
15:45
Speaker 3: whatever it is. But then you can't eat your cake
15:48
Speaker 3: and have it too. And I actually fell out of
15:51
Speaker 3: my chair, literally. And I have witnesses. I said, wait
15:54
Speaker 3: a minute, give me the original version. My original version. Manifesto,
15:59
Speaker 3: where it was earmarked and post-its and everything else on it.
16:03
Speaker 3: open up the paragraph 185. We just have that number
16:06
Speaker 3: memorized and there it is. Blah, blah, blah. Technology.
16:10
Speaker 1: Oh my God.
16:11
Speaker 3: Environment, but you can't eat your cake and have it
16:13
Speaker 3: to matching up perfectly. Ran down to the prosecutor's office
16:17
Speaker 3: or actually I called him, said, come up to the
16:19
Speaker 3: task force. I have a, I have something I want
16:21
Speaker 3: to announce. I bring it up and I tell them
16:23
Speaker 3: for the first time, the whole team. And they said, uh,
16:26
Speaker 3: this is just what we need to get the search warrant.
16:29
Speaker 3: That is our linguistic smoking gun. And, uh, We were
16:33
Speaker 3: still going to wait about a month, but that's when
16:35
Speaker 3: Dan Rather interfered and said, we're going to run with
16:38
Speaker 3: this tonight. And Louis Freeh, the director, talked him into
16:42
Speaker 3: three more days. Then we put the final touches on it,
16:45
Speaker 3: got it approved by a judge in Montana, searched the cabin,
16:48
Speaker 3: and inside was a treasure trove of evidence.
16:52
Speaker 2: I mean, I have.
16:54
Speaker 1: chills over all of this. And the series really does
16:57
Speaker 1: cover that well.
16:59
Speaker 3: It does.
16:59
Speaker 1: It does cover that very, very well. And it sounds
17:03
Speaker 1: like very accurately. Ted's brother....
17:21
Speaker 2: David and the sister-in-law, Linda Patrick, they are the ones
17:25
Speaker 2: that came to you all, right, with this information and said,
17:29
Speaker 2: this sounds like him. So how important were they to
17:33
Speaker 2: cracking the case?
17:35
Speaker 3: Oh, they were very important. In my book and any
17:38
Speaker 3: type of, if I have an interview in which I
17:40
Speaker 3: have enough time, yeah, I always sing the praises of David.
17:44
Speaker 3: He's truly an altruist. He took the million dollar reward,
17:48
Speaker 3: but after he paid for some legal expenses, for himself
17:52
Speaker 3: and his wife. And he gave the rest of his
17:55
Speaker 3: money to the victims, the reward money to the various victims.
17:58
Speaker 3: So he's a standup guy all the way around. I
18:01
Speaker 3: think his wife, Linda, just died in the last year.
18:03
Speaker 3: It's always sad to hear that. But yeah, I always
18:07
Speaker 3: found it ironic to find out months later, she was
18:10
Speaker 3: an academic and she was in Paris on an academic
18:14
Speaker 3: at a conference somewhere. And you may not be old
18:17
Speaker 3: enough to remember this, but used to sit in the
18:19
Speaker 3: lobby of these hotels. And there'll be one computer there,
18:22
Speaker 3: maybe two. Yep. And you take your turn to use
18:25
Speaker 3: the internet.
18:25
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm old enough for that.
18:26
Speaker 3: All right. I remember. You hide it well, Elisa. Anyway,
18:29
Speaker 3: and that's what she was doing. She says, oh, what
18:32
Speaker 3: is this Unabomber Manifesto? And she really had no other
18:36
Speaker 3: interest in looking at it. And, you know, she logs
18:39
Speaker 3: on to the very young, very new FBI.gov website. Because
18:44
Speaker 3: I don't think the newspapers back then had any, if
18:47
Speaker 3: they had a website or just had to get, subscriptions,
18:50
Speaker 3: things like that. But I don't think anywhere else was
18:53
Speaker 3: the manifesto being covered. And again, the irony is that
18:58
Speaker 3: the Unabomber was very much against technology in all its forms,
19:02
Speaker 3: certainly anything post-industrial revolution. And here he is, someone is
19:07
Speaker 3: on a computer thousands of miles away from him and
19:12
Speaker 3: reading this manifesto. And she says to herself, I've never
19:15
Speaker 3: met my brother-in-law. I know he's kind of a wacky
19:18
Speaker 3: guy that lives in a cabin in Montana in the woods.
19:22
Speaker 3: But boy, I've read his letters and I've talked to
19:23
Speaker 3: my husband, David. This sounds just like him. She gets home.
19:27
Speaker 3: We've heard all this after the fact, of course, when
19:29
Speaker 3: they were interviewed. She gets home, convinces her husband to
19:32
Speaker 3: go on the same website, read the manifesto. And he
19:36
Speaker 3: takes like two weeks. Yeah, my brother, the Unabomber, right.
19:39
Speaker 3: He wouldn't hurt a fly. And that's actually a term
19:42
Speaker 3: he used a few times. But he read it and
19:44
Speaker 3: basically had that. Holy S moment to himself. This sounds
19:48
Speaker 3: a whole lot like him. And the phrase that was
19:51
Speaker 3: in the manifesto, but we never found any other writings,
19:54
Speaker 3: but nonetheless, it's the one that David knew was important,
19:59
Speaker 3: was the term, a noun phrase, cool-headed logicians. So that
20:07
Speaker 3: was in the manifesto. It was never in any of
20:09
Speaker 3: the writings that we found of Ted Kaczynski. But David
20:12
Speaker 3: told us that, in fact, when Ted would talk to him,
20:16
Speaker 3: he would use that term, whatever that's supposed to mean.
20:21
Speaker 3: You're one who deals in logic and you're cool-headed, whatever.
20:25
Speaker 3: So David, that's what really attracted him. But he still
20:27
Speaker 3: fought it off and said, oh, my brother can't be
20:29
Speaker 3: the Unabomber. And it's almost like a Greek tragedy. What
20:32
Speaker 3: do you do when he's fiddling? Yes, right. He's a
20:35
Speaker 3: mass murderer. I should say a serial murderer. And he
20:40
Speaker 3: could have been a mass murderer if he brought down
20:42
Speaker 3: the aircraft in 1980 when he mailed the bomb on it.
20:48
Speaker 3: But so the bottom line is he did call up
20:51
Speaker 3: the FBI very hesitatingly and said, I'm hoping you can
20:54
Speaker 3: prove my brother is not the Unabomber. But he kept saying,
20:58
Speaker 3: if it is him, I want a deal, no death penalty,
21:00
Speaker 3: no death penalty. Once after the arrest was made, there
21:03
Speaker 3: was a little bit back and forth on that. I
21:05
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with that part. That's now Department
21:08
Speaker 3: of Justice involved in that. But eventually they reached a deal.
21:11
Speaker 3: Ted would plead guilty to multiple charges and two life
21:15
Speaker 3: sentences in the Supermax in Colorado. And that's where he
21:20
Speaker 3: stayed until he died just a few years ago.
21:23
Speaker 2: So one of the things that the series captures so
21:26
Speaker 2: well is just how incredibly careful Ted was, which you
21:31
Speaker 2: spoke about briefly earlier. So you've said that he stripped
21:35
Speaker 2: the identifying skins off batteries and then made his own
21:39
Speaker 2: adhesive from deer hooves there. He left no fingerprints, no DNA.
21:44
Speaker 2: Did it ever strike you as ironic that someone so
21:46
Speaker 2: obsessed with leaving no physical trace ultimately gave himself away
21:51
Speaker 2: through something that he could hide, which is the way
21:54
Speaker 2: that he wrote?
21:55
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I've had that, I've had thoughts of that
21:58
Speaker 3: for years and I've certainly been asked that and had
22:00
Speaker 3: discussions with people. And, um, I usually get a twofold question.
22:05
Speaker 3: If the brother never turned him in, and sometimes I
22:09
Speaker 3: have seasoned, I'll just stick with this for a minute,
22:11
Speaker 3: seasoned investigators, they'll kind of, you know, maybe like they're
22:15
Speaker 3: half cocky or half kidding. Oh, well, the brother turned
22:18
Speaker 3: him in. I said, well, okay. Have you ever worked
22:21
Speaker 3: any bank robberies or murder cases? And someone calls, oh,
22:25
Speaker 3: my brother killed Joe Smith or robbed the first national bank.
22:29
Speaker 3: You just go and put handcuffs on the guy? Well, no,
22:31
Speaker 3: you have to build your case afterwards. Nice. Thank you.
22:35
Speaker 3: And David was not the only person contacting us regarding
22:39
Speaker 3: who may be the Unabomber. When I got to San
22:42
Speaker 3: Francisco in summer of 95, they had 2,500 suspects. Some named,
22:48
Speaker 3: some unnamed, a lot of ex-husbands in there too, of course,
22:52
Speaker 3: and former lawyers. But none of them carried any weight
22:56
Speaker 3: at that point. So the two-part question I get is,
23:01
Speaker 3: if the brother never turned him in, Yet you still
23:04
Speaker 3: had his writings. Would you still have been able to
23:07
Speaker 3: identify and arrest them? And I said, yes. And I
23:10
Speaker 3: put this in my third book. We had a plan
23:13
Speaker 3: to start doing deep dive archives around the country and
23:18
Speaker 3: different newspapers and magazines and looking for topics such as
23:24
Speaker 3: the anti-environment, industrial revolution, and a lot of the keywords
23:30
Speaker 3: that he used in the manifesto. And now this is before,
23:35
Speaker 3: and the internet was around, but the search engines were
23:38
Speaker 3: in 95, 96, next to nothing. So this would have
23:41
Speaker 3: been actually getting a team of agents in each division
23:44
Speaker 3: and around the country to knock New York Times, can
23:47
Speaker 3: we look through your archives of all your letters to
23:49
Speaker 3: the editor? Yes. Atlantic Magazine, Life Magazine back in the day.
23:55
Speaker 3: And I think we would have found that letter I
23:57
Speaker 3: just mentioned to Saturday Evening Magazine. You can't eat your
24:01
Speaker 3: cake and have it too. But even without that, He
24:03
Speaker 3: wrote a lot of letters to different magazines, signing his
24:06
Speaker 3: name and complaining about different things in society. I think
24:10
Speaker 3: he would have been on a list of a number
24:12
Speaker 3: of other people that we would have checked out. And
24:14
Speaker 3: I think eventually we would have gotten him. Now, to
24:19
Speaker 3: answer the ultimate question you just asked me, if he
24:22
Speaker 3: never wrote, would we have caught him? And it's very possible,
24:27
Speaker 3: it's very possible, Elisa, that we may not have. We'd
24:30
Speaker 3: have to get lucky with fingerprints or DNA on one
24:33
Speaker 3: of the devices or him practicing out in the woods.
24:37
Speaker 3: Someone hears an explosion and calls the police and they
24:41
Speaker 3: put two and two together at that point. But it's
24:44
Speaker 3: very possible if he didn't do his writing. And I've
24:46
Speaker 3: said this before, it's really his hubris. It's his personality.
24:52
Speaker 3: His wanting to be not identified, but wanting to be
24:54
Speaker 3: known and having this cause, which may or may not
24:58
Speaker 3: have been a legitimate cause. Because as I've told people,
25:01
Speaker 3: if you read the manifesto, much of it is derivative,
25:04
Speaker 3: to use that word again, of other people before him.
25:07
Speaker 3: He's not the first one upset with the Industrial Revolution
25:10
Speaker 3: or with modern society and how it's progressing. A French
25:14
Speaker 3: philosopher named Jacques Yule wrote a whole book that Kaczynski
25:19
Speaker 3: heavily referenced, yet he never cited him in the manifesto. Interesting.
25:23
Speaker 3: He cited other people, but he borrowed a lot from him.
25:26
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying Kaczynski wasn't brilliant. He was a
25:29
Speaker 3: genius in his own right. But I really think this
25:32
Speaker 3: whole anti-industrial revolution and modern technological society was more of
25:41
Speaker 3: a ruse to cover up a term that I didn't
25:46
Speaker 3: have back in the mid-90s working the case, but I've
25:49
Speaker 3: assigned to him since then. I believe firmly he was
25:52
Speaker 3: an incel, involuntarily celibate. He was one of these guys,
25:57
Speaker 3: he could not meet the woman that satisfied him. No
26:02
Speaker 3: woman really paid attention to him. He wasn't a bad
26:05
Speaker 3: looking guy. He was brilliant. You know, he was trim, fit,
26:09
Speaker 3: all these things, but he just did not have the
26:12
Speaker 3: socialization skills to, to, to, to get into a relationship
26:18
Speaker 3: with someone. And I wrote his, he wrote, he wrote
26:20
Speaker 3: a thousand different documents that we found in his cabin,
26:24
Speaker 3: his autobiography, his memoir, his journal, his diary. notes. And
26:30
Speaker 3: many times he wrote about women in his life and
26:32
Speaker 3: how he thought he got close and, and, but they
26:35
Speaker 3: turned them down or they wouldn't, he was too nervous
26:37
Speaker 3: to approach them. He wrote, he's a virgin. He never
26:41
Speaker 3: had sex with a woman. He said he's a straight male,
26:44
Speaker 3: never interested in homosexual. A lot of people forget he
26:48
Speaker 3: was confused in the mid sixties and he went to
26:50
Speaker 3: the University of Michigan psychology office and he wanted to be,
26:55
Speaker 3: he wanted to be a woman. So all the trans
26:57
Speaker 3: stuff we're talking about now.
26:58
Speaker 1: Really?
26:59
Speaker 3: Back in the mid-60s. Yeah, this is public information. He
27:03
Speaker 3: went to a psychologist there saying, all these sexual issues
27:07
Speaker 3: I have, I can't meet a woman, they won't have
27:09
Speaker 3: sex with me, whatever. He's still working on his PhD
27:12
Speaker 3: at University of Michigan. He goes to this shrink and
27:15
Speaker 3: he writes it in great detail in his autobiography. And
27:20
Speaker 3: he said, he talked to the shrink and he basically
27:23
Speaker 3: wanted surgery the next week. And the shrink sat with
27:26
Speaker 3: him and said, well, Mr. Kaczynski, here's what we're going
27:31
Speaker 3: to do. We're still in the mid-60s. We're not in
27:33
Speaker 3: the 2000s yet. I'm kidding about that part. But he said, look,
27:37
Speaker 3: we're going to talk for about a year, just the
27:40
Speaker 3: two of us. Let's see where your feelings are. And
27:42
Speaker 3: then maybe after that, we'll prescribe some medications to you
27:46
Speaker 3: for a few years. Then depending where we are in
27:48
Speaker 3: the three to five years, we'll consider doing some of
27:52
Speaker 3: these exploratory surgeries we have now. even back in the 60s. Wow.
27:58
Speaker 3: And according to Ted in his own writings, he said, thanks,
28:01
Speaker 3: but no thanks. Got up out of the room, slammed
28:03
Speaker 3: the door, walked outside and said, hell with it. I'll
28:06
Speaker 3: stay a man. But I am now convinced it's people
28:09
Speaker 3: like him I want to kill. I will kill people
28:12
Speaker 3: like him when the time is right. They deserve to die. Now,
28:15
Speaker 3: he never took out a psychologist or psychiatrist or even
28:18
Speaker 3: a medical doctor, but he complained about them a lot
28:21
Speaker 3: in the manifesto. And it took them about 12 years
28:23
Speaker 3: from then 1978 to start his bombings. And it was
28:29
Speaker 3: an eclectic mix of victims, but all related to university
28:33
Speaker 3: and airlines early on, then computer stores a bit later
28:36
Speaker 3: after that, then a little bit more after that. So
28:38
Speaker 3: he was a confused guy. And I will say he
28:41
Speaker 3: was brilliant. And I'll still say to this day, there's,
28:46
Speaker 3: I think, 28 chapters in his manifesto, the way he
28:50
Speaker 3: set it up, like a broken clock, which is right
28:53
Speaker 3: twice a day. Maybe in each chapter, there's a bullet
28:56
Speaker 3: or a thought he put in there that had some
28:59
Speaker 3: credibility and validity to it. And even today, maybe that
29:03
Speaker 3: we are too much dependent on technology with our cell
29:06
Speaker 3: phones and fit watches and everything else that we're on
29:09
Speaker 3: all the time. And he may have been right about
29:14
Speaker 3: things like that, but of course he didn't have to
29:16
Speaker 3: bomb and kill people to get his point across. But again,
29:19
Speaker 3: I think it comes back to him being an incel.
29:22
Speaker 3: I think a lot of these mass shooters today, the
29:24
Speaker 3: younger men, And sometimes trans people, they're just so confused sexually.
29:28
Speaker 3: You rarely see any of them with like a girlfriend
29:31
Speaker 3: or a wife occasionally, but it's more rare than common.
29:36
Speaker 3: And I think that was the Unabomber situation too. Some
29:39
Speaker 3: of these guys like him, if they had a girlfriend,
29:42
Speaker 3: I'm not blaming women of the world. I'm just saying,
29:45
Speaker 3: if somehow he could have acquiesced and maybe it wasn't
29:47
Speaker 3: a perfect woman, I think he would have had a
29:50
Speaker 3: whole different philosophy on life and there would be three
29:52
Speaker 3: people still alive and two dozen more that haven't been
29:55
Speaker 3: that grossly disfigured.
29:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Manhunt devotes almost an entire episode to Ted's past,
30:15
Speaker 2: his childhood, and entering Harvard at 16, and his isolation,
30:21
Speaker 2: and the psychological experiments that he participated in there. And
30:25
Speaker 2: they are particularly disturbing. And there has been a lot
30:29
Speaker 2: of speculation about what role those experiments.
30:32
Speaker 1: Played in Ted's later life. Do you think that people
30:35
Speaker 1: make too much of that connection?
30:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just up front, in the Manhunt Unabomber series,
30:41
Speaker 3: there were eight episodes, about an hour each, give or take,
30:44
Speaker 3: maybe 45 minutes each. That was episode six. I had
30:47
Speaker 3: nothing to do with that episode. It was a whole
30:50
Speaker 3: different actor who played a young Ted. Just like when
30:53
Speaker 3: I reviewed the present Netflix Unabomber movie, I basically just
30:57
Speaker 3: skipped over those 20 segments. I actually counted. There were
31:01
Speaker 3: 20 segments each, if I got the number right, of
31:04
Speaker 3: 1995 Unabomber Task Force. trying to catch him in 1958, 59, Harvard.
31:12
Speaker 3: So what I will say is this. I read all
31:15
Speaker 3: of the cabin documents, as we called them, those 1,000
31:19
Speaker 3: documents found inside his cabin upon his arrest. They were
31:23
Speaker 3: really never meant for other humans to read. And they
31:28
Speaker 3: gave us a lot of evidence, of course, that he
31:30
Speaker 3: was the bomber. But at the same time, he talked
31:35
Speaker 3: about his Harvard days. He never once mentioned the Harvard experiments,
31:41
Speaker 3: MK Ultra, which that term wasn't even used in this
31:44
Speaker 3: current movie. It was used, I believe, in Manhunt Unabomber,
31:47
Speaker 3: that episode six. And it really, that is just something
31:53
Speaker 3: that is in this movie. And as far as anyone
31:56
Speaker 3: else knows, that's completely made up and fictionalized. It's going
32:00
Speaker 3: to be the dialogue. There was a professor named Henry Murray.
32:04
Speaker 3: There was something allegedly called MKUltra. They did work with
32:08
Speaker 3: the CIA and it had to do with like brainwashed
32:11
Speaker 3: prisoners of war back from the Korean War and how
32:14
Speaker 3: can they fight that or whatever. So I guess the
32:17
Speaker 3: argument could be MKUltra worked so well with Ted Kaczynski
32:21
Speaker 3: that he didn't even write about it. He didn't remember
32:24
Speaker 3: anything to do with it and he became the Unabomber.
32:27
Speaker 3: But by all accord, there were hundreds of people that
32:31
Speaker 3: went through those experiments in the late 50s, early 60s.
32:35
Speaker 3: And as far as we know, the only serial killer
32:37
Speaker 3: was Ted Kaczynski. So I think there had to be
32:39
Speaker 3: a whole other personal formula in his life, including his childhood.
32:46
Speaker 3: And he did highly resent his parents. They pushed him academically,
32:51
Speaker 3: but he feels they failed him socially and personally. And
32:56
Speaker 3: he truly disliked them. And some of the letters that
32:59
Speaker 3: he wrote to them over the years that we eventually
33:02
Speaker 3: had access to and his own personal writings in his cabin.
33:06
Speaker 3: He really, really disliked his parents. His father committed suicide.
33:10
Speaker 3: He was, we think he was so upset about, he
33:12
Speaker 3: didn't even know his son was a Unabomber, but he
33:15
Speaker 3: was upset that he, you know, I guess he failed
33:18
Speaker 3: his son or his son, this brilliant mathematician professor at Berkeley.
33:22
Speaker 3: And he quits all that and goes and lives in
33:24
Speaker 3: the woods like a hermit. And I think for whatever reason,
33:27
Speaker 3: complicated reason, the father killed himself. Ted didn't even bother
33:31
Speaker 3: going to the funeral. He didn't They got a letter
33:34
Speaker 3: from his brother. He didn't call the family until like
33:36
Speaker 3: two weeks afterwards. And they just said, hey, you have
33:39
Speaker 3: insurance money from dad? Well, yes. Can you send that
33:42
Speaker 3: to me? I need it. So here his mother sent
33:45
Speaker 3: him some money, which he was then using to fund
33:48
Speaker 3: his bus trips to San Francisco to plant more bombs
33:52
Speaker 3: or mail more bombs at that time. So yeah, a
33:54
Speaker 3: complicated personality sketch of this man. I mean, you can
33:59
Speaker 3: argue complicated. They later, through various psych evals, you know, paranoid, schizophrenic, whatever.
34:04
Speaker 3: But on top of all that or beneath all that,
34:08
Speaker 3: however you want to phrase it, he was an incel.
34:11
Speaker 3: And I just think highly frustrated. They did capture it well.
34:14
Speaker 3: This movie now got it all confused and mixed up.
34:17
Speaker 3: But in the real case, which Manhunt Unabomber covered well,
34:21
Speaker 3: for the two years he was living in Chicago, he
34:25
Speaker 3: left the cabin after six years, back to Chicago for
34:28
Speaker 3: two years. And that's when the bombing started. He was
34:31
Speaker 3: working at a company for his younger brother, David. David
34:34
Speaker 3: was his boss, seven years younger. Ted has a PhD
34:37
Speaker 3: in math, and he's doing very basic stuff at like
34:39
Speaker 3: a foam cutting company or something. And he asked some
34:44
Speaker 3: girl out, some woman out at the office. They meet
34:47
Speaker 3: for one night, make an apple pie. It seems he
34:50
Speaker 3: tries to kiss her, and she kind of, oh, no,
34:52
Speaker 3: this is just a friendly thing, Ted. You know, they
34:54
Speaker 3: were at her mother's house. And he got so upset
34:58
Speaker 3: the next morning he got in early. And he put
35:00
Speaker 3: all these like three inch by three inch post-its all
35:03
Speaker 3: around the office, calling her all these names. Her name's
35:07
Speaker 3: Ellen Tarmichael. She's a real person. She went public with this.
35:11
Speaker 3: I look at her news conference sometimes the day after
35:13
Speaker 3: he was arrested and she's thrust into the spotlight by
35:17
Speaker 3: the media and says, yeah, I knew him for like
35:20
Speaker 3: a couple of months. He worked in this office. We
35:22
Speaker 3: went out once and made an apple pie and he
35:26
Speaker 3: just couldn't resist himself and nothing happened. And he, you know,
35:30
Speaker 3: she said, that's it. You know, we're just friends at work. Wow.
35:32
Speaker 3: Friends with no benefits. And next thing you know, all
35:37
Speaker 3: these post-its are over the place, you know, insulting her
35:40
Speaker 3: body and her looks and other stuff. And David called
35:44
Speaker 3: him in. What have you done? This isn't just one
35:47
Speaker 3: note you left at her desk. You can apologize. They're over. Ted,
35:50
Speaker 3: I have to fire you.
35:50
Speaker 1: Trying to humiliate her, right?
35:52
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ted, I have to fire you. Okay.
35:54
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
35:55
Speaker 2: You know, for all the things that, we've already talked
35:58
Speaker 2: about that are inaccurate in the series. These sorts of
36:02
Speaker 2: specifics that are so almost impossible to believe are covered
36:08
Speaker 2: really accurately in the series. That is so disturbing. And
36:12
Speaker 2: so Ted was obviously an extraordinarily intelligent man. So do
36:16
Speaker 2: you think that his intelligence ultimately worked against him because
36:20
Speaker 2: he became convinced that he was smarter than everybody else?
36:24
Speaker 2: And certainly everyone trying to catch him?
36:27
Speaker 3: In his case, it did, but I'm certainly not going
36:29
Speaker 3: to denigrate intelligent people. We have a lot of very
36:34
Speaker 3: intelligent people out there that are sending rockets to the
36:36
Speaker 3: moon or other places or trying to electric cars, whether
36:39
Speaker 3: you like politics or not. There are very brilliant people
36:42
Speaker 3: out there that aren't going around killing other people or
36:45
Speaker 3: putting notes all over the walls of some woman who
36:49
Speaker 3: won't go even halfway to first base the night of
36:54
Speaker 3: their Apple birthday. baking event. So, so I think it's
37:00
Speaker 3: a combination of things with Ted. Probably going to Harvard
37:05
Speaker 3: at 16 did not help him, but I'm sure his parents,
37:09
Speaker 3: you know, working class parents in Chicago were so proud
37:12
Speaker 3: of their young Ted and that he could, you know, get,
37:14
Speaker 3: you know, that achievement at such an early age. I'm
37:17
Speaker 3: certainly not going to blame the parents for pushing their
37:20
Speaker 3: son academically. A lot of other parents have done that
37:23
Speaker 3: over the years and continue to do so. So, people
37:26
Speaker 3: will throw out the term perfect storm. It can apply
37:28
Speaker 3: to a lot of different things, but I think, you know, psychologically, emotionally, environmentally, domestically,
37:36
Speaker 3: you know, academically, all these things came together in many
37:41
Speaker 3: ways on the negative side of their individual, you know, algorithms,
37:47
Speaker 3: if you will. And it just hit a spot with
37:51
Speaker 3: a guy that just said, I just can't, you know,
37:54
Speaker 3: I can't deal with this and I got to do
37:56
Speaker 3: something about it. And it took him years. I mean,
37:59
Speaker 3: he was in 19, I think he was, you know,
38:03
Speaker 3: about 30 when the bombing started in Chicago, living at home,
38:07
Speaker 3: making his bombs in the attic in his parents' house
38:11
Speaker 3: under there, right under their noses, which of course they
38:13
Speaker 3: didn't know anything about it. And, and it just, he
38:17
Speaker 3: just had to kill other people. He so resented academia that,
38:21
Speaker 3: that they were his original targets. Because again, he got
38:25
Speaker 3: hired at Berkeley, not a bad school, certainly academically back then,
38:31
Speaker 3: on the tenure track for mathematics. And no one questioned
38:36
Speaker 3: his knowledge of the field of mathematics, but he just
38:40
Speaker 3: didn't get along with his students. He didn't get along
38:42
Speaker 3: with fellow faculty members. And whether he would have made
38:47
Speaker 3: tenure or not, who knows, some of that is You know,
38:50
Speaker 3: political is not just how much you know of your field.
38:53
Speaker 3: You've got to be able to work with your fellow
38:56
Speaker 3: academics and you've got to be able to get grant money,
38:58
Speaker 3: things like that, and get good ratings from your students,
39:02
Speaker 3: things like that, too. So just a confused guy that
39:06
Speaker 3: everything possibly in his brain that could go wrong, smart
39:10
Speaker 3: enough to know how to make bombs. And that was
39:12
Speaker 3: his recourse. Yeah.
39:14
Speaker 2: So do you think he, as you said, he eventually
39:17
Speaker 2: walked away from an academic career and modern society and
39:21
Speaker 2: moves to this tiny cabin, but so without electricity or
39:24
Speaker 2: running water, to be clear. So do you think that
39:26
Speaker 2: that was really about rejecting technology or was it about
39:30
Speaker 2: rejecting people?
39:32
Speaker 3: Oh, definitely rejecting people. I mean, he did have a
39:35
Speaker 3: transistor radio he kept in the cabin and he knew
39:38
Speaker 3: enough about batteries. You can argue batteries are advanced technology.
39:43
Speaker 3: He would have those for his IEDs, his improvised explosive devices.
39:48
Speaker 3: So yeah, he would cheat enough in the world of
39:51
Speaker 3: technology to get by. But I will give him credit.
39:55
Speaker 3: A lot of people talk about living off the grid. Nowadays,
39:57
Speaker 3: that term wasn't really around back then. But he did
40:00
Speaker 3: put his money where his mouth was, and he moved
40:02
Speaker 3: to a hillside in the middle of Montana. And that
40:06
Speaker 3: would have been fine. No one would have questioned anything then.
40:08
Speaker 3: He could have written his journals and his documents, even
40:10
Speaker 3: mailed them manifestos to the or at least be willing
40:18
Speaker 3: to listen to him. But instead, he had to kill
40:20
Speaker 3: people and representational targets that, you know, to some people
40:25
Speaker 3: to this day made really no sense. And again, he
40:28
Speaker 3: chose airlines. We knew they were representational targets, the earliest
40:34
Speaker 3: profiles that John Douglas put together that I came along
40:38
Speaker 3: and revamped and updated once the manifesto was received. And
40:43
Speaker 3: he bombed airlines because as he wrote in his private
40:46
Speaker 3: papers in his cabin, They were flying over his head
40:49
Speaker 3: at 30,000 feet, leaving contrails. And if they were a
40:54
Speaker 3: little bit lower, sometimes he thinks he could hear them.
40:57
Speaker 3: He eventually went after a lumber, uh, forestry executive because
41:02
Speaker 3: he could hear a sawmill that opened up about a
41:04
Speaker 3: mile from his cabin. I can hear the sawmill going,
41:07
Speaker 3: you know, in the middle of the day and that
41:08
Speaker 3: disturbed them. Universities just had to do with, he just
41:12
Speaker 3: hated his university experience, everything that it entailed. And, uh,
41:17
Speaker 3: And that's why those early bombs were to them also.
41:22
Speaker 3: So then he expanded the computer stores, whatever. And you
41:25
Speaker 3: think about it, here's a guy that got a mathematics
41:27
Speaker 3: degree that back then, and if you watch the movie,
41:30
Speaker 3: what's it called? A Beautiful Mind.
41:32
Speaker 2: Yes.
41:33
Speaker 3: Russell Crowe was in that, interestingly, coincidentally. Back then, mathematicians
41:38
Speaker 3: had to sit with a piece of paper or maybe
41:40
Speaker 3: a blackboard, including windows they would write on, and to
41:44
Speaker 3: figure out their advanced skills. mathematical formulae to figure out
41:51
Speaker 3: these math problems. So here's this guy, he gets his
41:55
Speaker 3: PhD in the mid-60s in mathematics, and within five to
42:00
Speaker 3: ten years, there's these computers, they're giant, they're the size
42:04
Speaker 3: of a room perhaps, but they can figure out these
42:07
Speaker 3: math problems back then in minutes, now it's seconds, that
42:11
Speaker 3: it would take him weeks and months to figure out.
42:14
Speaker 3: And it had to be very upsetting to him.
42:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the fear of his own extinction, right?
42:20
Speaker 3: That's right. But you think a lot of mathematicians around
42:22
Speaker 3: that said, all right, I did a lot of hard
42:24
Speaker 3: work getting my PhD, all this stuff. You know what?
42:27
Speaker 3: It's a lot easier now. This gives me time. Then,
42:29
Speaker 3: all right, I can figure out the formula and the results.
42:32
Speaker 3: Now I have more time to figure out what to
42:34
Speaker 3: do with it. Or maybe some other formula or some
42:38
Speaker 3: quagmire that we can't figure out in the math world.
42:41
Speaker 3: So that's how a normal person, quote, unquote, would have
42:45
Speaker 3: handled the advent of the computer world. But not Ted
42:48
Speaker 3: Kaczynski with everything else mixed into his head and his
42:54
Speaker 3: lack of social skills. Yeah. It just wasn't meant to
42:57
Speaker 3: be for him. Right.
43:13
Speaker 2: So the agents found bomb components, extensive writings, and a
43:18
Speaker 2: completed bomb in the cabin. So after 17 years of
43:22
Speaker 2: chasing someone who had managed to remain essentially invisible, what
43:25
Speaker 2: was it like finally seeing the physical proof of the
43:30
Speaker 2: life that he had been leading?
43:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were a few people on the task force
43:35
Speaker 3: that had spent almost 17 years chasing him down, a
43:38
Speaker 3: few older guys. I guess I'm an older guy now,
43:41
Speaker 3: but But I was brand new to the task force,
43:44
Speaker 3: getting there at the 17-year mark. And nine months later,
43:48
Speaker 3: we had the Unabomber in custody. It's a nice feeling
43:52
Speaker 3: to know that I had some role in that, certainly
43:54
Speaker 3: with the language analysis. Oh, it was a remarkable day.
43:59
Speaker 3: I was back in headquarters, I should say in San
44:02
Speaker 3: Francisco office, really doing the last minute details. Because as
44:06
Speaker 3: I told you, CBS had a leak. that the Unabomber
44:11
Speaker 3: was living in Lincoln, Montana. And we had to get
44:15
Speaker 3: some last minute things together. So I stayed back. Another
44:18
Speaker 3: team went to Montana. There had been some there already.
44:22
Speaker 3: And they decided to make the arrest on April 3rd,
44:25
Speaker 3: a few weeks before it was the original plan to
44:27
Speaker 3: do so. But once, you know, the first thing, of course,
44:30
Speaker 3: is safety and security of everyone involved, law enforcement, as
44:33
Speaker 3: well as the Unabomber. And once we confirmed he's in handcuffs,
44:36
Speaker 3: no injuries, great news. Then we had to wait about
44:41
Speaker 3: three days to render safe the cabin because we knew
44:45
Speaker 3: this guy was a bomber and he could have easily
44:47
Speaker 3: hooked up booby traps, trip lines, anything like that. So
44:51
Speaker 3: he was still sitting in some kind of a tent
44:53
Speaker 3: they put up there, Mrs. Kaczynski. They kept him there
44:55
Speaker 3: about three hours and they had a right to put
44:58
Speaker 3: him in custody, even though just with a search warrant.
45:03
Speaker 3: So he couldn't flee the scene, whatever. And it must
45:06
Speaker 3: have killed him. We all agreed to watch the little robot.
45:09
Speaker 3: climb up this little ramp to go inside his cabin
45:13
Speaker 3: and then search. And it was an old fashioned robot
45:15
Speaker 3: with the calipers on it and, you know, but had
45:17
Speaker 3: a camera and it could move things around. So if
45:20
Speaker 3: it did triple wire, it wouldn't hurt a human. So
45:23
Speaker 3: that must've driven him nuts. And, um, uh, so, uh,
45:28
Speaker 3: but yeah, the agents were definitely happy with that. I
45:31
Speaker 3: got to add this in here. I think the ending
45:34
Speaker 3: of Manhunt Unabomber was fine. Uh, I made sure early
45:38
Speaker 3: on I don't want Kaczynski being made into a hero.
45:42
Speaker 3: You can show his life. Maybe he had some rough
45:45
Speaker 3: patches in his life. We all do. But you don't
45:47
Speaker 3: go out and kill people because of it. I'm sorry.
45:50
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm old school that way, but that's me. And
45:52
Speaker 3: they held true to that. Yes. This movie bothered me because,
45:58
Speaker 3: as I kiddingly said, the Unabomber movie transitioned me without
46:02
Speaker 3: even telling me they were doing it. It was a
46:05
Speaker 3: female agent portraying me, Jim Fitzgerald, who of course changed
46:09
Speaker 3: her name. And there's a number of things in there
46:12
Speaker 3: that she is my character. I can tell that. The
46:14
Speaker 3: linguistic part, she was shipped in, you know, near the
46:17
Speaker 3: end of the investigation. There's that part. But at the
46:20
Speaker 3: very end of all the stuff they did, at the
46:22
Speaker 3: very last scene with her, agent Joanne Miller was her name,
46:26
Speaker 3: not a real agent. She's sitting at her desk after
46:29
Speaker 3: some high fives for resting in the bottle. Here's a
46:32
Speaker 3: tear coming down her face. Okay, I get literary license
46:38
Speaker 3: and it's the end of a culmination of a hard work. Okay, well,
46:43
Speaker 3: Fitz didn't cry after we arrested a Unabomber. But worse
46:48
Speaker 3: than that, the very next scene is real footage of
46:52
Speaker 3: the real Ted Kaczynski. They don't cite it. I don't
46:55
Speaker 3: know the proof of it, but they have a voiceover
46:58
Speaker 3: of him looking into the camera in his prison cell
47:01
Speaker 3: in the Supermax. And there's a voice saying, reading off,
47:07
Speaker 3: there's a voice stating, hey, I'm paraphrasing here. Yeah, I
47:11
Speaker 3: realize that people think I'm some kind of a role
47:14
Speaker 3: model for them and their revolutionary causes. Well, if they're
47:18
Speaker 3: going to get things done, if they're going to fight
47:19
Speaker 3: this revolution, then use me and take care of it
47:23
Speaker 3: by any means necessary. The end. Do we really need
47:29
Speaker 3: to put this message out to younger people today to
47:33
Speaker 3: make him You can call him a hero or not.
47:36
Speaker 3: And the whole unannoying focus on the Russell Crowe, Harvard scenes,
47:44
Speaker 3: that can go either way. But they did not have
47:46
Speaker 3: to put the actual Ted Kaczynski at the end. And
47:48
Speaker 3: these people now that have issues with CEOs of insurance
47:52
Speaker 3: companies or someone who goes on campuses and says stuff
47:55
Speaker 3: they don't like, oh, okay, we can just kill them
47:57
Speaker 3: by any means necessary. Sure. And I have a big
48:01
Speaker 3: problem with that. We certainly didn't end. the Manhunt Unabomber
48:04
Speaker 3: series that way, or my book. But I was very bothered.
48:08
Speaker 3: The factual stuff, Unabomber got wrong on Netflix, whatever. A
48:13
Speaker 3: woman betraying me, whatever. But those last two scenes really
48:16
Speaker 3: bothered me. Right.
48:17
Speaker 1: It's somehow legitimizing what he's done.
48:21
Speaker 2: Like it's such a clear, we talk about this a lot,
48:24
Speaker 2: or I do, on this podcast that it's, you know,
48:29
Speaker 2: dramatic license is one thing, but there's a very clear
48:31
Speaker 2: line between exploiting someone's pain and or actions and doing
48:38
Speaker 2: it as a sort of cautionary tale or helping to
48:42
Speaker 2: explain the human experience.
48:45
Speaker 1: But it's very clear. It's a fine line, but it's
48:47
Speaker 1: very clear, I think.
48:49
Speaker 2: So how, and to that end, warnings about technology today,
48:55
Speaker 2: how do we... You know, there's something uncomfortable about hearing
49:01
Speaker 2: all of that today when we're living with smartphones, social media, algorithms, AI.
49:05
Speaker 2: So how do we acknowledge that some of the questions
49:09
Speaker 2: that he raised still resonate without turning a murderer into
49:13
Speaker 2: some kind of a misunderstood prophet?
49:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's definitely misunderstood. I know. you just used the
49:20
Speaker 3: term prophet, but I certainly wouldn't call him that. I
49:24
Speaker 3: think without the Unabomber, his manifesto or anything he ever
49:28
Speaker 3: really borrowed, if not stole from others well before him,
49:33
Speaker 3: I think we would still be asking questions about you know,
49:39
Speaker 3: certainly young children with, with cell phones and being glued
49:41
Speaker 3: to them. And, you know, so many hours a day,
49:44
Speaker 3: people not engaging with actual, in actual human interaction with
49:48
Speaker 3: one another, as opposed to, you know, doing it digitally
49:52
Speaker 3: on the phone. And I remember 20 years ago, walking
49:55
Speaker 3: the coffee shops, maybe even a little restaurant or pub.
49:58
Speaker 3: And there's like, like five, like college age students sitting
50:01
Speaker 3: around and they're all on their phones, not talking. And
50:05
Speaker 3: I would kid around and maybe I knew one of
50:07
Speaker 3: them or, Or afterwards, were you texting each other then? Or, oh, no,
50:11
Speaker 3: it was other people. Okay, kind of weird. But that's,
50:15
Speaker 3: I see some adults my age doing that now. I
50:18
Speaker 3: really work hard to not do that myself. And my
50:21
Speaker 3: kids are older. I have grandkids. The phones go away
50:24
Speaker 3: at dinnertime. They're going to be in my house. No
50:26
Speaker 3: phones at the table, at least for that 10 or
50:28
Speaker 3: 15 minutes that we're eating. And that's certainly what we try.
50:32
Speaker 3: If there's something you have to pick a kid up
50:34
Speaker 3: or someone's in the hospital, that's different. but for just,
50:36
Speaker 3: you know, routine scrolling of sports scores or something like that.
50:41
Speaker 3: And my kids, you know, I have grandkids now, and
50:44
Speaker 3: my children are pretty good with their children. You know,
50:47
Speaker 3: screen time is a half hour a day. That's it.
50:50
Speaker 3: And mom knows and dad exactly what they're looking at.
50:53
Speaker 3: I think my oldest is nine, finally has a, you know,
50:56
Speaker 3: a fit watch, whatever, but it's highly restricted. It's like
50:59
Speaker 3: four people she can communicate with.
51:01
Speaker 2: It's like a second career having to manage that stuff
51:03
Speaker 2: as a parent, I can say personally.
51:06
Speaker 1: But the diligence is important. I feel like it's life-saving.
51:12
Speaker 1: It's mandatory.
51:13
Speaker 3: And I think our own human nature and how we
51:16
Speaker 3: were raised, how your parents were raised, we didn't need
51:19
Speaker 3: a Unabomber or a Ted Kaczynski to tell us that.
51:22
Speaker 3: If he happened to be that broken clock a few
51:24
Speaker 3: times in his manifesto, fine. But he borrowed those– He
51:30
Speaker 3: borrowed those artifacts, if you will, from others before him. Right.
51:35
Speaker 3: And others maybe take them from others even before. Think
51:38
Speaker 3: back to the Middle Ages and people who thought the
51:41
Speaker 3: sun wasn't the center of the universe and how they
51:43
Speaker 3: were criticized, things like that. So, yeah. So it's a
51:47
Speaker 3: complicated world, but it really isn't. And I like where
51:50
Speaker 3: some of these countries, I think Australia, maybe a few others,
51:54
Speaker 3: have at least said no social media for anyone under 16. Yep.
51:59
Speaker 3: Enforcing that. Easier said than done. I get it. But
52:02
Speaker 3: when the parents have to say, hey, it's against the law,
52:05
Speaker 3: little Johnny. No, you're not having a phone. We'll give
52:08
Speaker 3: you a flip phone. We'll blame the government. Let them
52:10
Speaker 3: be the bad guys. We also agree with this at
52:12
Speaker 3: the same time. So if, yeah, I'm not going to
52:16
Speaker 3: give the Unabomber any credit for that. I think anyone
52:18
Speaker 3: with common sense would also realize that. Right.
52:21
Speaker 2: Well, James, this has been so fascinating. I honestly could
52:25
Speaker 2: talk to you for many hours. The Manhunt Unabomber is
52:29
Speaker 2: streaming online. And James, thank you so, so much for
52:34
Speaker 2: talking with me today.
52:35
Speaker 3: You are very welcome, Lisa. And you have a great
52:37
Speaker 3: rest of your day. And thanks for inviting me on
52:40
Speaker 3: Killer Thriller Podcast.
52:42
Speaker 1: Thank you.