Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski Read online

  Suspicion turned to irritation when they moved up my gulch. One afternoon the plane circled four or five times over an area where I had some heavy equipment parked. What was going on.-^

  Satirday, Ji ne 15, 1996 [Chris Waits journal]

  I talk to Butch [Gehring, who lives and operates a sawmill near Ted's cabin] about planes flying low up my gulch. I wonder what they're doing. I ask Butch if it's him, he says no. He says that the agents are searching for something and that he thinks that there are firearms involved. He doesn't know. Mentions cliffs, water dries up in the fall, rockslide, diagonal rock, herbs in vegetation. I say I bet whatever it is, it's up here.

  I talked to Butch and after he explained who it was and what they were doing, I was relieved. I had even started to wonder if I was being investigated as an accomplice.

  The aircraft moved once again to another area, north and east of my gulch, and then the flying stopped altogether. Had they found what they were looking for.'^ Most likely not. The terrain was far too rugged to yield secrets to agents in a plane that far overhead.

  My theory that the search by air had been unsuccessful was confirmed during the next few days as I saw FBI vehicles parked in different areas along the Stemple Road and the surrounding gulches while agents searched on foot. I even saw a small boat sticking out of the back of one of their pickups—even though there are few waters for boating in the area.

  Monday, June 17, 1996

  FBI is out. I see them out looking for some hidden

  kind of cache, stash or something. I talk to [F'BI Special Agent] Dave Weber and [U.S. Forest Service Officer] Jerry Burns. I see them around all over Stemple. I tell Dave how much Ted accessed the gulch and all the time he spent there. No reaction to reveal info. Jerry, Dave and a woman visit my house. Dave seems interested in returning. I wonder. I offer to help. They ask to go up the gulch. I say I would take them.

  One afternoon while I was out working in the yard, Jerry Burns and Dave Weber drove up in Burns' white Ford Forest Service pickup. When they got out I noticed a woman I didn't recognize was with them; she stayed in the truck (I found out later she was Weber's wife, Sue).

  Eager to find out what all the searching was about, I approached them, ready to offer my help. Dave asked me if they could go up the gulch. When I asked why, he said he wanted to talk to the person who owned the machinery. I replied, "You are talking to him." Jerry knows I own the whole gulch and everything in it. I then said they were welcome to go up and that I would take them. They seemed less interested after I said Fd go along.

  Jerry asked several pointed questions about one drainage in particular. I said there wasn't any machinery there.

  I had gotten to know Weber that year, and Burns and I go back many years. We had even worked together at the Forest Service in the mid-'70s. So I probed deeper, trying to dislodge a few more details about the object of the intense search. I dropped a few clues, but got little response. Our discussion seemed vague; nothing was confirmed.

  I understood the integrity of the case couldn't be compromised, but I told Dave if we could trust each other I was sure I could help. I went on to say Ted spent a great deal of time in this gulch. It's all private but he had permission to be here. He used to cross Stemple Road, drop over a small ridge just below the house and then head up the gulch.

  Dave appeared interested. He was polite and said he would return at a later date. I didn't know what to think. Dave thanked me for taking the time to talk to them, then they departed.

  Now ccn more keenly curious about their interest in the gulch and the real object of their search, I was determined not to waste any more time, and planned to go out the follow ing day and begin my ow n search. Maybe after I foimd something the agents would take me more seriously.

  TrESDAYjlNE 18, 1996

  I am suspicious and go up the gulch alone and start looking for I don't e"en know w hat. Go up the main gulch. Meet led's lawyers at the center [Lincoln (Center for the Performing Arts, in Lincoln] for an inter iew in afternoon. They say Ted would like me to isit him.

  As June started to turn to July, I spent every spare moment in the woods. The first days were discouraging. Then I started to pick up subtle but definite signs of Ted's habits. Alongside a steep game trail I sighted chest-high blazes carefully cut with his hatchet into two lodgepole pines. From the appearance of the scarred cambium and the bark curled back into the cuts, the blazes looked about twenty years old.

  Several days later, on June 25, I walked through a beautiful and secluded spot. A small spring—with water so clear each gray and reddish stone that made this natural mosaic was visible—fiowed under my feet. Moss clung to e"ery inch of the forest floor, light green and puffy proud about its existence. It w as like an unspoiled section of coastal rain forest. The roots of Englemann spruce and Douglas-fir searched, exposed like heax^; muscular spider legs, for a firm hold in the boggy bottom: chest-high ostrich plume ferns carpeted the forest floor.

  Just above the mossy spring I found a hidden, but well-used, campsite and a hollow ed-out log Ted had used as a bed. The log cavity was a perfect fit for his lean 5'9", 140-pound frame. He didn't pack an ounce of fat: any city softness was worn away years ago on these mountain trails. Buried behind the log were a small plastic tarp, used as a cover w hen the thin mountain air chilled toward evening, and an aluminum cooking pot. A large, hard, red Douglas-fir stump just six paces from a spot where Ted would build his fire had been a great source

  of starter and kindling; hatchet marks showed where he had spht hundreds of spHnters from the stump. Dry and saturated with pitch, they would easily ignite with a match. There wasn't an obvious firepit. Ted had always been careful to cover any signs of his presence, especially in firemaking. To an untrained eye the many bleached-out deer bones scattered about would look like the remains of animal kills. But on close inspection the knife and hatchet marks of a hungry meat hunter were evident. I even found part of a broken arrow lying in the brush just down from this spot. The tip was broken off.

  Below this campsite, near a game trail, I found a stash of firewood chopped into various lengths, piled together and covered with a large piece of fir bark; a nice supply of dry firewood for someone caught out in a storm. A red pine squirrel also had chosen this spot to hide his winter supply of pine cones. In preparing his larder, the squirrel had moved Ted's fir bark cover and exposed hatcheted ends of the limbs and poles that caught my eye as I walked along the trail. Ted had learned his back-country lessons well, and he obviously could live for extended periods in the woods.

  This must have been a hunting camp; a most perfect and private place, the kind of place Ted loved.

  Ted spent plenty of time in my gulch. I often saw him, even when he didn't see me, walking along a heavily wooded trail above the old mining tailings on the lower mile of my land. I hadn't cared, he'd been my friend and neighbor for twenty-five years. He had permission to be there, but he was the only one who had that permission.

  Saturday, July 6, 1996

  Went back up gulch to the end where it forks. I take Butch with me. I show him firewood cache and campsite. We hike up to some cliffs and caves. We find where some caves have been cleaned out and enlarged. Nothing major found. W^e talk about case all day.

  In mid-July, I found two caves Ted had used, slender natural breaks in argillite outcroppings that opened into comfortable caverns big enough for a rough bed of pine boughs. Toward the back of one cave I found candles, canned food and empty cans with jagged, sharp, open

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  lids. \'hcnccr led ate fruit or vegetables from a ean, he opened the top w ith a hiintini; knife he always earried, leaving a dan^erous-look-in^z; lid, still hinged to the ean. When finished, he would toss the ean into his eampfire, whieh often was started with the torn-off label. He would burn the eans until they were quite charred; a charred can will rust and decompose rapidly, especially when buried. Then he'd go to great extremes to bury the cans in the firepit and cover everything with soil an
d pine needles. Whenever I found one of these old firepits, Vd dig into it and fmd raggbd, sharp topped, burned cans. They were one of his signatures, as personal as his fingerprint. I unearthed these cans wherever Ted stayed on my place, even under loose floorboards of an old miner's cabin I own about a mile above home. I searched the cabin because I had seen Ted there often and knew he had camped there overnight.

  Even with these finds, there were many, many days of fruitless searching. I would sight an occasional blazed tree, but the haphazard trail markers were a mystery. None of the clues seemed to interlock, none seemed to develop into a pattern.

  Saturday, July 20, 1996 [Waits journal]

  Dave Weber stops by to visit with a couple of agents. I show him some wild vegetables. Dave won't tell me even what they are searching for. I tell Dave that I have been doing my ow^n search all summer and I wish I knew what I was looking for. I say if we have trust I can help. Dave asks for my notes. I refuse. I show him wild carrots. No response. Dave says he got the word. He can't talk about the case.

  Saturday, Aug. 17, 1996

  Continue search. I wish I knew what I was looking for. It must be really something good because the agents are still out searching. Haven't had any communication with agents for almost a month.

  Sunday, Aug. 18, 1996

  Whatever the agents are looking for I still think that

  it's up here in the gulch. Continue on the east side of the main gulch. This is discouraging, but I know how much Ted was in this gulch. It has to be here. I won't give up no matter what.

  In late August, I explored some of the rock outcroppings along the ridge. On August 31,1 found two blazed uees one third of the way to the top. What did they mean.'^ Maybe they marked a drop-off point or a place to turn off. In my journal I noted: "If the clues diagonal rock, rock cliff or rock slide mean anything, they all fit. Maybe I'm getting closer."

  If I was getting closer, so was winter. In my journals, I noted several futile searches of caves and crevices during September.

  Saturday, Sept. 28, 1996 [Waits jounral]

  Take the ridge trail to the top and come out. Find some newer blazed trees about 15 years old. They have to be Ted's—no one has been up here for years. I remember following Ted's tracks this way.

  On Tuesday, October 1,1 was running a dragline three quarters of a mile above home. When I shut down about 5:00 P.M. there was a loud blast in the direction of the ridge that echoed down through the gulch. The explosion sent my mind racing in speculation and changed the tenor of any exploration. No one was in the gulch. I knew that. The only entrance into the five drainages is a narrow throat guarded by our home, and the only access is a rutted, ten-foot-wide mountain road some eighty feet east of the house. Anyone ignoring the no trespassing signs would have been seen. Or, my wife Betty's dogs would have sounded a hard-to-ignore alarm.

  What if a deer, elk or small animal had triggered a booby trap.'^ What if Ted had a secret cache or a cave, with a bomb set on a time-delay switch to implode the entrance after, say, six months of his absence.^ I knew booby traps and bombs were probably hidden in the woods. They could be anywhere. I had been searching with great caution. Now the stakes were higher, and I would be even more careful.

  (Continue search on rid^c. I hac to find something. Tell Butch about blast I heard. He thought maybe could be seen from the air. I said Fm sure not. Mountains are too steep and hea y tree cover.

  The blast, and what caused it, ate away at me. But it also helped me focus on the ridge. Even if the explosives covered the entrance to a cache or a cave, there must be something visible—disturbed earth or freshly broken stones or tree branches. I was determined to chart my grid search of the ridge as long as the weather held, which wouldn't be long. Autumn and winter were in a teetering balance. Mornings found hoar frost on the forest grass and leaves. Darkness and evening came too quickly. Days and nights were almost of equal length.

  In mid-November, that first winter storm hit like a blast out of the north. Lincoln and its surrounding mountains were right on the edge of slow-moving molasses, cold air. Higher in the middle than along the edges, the bitter cold dome was centered over west central Canada, but its nose poked into northwestern Montana where it was gradually building up over the mountains. Warm, moist air was also moving in from the Pacific, rising aloft above the cold mass and taking a ride to dizzying heights over the mountains where all the moisture was being milked away, falling back to earth as snow. Mountains are especially good at producing moisture because of the way they lift warm air. They certainly were showing their character on November 17. At the same time, the jet stream was slicing in from northwest Washington, down over Missoula in w^estern Montana, and then easterly toward Great Falls, right along the frontal boundary, where it was energizing the storm. By the 19th, as the cold air stalled, much of western Montana was in its grip, almost paralyzed. Thousands w^ere without power as high w inds drove heavy snow and freezing rain, making life miserable.

  Around noon on November 22 near our home along the Stemple Pass Road, there was a slight break in the storm. As I stared out the back window of our house, I weighed whether or not to go out searching again. I didn't have any piano students scheduled for the afternoon, so I thought I might as well give it a trv. What would it hurt.^

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  I laced my high-top Wolverines, placed matches, a small flashlight, note pad and pencil in my fanny pack, grabbed my coat and headed out the door, realizing that darkness would cloak the mountain valleys by 5:30 P.M. here close to 46° north latitude. Wasting no more time I began my trip up the mountain. The outside thermometer registered just 18° Fahrenheit, but it was finally calm after five days of snow.

  I hadn't been on the mountain an hour when slight movement ahead caught my attention. I paused, cautiously moved around a large Douglas-fir, and spotted a four-point whitetail forty feet away browsing on a clump of short mountain maple bushes. He lifted his head, ears alert and nose twitching, trying to pick up my scent, and gazed toward me. We watched each other nearly thirty minutes, both frozen in our thoughts. Finally, it was time to get back to my journey, and I moved off in earnest. The buck sprang off to the north, flashing its tail through the trees.

  The day, which had started cold and overcast, stayed surprisingly calm. Barely a breeze blew through the mature lodgepole pine forest, with its scattering of fir, spruce, subalpine fir and junipers. The white snow cover and lack of bushy limbs close to the ground opened up the forest; I could see fifty yards or more in some spots. Huckleberry, wild rose, Oregon grape, red twinberry, and other low shrubs were put away for the winter, all covered by snow. Taller, scattered mountain maple, juniper shrub, alder, and serviceberry bushes stood above snow level, but their branches were arched heavily under the weight of the snow.

  The afternoon wore on and the sky began to blacken as I neared a summit. A Clark's nutcracker and a Steller's jay chattered from nearby trees, as if to mock me. The wind started to gust and the temperature was dropping. I reached a small meadow just 200 yards below the ridgetop. Fve always loved this spot, encircled by huge old gnarled Douglas-fir. Beargrass grows knee-high in large clumps. Deer and elk browse on the beargrass flowers when they bloom in the summer. But the animals won't touch the long, hollow straw-like stalks; that's been the bane of many a hunter on a sneak, to have the game startled by a loud snapping sound of the brittle stalks underfoot.

  The weather turned even worse and I decided to move around

  the moinuain to the south instead of toppin*^ out and oxer. More sheltered, this route w as proteeted from the strong w ind and hlowin*!; snow on the rid^etop. C'ontinuin^ south, I eontoured the mountain at the top of a deep ravine that had to be erossed. Lodgepole grew thiek on either side of the ravine, making it almost impossible to sneak through. The cjuarter-of-a-mile-wide thicket is the byproduct of a forest fire that swept through decades ago, pushed by strong, hot summer winds. Flames destroyed the old-growth trees, but at the same time the intense heat broke open th
e dormant lodgepole seeds, allowing them to grow as thick as hair on a dog's back. It's astounding how quickly these trees come back. They can regenerate in huge numbers, and, with no thinning, can completely cover large areas, growing only inches apart. These forests never mature; some eighty- to ninety-year-old trees are barely two inches in diameter.

  The going was really tough. F'allen poles lay scattered ever^ which way under the snow on the 70-degree slope, acting like deadly ski runners underfoot. The only saving grace of falling in such a thicket is you don't slide far before a tree catches you.

  Tiring, but fmally on the other side, I looked down toward a basin with a small creek running through the bottom some 1,500 feet below. A ridge ran to the southwest and I decided to follow it down, meandering back and forth in a continuing search, looking for tree blazes, markers, anything that would help direct my efforts.

  Snow and cold winds were swirling through the trees like the honor guard of another major winter storm. This would be the last search of the year.

  Exhausted, I wanted at least to explore a rock outcropping right below me. It was worth a final trv'. Formed by red argillite, a clay-based shale rock, the cliffs were cut and split by dozens of natural cracks and caves, much like those I had explored during the summer.

  Working my way down the slope, I cut fresh elk tracks in the snow, probably a small herd of eight or ten. Minutes later, in the middle of a sheltered thicket, three mature bull elk jumped up from beds where they had planned to spend the night. In the dimming light I couldn't see how many points each had, but I saw a lot of ivory tips on their antlers as they crashed through the thicket. Their yellow rumps disappeared in a flash. I took a deep breath and paused. The overwhelming