My brother the Unabomber

Jane Beresford
Radio 4's Taking a Stand

Ten years ago, the Unabomber was arrested by the FBI after a tip-off from his brother David. His family still write to him regularly in prison but have no idea if he reads their letters.

His brother's story has inspired David Kaczynski to become a leading campaigner against the death penalty.

Ted Kaczynski was sentenced to four life terms without parole

What does it feel like to realise that someone you love is one of the most wanted men in the United States, a notorious killer who has been hunted by the FBI for nearly two decades?

David Kaczynski knows. His brother Ted is the so-called "Unabomber" who, in 1978, launched a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured many more.

His targets were universities and airlines, all linked to the modern "technology" that Ted despised.

But it was not until 1995, when Ted's "anti-technology manifesto" was published in leading newspapers, that David's wife Linda shared her suspicions that David's estranged brother Ted might be the Unabomber.

David recalls: "We compared passages in the manifesto to passages in Ted's letters. I don't think by any stretch we ever found the smoking gun... but at times I'd read the manifesto and almost have this eerie sense that I could hear my brother's voice in it...

"I remember waking up one morning and having a crushing sense of depression, I was literally considering the possibility that my brother was the Unabomber".

David had a chilling decision to make: "If I did nothing and Ted's the Unabomber, he might kill again. If we go to the authorities, I mean these are capital crimes, he might be executed".

Isolation

No-one seems to remember him having any friendships there David Kaczynski on his brother's time at Harvard University

The Kaczynski family had worried about Ted since he was a boy. But his withdrawn and solitary behaviour was attributed to the fact that he was brilliant, says David:

"At one point as a teenager his IQ was measured in the 160 range which is well above genius".

Ted won a scholarship to Harvard at the age of 16.

David claims: "In retrospect I think it was probably a very unfortunate decision ... to send him away from home so early because I think he was only comfortable within the family nest".

Harvard was an alien environment for this working-class boy.

According to David: "When he sensed or felt rejection, his tendency was to withdraw. And apparently that's what he did at Harvard. No-one seems to remember him having any friendships there."

Indeed Ted's closest companion throughout his life seems to have been his younger brother David.

They even bought some land and shared holidays together in Montana.

But their relationship was to end abruptly when David wrote to Ted to tell him that he was getting married:

"Sometimes I look back now and think it might have been fairly devastating for him when I left Montana. It might have broken the one close human tie that he had developed."

David eventually took his suspicions about Ted to the FBI and they arrested Ted at his remote cabin in Montana on 3, April 1996.

David explains: "[It was] very painful for me to hear this later, that Ted's first reaction was disbelief. You know the one person this paranoid man trusted was the person who ended up turning him in."

'No remorse'

Partly through David's advocacy, Ted escaped the death penalty but will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Ted refuses any contact with his family and has never expressed any remorse for his actions, which David believes were a result of Ted's mental illness.

Both David and his mother continue, 10 years after he was imprisoned, to write to Ted.

They have no indication of whether he has ever read any of their letters. David says:

"We never fail to say we love him ... it's the bond of affection, the bond that we shared as brothers. I mean who does he have? He has his family."

David Kaczynski talks to Fergal Keane in Taking a Stand which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tue, 15 December, at 0900GMT and will be repeated at 2130GMT
You can also listen to the programme online at BBC Radio 4's Listen again page.