Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Evil Genius: The FBI agent who snares serial killer UNABOMBER reveals how he did it

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Ted Kaczynski was a math genius who admitted to building bombs he planted or mailed to targets around the US that killed 3 people and wounded 23 between 1978 and 1995. Dubbed the UNABOMBER by the FBI -- and acronym for "Universities and Airlines Bomber, Kaczynski constructed his deadly devices in a primitive cabin in a remote area of Montana. Guests include retired FBI agent Jim Fitzgerald, who was key in the arrest and conviction of Kaczynski. Also forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman,  and Crime Stories' co-host Alan Duke. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. today at PIMagazine.com. Use this show's promotional code for your special discount at PIMagazine.com. Subscribe today. Use promo code Nancy for your special discount. That's promo code Nancy. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. Talk about an evil genius. Someone so incredibly mentally gifted with an IQ around 170, but uses that brainpower for evil, terrorizing the country. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.

A math prodigy, an academic career. How did he come to the decision to abandon a career at university to follow a primitive lifestyle, living in the middle of nowhere and basically a log cabin without indoor plumbing? How does this happen? And how does an evil genius living in the middle of nowhere in a remote cabin without electricity or even running water and in the woodlands of Montana how does this guy manage to terrorize the country with a nationwide bombing campaign targeting people involved with modern technology. How does your mind get so twisted when you could have been anything, working at NASA, teaching at Chicago or MIT? How do you end up in a cabin in the middle of the Montana woodlands,

masterminding and executing a bombing, a lethal bombing campaign across the nation. The evil genius, Theodore John Kaczynski, commonly known as the Unabomber. With me, Jim Fitzgerald, former FBI agent. This guy, Jim Fitzgerald, is actually the star of a movie called Manhunt Unabomber. His character was played by Sam Worthington. It was on ID and now on Netflix, Manhunt Unabomber. He is also the author of a series of books called A Journey to the Center of the Mind. You can find it at his website, jamesrfitzgerald.com or Amazon. With me, the terrorist therapist, Dr. Carol Lieberman, L.A. forensic psychiatrist, author

of Lions and Tigers and Terrorists. Oh, my. You can find her at theterroristtherapist.com. And reporting today, crime stories, investigative reporter, Alan the Duke Duke. All right. I don't even know where to start. So let's just start with you, Alan Duke. Nobody, I remember this vaguely when sketches of the Unabomber would come out.

And to me, every guy running the jogging track looked like him because it was a hoodie with a hoodie pulled up over the head and a pair of like aviator sunglasses. That could have been anybody. Do you remember when they came out? Oh, yes. I was at CNN just as you were. And we were trying to figure out who this guy was, where he was, because every few months over a series of years, there would be another bomb attack and they became more serious and more serious, stretching out from 1978 to 1995, killing three people, injuring 23 others. What was it, Jim? 17 bombings, I think, over those that period. It was 16 total. And if you brought down the airplane he wanted to, he put a bomb on, it would have been, you know, 250 more people.

So luckily that bomb only worked sort of halfway, and the plane resulted in an emergency landing. Wow. You know what? I did not even attribute the plane bombing to him, Jim Fitzgerald, former Fed with the FBI. You just taught me something new. And Alan Duke, what you were saying about us being at CNN at the time,

I remember jogging back in Atlanta at that time, and I would literally see a guy running by with a hoodie and sunglasses. And I would stop and turn around and look at him. And then another guy would come along, basically looking the same way. I'm like, and I would stop and turn around and look at him. And then another guy would come along, basically looking the same way. I'm like, this is crazy. No one could identify the Unabomber. And he was so smart, Dr. Carol Lieberman, that he would implant false clues inside the inner workings of the bombs. False clues. That's howings of the bombs. False clues.

That's how brilliant this guy is. Yes, he was very intellectually brilliant, but psychologically he had problems from the time he was a baby on. That began with his having hives and being isolated in the hospital. It's so interesting as a psychiatrist to see all of the different things that happened to him along the way in his early years that turned him into the Unabomber. Things where he was hurt, made angry, felt resentful and revengeful against society. It's really an interesting study about how a brilliant mind

can get so twisted. Take a listen to what a Salt Lake City computer store owner, Gary Wright, tells ABC about how he was wounded. As I drove into the rear parking lot, I noticed that there was a piece of wood. I went over to pick it up. I bent down and I put my hand on the very end of it. And immediately, something happened. There was a big blast of pressure, and I was knocked about 20 feet backwards into the parking lot. What happened to you? When it went off, there was about 200 pieces of shrapnel that went through my body at various points. I found out that my secretary had been looking out this window right here, and she saw somebody kneeling down, pulled something out of a bag, and set it on the ground.

And they were looking face-to-face about four feet apart from one another. To Jim Fitzgerald, former FBI agent, criminal profiler, forensic linguist, former FBI agent, known for his role in the Unabomb investigation. You know, Unabomb stands for University Airline Bombs, right? And it was turned, it was used, he became, it was called first within the FBI, the Unabomb investigation. I've been understanding. Then he turned into the Unabomber from that pseudonym.

And there were 150 full-time investigators on the case trying to catch this bomber. Jim Fitzgerald, what a pleasure to have you. Your book's A Journey to the Center of the Mind. Let me ask you, what went wrong in the mind of Ted Kaczynski? I mean, how does a child math prodigy end up out in the Montana woodland in a log cabin with no running water or electricity? Well, that's an excellent question, Nancy, that I think a number of psychologists and psychiatrists, both professional and armchair, try to figure out even to this day. And I mean, I heard what Dr. Carroll say about his hospital stay when he was very young. He was back in those days, it would be like the late 1940s.

They would actually isolate young children from their parents for a certain amount of time. And supposedly when he came back, I think he was only two to three years old, his mother said in later interviews with FBI agents that from that point on, she noticed a different little Teddy. There was something that was changed about him as a result of that isolation for about five to seven days, I believe it was, when, again, he was about three years old. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on.

Are you guys, Jim Fitzgerald and Carol Lieberman, Dr. Carol Lieberman, trying to tell me that five to seven days in isolation as a child because he had hives turned him into the Unabomber? Because I'm just not buying that. Well. Help me out, Jim. Yeahber because I'm just not buying that. Help me out, Jim. Yeah, I was about to say here that that happened to thousands and probably hundreds of thousands, if not more, of kids in that age bracket during that time frame. But guess what?

They didn't turn out to be serial killers or serial bombers. There was definitely something in his DNA that took him to that level years later in life. Well, you know, first of all, there were things that happened during that hospitalization. It wasn't the only bad thing that happened to him. But, you know, he was also held down by doctors examining his hives. There's a lot of, there's a pattern that repeats. Wait a minute. The doctors made me hold the twins so they could get their vaccinations. They're fine.

Well, the thing is, first of all, his mother said that he always had sympathy towards animals in cages. But there's a pattern in his life of isolation. We all have sympathy toward animals in cages. My dog fat boy is in a crate right now. So he won't attack somebody when he's a dachshund, but the animal in the cage. Yes. None of this is convincing me that it's anybody's fault. And that's why he's in a cage now.

Okay. But wait, that was just the first thing in a pattern of similar kinds of situations where he was isolated. First of all, through school, he was always kept on the outside by friends. He didn't really have friends. He was kind of bullied. And he always felt sort of held down in a way by society. So that's a pattern that keeps repeating.

Alan Duke, Alan Duke. Can you and Jackie please help me? I mean, I've got two brilliant guests here, Dr. Carol Lieberman and Jim Fitzgerald. Brilliant, both of them. Can we just put a little common sense world knowledge into this? Everybody feels like they're bullied in high school, even the bullies. Everybody feels like they don't fit in on the outside looking in i was just convinced everybody thinks that held down in the hospital to look at his hives yeah okay not that's still not bothering me alan let's listen to what his brother david kaczynski his younger brother said about how he was when he was a young man, a teenager, just going to college at age 16, he would write angry letters to his parents. And he showed signs of mental illness, even at that point. He began to write very hostile, angry, resentful letters to our parents.

I had a hard time understanding where the resentment came from. How long do you think he was challenged with mental illness? It's pretty clear that by the time he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he was suffering from some pretty serious delusions. My major argument against the death penalty for my brother is the fact that he's diagnosed with a serious mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia. Wow, so at 16, he was writing these angry letters to his parents. You know, I thought teens always blame everything on their parents. That's my understanding.

I've yet to live through it, and I dread it. I really dread it. But to me, that's still not telling me that his mental illness caused him to turn his alleged mental illness, turn him into the Unabomber. I want to get back to him being the Unabomber. And I am fascinated. Jim Fitzgerald, author of A Journey to the Center of the Mind. Jim, I mean, you've even had, you're a star in a movie about this called Manhunt Unabomber Sam Worthington plays you I can't even imagine what that must feel like so congratulations you can see it on Netflix but I am totally intrigued by I mean I always think I've seen it all nothing new under the sun now as far as crimes go. But this guy is so brilliant.

He actually would implant false clues in his bombs. Explain. Yeah, it's one thing to do forensic countermeasures. But this guy sort of did, he not only avoided putting clues on his devices or on his letters, he added false clues onto specifically letters, as far as we know. First of all, he inscribed the initials FC onto all of his bombing devices, or at least about 14 of the 16 of them. F as in Frank, C as in chicken, F-C? Yes, except he later explained to the New York Times the F-C stood for Freedom Club, which was in fact sort of an anti-technology. That was easy to figure out. Yeah, and of course some people thought they were his initials early on or he

reversed them. He's really C. Charlie, F. Frank was his name, you know, something like that. But so that's one thing. But what he also would do on his letters, he would send letters to one specifically to a Yale professor, Dr. Gelerntner, a professor of computer science there, who first received a bomb from him and lost half of his hand. And then a few months later, receives a letter from him sort of rubbing salt into the wounds, you know, figuratively speaking, and he puts in the return address of the envelope, 9th and Pennsylvania Avenues, Washington, D.C. Now, I'm sure most of your listeners know that's the address of the FBI building, as it was FBI headquarters, as was well known at that time, the FBI was in charge. If you hear that, he's brilliant. So he, and I'm not saying that in a good way. I'm saying it like, you know, the devil is brilliant in his own way as

well. When I'm, it's just amazing to me that he blows the guy's hand off, then writes him a letter, you know, rubbing salt in the wounds and gives the return address as the FBI. Now, I'm still disagreeing with the two of you, Jim and Carol, because from first to fourth, he went to Sherman Elementary in Chicago. He's described as healthy and well-adjusted. All right, no problem there. Then they moved to Evergreen Park Central School. He skipped the sixth grade. That's a problem for him because he's in with

people he doesn't know and he feels bullied. Okay, that happens to everybody. He goes to Evergreen Park Community High School where he excelled academically. He played the trombone in the marching band. He was in the math club, the biology club, the coin club, the German club. All right, still, I mean, he's holding it together. He was regarded as a walking brain, so to speak, according to his peers. He was considered the smartest kid in the class, just quiet and shy. But once you knew him, he would talk and talk and talk. Throughout high school, he was in front of everybody in advanced classes. He went to Harvard University. Okay, hold on. He goes to Harvard. He makes it at Harvard. Now, to me, you would have to be, how can someone who is not mentally adept make it Make it through Harvard, okay? His suite mates even really did not see anything out of the ordinary with him.

He excelled at Harvard. No one noticed anything was wrong. He would debate personal philosophy with fellow students, write essays as to his beliefs. So one thing happened there though he began his anti-technology fixation and it's claimed that fixation had roots in the harvard curriculum he got his degree in math at harvard and um know that much. Then he went to University of Michigan, got his master's in doctorate in mathematics. I mean, how can you get through that if you're mentally ill? Well, you actually, I mean, because he was such a genius and he was doing so well academically that people ignored the fact that he was having all of these social problems,

you know, socialization problems. His mother even thought about putting him in a study for autistic children because of that. And today he might have been classified as in that autism spectrum. There are interesting debates about what his actual psychiatric diagnosis is. Some forensic psychiatrists said schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia. Then Park Dietz, who's a well-known forensic psychiatrist, said he had just a schizoid personality disorder. I'm looking at the dates.

The dates that he started doing things, started going downhill, actually coincide with, actually more even with manic depressive illness, in which you can become paranoid in manic phases. I'm not sure that we... Okay, well, tell me this then, Jim Fitzgerald. I'm hearing all about his, everybody arm cheering, this one and that one, what they think may be wrong with him. Could somebody explain to me how at just 25 he became the youngest assistant professor of mathematics in the history of the university of california berkeley he taught undergrad courses in geometry and calculus hello and then all of a sudden out of the blue he just resigns from Berkeley, moves to his parents in Lombard, Illinois, and then to a remote cabin he himself built in Montana.

I mean, nobody had any clue. And he's approaching 30 now. And he's a teacher, the youngest teacher ever at University of California, Berkeley. Well, Sherlock Holmes had his Professor Moriarty. And I would put Professor Kaczynski in that same category, except, of course, nonfiction. Kaczynski self-loathed. He didn't like himself. And that's always a place I think Dr. Carroll would agree with it. That's a place where then hatred for other people starts building. That's the foundational level where hatred for others start building. And it was during his University of Michigan years, because we read, once we got inside his cabin

in April of 96, I was one of the first people to read his autobiography, his diary, his notes, his journals. And he really talked a lot about those University of Michigan years and how he started hating everybody around him to the point that for some reason he was confused in terms of his sexual identity. And he went to the school psychologist and said, I want to become a woman. And the doctor said, all right, well, we'll need about five years of counseling. Maybe we'll put you on meds in two or three years. Remember, this is like the mid 60s. So a lot of before a lot of these operations or these even identity crises were known to be publicized. Kaczynski got so upset that it would take five years. He wanted surgery the next day to become a woman. So I read this journal of

his, you know, 20, 30 years later, and he says he was leaving the doctor's office that day. He said to himself, forget becoming a woman. I'll stay just like I am, but I'm going to start killing people just like the psychiatrist and other people in business. And that's when his true hatred for society really manifested. Now, it took him another 10 years or so to start bombing, but that's the foundation, the seeds of it right there at the University of Michigan. Let's talk about the bombs. Jim Fitzgerald, former FBI agent who knows everything about the Unabomber investigation,

actually has a character in a movie, the lead character in the movie Manhunt Unabomber investigation actually has a character in a movie, the lead character in the movie, Manhunt Unabomber. Jim, I want to talk about the bombs, the bombs, the murderous bombs. And there were many of them from Northwestern University, American Airlines flight that you mentioned from Chicago to Washington, Lake Forest, Illinois, University of Utah, Vanderbilt, University of California, Berkeley. That should have been a clue right there. There were two together there in July and May. Boeing, University of Michigan, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Yale. I mean, it goes on and on and on.

Tell me about the type of bombs he would build and how would he conceal them who would find the bombs well of all those locations you mentioned there's really only three cities that played into our investigation once the unabombed task force started in 95 that was chicago salt lake city and san and San Francisco. It's those three places he either placed the bomb at a specific location, or it's from where he mailed the bombs. And with any serial bomber, just like all the media interviews I did back in March during the Austin bombing case, these guys strive to get better. They're very proud in their devices. And just like anybody who tries something for the first time, build something, whatever, even makes a meal, you're going to get better

as you go along and add your own little signature elements to it, something that nobody else does. So his first bombs are relatively weak. They got better. You just spoke to me because I cook about five nights a week for the twins and my husband and my mom, if everybody's there. And the first time I make something, it's not always the best. I mean, it's edible. But then the second time it gets better, the next time it's better, then it's everybody goes back for thirds. So that just made sense to me. And I'm looking and been researching in some small, pathetic way to discuss this with you and Dr. Carol today. But I know that one tactic, as I said, was leaving false clues in every bomb deliberately making the clues difficult to find to trick investigators into thinking they had a clue, like a metal plate stamped with FC, as you said, hidden somewhere like the pipe end cap or a note he left in a bomb

that did not detonate, which reads, woo, it works. I told you it would. RV. One time he put a Eugene O'Neill one dollar stamps used to send his boxes one of the bombs was sent embedded inside a copy of the novel ice brothers um interesting right okay i i went off course go ahead Jim. We're talking about the type of bombs and who he would pick to find the bomb. Sure, and the bombs themselves were all very intricately designed and put together with spare parts and pieces that he would design and construct himself. Even the screws, he actually threaded them.

They were nails that he threaded himself and then put a slot on the top. The batteries, he would tear the skins off to make sure, of course, no fingerprints could be found, but even the lot number wasn't on there. He would use glue. He would use an adhesive to put the wooden devices together, and the FBI laboratory examined the glue looking, a name brand that you could buy in a hardware store. No, they realized the glue he used was made out of deer hooves. He would kill the deer, melt the hooves down and make glue. Just like in the old days, glue was made from horses. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me just let that sink in just a moment.

Alan Duke. Okay. I guess you and I are the only like normal people on right now because the other two are brainiacs okay sorry to suggest you're not but alan who has time to make glue out of deer hooves and this proves everything you see on tv about the f FBI is true because they are analyzing the glue made in these bombs. This guy is brilliant. He's taken off the battery covers. He's done everything to avoid detection.

He even made his own glue out of deer hooves. Did you know that? Because I did not. Yeah, he was a do-it-yourselfer. I mean, he built his own cabin. Wow, that's certainly an understatement a do-it-yourselfer. I mean, he built his own cabin. Wow, that's certainly an understatement, a do-it-yourselfer. I mean, to me, I put up a peg in my son's closet

the other day, put his baseball caps on. That's a do-it-yourselfer to me. This is way past that, Alan Duke. But he didn't have twins to watch after. He did not have a mother-in-law or a mother or a wife or anybody to disturb him because he was out in the middle of nowhere in Montana in that one room cabin. And he didn't have cable. Yeah, he had nothing to do out there. Well, for a long time, the FBI had very little to show for their investigation. After all of these bombs, there was a break in the case.

But before I get to the break, Jim, what was the similarity in the bombs? Were they all the same? And again, I keep going off on a tangent, but would he select the person that would find and detonate the bomb, or was that happenstance? No, the devices were remarkably similar, all well constructed, again, all these spare parts. In fact, before he was known as the Unabomber and it was Unabomb, he was called the Junkyard Bomber. That was his first name. But FBI headquarters didn't like that. And we love

acronyms in the FBI. So they came up with Unabomb, as you said, University Airline Bombings. As far as his target selection, that's always whether it's a serial killer, serial rapist, whatever, investigators, profilers always want to know what is the target selection process. How do they pick this target but not that one? Sometimes it's relatively easy. They may be blondes that are 5'10 or something. But someone like Kaczynski or the Unabomber, we only knew him as that. We weren't sure where they were coming from.

Finally, the big clue we had was that he was getting his bombers' addresses, certainly the ones he was mailing the bombs to, out of a book that every library had. It's always the thickest book in the reference section called Who's Who in America. And that's where we knew he was going to some library somewhere in the U.S. and researching the addresses of his victims because he would occasionally get like he put street instead of avenue or, you know, number instead of apartment, whatever. And we knew that who's who in effect sort of made that mistake. So we knew after three or four bombings that were mailed, that's where he was getting his information. But the victims all represented something to him.

Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Jim, hold on. So you guys figure out because of the mistakes in the addresses, such as instead of apartment number four, it said number four, whatever. He's getting it out of a who's who directory in a library. Is that what you're telling me? Yes. Now, that's where he got the specific mailing information. But he he learned about his victims, you know, in other readings. He was a he was reading every single day at the local library in Lincoln, Montana. We didn't know if that's where he was, of course. And New York Times,

Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, whatever magazine was out back then. And he'd read about research scientists, geneticists, whatever computer stores as he then. And he'd read about research scientists, geneticists, whatever, computer stores as he progressed, and he would find something they didn't like. Thomas Moser from North Jersey, that was his 15th bombing victim and killed. He didn't like him because he worked for a public relations firm that was defending Exxon after the Exxon spill. So this guy had nothing to do with Ted Kaczynski. They never met, but he sent him a bomb to his home just because his firm was representing the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Five months later, the forestry lobbyist in Sacramento,

he received the bomb because Kaczynski, and we didn't know his name yet, but there was a sawmill that opened up about a half mile from his cabin, and he would hear the noise in the morning, and knowing the trees are getting cut down, that bothered him. So instead of doing anything to those lumberjacks a half mile away, he sends a bomb to a forestry lobbyist in Sacramento. This is how he would choose his victims, and he could never be connected to them in any way, shape shape or form. So, Alan Duke, I guess you're telling me you knew all that, too. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I really started getting into the Unabomber, especially when they started sending the manifesto. OK, I haven't got to that yet. But actually,

let's talk about the manifesto. You know, Dr. Carol Lieberman, you know, the old phrase, L.A. forensic psychiatrist, the terrorist therapist dot com, author of Lions and Tigers and Terrorists. Oh, my. Dr. Carol, the old saying is vanity. Thy name is woman. That is total BS, which is a technical legal term, because that, I believe, is what was the undoing of this evil genius, the Unabomber, because he couldn't just have these thoughts. He couldn't just bomb people and murder them all around the country. it off with, I think, what was it, a 95,000 word manifesto that then he sent to various publications, including the Washington Post and the New York Times. And of course, they published it. Vanity, Carol. Yes, vanity, absolutely.

And then there's also an earlier route for that that we haven't talked about yet, how he was in this experiment in college in harvard where people were a psychology experiment where people were supposed to write essays and then they would be criticized by someone and he was in this experiment weekly for three years and he would have somebody criticize him terribly make personal uh on a personal kind of level, really pushing him down. And so it's so interesting. That was a voluntary psychology group he was in, as it related to his psychology classes he was taken. And I would argue that that's the very same thing that happens when you're in a sorority. But anyway, that's a whole other can of worms.

Vanity is what I'm talking about, Dr. Carroll. He had to get published. But it's interesting that here are the essays that he wrote in this ongoing three-year experiment, brutal experiment. He now wanted to have the opportunity, call it vanity, to have his essay published without someone putting him down for it. He wanted the whole world to see it. Did you know about a recent law that could leave your personal data exposed online for anybody to find? If you've turned on the news lately, you know the internet has created a dangerous new world. Data breaches expose private information. There's a new cybersecurity threat every other day and criminals can sell the identity of you and your family on the dark web. It's time you take

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Enter your own name. Get started. Let's talk about the manifesto. With me, former FBI agent, author of A Journey to the Center of the Mind, and played by Sam Worthington in the movie Manhunt Unabomber. It's on Netflix right now. Times before the manifesto was published or even received by the New York Times. So there was a lot of information there, too. He wrote 14 letters total, the 14th being his article. He never called it manifesto, by the way. He referred to it as his article.

And the deal with the New York Times was if you publish this, I will cease and desist from bombing to kill people for the rest of my life. However, and I always get a kick out of this, I retain the right to bomb for purposes of sabotage. So I was never clear how you would send a bomb somewhere only to destroy a building, but not hurt anybody. But that's the deal that he wanted. And the manifesto itself was 35,000 words, 56 pages. I don't know where I got 95,000, 35,000 words, guys. Take a listen to this. Now, of course, there's no camera in Attorney General Janet Reno's office. But listen to this from the movie Manhunt as Reno tries to decide about the manifesto being published. Listen. So the Unabomber's publishing deadline is approaching. Time's in the poster on my call sheet. What am I going to tell him? Packerman. The FBI recommendation. Don. The FBI recommendation

is that we publish the manifesto in full. We publish exclusively in the Washington Post as part of a two-pronged approach. First prong, forensic linguistics. If we make the manifesto widely accessible, I believe that there is an excellent chance that a friend or a colleague of the Unabomber will recognize his unique language and ideology and will turn him in. Second, there's a high likelihood that the

Unabomber lives in the Bay Area. Now, the Washington Post is sold at only one location in San Francisco. This unique advantage will allow us to stage a large surveillance operation to follow, to question, to identify every individual who buys a copy of the post on the day of publication. While this operation, while the size and scale of this operation is unprecedented, we believe it to be a singular opportunity to lure the Unabomber into the light. That's an unusual strategy. You're betting big that he's in the bay area well we've traced every unabomber letter package and bomb to the exact mailbox he dropped

it in every single one of them is within an eight mile radius of san francisco if he's coming to town to mail his bombs he'll come to town to buy his manifesto. Now, what's the precedent here? Where do we stand once all this is done? I believe that we can say with conviction that publication is less to assuage the demands of the attacker than to use his plan against him. So that it establishes a precedent of vigilance rather than weakness on the part of law enforcement. If you catch him. Yes, ma law enforcement. If you catch him. Yes, ma'am. If we catch him.

Big if. Wow. And that was your character. That was you. Along with Chris Knoth playing Don Ackerman and Reno played by Jane Lynch, who I love, by the way. Jim, I'm curious about how it feels when you hear a dramatization of what really went down. Well, I've used one word in any interview I've done or even personal conversations to watch a character on the screen portray you and someone as good an actor as Sam Worthington.

The word is surreal or surrealistic. I mean, it's almost dreamlike. And yeah, that's what I said. Yeah, that's what I told the writer. I said that 20 years ago to that guy, and they captured it all in there. I thought they did a great job. And really, in that scene, you just played-

I can't wait to watch this. And you're saying it's on Netflix, Manhunt, Unabomber. I can't wait to see this. Nancy, it's actually an eight-part miniseries that actually initially aired on Discovery, but now it's actually an eight-part miniseries that actually initially aired on Discovery, but now it's on Netflix all over the world. And it's gotten great reviews and people are still talking about it. And the last chapter in my third book is a detailed story of my role at Unabomber. And there's some things, of course, in any miniseries or movies,

even based on true events that didn't exactly happen as, you know, so portrayed. So in my book, I certainly set the record straight in that regard. But on the whole, I'm still very happy with the miniseries. They told it a good overall story about the FBI's quest to get this serial bomber off the streets. And we eventually did. So that depicts the conversation and the thinking of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno into letting this manifesto, 35,000-word manifesto, be published. Now, take a listen. The manifesto, again, was the undoing of Ted Kaczynski, the evil genius. How did you, David, come to suspect that your brother was the Unabomber? You know, it actually began with my wife, Linda.

And interestingly enough, she had never met Ted. But she knew that Ted had this kind of phobia about technology. She knew he was estranged from the family. But I had never seen Ted violent. I couldn't believe that he was capable of it. But she did at that point say, look, the Unabomber has sent this manifesto to the Washington Post. Would you read it and tell me what you think? And I thought it would be a way to allay Linda's fears.

I thought I'd read that thing, I'd tell her it's not Ted. And instead, as I began to read it, I realized that the voice there was so much like ted's um you know there's some languaging yeah there was a particular phrase where he had called modern philosophers cool-headed logicians and i had recalled a similar phrase in a letter he had once sent me and then you thought and the the day finally came when I said to Linda, you know, hon, I think it's a 50-50 chance. That it could be. Yeah.

And did you ever think of not turning him in? Oh, think of the dilemma I faced. You know, on one hand, here's my brother whom I love, who I felt the need to... Whom your mother had told you to always protect. To protect. I remember when I was a child,

she had said, never abandon your brother because that's what he fears the most. I think Mom knew that Ted had a kind of vulnerability about him. He was going to struggle in life. How did you tell your mother? So how did you do it? You have this dread and you have this denial

and you don't want to face it, but then something inside you knows that it could be true. you have this denial and you don't want to face it but then something inside you knows that it could be true 50 50 as you said so then you determined to go to the fbi if you think of the dilemma we were in a place where any decision we made could lead to somebody's death right if we did nothing we might wake up someday and realize hey somebody died because we had failed to act in that case we'd have the blood of innocent people on our hands on the other hand there was the realization that if i turned ted in um you know he'd committed three murders he was the most wanted person in

america he could be executed so i had to ask myself what would it be like to go through the rest of my life with my brother's blood on my hands. I think ultimately, we just felt, you know, we couldn't live with ourselves if we failed to stop the violence. We had to act. And so we did end up through an attorney contacting the FBI. That was Kaczynski's brother, the Unabomber's brother, David Kaczynski, talking to our beloved Oprah Winfrey. But listen to what the wife has to say, what she tells ABC. The longest FBI investigation in the history of our country. But how is it that you, a college professor, was the first to suspect Ted Kaczynski could be the Unabomber?

The main reason, I think, is that the FBI began to release information. That must have been awful for you to have these suspicions that you're going to share with this man who you love. Yes, but it was really important to talk with Dave about it. They had posted the first few pages of the manifesto on the screen computer in the lobby of the library. So Dave went with me, and then as Dave read the first page, I was sitting at his side and his jaw dropped. I thought I was going to read the first page of this, turn to Linda and say, see, I told you so, but on an emotional level, it just sounded like my brother's voice.

I thought about the families that were bombed. There was one in which the package arrived to the man's home and his little two-year-old daughter was there. She was almost in the room when he opened the package. Luckily, she left and his wife left and then he died. And there were others. So I spent those days thinking about those people. Wow. But you know, you hear the heartbreak and the evil genius Unabomber's brother and his sister-in-law's voice is a struggle. Is this my brother? If I turn him in, will he be put to death? I promised my parents I would take care of him. But you know what? Listen to Ted Kaczynski and his take on his brother. What ways, if any, do you think he was jealous of you?

He's probably jealous of the fact that I got more attention from our parents. He was jealous of the fact that simply that I was down in our relationship. Jealous of the fact that I was smarter than he was. I could do most things better than he could. Athletics are one exception. That was Ted Kaczynski speaking to journalist Stephen Dubner. But listen to what else he had to say. If the roles had been reversed, if you had suspected David of being the Unabomber, right,

after all the years that you haven't been communicating very regularly, what would you have done? I would have kept it to myself. Is that what you feel he should have done? Yeah. And what was your reaction to that when you first hear that david is involved in turning you in what does that feel like well obviously i resented it um there there was another another strain to my feelings. I don't know if I can explain it properly,

but in a way I was almost glad because my own brother turning me in, in a sense, made me feel good. That is amazing to me. I need to shrink. Talk to Carol Lieberman with me, forensic psychiatrist, theterroristtherapist.com and author of Lions and Tigers and Terrorists. Oh my, he is actually blaming his brother and claiming that it's all because his brother was jealous of

him and that he would never have turned his own brother in and that his brother made him, the serial killer, look good. Well, you know, actually, I was thinking about that, that his brother, that, you know, although his brother and his brother's wife do seem emotionally distraught, you know, at this decision to make and so on, I think there had to have been at least some bit of jealousy, maybe that he wasn't aware of, that the brother wasn't aware of. But you know, can you imagine growing up in a household where you're with a genius brother and his parents paying more attention to him and so on? There had to be at least unconsciously some jealousy. Yeah, totally. My parents totally

paid more attention to my brother than to me and my sister. Yeah, because he made all Fs and they had to coach him and tutor him and this and that and beg and plead. Jenny and I were like, okay, let's just go do our homework. And yeah, so totally. And I'm shocked, Dr. Carol Lieberman, that you would even say that the Unabomber's brother was jealous of his serial killer brother, Ted Kaczynski. I mean, that's, to me, way beyond the pale. But Jim Fitzgerald, you're closer to the case than any of us weigh in. I never saw jealousy there from everything I've read. Ted was very much mad at his family in the last few years. His father committed suicide, and Ted didn't even show up for the viewing or even anything after that. He made a phone call

two weeks later to his mother, Collect, of course, from a Lincoln payphone. And she was so glad to receive that because David had already written him a letter that his father was dead. And I think he did have parent issues. And in the 1985 letter to Dr. McConnell, which was a ruse letter to open up a bomb, I'm the one that first found 10 years later, the hidden message, dad, it is I. And I've always suspected it's written down the left-hand column of the letter to trick the professor to opening up the package. And I've always felt that he had some strong animus towards his parents. He blamed them for what he turned out to be, for the creature and the social retard, if I can use that term, that he basically turned out to be. He just couldn't function within society. Brilliant, but he just couldn't do it. And he had to blame someone besides himself.

So he blamed his parents. And the bombing started in 1978, coincidentally, when he was living at home for two years in Chicago, Chicago suburbs with his family once again. And don't forget, too, Nancy, during that time frame, he was working at his younger brother's company and he had one sort of semi-date with a woman and she said no to any subsequent dates. He put all these post-its around the company, you know, insulting her, you know, body shaming her, as we would say now. And David, his brother, his younger brother of seven years, had a flyer, Dr. Kaczynski, from his foam,

you know, company. And so I think some animus built up from that point on. Wait, what do you mean by post-it notes? What did the post-it notes say about the woman he dated? I list the limerick in my book, the whole limerick, and they covered this in the miniseries. But basically he went out and baked an apple pie one night with this woman he worked with. It was like the only date he ever had.

And she said, hey, Ted, you're nice, but let's, you know, I can't see anything more coming of this. The next morning, he gets into work early. Again, his brother's the manager of this company in suburban Chicago. And Ted has all these post-it notes criticizing her fanny size of her butt, so to speak, and other things about her. And actually, they were limericks. And it was, you know, they rhymed and, you know, almost well written. So he stayed up all night writing limericks on post-it notes to put all... Looking back, luckily, luckily it was limericks and not a bomb, right? Well put. This guy had 31 victims, many dead, multiple bombs all across the country.

A brilliant, brilliant mathematician leaving false clues to throw off the FBI. And they were thrown off for years. And you heard the extremes they were going to to try to catch this guy. Digging through libraries, standing at newspaper outlets to see, watch every person that bought a certain newspaper at a certain time during a day. I mean, extreme measures to catch the Unabomber. Finally, his own vanity did him in when he published his so-called manifesto against technology. I guess he wanted everyone to live in the woods in a log cabin without water and electricity like him. But listen to what Ted Kaczynski says now. I'm not depressed or downcast. It's, let me see, let's see if I can explain this. There's there's sort of different levels of of how you feel about your life.

Let me try to explain it this way. When I was living in the woods, there was sort of an undertone, an underlying feeling that things were basically right with my life. That is, something might go wrong. I might have a bad day. I might screw something up. I might break my axe handle and do something else, and everything would go wrong. But still, somehow, underneath the superficial unhappiness or bad feelings, there was this underlying feeling that my life was right. I was able to fall back on the fact that here I was, a free man in the mountains, surrounded by forests and wild animals and so forth,

and this made my life right, even if things were, for the time being, going going badly. Here it's the other way around. I'm not depressed or downcast, and I have things to do that I consider productive, like working on getting this book out. And yet, the knowledge that I've locked up here and likely to remain so for the rest of my life is, it ruins it. The undertone in this case is an extremely bad one. And I don't want to live long. I would rather get the death penalty than spend the rest of my life in prison. Would you take your own life, given the opportunity?

I will not comment on that. I mean, on a superficial level, it isn't really that bad. It's just the knowledge that I'm locked up and I'm not free, sort of, to me, it's just not a life worth living. Ted Kaczynski claiming he'd rather be dead than in prison, and you know what, Kaczynski? I bet there are a lot of murder victims' families that wish you were dead. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off.

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