Original subtitles

♪♪

I realized it wasn't a nightmare.

I was literally considering the possibility

that my brother was the Unabomber.

♪♪

♪♪

Hey, everyone. I'm Hill Harper.

The hunt for the Unabomber was one of the largest,

most expensive investigations in FBI history.

This lone wolf serial killer put the nation on notice,

as his increasingly deadly campaign of terror

expanded across the country.

Beginning in the 1970s,

the mysterious bomber taunted law enforcement,

left no trace of his identity,

made no demands, and evaded capture for years.

By 1993, the case had gone cold.

People had hoped the Unabomber was dead,

but really, he was just getting started.

♪♪

Reporter: So far, investigators don't know who he is,

but they say he's attacked people

all across the country since 1978.

Turchie: There were never any serious subjects.

There had never been any search warrants served.

It was as close to being unsolvable as a case can be.

The Unabomber disappeared for nearly 7 years.

A lot of people thought, "He's dead.

He's either dead or in jail."

Dornin: Then, in 1993, come two savage attacks in 1 week.

Noel: A bomb appeared at the residence

of a Dr. Charles Epstein,

who was an internationally renowned geneticist.

Reporter: Violence shattered the life of one

of the West's most prominent genetic researchers.

It was a small package in the mail,

and it blew up with a vengeance.

Reporter: Epstein's arm was maimed by a bomb

sent to his Tiburon, California, home.

It was much more sophisticated,

and his techniques had improved immensely in the past 7 years.

Then he struck again.

The second professor this week is hurt by a mail bomb.

Turchie: Professor David Gelernter,

computer scientist at Yale University,

received the bomb in his office.

We heard a man screaming, and a couple seconds later,

I saw a man running, with blood.

Dornin: Police said it was a miracle that Dr. Gelernter

survived the bomb exploding right in his face.

Now the Unabomber had everyone's attention.

A day or so later, at "The New York Times,"

an editor named Warren Hoge received a letter in the mail.

Reporter: Someone sent a warning letter to "The New York Times"

that claimed to be from an anarchist group

calling itself FC.

The letter said, "They call us the Unabomber,

and we want to let you know that we're back,

and we're going to begin a campaign of terrorism again."

Turchie: The attorney general, Janet Reno, said,

"Enough is enough.

We have been chasing this man for 14 years."

"We need to stop this."

She came to the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh,

and said, "I want a real task force."

Louis Freeh said, "Fine."

Candiotti: Until now, the investigations

had been piecemeal all around the country

where the different attacks had taken place.

Dornin: The task force had to go back to the beginning

to look through a new lens.

A 1979 airplane bomb gave the FBI the first clue

that they may have a serial bomber on their hands.

An American Airlines 727,

with 80 persons aboard, landed safely today

at Washington's Dulles International Airport

after a small bomb exploded in a mail pouch in the cargo hold.

Reporter: Recovered with the remains of the bomb

were batteries and an altimeter,

apparently used to detonate the explosion

when the plane reached a certain height.

Turchie: Explosive devices have a signature.

The FBI lab examiner took a look at the components

and the bomb and its construction,

and he was convinced this can't possibly be the first bomb

this individual has built.

Dornin: They were able to connect the airplane bomb

with two previous bombs placed at universities.

Reporter: There were similarities in the way

the bombs were made and sent.

Many contained meticulously-carved wood.

Some were signed with the initials FC.

June of 1980, we had the fourth Unabomb event.

This time, it was a bomb mailed to Percy Wood,

the president of United Airlines.

He sent a letter to the president

of United Airlines saying,

"I'm sending you a book of great social significance,

and you must read it."

So when he opened that package, it exploded.

Reporter: The bomb was a small cylinder

placed inside a hollowed-out section of a book.

He devised stratagems for the victims

to be sure to open the device.

Reporter: The case, code-named Unabomb, has primarily involved victims

who worked for universities or airlines.

"Un" for university and "a" for airliner -- "Unabomber."

Cossack: It was the randomness of it that frightened everyone.

It would seem to die down for a while,

and you'd almost forget it,

and then, suddenly, it would happen again.

Then, his most vicious bombing yet, his first kill.

In 1985, which we turned around

and called "the year of the Unabomber,"

he actually placed or mailed four devices

in December of 1985.

We had our first tragic outcome.

Reporter: 38-year-old Hugh Scrutton died

when he spotted a paper bag

by a dumpster at the back of his store.

When he picked up the device, it exploded.

Puckett: Hugh Scrutton bent over something

that looked like a road hazard and exploded into his heart.

Tuchman: It was unimaginable.

These bombs were now getting stronger.

A man had died, and people were scared,

but then the FBI got their first break.

Noel: In 1987, in Salt Lake City,

the individual known as the Unabomber was seen

placing the bomb beside the left front tire of an automobile

in the parking lot of Cam's Computer Company.

Gary Wright is brutally injured by the bomb,

but his secretary catches a glimpse of the killer

in the parking lot.

Reporter: The first solid lead,

a bomb explosion in Salt Lake City,

but a woman sees him.

Angular features, hooded sweatshirt, aviator glasses.

The Unabomber has a face.

Candiotti: Seeing that sketch of him,

with a hood pulled up over his face,

with the big sunglasses, and you thought, "He exists."

Puckett: One witness sees him in Salt Lake placing a bomb,

and he goes underground for 6 years and 4 months.

♪♪

Then in 1993, he came back stronger than ever.

He sent two new bombs, very much improved in size and lethality.

Reporter: Seriously injured, geneticist Charles Epstein,

while opening a package sent to his home.

Maimed, computer science professor David Gelernter,

opening a package sent to his office.

When the Unabomber came back on the scene,

he had taken all these years

to build a more powerful bomb in a smaller package.

Noel: He conducted fragmentation experiments,

he conducted explosive mixture experiments,

trying to come up with a bomb which would kill effectively.

And his practice paid off.

The bomb he sent to Thomas Mosser

was the deadliest yet.

Reporter: Authorities say the bomb that

killed Madison Avenue advertising executive

Thomas Mosser was the size of a video cassette tape

and was intended for its victim.

Turchie: It was loaded with shrapnel.

It had green panel nails.

When it detonated, it blew with such force,

it put a hole in a cast-iron skillet.

It was just a very devastating explosion.

Reporter: Behind the casket carrying the body

of Thomas Mosser

was the most important part of his life -- his family.

We were shattered we had lost someone else to the Unabomber,

and we still hadn't gotten him.

It's extraordinary that somebody like Mr. Mosser,

such a decent human being,

is one day alive and living,

and the next day, he's not with us.

It was becoming apparent that this guy wasn't going to stop.

Turchie: While we're working on trying to pull all this together,

unbeknownst to us at the time, the Unabomber was on a bus,

making his way to the Bay Area with his most lethal bomb of all

that he'd built, and the results were tragic.

Reporter: A nationwide search is on for the so-called Unabomber,

who has been tied to 15 attacks since 1978.

Puckett: There were never any latent fingerprints.

There was never any particle evidence.

In fact, he planted evidence to mislead investigators.

He would actually wear disguises when he went anywhere,

to pick up a piece that was going to become

a component in his bomb.

Puckett: I had only really seen that

in foreign counterintelligence

because spies have to be careful.

They have tradecraft, and this guy was making up

his own tradecraft.

Turchie: But while he was doing that,

he overlooked one very serious aspect of this,

and that was the behavioral part.

You can remove forensic clues,

but you can't remove who you are.

Puckett: It was obvious that he was a reader and a writer.

His grammar, his syntax,

vocabulary was someone who was educated.

One of the immediate things we had noticed,

when we started working on Unabomb as a task force,

were all of those bombs that were placed in universities --

University of Chicago, at Northwestern University,

and University of California, Berkeley.

Not mailed to them, placed.

So someone felt very comfortable being in those environments.

Tuchman: As they developed a profile of the killer,

the task force turned to the public for help and said,

"Somebody must know who this man is."

Freeman: We kept coming up with new things

to communicate to the public

to make them partners in our investigation.

Reporter: The investigation is beefed up.

Government ups the ante.

The reward now $1 million.

Turchie: But while we're working on trying to

pull all this together, unbeknownst to us at the time,

the Unabomber was on a bus, making his way to the Bay Area

with his most lethal bomb of all that he'd built.

Here we go.

-Here we go? Okay. -Here we go.

Reporter: The bomb came in the day's mail.

A receptionist handed it to 47-year-old Gilbert Murray,

who tried to open it and was killed instantly.

When the package came in to

the California Timber Association,

Mr. Murray said, "I'll just take it back to my office."

The results were tragic.

Reporter: The most dangerous serial bomber in US history --

16 bombs in 17 years, 23 injuries,

and now a third death.

It was very frustrating because you were doing all the things

that you thought you should do,

and you weren't any closer to solving the case

than you had been 2 years previous.

Tuchman: Then the Unabomber reached out to the press

and said, "I want to make a deal,"

and it took this case in an entirely new direction.

Reporter: Along with the latest bomb, he sent three letters.

The letter says the bombings are the work of a group

that hopes to promote instability

in industrial society.

The bomber says he will stop

if a long article he's written is published

in a major US Publication.

He made it very clear, "If you publish the manifesto

in 'The New York Times' or 'The Washington Post,'

the terrorist group FC will desist from terrorism."

Freeman: He cases are solved when the subject starts communicating.

Any time you have someone that wants something,

they usually give away a little bit of themselves.

Reporter: The Unabomber has delivered a manifesto

to "The New York Times,"

in which he says he's killed to get attention for his views,

claiming that technology reduces human beings

and other living organisms to cogs in the social machine.

There were themes about people taking care of themselves

and living on their own in the wilderness.

There were themes about the police state

and all of this surveillance going on in our country.

It is so passionate, and it is so detailed,

and it is so specific that the person who wrote it,

no doubt, has mentioned this to someone.

He had stayed under the radar so long,

he was now getting to the point where he wanted recognition.

This was his Achilles' heel.

Turchie: The question became, how are we going

to take advantage of his offer, if at all?

Because at that point in time,

the United States had a very specific policy.

We did the not negotiate with terrorists.

Tuchman: A terrorist asks you to print something,

a manifesto in a newspaper, and you just do it?

Maybe this is the first step to ultimately catching this man.

Freeman: We suddenly have a potential treasure trove of information

coming from the typewriter of the Unabomber himself,

and we're going to not be allowed to share that

with the American people because of this policy.

Tuchman: Attorney General Janet Reno asked the FBI

for a recommendation, whether or not to break policy.

The task force said yes.

Reporter: The manifesto of a murderer.

"The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" today

bowed to demands of the Unabomber

and published his manuscript.

The move follows urging from the justice department.

The media coverage of this case, after the manifesto was printed,

it triggered an avalanche of calls.

Reporter: Agents have received more than 15,000 calls

and still no luck.

Thousands of tips were coming in,

but one family couldn't see what was right in front of them.

You know, the family is so close to someone who is very sick,

and you don't see that person as a label in a book.

You see them as a unique individual.

Tuchman: David Kaczynski had worried about

his estranged brother for many years,

but never dreamed that he would be dangerous

to anyone but himself.

Cossack: Certainly, the family suspected

him of being mentally ill,

but to take that next step

and say he may be someone who is murdering people,

they couldn't see it.

So along comes his sister-in-law,

who sees him much differently,

as someone who could be dangerous.

Patrik: Every other day,

it seemed as though there was an article about the Unabomber,

someone who hated technology,

someone who had some kind of carpentry skills perhaps.

And then places where the bombs went off --

San Francisco, Chicago.

It sounded like David's brother, Ted.

Kaczynski: She said, "David, do you think

there's any possibility,

even a remote possibility, that your brother,

Ted, could be this Unabomber

that everybody is talking about?"

I thought, "There's no way my brother is the Unabomber."

I asked mom, "What's wrong with Teddy?

Why is he like this?"

And that's when she told me, for the first time,

about Teddy's hospital experience.

Reporter: This Unabomber targets universities

and high-tech companies, and despite some leads,

the FBI has been unable to catch the culprit.

It's someone out there in the public

that has the Unabomb subject living next door to them.

Kaczynski: From the time I was a young child,

I had this realization that my brother was special.

He was special because he was so smart.

His IQ was measured at 165.

Cossack: Kaczynski was a brilliant student.

He was a mathematical genius, but always a bit off-center.

Kaczynski: Our family really valued education.

We were told, "This is the key

to the future, not only your own future,

but for the betterment of the world,"

and so Ted could, like, do no wrong in my view.

He came from a rather middle-class family,

used to have family gatherings

where they all would play different instruments.

Kaczynski: It felt like, you know, the only place

Ted seemed really comfortable and relaxed

was in sort of the cocoon of the family.

Cossack: He was very shy, painfully shy,

and what happened is, in school, they would --

they kept skipping grades with him,

and so he would end up the youngest in the next grade,

and he's the smartest,

and so, socially, he never really fit in.

Kaczynski: Being in a social situation was difficult for him.

A close family friend

or a relative would drive up to the house,

and Ted would look out the window, see them,

and he'd, like, run up to the attic,

and I think it was his fear of social situations

that prompted me to ask mom, "What's wrong with Teddy?

Why is he like this?"

And that's when she told me, for the first time,

about Teddy's hospital experience

at the age of 9 months.

He had a rash covering his body,

and he was admitted to the hospital.

Mom and dad were only allowed to visit him

every other day for 2 hours.

Mom said that when her little baby boy

came back from the hospital, he no longer made eye contact.

He didn't smile anymore.

He was like -- As she described him,

"He was like a rag doll."

Then she said to me, "David, don't ever abandon Teddy

because that's what he fears the most."

My father said, "You see, David.

He'll go off to college.

Eventually he'll get married and have a wonderful life.

You'll see. Ted will find himself."

Dornin: Ted Kaczynski was accepted to Harvard University

at the age of 16, full scholarship.

His family thought this was going to be

the beginning of a great future.

Amador: When Ted arrives at college,

it's nothing like what he had dreamed of and hoped for

because he felt isolated.

He felt different.

He felt rejected at every turn.

Tuchman: Ted basically became a guinea pig

in an ethically dubious psychological experiment

conducted by Dr. Henry Murray.

Kaczynski: They gave a kind of psychological test

to incoming freshman.

They selected the people they thought were the most alienated,

in effect, the most vulnerable, for this study,

to kind of determine what their breaking point might be.

Cossack: Henry Murray was using students

to study the effect of stress.

He did that by subjecting them

to long periods of intense interrogation

designed to break down their egos,

to break down their confidence.

Tuchman: They were asked to write an essay

about their principles and their philosophies,

and that they would be debating them with other freshman,

but it was all a lie.

Amador: They were being lured into an experiment

and to be ridiculed by graduate students

who would dissect their beliefs and attack their foundation

and try and tear down their egos.

Kaczynski was an eggshell of a person to begin with.

What had started out as a little bit

of social awkwardness

turned into a lot of fear and anger and certainty

that the world was rejecting him.

Kaczynski: He's showing up on the last day of class,

acing the exam, even though he hasn't been to the class,

but he's in his room, kind of going through this,

you know, delusional paranoid process

of thinking people are talking about him.

He sees a couple out his window, walking across the street,

and they're smiling and laughing,

and he assumes they're laughing about him.

There is a kind of breakdown of reality taking place.

It's really the beginning of the full-blown illness.

He gets his PhD, and then gets his job

on the mathematics department

at the University of California, Berkeley.

He got a tenured track position and then shocked everybody.

After 2 years, he quit and went to live in the wilderness.

Cossack: So he leaves Berkeley and goes up to Montana.

He wants to return to the land, grows his own food,

hunts his own food, and lives a lonesome lonely Spartan life.

Kaczynski: It's because he's beginning to develop

this philosophy that technology is actually very,

very negative for human beings.

It's ultimately going to destroy the planet.

It's going to take away our freedoms.

Dornin: This is the beginning of Kaczynski's radical

political departure.

He was breaking with society, going off the grid.

Cossack: And the more time he spends alone

in this little cabin,

the anger that has been building up inside of him goes unchecked,

and this begins to take a dangerous turn.

Kaczynski: I remember mom and dad coming to me

with this letter that Ted had sent.

It was utterly abusive.

It was angry.

Basically it was saying, "I've been unhappy all my life,

and now I finally understood why.

It's because, mom and dad, you never loved me."

By the end of the letter, he says,

"I don't want anything to do with you anymore."

Amador: As he was trying to understand his social isolation

and awkwardness and inability to function,

like many people with mental illness who are paranoid,

he started looking around him.

And who's around him?

The people closest, so his mother,

his father, his brother.

Tuchman: David was the last family Kaczynski had,

but when David fell in love,

it drove his brother even further away.

Amador: David had the audacity to get married,

and Ted cut off all contact with him.

He took that as a personal affront.

His dearest, closest friend,

his younger brother who he loved.

Kaczynski: He said I was stupid,

that I was making the biggest mistake of my life,

and, "You're no brother of mine.

I don't want to hear from you ever again."

Dornin: David married Linda,

and then Linda started noticing disturbing things about Ted,

things that his own family couldn't really see.

Cossack: And it's tough to think your brother is so mad

that he's a murderer,

and it takes someone like a sister-in-law

who sees him as someone who could be dangerous.

When David got together with his mother,

they spent hours talking about Ted.

How could they help Ted?

So I began to pick up that

there were serious problems in the family.

Kaczynski: Linda, she says,

"Dave, you know your brother is sick, don't you?

I mean, he's mentally ill."

Puckett: The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I thought, "Oh, my God, this is him."

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

By 1995, the Unabomber had led law enforcement

on a deadly 17-year manhunt with a rising body count,

but now he wanted recognition.

When the FBI, desperate for a lead,

took the unprecedented step

of allowing his manifesto to be published,

the bomber's sister-in-law started to connect the dots.

Now his brother would have to make

the hardest decision of his life.

Reporter: The Unabomber's manifesto, reprinted in

"The Washington Post" on Tuesday,

arrived on newsstands a day late in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Finally, the day comes when the Unabomber's

manifesto is published.

I think I'm going to read the first paragraph,

maybe the first page, and I'm going to turn to Linda

and say, "See, I'm right. This isn't Ted."

And instead, as I begin to read,

you know, there's just sort of a tightening, a chill.

His jaw dropped the first time

he saw the opening page of that manifesto.

I realized pretty quickly

I can't tell Linda in good conscience

that it wasn't written by my brother.

Reporter: In other excerpts, "The Times" quotes the Unabomber wanting to

"overthrow the technological basis of society."

He describes himself as angry,

with no reason to abide by society's moral code.

The ideas in the manifesto sounded strikingly familiar.

Patrik: And for the next couple of months,

we would read that manifesto

and compare it to the letters that David had from Ted.

Kaczynski: Sometimes I'd be reading the manifesto

and all of a sudden forget

and think I was reading one of Ted's letters.

I thought, "Come on, this is crazy."

I was literally considering the possibility

that my brother was the Unabomber.

Cossack: David Kaczynski was faced with a terrible dilemma.

He had to weigh his love for his brother.

It's against what we would all say is the right thing to do,

but certainly not the easy thing to do.

Kaczynski: I'd been told, I mean, from the time I was small,

that I needed to watch out for him,

to protect him, never to abandon him,

and here I could be handing him over to the executioner.

It was a horribly hard decision for David to make.

Kaczynski: I think, ultimately, we realized we couldn't control

what would happen to him, but we could stop the killing.

Cossack: So the family hires an attorney, Tony Bisceglie,

to assist them in dealing with the FBI.

Mr. Bisceglie provided to me

four letters handwritten by Ted.

I took the material to the FBI laboratory.

So, in effect, we tipped off the government

and then didn't hear anything for two or three weeks.

Dornin: There were thousands of calls coming in,

and the FBI was inundated with tips.

Many people wrote and called and said their ex-husbands were

the Unabomber or ex-boyfriends or ne'er-do-well sons.

It was amazing how many people

thought that they knew the Unabomber.

People will say, "Oh, oh, that was easy.

His brother told you who it was."

Well, what most people don't understand is,

60 other brothers told us with equal fervency

that it was their brother that was the Unabomber.

Reporter: Phones ring constantly in the San Francisco FBI's

Unabomb war room, some with tips, some duds.

99% percent of the responses are false leads, unfortunately.

There's only going to be one call

that's going to be the right one.

Tuchman: While they were waiting for a call back,

David found an essay that his brother wrote decades earlier.

It had an incredibly uncanny resemblance to the manifesto.

Flynn: I took it to our FBI laboratory,

and I was almost immediately told

that the typewriting didn't match.

They examined it and said, "Nope, it's not the typewriter.

Therefore, it can't be the Unabomber."

Molly wouldn't give up.

She called the task force directly.

[ Phone rings ]

I said, "I think you're really going to want to read this."

Puckett: I remember looking down at this paper,

and by the third paragraph,

the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I thought, "Oh, my God. This is him."

It didn't take much more than that, at first blush,

to realize there's something really chilling about this.

Freeman: We were in agreement.

Ted Kaczynski was our primary suspect.

Turchie: We're going to close down every other suspect,

and we're going to go ahead

and turn the Unabomb task force towards this one individual.

Noel: We had 2,417 actual suspects.

They're numbered chronologically,

as the information is received.

Ted Kaczynski's file was number 2,416.

Dornin: The task force sent agents

to Montana to get eyes on Kaczynski

and to try to connect him to each one of the attacks.

Freeman: It took us a good 60 days of nonstop,

7-day-a-week, 24-hours-a-day

gathering evidence that would convince a federal judge

that we had enough probable cause,

not for an arrest warrant, which is what I wanted,

but for a search warrant.

Turchie: For example, check all the hotels in Helena.

Bingo, he'd come into town about 31 times

and stayed at a hotel there,

all before or after a Unabomb event.

We felt we would be ready to serve a search warrant affidavit

by the end of April.

But then our plans were short-circuited by a leak.

Someone from the investigation was talking to the press.

Turchie: CBS News essentially has told the Bureau

that they found out we're in Montana.

They found out we have a Unabomb subject,

and they're saying they'll hold off

unless their competitors find out,

and then all bets are off.

Dornin: As the agents walked towards the cabin,

they had no idea if it was booby-trapped

or if he had guns inside.

Dornin: On April 3rd, 1996, over 100 agents

surrounded Kaczynski's cabin in the mountains of Montana.

Turchie: We're dealing with a person

who has been killing people with bombs for 18 years.

These agents, as they approached the cabin,

could be in jeopardy from something

that he may have booby-trapped on the outside.

So we're going to have to be very, very careful

in approaching the cabin.

About a 40-yard walk toward the cabin, and we began hailing him.

We could see there was smoke coming from the chimney,

and we were pretty sure he was there.

Turchie: It was a very dangerous situation.

The biggest concern was that his cabin

is going to be a bomb factory.

We also had no idea what he might have in the way

of weapons inside,

but remember, he's hunting in the wilderness.

He's killing his own game, so he has weapons.

As we got right up to the cabin,

Jerry went toward the front door,

and we could hear some shuffling around inside,

and the door opened,

and there stood Mr. Kaczynski,

and he started to turn to go back in the cabin,

and when he did, Jerry grabbed him and snatched him,

and Kaczynski was yelling and hollering and what have you.

I was just elated at the time to see him,

as awful as he looked,

as awful as his hair looked, as awful as he smelled.

Noel: It was incredulous to me that that's who

we'd been looking for and who'd been avoiding capture

for all these years.

Puckett: The cabin was a mother lode of evidence.

40,000 pages of writings.

Bomb-making materials, chemicals, journals.

Puckett: And all of his experiments

that led to the construction of the bombs,

some in mathematical codes, some in other languages,

details of each Unabomb event.

Tuchman: Everything in there implicating

Ted Kaczynski as the Unabomber,

the man they had been looking for for 17 years,

all inside this little shack in the middle of nowhere.

Reporter: The FBI agents hunting for the deadly

Unabomber have detained a Montana man

described as a hermit.

A neighbor identified him as Theodore Kaczynski.

While the FBI was executing the search,

they insisted on a total lockdown of information

so that the case wouldn't be blown.

Kaczynski: I had no inkling that they were going to arrest

Ted on the day he was arrested.

I was specifically told, repeatedly,

"You cannot talk to David. You cannot warn him."

We turn on the TV, and a suspect had been arrested

in the Unabomber case, and his name is

Theodore J. Kaczynski of Lincoln, Montana.

Reporter: Theodore Kaczynski is headed for the county jail,

where he will be held as the key suspect in the Unabomber case.

Kaczynski: He looked horrible.

I mean, his clothes were tattered.

They were filthy. He was bedraggled.

Man: Ted, are you the Unabomber?

Reporter: Kaczynski said nothing as he was taken away in handcuffs.

Dornin: He didn't seem like this could be a mastermind

of all these bombings.

He seemed like some just bum hermit

that they had dragged out of the woods,

which is what they did.

We began to hear our doorbell ring...

[ Doorbell rings ] ... and it was like --

kind of like a dam had burst.

There was satellite trucks coming in,

and people were getting out,

and they were setting up cameras on tripods.

And it's then that, you know, the reporter on TV says,

"Well, Kaczynski was fingered by his own brother."

There are unconfirmed reports

that his own family turned him in.

Law enforcement officials say they will neither confirm

nor deny those reports.

It really did feel like a kind of living, waking nightmare,

not knowing how do we live the rest of our lives.

I'm going to be the brother

of a notorious terrorist serial killer,

and I'm also the guy who fingered his own brother, a rat.

I finally got the call that it was okay now to call David,

and I called him just as the news was breaking,

and the television crews were showing up on his front lawn.

Kaczynski: She said, "Is there you could do for us?"

And I said, "The only thing you could have done is --

you failed to do, protect our confidentiality."

I was really angry. I slammed down the phone.

It felt like a trust had been violated.

I ended up hopping on a plane and going up to New York.

By the time I landed, media was everywhere,

and they had already besieged David and Linda's house.

I didn't know what to do.

You're just a neighbor coming by?

Woman: Yeah.

Kaczynski: The press was trying to get interviews.

You know, this was such a private,

personal, painful story for us.

I didn't want to talk about it with anybody.

Flynn: So I went through the backyards to their back door,

and I could hear voices.

So I'm trying to tap at their door...

[ Knocking on door ]

...while the media is out front.

Kaczynski: Linda went to the back door and saw a face she recognized.

It as Molly Flynn from the FBI.

She started to apologize,

and just her feelings overwhelmed her.

I went inside and told them how really unfair it was...

♪♪

[ Voice breaking ] ...and that's basically what happened.

I started to cry with them because I said

it's really unfair how they were being portrayed.

They had only done everything for the right reason, so...

Kaczynski: I hope that I can somehow emerge from this ordeal

as a better person.

I hope that our nation's criminal justice system

will find the courage and the wherewithal to take a closer,

more understanding and compassionate

look at the problem of mental illness.

I hope that my brother, Ted, will someday forgive me.

Reporter: So far, Ted Kaczynski has refused to speak

to the brother who did what he still believes was right.

Dornin: And we were all waiting for that moment,

and finally, we're going to see this guy in court.

Reporter: Just as court was about to begin

with opening statements, Kaczynski spoke out.

Ted stood up, and the bailiff starts shouting,

"You're out of order. Sit down."

Dornin: It had been nearly 2 years

since Ted Kaczynski's arrest,

and finally, we're going to see this guy in court.

Reporter: Unabomber suspect Ted Kaczynski now faces

the death penalty if convicted.

We were told that Ted didn't want us in the courtroom.

I said, "Well, if it might be helpful to the jury

to see that this man has a family,

we're going to be there."

My mother and I wish to reiterate

to the surviving victims our deep sorrow and regret.

Reporter: Attorneys for Theodore Kaczynski

have at least two goals this week --

find jurors they're happy with

and get the judge to go along with a key strategy,

a mental illness defense.

Ted Kaczynski's lawyers wanted to claim he was insane.

Kaczynski wanted nothing to do with that.

Reporter: Just as court was about to begin

with opening statements, Kaczynski spoke out,

saying he had a statement he wanted to read.

Ted stood up and said, "Your honor, I need to speak

with you very urgently," and the bailiff starts shouting,

"You're out of order. Sit down."

Reporter: He told the judge he wanted to defend himself,

that he could not tolerate the strategy

of a mental illness defense

the court-appointed attorneys planned for him.

The judge was inclined to let Kaczynski defend himself

because he seemed so rational in court,

but the defense knew that was suicide.

Reporter: A January 7th transcript shows Judge Burrell

saying Kaczynski looked sane to him.

"I find him to be lucid, calm.

He presents himself in an intelligent manner."

Amador: The defense asked me to write a declaration,

to educate the judge about the research.

I'm talking about a brain disorder

that leads somebody to misinterpret reality

and feel certain that they're in danger,

and that they have to, as he wrote in his diary,

"strike back."

Reporter: A defense psychiatrist claims Kaczynski

is a paranoid schizophrenic and suffers a brain disorder

that impairs his thinking and behavior.

Amador: About half of all people

with certain psychotic illnesses,

like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,

don't understand they're ill.

When the judge ruled he couldn't fire his attorneys,

and he couldn't defend himself,

Ted took matters into his own hands.

Reporter: The Unabomb suspect,

who resisted being labeled mentally ill,

may have attempted suicide in his jail cell.

Ted Kaczynski attempted to hang himself sometime last night.

Kaczynski: I heard this news, and I was just crushed.

I remember I was sobbing.

Tuchman: After his suicide attempt, the judge brought in

a psychologist to independently assess

Ted Kaczynski's mental condition.

Reporter: This week, the Unabomber suspect must face what his attorneys

say is his worst nightmare -- an extensive mental exam.

His examiner, Dr. Sally Johnson,

will begin testing Kaczynski Monday.

Sally Johnson comes back in agreement

that this defendant has paranoid schizophrenia,

that he's delusional, he has no insight into his illness.

Reporter: But government prosecutors want the judge

to block such testimony

unless their own doctors can examine the Unabomb suspect.

That's something Kaczynski has so far refused.

The issue of whether Kaczynski would be ordered to submit

to an examination by me was litigated for a year.

Finally, the court decided, and he was ordered to see me.

I dropped everything.

On the way to the prison, a phone call arrived

saying he had decided to plead guilty

rather than meet with me.

He was afraid I was going to find him crazy or insane,

and he didn't want that.

Reporter: Nearly 20 years after he set his first bomb,

Theodore Kaczynski pleaded guilty to a bombing spree

that killed three and injured 29.

Justice could best be served by an immediate guarantee --

and that's what we get out of the plea --

an immediate guarantee that the defendant

will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The Unabomber's career is over.

Kaczynski: In the end, Ted got life imprisonment

without possibility of parole.

Ted would be put in a place where he couldn't hurt others,

and his life would be spared.

Part of the tragedy of this whole saga

is that our parents raised us to be humanitarians,

and then Ted, this bright, brilliant young man,

turned into a murderer.

♪♪

The hard work of law enforcement and the tough choices

of a loving family ultimately came together

and halted Ted Kaczynski's reign of terror.

He is currently serving four life sentences

at a supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado,

where he has written and published two books

on the dangers of technology.

David Kaczynski has continued his fight

against the death penalty

and is active in spreading public awareness

on mental illness.

David has written to his brother, Ted,

every birthday and Christmas since the trial,

but has never received an answer.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.

♪♪