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[Music] [Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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of the be that's right true crime garage creating all the spam all right everybody gather around grab a chair
00:03:42
grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] [Music] hello Jamie thank you for joining me
00:04:21
here in the garage today I'm excited to talk about your new book madman in the woods it's quite the interesting story
00:04:28
it's quite the interesting life that you had really kind of scary when you think
00:04:32
about how close you were to well the madman in the woods life next door to the unibomber jimie is here to talk
00:04:40
about her childhood and growing up next to Ted kazinski as casual as this is Jamie and as short and simple to put it
00:04:49
you grew up next to a serial killer yes I sure did I grew up um just less than a
00:04:57
quarter of a mile away from um Ted kazinski the unibomber and um sometimes when I say a quarter
00:05:05
mile people are like oh that that seems actually kind of far but it's rural Montana and so you have to really think
00:05:14
about the landscape there and um you know and and just to give you a a small amount of
00:05:22
background my family purchased about 9,000 Acres um of Ranch Land decades before Ted kazinski came to
00:05:34
Lincoln and in 1971 my grandfather sold 1.4 acre to Ted and David kazinski and that 1.4 acre was on
00:05:47
The Fringe of our Ranch Land and so since 1971 to 1996 when Ted was arrested our family and Ted kazinski basically
00:05:59
were sharing a backyard and me specifically for you know most of my childhood you're quite a bit younger
00:06:07
than Ted so um you're only living next door to him for what about 15 years is that right yeah you're you're very close
00:06:18
I was born in 1980 and so he was arrested in 96 I was 16 years old when he was arrested and describe this area
00:06:27
for us the uh the the land that your family owned and of course the 1.4 acres that Ted and his brother own so the area
00:06:36
that I am from um Lincoln Montana is very rural like it's a it's about a thousand residents give or take
00:06:46
depending on the season the town is very small it has um a blinking stoplight not
00:06:53
even red and green so you can imagine um you know that it's very very very tidy where Ted specifically lived was close
00:07:05
to four miles from the Tiny Town of Lincoln very isolated rural area surrounded by pine trees and when he
00:07:15
bought that land in 1971 there were very few people living out there and so obviously that really
00:07:25
did appeal to him as the years went on there were a couple more neighbors here and there but um really there there
00:07:34
weren't it wasn't very populated so my my family my dad of course um you know as as seemingly
00:07:46
fellow mountain men do was always looking out for Ted and trying to help Ted because that's kind of how the
00:07:54
community worked and you know because of that they did form almost you know it seemed on the
00:08:02
surface a friendship in those very early years so you know the the place is very
00:08:10
rural but the community is very tight-knit and so my you know my father really tried to care for Ted in um in
00:08:21
the way that he would care for any other neighbor yeah Ted was a very interesting guy a very odd
00:08:29
character to to Really you know when we covered the unibomber case while back a year or so ago and I really dove into
00:08:39
who he was and tried to get an opinion on his personality and his makeup even you know thousands a thousand miles away
00:08:48
and all these years later and really just what I could pull off of pages and not so much the experience you had where
00:08:57
you met him face to face on multiple multiple occasions and live next door to him essentially but the vibe I always
00:09:04
kind of got Jamie was that here we have this guy that yes he he moves out you say rural but you know like I live in a
00:09:10
rural area of Ohio to call your area Rural and mine rural in the same sentence would be Insanity because uh to
00:09:19
me like you guys are living out in the middle of nowhere pretty much and for this guy to move out into the middle of
00:09:26
nowhere it gives you this Vibe like here's this dude that wants to just run away from everybody else that he hates
00:09:34
Society he hates all that in society entails and he wants to be by himself he wants to be left alone but at the same
00:09:41
time I glad I'm glad that you bring up what you did with your father and and the way that the mountain men would work
00:09:48
and they would check in on one another and I imagine your father's going over there every couple of days or or just
00:09:55
dropping by when he happens to be in that corner of of your guys's plot of land and saying hey Ted how's it going
00:10:03
you you know any problems you know you just kind of check in with each other as neighbors would in any area but but it's
00:10:11
more important here in this area because you're talking about a situation where somebody could God forbid they have a a
00:10:18
health situation and pass away they could not be noticed for for days or weeks if nobody's there to check on them
00:10:25
if not longer but with Ted I always kind of got this vibe even though he's once and seems on the surface like he desires
00:10:33
this hermit style of life I do think just like every other human being though he was someone that
00:10:41
needed some kind of interaction with others and and and actually desired it even if he would tell us otherwise I
00:10:48
think he actually desired human interaction and really probably was starved for some type of meaningful
00:10:55
friendship that he just didn't have and and that maybe he didn't allow himself to have and you met him face to face and
00:11:01
your father knew him am I close to being right here yeah actually I think you're
00:11:06
pretty spot on especially in the what I call the early years for me so the late 70s early 80s
00:11:15
that is when Ted kazinski was still coming over to our family's home for dinner he he held me as a baby and and
00:11:25
and asked to hold me um you know there were still late night card games between him and my parents and in in my book and
00:11:37
madman in the woods I do really try to uncover that like was that was it a cover for Ted was it was
00:11:48
he trying to create this Persona of being this you know normal neighbor or did he really still at that point have a
00:12:00
desire for connection and and I don't know if we'll we'll ever really get to the bottom of
00:12:06
that answer but I there there's still a part of me that really does believe that
00:12:13
he he still he still needed that and even as the time went on when you know he was deep into his reign of domestic
00:12:23
Terror you can read his journals and sort of see that as well because he's writing every single day and and
00:12:32
when I say journals they're basically stacks of notebooks that were found in his cabin but he is detailing everything
00:12:40
about his day you know what he's eating what he's hunting what he's reading um and of course his crimes as well but
00:12:48
when he writes it's as though he's writing to an audience and that also has always made
00:12:56
me think that it was his own way of some sort of almost communication with the outside world the only the only safe way
00:13:07
he could do it was almost to mimic like he's writing somebody a letter rather than keeping a personal Journal exactly
00:13:14
exactly it was some sort of in his mind connection um and communication with others even though it really wasn't and
00:13:24
that's interesting too that he was doing that and I was aware of the these Diaries I kind of pictured as being
00:13:29
something a little bit different but um but didn't do a whole lot of research into those particular Diaries so that's
00:13:36
interesting to hear and that to me in some ways reflects the typical behavior of a solitary man you know uh we we will
00:13:47
see that similar behavior from inmates where they're locked up for long periods of days so of the day so they will write
00:13:54
down and journal things that you and I would not you know what what I had for lunch what time lunch was what books I
00:14:02
was reading and so on and so forth It's all these little minute insignificant details of their day but it's a way to
00:14:10
pass the time and to record the time in a way and but he's doing it in a way that that it would be almost that he's
00:14:19
presenting it to an audience or that he he's he's communicating with someone and
00:14:24
I think that goes back to what I was thinking and what you're hitting on there that I do think in a way as as
00:14:28
alone as he seemed to want to be on the surface again I I do think he was starved for real relationships I don't
00:14:35
know that he had the ability to to have them or to have any type of lasting meaningful relationship it's almost like
00:14:43
a his personality was his own prison while writing the book I did I connected with David kazinski his brother of
00:14:52
course and I mean that was that was one perspective that I found obvious for obvious reasons very interesting and he
00:15:02
you know kind of said the same thing especially with the with the isolation that Ted chose he was really just stuck
00:15:11
in the Echo chamber of his own mind and um you know who knows if that continued isolation um fueled him even
00:15:22
further with with his campaign did you meet his brother David before the rest of the world knew what Ted was up to no
00:15:32
I didn't so Ted and um his excuse me David and his parents had come out to Lincoln in the early 80s for a a few
00:15:44
visits um but we actually did not did not meet them and did not see them but um you know
00:15:53
Ted definitely destroyed that relationship and the last time that kazinsky came out was
00:16:02
the mid 80s and after that you know Ted decided that he didn't want anything to do with his family so we did not we did
00:16:10
not know them and there were very strange encounters as a child with with Ted and many times he would come to our
00:16:22
home and knock on the door and ask what time it was what day it was and so I would tell him and his reason
00:16:33
for many of those um encounters would be because he needed to go pick up his brother from town and it was it was
00:16:44
really interesting because when I was writing the book and talking with David I had told him about that and he
00:16:52
was like oh that that's definitely very strange because the last time I came to visit you know was the mid 80s and this
00:17:00
was definitely happening past that into the 90s and so that always made me really wonder too and something that I
00:17:09
wrote about as well is if he still in in part of his mind had the desire to see his brother because it was such a
00:17:21
strange thing to say or again if it was just a cover because he needed to know what time it was TR because he was
00:17:30
potentially catching the bus um to go plant a bomb so yeah very very strange things from my childhood once we you
00:17:40
know as an adult can really look back and uncover what was truly going on yeah that's interesting it's it's either a a
00:17:47
cover or like you said he still had the desire to to be close to his brother who
00:17:53
we know he was close with at one point in his life and we know that David helped him build build the Shack or
00:18:00
whatever we want to call it that Ted was living in that's interesting about kind
00:18:04
of having a cover for catching the bus to to plant these bombs but we do know that Ted was riding his bike into town
00:18:12
on occasion to for the Post Office you know like where where I live and where most people live there's there's a a
00:18:19
wonderful lady or man that drives around in a little truck and hands out the the
00:18:24
mail and puts it in the mailboxes and such but in these smaller communities we you have to go to the Post Office not
00:18:31
just to send something out but to retrieve your own mail and so Ted would go to he would ride into town on his
00:18:39
bicycle to pick up mail drop off mail and uh I believe he was visiting a a small a very small library that was in
00:18:48
town yeah so Ted would go in and out of the town of Lincoln um and he actually did have a mailbox on on the road
00:18:59
outside of his home with with his name on it but he also you're right he did also have a PO box and in reading some
00:19:08
of the letters the correspondence between him and his parents his mom specifically um there were some times
00:19:17
where Wanda kazinski his mother had sent dried fruit or you know some sort of Provisions in a package to him and the
00:19:26
box was too large to fit into his mail box and so they held it at the PO at the post
00:19:33
office and Ted would have to go down there ride his bike or walk down and it enraged him I mean reading reading the
00:19:43
scathing words was really actually pretty difficult um to see what he would write to his own mother but I mean
00:19:51
looking back now you can see I mean obviously it's the unibomber so there's you know there's a little Little Mix of
00:19:59
whatever's going on there with some potential mental illness and um the isolation so it's easy to see where the
00:20:07
words are coming from but anyway he would have to walk or ride his bike into town and go to the post office but he
00:20:16
would also take time to go into the Lincoln Library he would sometimes go into um the grocery store or Garland's
00:20:27
Town and Country as it was called back then which was like a general store um and at at those locations he did have
00:20:36
people that he would sit and talk to he had found you know just a few people in town that he was
00:20:45
comfortable conversing with but it was very very few as much as he refused to believe that he was crazy
00:20:55
and you're calling him the mad man and I actually believe that he was very deep in psychosis by the time that he was
00:21:03
apprehended it's difficult to I think it probably started rather young maybe in his teens or early 20s and I think it it
00:21:11
becomes a slippery slope that you just keep falling down a little bit more and I know understand that every case is
00:21:16
different but I'm looking at Ted specifically and I just wonder with the uh you know oh I have to pick up my
00:21:23
brother if it was more of could have been his his mental illness kicking in of you know retrieving mail or or hoping
00:21:32
to retrieve something from his brother in town talk about some of his you know you said he' come over and play cards I
00:21:39
would imagine it's difficult playing cards against someone with a genius level IQ um talk about some of your
00:21:46
interactions with him at the house what do you remember in your young childhood sharing a meal with the unibomber I
00:21:54
would imagine as a as a young girl you're probably sitting there watching dad and Ted talk about you know all
00:22:01
sorts of things so when Ted kazinski was coming to our home for meals still I was a baby
00:22:08
so I don't remember those um visits but in writing the book I got to sit down with my mom and um you know she was able
00:22:20
to really detail what that looked like and what that felt like which was very compelling because
00:22:29
you know in those early years as you were saying you know through the years he was probably deep into his psychosis
00:22:37
when he was coming by and asking the time and such but when he first came to Lincoln he made it very clear in in
00:22:43
these journals that his motivation for choosing this lifestyle was Revenge even in 1971 so
00:22:53
that was still very present but he still had the the appearance of the Berkeley Professor a bit he
00:23:04
didn't you know he didn't quite look like the man that was pulled from his cabin in 1996 completely disheveled with
00:23:13
his clothes rotting off and you know stood on his face so in the early years when Ted would come over it was he was
00:23:23
always a bit strange and I you know the my first memory of him I don't when I really truly look at them I wasn't
00:23:33
scared I wasn't there was there was no fear present when he was at the house or um you know when he came over to help my
00:23:43
dad and things like that but definitely as the years went on those visits became
00:23:51
much more alarming and did your parents try to keep him at a distance at some point yes they did in you know my so my
00:24:00
mom and my father did get divorced in the80s and my dad remarried um and my stepmother was not
00:24:12
didn't have quite the relationship with Ted as my mom did and so there was definitely a change in that Dynamic when
00:24:22
Ted would come over it just wasn't quite the same he wasn't coming over for dinner at that point
00:24:29
he was you know there I talk about in the book there was a day where he actually worked on my dad's
00:24:35
Sawmill and my my stepmother Wendy was his boss and it made for um a pretty difficult day of of labor for for all of
00:24:47
them the dynamic definitely changed in our you know in our family over the years um and you know Ted wasn't Ted
00:24:57
wasn't quite as friendly with my parents and there were plenty of disagreements between my father and Ted especially in
00:25:08
the 90s as you know as as Ted's reign of terar continued and of course as as his
00:25:16
mental illness probably deepened so we talk about disagreements with your father in Ted but there was some strange
00:25:23
things going on that at the time probably seemed very strange and maybe random but then later knowing who Ted
00:25:31
actually is you have to have your suspicions that maybe Ted was involved or or the the the sole uh perpetrator of
00:25:41
some of these items so let's let's talk about two strange events in particular would be there was some kind of sabotage
00:25:49
at your your father's Sawmill which I I believe that was covered in one of the maybe the Netflix special and then
00:25:58
your this is incredibly terrible but your your the family dog your family dog uh was poison at some point yeah so
00:26:08
there were plenty of um acts of sabotage in the Lincoln area that I uncovered while writing this book and of course I
00:26:18
can't say for sure that Ted was responsible for all of them but there were a few definitely that um he
00:26:27
admitted to and one of those yes was the sabotage of my father's Sawmill it was sanded which just means that you know
00:26:37
somebody had put sand into the gas tank and um we didn't know at the time who that was my dad initially had he did
00:26:48
have some suspicion that it may be Ted and had confided in one of our neighbors like oh I just I don't he said I don't
00:26:56
trust him I don't know why and the neighbor Chris you know was like oh Ted couldn't do that think about
00:27:04
it like he's just an eccentric hermit my dad finally kind of accepted that and moved on I will be honest when yes when
00:27:13
he was arrested of course we were like oh you know that was most likely Ted but I didn't know that it was absolutely
00:27:21
100% Ted kazinski until participating in the Netflix document Tre and hearing the
00:27:29
interview that's on that Dock and Ted is is bragging about it and admitting to it
00:27:36
and saying you know that he I think he calls my dad an [ __ ] and says something like I have this neighbor
00:27:44
Butch Garing who's an [ __ ] or something like that and uh you know my my goal was to put him out of business
00:27:53
and so hearing that and hearing what you know what he did could finally you know
00:28:00
provide some like concrete closure and you know um my dad has passed away and I I really wish that he was able to hear
00:28:10
that because it would have have really you know confirmed a lot of a lot of his thoughts through the years I mean
00:28:20
obviously the arrest was a big wakeup call for everybody and um had solved some some mysteries for sure but that
00:28:30
specifically wasn't uncovered until the documentary aired so yeah that was one and then there was another pretty
00:28:38
horrific event I mean when um when I was writing this book I had interviewed other neighbors and was hearing all of
00:28:47
these horrific stories of other pets in the area being poisoned and pets being stabbed and horrible deaths and such our
00:28:58
dog had been our dog Wy had been poisoned and had a pretty slow death but at the time the veterinarian had
00:29:09
confirmed that it was strick nine that the dog had ingested and as horrible as that was um
00:29:20
you know and there I definitely had um some I guess concerns that it was Ted kazinski you know there was strick nine
00:29:31
F found at his home when um the FBI searched the cabin it wasn't again until I was writing this that I found a letter
00:29:43
that Ted admits to killing a dog a neighbor's dog that was sneaking into his garden at night I
00:29:55
think that was I mean it was a difficult moment for me for sure because I know this sounds really odd
00:30:06
but knowing a a killer as a child is I mean to put it lightly a a very strange experience and a hard thing
00:30:17
to reconcile as an adult because I I do have these softer memories of him and I saw him through this different l and I
00:30:27
trusted him as a little kid and finding these things out and knowing seeing the concrete evidence of really what he was
00:30:38
capable of and really what danger we were in living so close to him um was was just a really hard part
00:30:50
of this whole [Music] process [Music] this show is sponsored by better help do you look forward to the holidays maybe
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sign up at greenlight.com slmp podcast Angie's List is now Angie and we've heard a lot of theories about why I
00:33:02
thought it was an Eco move for your worse less paper no it was so you could say it faster no it's to be more iconic
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must be a tech thing but those aren't quite right it's because now you can compare upfront prices book a service
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instantly and even get your project handled from start to finish sounds easy it is and it makes us so much more than
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just a list get started at angie.com that's ngi or download the app [Music] today all right let's get back to Nick's
00:33:49
interview with Jamie the author of madman in the woods talking about unibomber Ted kazinski yeah I can hear
00:33:57
the the inner struggle that you have there and it's something that I can't you know nobody can take away from you
00:34:02
or or nobody can relieve you of that but it's something I really wish that it's one of those situations where that's
00:34:10
what separates you from Ted That's What Separates Me and You and a whole bunch of other people from somebody like Ted
00:34:17
where you have enough compassion in your heart and empathy that for somebody that
00:34:24
you can look back on somebody as terrible as this man is and as horrible his as his deeds were and as evil as he
00:34:32
was that you can still you still look back and go he wasn't always bad or there was
00:34:40
some good in him or or there was something that you saw that wasn't Pure Evil and he he would never feel that way
00:34:47
for any of us right and so it's it's hard to really kind of wrap your head around that but when we talk about the
00:34:55
destruction to your father saw and the a dog being poisoned maybe he poisoned other dogs as
00:35:04
well you know Ted was so his makeup especially the older he got to me was just somebody that was so
00:35:11
incredibly jealous spiteful and hellbent on Revenge I think it rings true when we
00:35:18
hear him say years later oh this man that I live next to he was an [ __ ] and I and I happily uh put sand in in
00:35:26
The Sawmill and and and tried to take down his operation because that's who he is he's hell been on Revenge and he he
00:35:34
personally feels oh I bested that man I won in the in the end I won even though I didn't play fair even though I played
00:35:41
dirty and oh by the way we were in some weird competition that this other guy was even unaware of and I was jealous of
00:35:49
him for reasons that he would never even know or understand but oh in the end it
00:35:54
doesn't matter because I won I bested him that's really to me what a lot of his destruction and chaos and death that
00:36:02
he caused was all about and and so many people and this we talk about difficult to wrap your head around so many people
00:36:11
you see them on the Internet go oh if anybody would take the time to read his Manifesto you would realize how
00:36:16
brilliant and how smart and forward thinking this guy was and I read the manifesto and the whole time I'm sitting
00:36:21
there thinking yeah he sent bombs to people and and with total Rec regard for any human life we are lucky that he
00:36:31
would only killed the number that he killed the number could have been so much higher just just just based off a
00:36:37
circumstance that was out of Ted's control and so you sit there and you read his Manifesto and you go this guy
00:36:43
is a walking contradiction to everything that he put in these papers there's no Brilliance there nobody's arguing that
00:36:49
he has 167 IQ but I would argue what kind of real Brilliance and beliefs did this guy have other than the the core of
00:36:57
it all at the core of it all I see a a a weak man who has no self-respect and has shunned himself
00:37:06
from his family by his own choice but blames his family that he doesn't fit in with them just like he blamed your
00:37:13
family that he didn't fit in with you he's hellbent on jealousy and revenge and and spitefulness to that that led
00:37:21
him down this horrible dark destructive path now the other thing too though you you you mentioned that there were weird
00:37:30
meetings in the woods with Ted or or hearing strange noises at night yeah there was um multiple events when um I
00:37:40
was really small that I I was about five when it first started happening I was laying in my bed and my bedroom faced
00:37:52
kind of the mountain side and behind our home there were some old cars um and my dad had an old olds
00:38:03
mobile he was planning on fixing and his boat and various um pieces and parts for
00:38:10
The Sawmill and things like that and that was very close to my bedroom window and I would start hearing something
00:38:19
outside of my window and it wasn't it wasn't an animal I knew that much would hear like rustling I would hear metal
00:38:29
clinging against each other I would and I started to hear very light whistling I
00:38:36
would always sleep with my bedroom window open because even as a little kid I really loved the the wind and the
00:38:42
smell of the Pines I started waking up to this these noises outside and I was terrified and I would run into my dad's
00:38:54
bedroom and yell you know there's a monster outside and my dad of course would be like oh no it's just your
00:39:02
overactive imagination climb into bed and I was like no dad there's really somebody out there and I think he did
00:39:09
appease me a few times and would like walk over to my room and be like no nobody's here you know and come back in
00:39:16
as you do with little kids but you know as Ted writes in his journals he was foraging for scraps and and pieces to
00:39:28
put in his bombs and and much of the reason he was untraceable for so long because he wasn't buying supplies
00:39:36
anywhere that could be traced for his bombs he was finding the majority of the metal and of course wood that he was
00:39:44
using around his home knowing that now as an adult and knowing that I was hearing really I was really hearing a
00:39:53
monster outside my window was um I I think it was just a real Moment of clarity for me and finally as an
00:40:05
adult I I could kind of put that to rest and and too like know that I was I was right and I knew something was a Miss I
00:40:15
but you know I was just a kid so that you know although a a scary experience um you know was it was really kind of I
00:40:26
suppose empowering for me as an adult to write about it and know that that I that
00:40:32
I had the intuition um to know that something was wrong so yeah that was that was one experience and then there
00:40:39
was another one as I was much older it was actually just the year prior to Ted's arrest that I I was taking a walk
00:40:49
through our Woods which I did all the time and um you know I I was rounding a corner
00:40:57
almost collided with Ted and here we are both alone in the woods together and he
00:41:05
is much more at this point like the man that you saw being uh pulled out of his cabin in 1996 you know he's describe him
00:41:17
a little bit for us yeah so he's completely disheveled he's got you know holes in his clothing he's got soot I he
00:41:26
always had soot on his face dirt under his fingernails but at this point his his eyes were really
00:41:33
bulging he um just seemed like almost you know agitated and frantic his just demeanor was completely
00:41:44
different from kind of the shy reserved eccentric hermit that I initially had known as a little kid um and so just his
00:41:56
appearance was much more frightening you know there was gray in his beard his hair was sticking up all over the place
00:42:03
and you know the of course at this point I understood a bit more about the world
00:42:07
around me than I did when I was four and so being alone in the woods with him was
00:42:14
frightening on its own but also there was just something about him that really scared me at that point and you know
00:42:25
it's just one of those those moments where the hair on the back of your neck is sticking up and you know you're
00:42:31
scared for for a reason um it's intuition and so you know we both said hello as best as possible turned around
00:42:40
he went back his way I went back to my house and the entire time I was running back to the home as soon as I knew that
00:42:51
he couldn't see me anymore or thought he couldn't see me and was looking over my
00:42:55
shoulder to make sure he wasn't behind me um so that was one of those other you know really frightening experiences as
00:43:05
an adult looking back on that and thinking how differently that could have gone I mean he was he was killing he was
00:43:17
maming he was you know he had been um a domestic terrorist for for almost two decades at
00:43:28
that point you talk about being scared you're meeting him in the woods and now forgive me for a little bit uh I'm might
00:43:36
use a little language that that we don't want but uh you know one of his journals
00:43:41
one thing that struck me when researching Ted and his crimes and his life and his lifestyle a little bit was
00:43:50
in one of his journals and I don't know if this was made up for the media or if this is
00:43:56
real and you may know but it was referenced that he at one point was sitting in the woods with his rifle
00:44:05
considering shooting the neighbor's daughter I think he even says something extremely vulgar like I I thought about
00:44:13
killing the [ __ ] or or shooting the little [ __ ] was he talking about you and is that true do do we know if that's
00:44:19
true so you're right about that and um I do talk about that in my men in the woods it was one of the more difficult
00:44:29
things for me to write about and the the way it happened is that yes Ted was in the woods with his rifle and um
00:44:44
in that 10 by 12 cabin on in Lincoln Montana he did have rifles he had a pistol that he had made
00:44:55
him self and as you as you know when he was arrested he also had a bomb that was
00:45:02
packaged and ready to be sent so there were plenty of terrifying things within that cabin and within those woods and on
00:45:11
one particular day Ted was out um in our again our shared backyard with his rifle and since our land surrounded his
00:45:25
my stepmother and my little sister who was only two at the time was they were out doing some chores and kind of
00:45:35
reeding the ground and my stepmother just felt something she felt something ominous she she felt a presence and you
00:45:46
know you're in the in the middle of the woods and you think you're in Montana it's maybe a mountain lion there's a
00:45:53
predator of some sort so she grabbed her daughter got her in the truck and they left well she didn't think about this um
00:46:02
again until after Ted's arrest and in those journals which my my especially my father was very involved in the
00:46:13
investigation but they were able to read some of those and my stepmother rememberers reading that Ted had a rifle
00:46:24
pointed on her and yes he was kind of vacillating between my stepmother and my little sister who's a
00:46:34
toddler really contemplating killing them and yes you're right while he's looking through
00:46:43
the scope and thinking about you know killing close range he's in his journals later talking about if he killed the you
00:46:53
know [ __ ] one then [ __ ] two would be left on the mountain side I mean just the way that he talks about it is
00:47:02
horrific and for obvious reasons that was really really difficult to to write about of course of course and and I mean
00:47:13
it doesn't get any scarier than that now your father we have him playing a role in taking
00:47:22
down Ted we have FBI Max null says that your father was the eyes and ears of a portion of their investigation can you
00:47:33
tell us about your father's role and and maybe anything you witnessed or or learned about after the fact yes this
00:47:41
the uniom case um was you know very sensitive for for many reasons but because of Ted's
00:47:52
isolation and because of the environment he lived in he's surrounded by trees he's surrounded by mountains and trees
00:48:01
and and hardly anybody lives out there he knew he being Max null knew that he was going to need some help and my
00:48:15
father ended up being that person and of course the the FBI had to First determine if they could trust my father
00:48:24
and that didn't take that didn't take very long it just took a conversation my dad ended up yes being kind of the eyes
00:48:31
and ears because any other person around the cabin would have raised suspicion during that
00:48:41
time when Max null was planning the investigation and you know really trying to figure out how they were going to
00:48:50
arrest this man it was you know they were looking back on Ruby Ridge and Waco and they didn't want they didn't want
00:48:58
any casualties they didn't want you know Ted to be killed and they didn't want OB
00:49:03
obviously the FBI to be harmed and so they had to be really strategic and um my father was as you
00:49:14
said the eyes and ears he would report back to Max you know if there was smoke coming out of the gyy or if um there
00:49:22
were footsteps coming out of the cabin things like that in the beginning uh and then um as the investigation continued
00:49:33
the FBI was having a really difficult time getting images um even aerial images and so um you know my dad
00:49:44
actually went and walked the grounds walked around Ted's cabin with his handheld video camera and taped the
00:49:54
terrain for the f FBI in preparation of the arrest so they knew exactly what it looked like so that that was definitely
00:50:04
as even my dad would admit uh a very scary part of the investigation because my dad knew at that point they had
00:50:14
shared with him you know they they they slowly um kind of told him what they were suspecting Ted of but initially it
00:50:23
was they were just looking into Ted kazinski for writing some threatening letters and then it did come out that in
00:50:31
fact they thought he was the unibomber so my dad knew at that point when he was walking around Ted's cabin with this and
00:50:40
you think about in the 9s what a handheld video camera looked like it wasn't like your small little iPhone and
00:50:48
so he's walking around this serial Killer's home in the middle of the woods where he and he knows that he has rifles
00:50:56
he hunts he doesn't know all of the contents of his cabin but he was terrified and but he knew that he had no
00:51:06
other choice and um he couldn't see one more person hurt so he did it yeah and Jamie I want to thank you so much for
00:51:14
talking with us about your wonderful book your fascinating book madman in the woods the uh life next door to the
00:51:22
unibomber I there's really dozens of things that we could go into that you do go into in your book and it's a
00:51:30
fascinating read so I want to congratulate you on that one thing I want to leave a little bit of a
00:51:35
cliffhanger for everybody out there in listener land is um I'm sure everybody will be dying to know what happened when
00:51:41
you wrote to Ted in prison H after his arrest but we won't give that answer here today instead why don't we tell
00:51:49
everybody where they can find this incredible book yeah well thank you for the kind words on the book I really do
00:51:56
appreciate that my book can be found basically anywhere you buy your books any brick and mortar that you like to
00:52:03
shop at but also of course online Amazon um Barnes & Noble and then of course my
00:52:09
website as well Jamie gar.com wonderful thank you again for joining us and congratulations on the book and I hope
00:52:16
to come back and talk to us again sometime thank you so much [Music] [Music] old Ted kazinski madman in the woods
00:52:52
fascinating stuff Colonel do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners of course we do here captain
00:52:59
we're going to be recommending madman in the woods life next door to the unibomber by Our Guest Jamie as a child
00:53:06
in Lincoln Montana growing up her family shared their land their home and their dinner table with a Hermit with a
00:53:13
penchant for murder and that of course was Ted kazinski the unibomber check out her book her fantastically intriguing
00:53:21
book madman in the woods life next door to the unibomber you can find that great
00:53:25
title and many more on our recommended page at true Crim garage.com join us back here in the garage next week and
00:53:32
until then be good be kind and don't [Music] litter [Music] when it comes to teaching kids and teens
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