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