User: bohap Time: 05-17-2008 01:59 Product: CTMAIN PubDate: 05-18-2008 Zone: ALL Edition: BDOG Page: 1-15 Color: CMYK
CHICAGO TRIBUNE Ô FROM PAGE ONE Ô SECTION 1 Ô SUNDAY, MAY 18, 2008 15
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For months out tect one another. of every year, from 1983 to 1989, Dave “I have a vivid mental image of you at lived in southwest Texas—first in a the age of about 4, running with your tent, then a dugout he carved in the face all lit up with joy and enthusiasm,” desert floor and, finally, a one-room Ted wrote in 1984. cabin. Taped to it was a newspaper photo- Both immersed themselves in writ- graph of a smiling young boy who re- ing, Ted in his journal, Dave in fiction. minded him of Dave. But Dave periodically returned to Chi- In their extensive correspondence, cago to work and live with his parents, they debated philosophy and psycholo- while Ted’s Montana retreat only gy. Ted helped Dave learn Spanish seemed to fuel his rage. *OBMFUUFSUP%BWF 5FEUBQFEB grammar. When Ted attacked their It also brought out the protective OFXTQBQFSQIPUPPGBTNJMJOHCPZ parents, Dave defended them. older brother in him. At one point Ted UIBUSFNJOEFEIJNPGIJTCSPUIFS Ted wrote in one letter that if some- described a dream in which Dave’s Ç@k_fl^_kf]k_\]XZkk_Xkpfln\i\ thing ever happened to him, he wanted friends appeared as demons and took efn\eafp`e^k_\]i\\[fdXe[Y\Xlkp Dave to know that he was “the only Dave to a place of unspeakable torment. %"7&4-*'&*/5&9"4 f]k_\[\j\ik#Xe[k_`j^i\Xkcp person I ever loved.” “He said he would kill them in order Zfd]fik\[d\%%%%jfpflj\\n_Xkb`e[ Settling outside the small town of to keep them from taking me,” Dave %BWFGPMMPXFE5FETFYBNQMFUPMJWFSFNPUFMZ f]]\\c`e^j@_Xm\XYflkpfl#Xe[_fn Lincoln, Mont., in the early 1970s, Ted remembers. He didn’t think of it as EPJOHTPQBSUUJNFJOTPVUIXFTU5FYBT dlZ_@mXcl\pflÅ`ejg`k\f]fli plunged himself into self-imposed isola- anything but a fever dream revealing QVSTVJOHBXSJUFSTMJGF)FBMTPQPOEFSFE [`]]\i\eZ\j%ÊÊ tion. The choice surprised his parents Ted’s innermost fear: that Dave would UFDIOPMPHZ TFFJOHJUBTBCBSSJFSUPBNPSF but not his brother. Given the ethos of abandon him. BVUIFOUJDSFMBUJPOTIJQXJUIOBUVSF '#*GJOHFSQSJOUJOHEVTUDPBUTUIFMFUUFS He 1987 Could it heard be Ted? Dave studied the manifesto, and his stomach sank. The words V. “cool-headed logicians” stopped him. Ted used that phrase. a click Rummaging around to find family let- ters, Dave compared them with the lan- Gary Wright never saw guage in the manifesto. “Maybe there’s a 50 the man in the parking lot, percent chance that he’s this person,” he IV. but his secretary did. She concluded. noticed him through the rear window Dave’s wife, Linda, had been the first to of the Wright family computer com- make a connection. Vacationing in Paris, pany in Salt Lake City. Behind a pair she spotted a series of newspaper stories of aviator sunglasses, his face was on the Unabomber that presented the seri- expressionless, thin, with a reddish al killer as an anti-technology zealot. flush and rough-looking complexion, Linda couldn’t help but see parallels to her she would later tell investigators. brother-in-law. His hands, whiter than his face, had Over the many years that Linda knew long, thin fingers. His fingernails, she the Kaczynskis—she and Dave had been noticed, were clean. Dressed in a gray lab partners at Evergreen Park Communi- hooded sweat shirt, he knelt and GARY WRIGHT’S RECOVERY BROTHERS TORN APART ty High School—she often listened to them placed something in recount stories of the parking lot, just a HIS INJURIES: He underwent plastic When Dave and longtime girlfriend Ted’s odd behavior. few feet from where surgery to fi x cuts in his face. It took three Linda started living together in Linda knew his New York state in 1989, Ted wrote she stood. operations to restore use of his arm and writing voice inti- Dave, saying he was a fool to throw Arriving for hand, which for two years he kept in a mately from the years away his freedom and life in the work on that Feb- sling that awkwardly rested on his head to the family spent read- desert for a woman: ruary day in 1987, reduce pressure on a nerve bundle. ing his letters. She Wright noticed the THE STRESS: With the Una- “So as long as you’re expressed concern object: a nail-stud- bomber at large, Gary lived in a selling out, you may as well that Ted was men- ded piece of lum- gray uncertainty that strained SIX-YEAR HIATUS ... become a lawyer.” tally ill. ber. In retrospect, him and his family. When After being spotted, Ted never met Linda and After The Washing- he thought, the nails strange packages arrived at Ted sent no bombs didn’t attend her and Dave’s ton Post published 1990 should have served their doorstep, Gary says he until 1993. In that wedding in 1990–the same the manifesto in as a warning. They and his wife threw rocks at time, he repeat- year their father committed September 1995, seemed unnaturally shiny, jutting them, half expecting another edly reached out for suicide after battling lung Linda downloaded a copy from the Inter- from the scrap of wood. deafening “boom!” psychological help cancer. Ted called home to net and read it. “It just seemed as though it But he didn’t want anyone to punc- “Every day was a new without success. comfort their mother, but did was the voice of Dave’s brother,” she said recently. ture a tire or a child to get hurt. Stu- adventure in pain and the In 1991, he was not attend the funeral. Dave didn’t know what to believe. How dents walked through his parking lot unknown,” he said. taken with his cardi- In 1996, Dave worked closely every day. could this figure he once idolized, who A few years later, the Wrights ologist. He hoped to with the FBI to catch the Gary bent down. As he picked up looked after and encouraged him, how had a son, but life did not impress her by going Unabomber– his brother–be- the wood, he heard a click. could Ted become a killer? Had Dave been return to normal. While the back to college for fore he could strike again. He didn’t hear the explosion. blinded by family love? Could he have bombing didn’t cause his journalism. Sensing A single nail shot up through “I can’t express how painful grown up in the presence of evil and not eventual divorce, it didn’t a romance was Gary’s chin, piercing his lips and it felt to point out the exact known it? help either. Something name- unlikely, he later ricocheting off his sunglasses, barely location of Ted’s cabin Soon after, in January 1996, Dave con- less stalked him, a ghost abandoned the plan. missing his left eye. [to the FBI] among the blue tacted the FBI through an attorney. fi gure who might strike again. The blast liquefied nails and razor whorls on the map, knowing For weeks he showed agents letters Ted blades from the bomb, turning them FORGIVENESS: On a sum- that I might be sending my had written to their family, and Dave trav- into corkscrew-shaped shrapnel that mer day six years after the attack, Gary mentally ill brother to his death.” eled to help interview people Ted knew. He tore into Gary’s body, searing shut heard a voice say, “Look, you’re Christian. held out hope his brother was innocent, one artery and severing a nerve in his You believe in God, right? Well, if Christ but that hope evaporated when Dave got a left arm. can be crucifi ed, be put on a cross by When agents call from his FBI liaison. The agent said The explosion flung Gary back 22 these people, and he forgave them—then stormed Ted’s she was sorry: Ted had moved to the top of property, they feet as power lines above him con- you don’t have a choice.” the suspect list. found an active vulsed in a wave pattern. Debris and Less than a week later, Ted was arrested. He pulled his car over and wept. “I just let bomb–wrapped in duct tape spiraled down from the sky it go. I let the whole thing go.” foil and ready to go. PLEASE SEE UNABOMBER » NEXT PAGE like confetti.