Part 2
Proximity
Proximity to the murder scenes or locations of the letter-mailings forms what is
perhaps the most tenuous link connecting Theodore Kaczynski to the Zodiac events.
Following his graduation from the University of Michigan in the spring of 1967, Kaczynski
relocated to Berkeley, California, where he maintained an official residence until his
resignation from the University of California on June 30, 1969. According to the Turchie
Affidavit [Turchie; the warrant related to Kaczynski's arrest],
David Kaczynski recalled that
[I]n June, 1969, Theodore Kaczynski quit his job at UCB. Shortly thereafter, David met
his brother in Wyoming and they travelled in Theodore Kaczynski's car to British Columbia,
Canada to find some land. Theodore Kaczynski found some land near Prince George and filed
homesteading-type applications for the land. Theodore Kaczynski returned to his family's
home in Lombard, Illinois, in the summer of 1969, where he lived while awaiting word from
the Canadian government on his land application.
The distance in time covered by the words "shortly thereafter," cannot be
determined, and might range from a few days, to a few weeks, or even more. Even assuming, arguendo,
its sufficiency (at least four days) to cover the time leading to the Blue Rock Springs
incident, the implication clearly exists that Kaczynski's official residency at Berkeley
was long enough to cover only the December 20, 1968 and July 4, 1969 events. Additionally,
a New York Times article of 1996 suggests that the actual duration of the Canada
trip taken by Kaczynski and his brother might have covered two months, or portions of two
months. If that is so, then it appears that the trip's itinerary might have overlapped
with the July 31 and August 3 mailings to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San
Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. Clearly the implications are
(1) that Kaczynski could not or would not have composed those correspondences in the
presence of a second party, and (2) he was not in the Bay Area during on the dates of
their composition. Given the facts as they are known, neither of those implications is
wholly credible. Though it might (or might not) be true that Kaczynski would not have
composed the missives in the presence of his brother, there is simply no evidence to
suggest that the two were in continual contact during the period in question. Whether the
Canada trip comprised a visit to the Bay Area remains an open question that has yet to be
answered by either party. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that no account has been
given as to the manner in which Kaczynski moved his personal belongings from Berkeley to
Illinois. According to David, the brothers spent the duration of the trip in Kaczynski's
1967 Chevelle, camping in the woods and essentially living off the land. It is difficult
to believe that all of Kaczynski's personal effects could have been carried about in that
vehicle, along with two grown men and the equipment necessary for such an extended trip.
At some point in time, Kaczynski must have returned to Berkeley in order to settle the
arrangements for moving his possessions. That event has not been mentioned, nor has the
time been accounted for.
Whatever the case, there is no doubt that at some point in the summer of 1969,
Kaczynski moved his place of domicile from Berkeley, California, to the small residence of
his parents in Lombard, Illinois. While it may seem obvious to some that his relocation
effectively removes Kaczynski from the scenes of any further Zodiac events, it is
precisely this circumstance that attaches the greatest suspicion to Kaczynski in terms of
proximity. For, though he lived in Lombard, Kaczynski quite simply did not stay put.
In a New York Times article dated May 26, 1996, David Kaczynski stated:
David returned to school, and Ted moved in with his parents, who by then had moved
back to the Chicago area. . . . Living at home, [Ted] kept mostly to his bedroom. Awaiting
word on his land application, he did nothing for more than a year. His parents urged him
to get a job. . . . But the effort failed.
In reality, David Kaczynski was in no position to account for his brother's day-to-day
activities during the period covering Ted's residence in Lombard. During that time, David,
by his own account, was finishing his final year at Columbia University. In the late
spring of 1970, immediately after taking his degree, David moved from Columbia to
Great Falls, Montana, where he found employment working for a smelting company. The
recollections of Ted's mother, Wanda, should be viewed as more reliable than those of
David, considering that he lived directly alongside of her during his stay in Lombard. Her
knowledge of that period, as conveyed to the Washington Post, paints a somewhat
different picture of Kaczynski's movements during those two years.
There was another shutdown when Canada rejected his land application. And then, as
there had been several times before, an abrupt leave-taking. . . . Wanda, an early riser,
remembers lying in bed one morning and hearing him puttering around. “The thing that
gave me a disturbed feeling was the way Ted would leave,” she recalled. “He
didn’t tell us he was leaving. We had nothing.”
The context of these remarks indicates not only that the reference was to the two-year
period of Ted's residence in Lombard, but also that Kaczynsk's leave-taking had occurred
on more than one occasion. Kaczynski's mother did not simply say "the way Ted
left," as she would had she been referring to only one occasion. "The way Ted
would leave," assumes that this particular way of leaving was habitual, and had
occurred more than once over the period of years in question.
These assumed peregrinations on the part of Kaczynski have been documented for at
least two occasions coinciding with periods of Zodiac activity. The first is found within
the pages of the Psych Report:
Throughout the summer of 1970, Mr. Kaczynski continued to look for wilderness land in
Alaska and subsequently learned that his application for land in Canada was denied.
Summer of 1970 coincides with the June 26, July 24, and July 26 Zodiac Bay Area
mailings that included the Mt. Diablo map and code, the Kathleen Johns reference and the
Mikado paraphrase. There is, of course, no evidence to prove Kaczynski's actual presence
in the Bay Area during the period in question. However, the fact of his being in the
western United States, thousands of miles from his domicile in Illinois, with his actual
whereabouts completely unaccounted for, cannot be seen as other than suspicious.
At some point either late in 1970 or early in 1971 (the actual date remains unclear)
the Canadian government informed Kaczynski that his land application had been denied. This
precipitated a period of psychological withdrawal, at the end of which Kaczynski
determined to leave his parents' home and seek a new place of domicile in Montana, near
his brother's apartment in Great Falls. In a People magazine article dated August
10, 1998, David Kaczynski said:
I had gone to Montana in 1971 and taken a job as a steelworker. I got a letter from my
parents saying Ted had left, and they didn't know where he had gone. They were worried. He
had left a note that sounded suicidal. Several weeks later, he showed up at my apartment.
He had a plan for us to buy land in Montana, and we bought 1.4 acres near Lincoln, where
he built his cabin. [N.B.--David's statement that he had "gone to Montana in
1971" does not jibe with earlier recollections, given to the media and the FBI,
that his own relocation to Montana had occurred in 1970.]
A New York Times article, based on interviews with David, asserts:
In the spring of 1970, David graduated from Columbia. Unsure what to do with his life,
he remembered the beauty of Montana and decided to return. "I got a job in a smelter,
in Great Falls," he said. Meantime, Ted continued to live in Lombard. Then in the
spring of 1971, David recalled, Ted "showed up one day" in Montana, and soon he
found the piece of land he wanted. [New York Times, May, 1996]
Extrapolating from these recollections, it is not unreasonable to conclude that at
some point during or near the spring of 1971, Ted Kaczynski left his parents' home in
Lombard and traveled to his brother's apartment in Great Falls, Montana, arriving there
after an absence of several weeks. The period of time concerned is tantalizingly close to
the period of Zodiac activity marked by the L.A. Times letter and the Sierra Club
postcard; those missives dated March 13, 1971 and March 22, 1971 respectively. And once
again, though Kaczynski cannot positively be placed in the Bay Area during that period, it
is highly suspicious that at that particular juncture he had left his place of domicile in
Lombard, Illinois and traveled to the western United States, during which time his
whereabouts for a period comprising several weeks remained completely unaccounted for.
Following the March 22, 1971 Sierra Club card, the next authenticated Zodiac
correspondence was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle on January 29, 1974. At that
point, Kaczynski's new place of residence was the small cabin he had built on the
jointly-purchased land in Montana. Once, again, however, his whereabouts for the entire
winter of 1974 remain unknown.
In the winter of 1974, Theodore Kaczynski wrote the family a letter to say that he
would be away camping for a while and that they should not worry if they did not hear from
him. [Turchie, paragraph 141]
Kaczynski's actual whereabouts during this period of "camping" remain
unknown. A passage from the Psych Report may offer a
clue:
During the period of late 1972 until December 1973, Mr. Kaczynski worked at a variety
of jobs in Chicago and Salt Lake City, Utah. He returned to his cabin in Montana in June
1973. In September 1974, for two to three weeks, he worked at a gas station in Montana,
earning a few hundred dollars. In January 1975 he traveled to Oakland, California, and
returned to his cabin in March.
Based on the documentation, it appears that in the early 1970s Kaczynski spent his
winters away from the cabin in Montana, working odd jobs in various metropolitan areas.
Having spent the entire winter of 1975 in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is not illogical
to assume that he might have spent the previous winter (that of 1974; a period not
accounted for) in the same location. If that is so, it places him once again at a
considerable distance from his official domicile, near the scene of a Zodiac event.
The fact remains that, all hearsay aside, Kaczynski cannot be eliminated as a Zodiac
suspect on the basis of his known whereabouts during the periods of Zodiac activity from
1968 through 1971 and even beyond, to 1974. Further, the act of travelling a considerable
distance toward the areas of Zodiac activity makes him far more suspect than an
individual whose primary place of domicile was near those areas during the times in
question.
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