Amid Shared Pain, Signs of Healing

By MARK GLADSTONE

Jan. 24, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO — One day after his older brother admitted he is the notorious Unabomber, David Kaczynski held out hope that Theodore Kaczynski might still be redeemed.

“I would hope that one day he would appreciate the enormity of what he’s done,” said David Kaczynski, whose tip led to his brother’s arrest nearly two years ago. “He may not be capable of it yet.”

A pained yet relieved David Kaczynski, preparing to head back to his New York home and get on with his life, said Friday in an interview that his strong feelings for Theodore remain undiminished. And he hopes his brother feels the same way.

“Ted wrote to me once that I was the only person in the world whose death would give him real grief. . . . I still believe there’s a part of Ted who loves me very much,” David said.

“I know I love Ted very much. Sitting behind him in court, there were times when I felt that bond very powerfully and I sensed what a precious human being he is for me. All that heightens the tragedy of what happened to him . . . how his [mental] illness destroyed him.”

David Kaczynski also disclosed that Dr. Sally Johnson, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons psychiatrist who examined his brother last week, concluded that Theodore is driven by severe delusions.

In Theodore Kaczynski’s mind, Johnson determined, technological society was persecuting him and his own family was out to hurt him, said David, 48, who was interviewed by Johnson and read her report. He said she found his brother “impervious to logic.”

Johnson’s findings helped pave the way for the dramatic plea bargain agreement struck Thursday just as the murder-by-bombing trial was to begin. In federal court, Theodore Kaczynski, 55, pleaded guilty to five bombings that killed three people, and acknowledged responsibility for 11 other attacks.

In exchange, the government agreed to drop its effort to execute the Harvard-trained mathematician turned Montana hermit and, instead, keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

On Friday, the U.S. Marshals Service said Kaczynski could eventually be sent to a high-security prison, such as the new facility in Florence, Colo. David Kaczynski said he hopes that wherever his brother goes he will be treated for his paranoid schizophrenia.

For now, Theodore Kaczynski remains in the Sacramento County Jail. He is expected to be moved in about a week to a federal facility, possibly in Pleasanton, Calif., until his formal sentencing in May, according to a spokesman for the Marshals Service.

The plea bargain ended a case that involved thousands of FBI agents, support personnel and officials from other law enforcement agencies. Government officials said that it is impossible to estimate quickly the cost of the probe, which began in 1978.

On Friday, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh thanked those involved in the Unabomber investigation for “an effort unprecedented in FBI history” and expressed his gratitude “in perpetuity” to David Kaczynski.

It was in 1995 that David Kaczynski read a rambling manifesto detailing complaints about America’s technological society published in the New York Times and Washington Post. The papers published the treatise in full, a move that the FBI hoped would turn up a lead from someone who might recognize the Unabomber’s views.

David Kaczynski saw themes in the manifesto that were similar to those in letters his brother had sent him. He shared his suspicions with the FBI.

Propelled into the limelight by his brother’s arrest, this bearded six-footer may find it difficult to simply drive his 1990 Chevrolet S-10 pickup into the sunset. His life as an Albany, N.Y., social worker and that of his wife, a Union College philosophy professor, have been forever changed.

Since he came forward, Kaczynski said, he has received thousands of letters of support for his actions and found well-wishers drawn to him, including three people who sought him out at a Sacramento restaurant Friday. He may eventually write a book, but he says he will not keep any money he might earn.

He reiterated that the $1-million reward he may get for turning in his brother will go to a fund for the Unabomber’s victims. He said he has applied to the FBI for the reward.

As for his diminutive 80-year-old mother, Wanda, David Kaczynski said she feels like she is just now recovering from a long, debilitating illness.

Wanda Kaczynski, who tapped into her life savings to pay for an apartment for herself and David in Sacramento for the past two months, was not present at the interview at a local hotel, which also included the family’s lawyer, Anthony J. Bisceglie.

“What she told me this morning is she felt like she just emerged from a deep, long sickness. The fever has broken. She feels tremendously drained but tremendously relieved at the same time,” David said in the interview with reporters from three newspapers.

Calmly answering questions, David said Theodore has rebuffed his and his mother’s efforts to visit him at the county jail.

David, who before Theodore’s arrest had not seen his brother since 1986, said he always had a sense that his brother was different--more than just emotionally unstable.

“There’s no question we repressed our own intuitions about the severity of his illness,” he said, adding: “There were times when he seemed fairly normal.”

In the end, David Kaczynski said, he feels that “though [Theodore] has done evil things, he is not an evil person.”

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington contributed to this story.