Descent into anguish
By Paul Ferguson
Special to CNN Interactive
(CNN) -- Despite his moodiness and what his family called his occasional "shutdowns," Ted Kaczynski was making something of himself. His doctoral thesis was honored with a prestigious award, and a top school, the University of California at Berkeley, offered him a tenure-track job.
His sudden resignation from university life in 1969 was the point of departure that led the promising young academic to the life of a mountain hermit.
He moved back home with parents. "Well, I'm not going back," he explained about Berkeley. His family had not even known that he been thinking of quitting.
He complained that many of students planned to become engineers. Their work would destroy the environment, he said, and Kaczynski wanted no part of them.
His next job was in a mall as a gardener. It was the first of a string of low-paying jobs that he would take and then lose while he lived with his parents for two years.
He was waiting for an answer to an application he'd made for a plot of wilderness land in Canada. After two years of waiting, he received word that Canada rejected his land application. He fell into another shutdown.
Not long after, his mother heard him arise very early. She went downstairs to see he was just about to walk out the door.
There were no goodbyes with Ted, she recalled. He'd breeze in and out of their lives without ever having much to say.
He was leaving, he said. It would be easier if he didn't say goodbye. The note he left on a table, thanking his parents for everything they had given him over the years, was so stark that his father suspected it might be a suicide note. The note said he just had to leave.
But Ted was not going to kill himself. He was on his way to Montana.
Ted and David purchased a small plot of land for $2,100, though Ted was not completely happy with it. He had wanted something even more remote. He didn't want a neighbor within a two-hour walk. But he stayed, and built a flimsy cabin. He lived without plumbing or electricity.
His years alone in the woods did not bring him peace, his mother said. It had the opposite effect. Ted grew angrier, more eccentric, and difficult.
The first bomb that federal authorities attribute to Kaczynski exploded at a university in Chicago seven years after he purchased his Montana land.
Family members say he became increasingly moody, and subject to more complete shutdowns. Visits were filled with anguish and disappointment. His inability to relate to other people became more debilitating.
He asked them to stop writing to him, and insisted that even postcards were not welcome. They stopped. But Ted continued with his own writing, now searching for a larger audience.
It was his writing, and his brother's recognition that eventually brought Kaczynski out of the woods.
"I have got to know, I have GOT TO, GOT TO, GOT TO know that every last tie joining me to this stinking family has been cut FOREVER and that I will never NEVER have to communicate with any of you again. ... I've got to do it NOW. I can't tell you how desperate I am. ... It is killing me."