Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. It
Speaker 1: was an impossible dilemma in the sense that we realized
Speaker 1: that any decision we made could lead to somebody's death.
Speaker 1: We'd have to go through the rest of our lives
Speaker 1: knowing that someone had died because we had failed to act.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I had to ask myself, what
Speaker 1: would it be like to go through the rest of
Speaker 1: my life with my brother's blood in my hands. That's
Speaker 1: David Kazinski, author of the book Every Last Tie, the
Speaker 1: Story of the UNI Bomber and his family. David is
Speaker 1: the younger brother of Ted Kazinski, a brilliant, troubled, reclusive
Speaker 1: former mouth professor who began sending bombs through the mail,
Speaker 1: in killing three people and injuring twenty three others. When
Speaker 1: the FBI finally closed in on Ted kasins g after
Speaker 1: a nationwide manhunt that spanned years, it was because they
Speaker 1: received the ultimate tip the UNI Bomber's brother had turned
Speaker 1: him in. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: There were four of us in our family Mom and dad. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dad made sausages at his uncle's delly. Mom was a
Speaker 1: stay at home mom, at least until I get to
Speaker 1: high school. My older brother, Ted is seven and a
Speaker 1: half years older, was you know, idolized him. He was
Speaker 1: kind to me. UM. But in addition, he seemed to
Speaker 1: exemplify the family's values, which focused on integrity education. Um.
Speaker 1: He was very very smart, skipped two grades in school,
Speaker 1: went to Harvard at the age of sixteen on a scholarship.
Speaker 1: Is a Q was tested it I think a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty seven at one. So you know, he represented
Speaker 1: everything that I wanted to be at that point in
Speaker 1: my life. And I never doubted for a moment that
Speaker 1: I was loved by any of my three family members.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm very very grateful for that. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, you know, our our parents values.
Speaker 1: There were there were two working class people, both of
Speaker 1: whom had to drop out of school in high school
Speaker 1: in order to support their families during the depression. I
Speaker 1: had to go to work, and then they finished their
Speaker 1: high school at night school. Sometime later. I think they
Speaker 1: actually met in a book discussion club. So there was
Speaker 1: this attraction to the life of mind um, a sort
Speaker 1: of very powerful optimism, a belief that by developing your mind,
Speaker 1: you've developed your spirit, you became someone who could really
Speaker 1: contribute to the world. So it was part of it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't only that I modeled myself and Ted. You know,
Speaker 1: our family sort of had this framework of values that
Speaker 1: it was around the life of the mind, the arts.
Speaker 1: But even though David idealized and idolized Ted, there was
Speaker 1: also a sense that there was another side to Ted
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with the families shared values
Speaker 1: or academic achievement. There was a time a little bit
Speaker 1: later when I asked my mom what's wrong with Teddy?
Speaker 1: And she was a little taken aback. You know, what
Speaker 1: do you mean, David, there's nothing with your brother? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, he doesn't have any friends. Why is that?
Speaker 1: Doesn't he like people and games? He did seem to
Speaker 1: shy away from folks, you know, somebody would come over
Speaker 1: unannounced and he would sort of leave the room quickly,
Speaker 1: like he was upset that they arrived, a little frightened.
Speaker 1: And it was then that Mom said that, you know,
Speaker 1: Ted had had an experience as a child. He is,
Speaker 1: at the age of nine months, he had gotten sick.
Speaker 1: They took him to the hospital. Some kind of rash
Speaker 1: had covered his body, apparently an allergic reaction, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't diagnose it, and they kept him there for I
Speaker 1: think well over a week, and our parents were only
Speaker 1: allowed to visit during the regular visiting hours. Mom always
Speaker 1: faulted the hospital for for that, and you know, she
Speaker 1: felt that when they brought Teddy Holme from the hospital,
Speaker 1: he was a very different child, at least for a while.
Speaker 1: He didn't smile anymore, he didn't make eye contact. And
Speaker 1: it was at that point that my mom had said
Speaker 1: to me, Dave, whatever you do in your life, don't
Speaker 1: ever abandon your brother, because that's what he fears the most.
Speaker 1: And of course I love Teddy, I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: love Teddy. I'd never abandoned Teddy. And I remember crying
Speaker 1: thinking about the pain he had suffered this a little baby.
Speaker 1: And I think there was another lesson that my mom
Speaker 1: sort of wove into that sort of teachable moment, and
Speaker 1: the lesson was that it takes some compassions empathy to
Speaker 1: try to understand another human being. And how old were
Speaker 1: you when she imparted this lesson? More or less would
Speaker 1: think I'm not exactly sure, probably somewhere between seven and
Speaker 1: nine years old, and when you said to your mom
Speaker 1: what's wrong with Teddy? What? What was it beyond that
Speaker 1: he didn't seem to have any friends? What prompted you
Speaker 1: to say that? Do you think, Oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I've been that question and it's an interesting one. Um.
Speaker 1: I think there were times when Teddy just seemed like
Speaker 1: kind of shut down, UM, like something was bothering him,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't express it. A strong sense of privacy,
Speaker 1: an introversion that was unusual, I think, at least in
Speaker 1: my experience, and I tended to be a fairly social person.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had friends, you know, it was natural
Speaker 1: for me to to be interested in people and too,
Speaker 1: I want to interact with people, and with Teddy it
Speaker 1: was quite different. So probably I was trying to explore
Speaker 1: wire Teddy and I different in this way. Did you
Speaker 1: share a room? We did for a while until I
Speaker 1: was maybe six or seven years old, and then our father, Um,
Speaker 1: we had an attic that was unfinished. We had moved
Speaker 1: at from Chicago out to one of the suburbs when
Speaker 1: I was about three years old, and my father finished
Speaker 1: the attic and you know, a beautiful knotty Pine just
Speaker 1: made it another story of the house, and then that
Speaker 1: became Ted's room, so that he and I weren't together
Speaker 1: in a small bedroom. You know. In some ways it
Speaker 1: was wonderful for Teddy. On the other hand, it became
Speaker 1: a very very convenient escape for him. So on those
Speaker 1: occasions when he wanted to avoid company, he would just
Speaker 1: walk up the stairs up to his attic. And you know,
Speaker 1: I call it an attic. It wasn't like it was,
Speaker 1: you know, some place of banishment. It was very very nice,
Speaker 1: nice room up there. Ted goes to Harvard as a
Speaker 1: very young freshman. During his first year, he's identified as
Speaker 1: a candidate for a psychological study, an experiment that Ted
Speaker 1: took part in for three years during his undergraduate career.
Speaker 1: The study, titled a Multiform Assessment of Personality Development among
Speaker 1: Gifted College Men, was masterminded by a famous psychologist named
Speaker 1: Henry Murray and was meant to measure the effects of
Speaker 1: trauma ungifted male students. But here's the thing. In order
Speaker 1: to study the trauma, first they had to inflict it.
Speaker 1: Students were berated, emotionally and psychologically, beaten down, humiliated, these
Speaker 1: students chosen for their vulnerability and high degrees of social alienation,
Speaker 1: were purposefully being traumatized and gas lit because they weren't
Speaker 1: told the purpose of the experiment, so they had no
Speaker 1: idea why they were being treated. So sadistically, it's a
Speaker 1: study that would never pass MUSTER today. At least I
Speaker 1: hope that you know there are institutional review boards at
Speaker 1: colleges and universities. I think that would look at a
Speaker 1: study like this and say, no way, this is unethical
Speaker 1: for various reasons. Um In fact, even if you go
Speaker 1: back for the time of the study, there was the
Speaker 1: Nuremberg Code that came out of World War Two, and
Speaker 1: part of the code was that people should not be
Speaker 1: harmed or deceived, and this study did both. To my brother.
Speaker 1: He was asked by his defense attorneys, why didn't you
Speaker 1: drop out? Why didn't you quit? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to prove I could take it, that I
Speaker 1: couldn't be broken. And in some ways this is so
Speaker 1: much like Ted, because he has this kind of indomitable will,
Speaker 1: this stubbornness, and yet what occurs to me is that
Speaker 1: in some ways he may have been broken without realizing
Speaker 1: it at the very least he was hardened. We didn't
Speaker 1: know about it. Actually, Mom had had to sign a
Speaker 1: release because Ted was only seventeen when he went into
Speaker 1: this study, and so he needed parental permission. And Mom
Speaker 1: is thinking, oh, you know Ted, he has some social
Speaker 1: adjustment and issues. Maybe these nice psychologists could help him.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it was just the opposite. I think
Speaker 1: there's a theme in a way running throughout this story
Speaker 1: of misplaced trust and institutions in some way. You know,
Speaker 1: the hospital at that time isolating a baby, I'm sure
Speaker 1: thinking that they were doing the right thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: with repercussions. And then Harvard itself, the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: Ted would go to Harvard and find many other very
Speaker 1: high i Q individuals just like him, and it would
Speaker 1: be somehow a soft and gentle place, which is a
Speaker 1: more accepting place, a more accepting place, right, And then
Speaker 1: these psychologists under Harvard auspices who run a study like that, well,
Speaker 1: surely that's going to be a good thing. Ted graduates
Speaker 1: and continues his academic rise. David goes off to college himself,
Speaker 1: and even though they're very different young men, they have
Speaker 1: a really tight relationship for a pure of time, they
Speaker 1: both love the woods and far At preserves, and they
Speaker 1: go on joint camping trips. But then the summer after
Speaker 1: David's junior year, Ted decides that he's going to quit
Speaker 1: his job as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley. He
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to our parents saying that he's decided
Speaker 1: to quit that you know, he did not find mathematics fulfilling.
Speaker 1: That in addition to that, he'd come to this conclusion
Speaker 1: that technology that most people celebrate kind of uncritically is
Speaker 1: actually has many, many negative consequences. And he did not
Speaker 1: like the mathematics supported technology. But also on a personal level,
Speaker 1: he wanted to get as far away from it as
Speaker 1: is he good, and he wanted to go in and
Speaker 1: live in the woods someplace. And I remember at that time,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're old enough to remember the sixties,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't that uncommon, you know. I think there
Speaker 1: were time magazine had say a cover stories about people
Speaker 1: dropping out, quote dropping out or going back to nature.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a little bit of a movement
Speaker 1: to countercultural movement that Ted, you know, wasn't that he
Speaker 1: wasn't personally aligned with it, but we could understand where
Speaker 1: he was going, and remember hearing what he was planning
Speaker 1: to do, and I thought, oh, this is fantastic. Wow.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always admired my brother, but this is
Speaker 1: even better. I mean, how many people um get to
Speaker 1: do what they really want to do in life instead
Speaker 1: of what other people expect them to do, And how
Speaker 1: many people have the courage to follow their own deepest
Speaker 1: instincts instead of sort of conforming with the social expectation.
Speaker 1: So I thought it was wonderful. Our parents, you know,
Speaker 1: were accepting. They didn't try to talk Chet out of
Speaker 1: what he was doing. But I remember Mom saying to
Speaker 1: me at one point, you know, they've just I don't
Speaker 1: really think this has a lot to do with technology.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that the problem is that Ted doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: really know how to relate to people, and he's running
Speaker 1: away from a society that he doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: fit into. It gave me pause. That summer Ted said
Speaker 1: he was going to go look for land up in
Speaker 1: Canada and Alaska, and did I want to join him
Speaker 1: in that search? And so we spent a couple of
Speaker 1: months together camping in British Columbia. Mostly we've got up
Speaker 1: to the Yukon. There was definitely a brotherly closeness. I
Speaker 1: remember we took one long hike and I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was something I ate or if it was
Speaker 1: altitude or something, and I got a very upset stomach,
Speaker 1: and we were like four or five miles from the
Speaker 1: car and Ted ran back to the car to get
Speaker 1: some tept this fault that we had there, and ran
Speaker 1: came all the way back to help me so that
Speaker 1: I could feel better. You know, there was a kindness
Speaker 1: in him towards me that I always sensed, but there
Speaker 1: were also the times when he was very shut down
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what to make of it. I
Speaker 1: remember sitting around the campfire one morning and he just
Speaker 1: looking into the flames and he stopped talking, and I
Speaker 1: asked him a few questions and he just didn't respond.
Speaker 1: It was like a stone there and that. So I
Speaker 1: went off and took a walk, and by the time
Speaker 1: I got back, he was back to talking again, and
Speaker 1: I asked him, you know, what was that about. What
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you answer me? Says So I was just
Speaker 1: just deeply thinking. So I accepted it. But there were
Speaker 1: a couple of times when he was in a state
Speaker 1: that Gosh seemed close to what you would call catatonicum,
Speaker 1: and I sometimes wondered, if, you know, if he was
Speaker 1: coming to terms with the idea that you know, maybe
Speaker 1: Mom was right, maybe the really wasn't the answer just
Speaker 1: running away. Both David and Ted are drawn as young
Speaker 1: men to living solitary lives, but that, it seems, is
Speaker 1: where the similarity between them ends. While Ted seems to
Speaker 1: be pushing further and further away into a world that
Speaker 1: appears dangerously hermetic, with nothing but the contents of his
Speaker 1: own mind for company. David's solitary time has more of
Speaker 1: a feeling of a pilgrimage. Ted's in Montana, David's in
Speaker 1: a small cabin in the Texas Desert. The brothers are
Speaker 1: both geographically, psychologically, and spiritually on very different paths. Ted
Speaker 1: is becoming angrier, more and more hostile. He's written a
Speaker 1: series of terrible letters to their parents, blaming them for everything,
Speaker 1: cutting off all contact. David uses his time to arrive
Speaker 1: at a deep sense of self knowledge, and eventually he
Speaker 1: comes to realize that he's in love with his old
Speaker 1: friend from childhood, Linda, and that he wants to marry her,
Speaker 1: and so David writes to Ted to tell him the
Speaker 1: good news. At one point I told him that I
Speaker 1: was going to be leaving the desert. I said, be
Speaker 1: happy for me. I finally found the person I want
Speaker 1: to get married to. It's it's Linda Patrick, this girl
Speaker 1: I've known since elementary school. And he just wrote this
Speaker 1: very cruel letter. He had never met Linda, and yet
Speaker 1: he was saying, it's obvious, just David, just from your letter,
Speaker 1: that she's a horrible person. You know she's going to
Speaker 1: take advantage of you. But no, you never listened to
Speaker 1: my advice. So um, you know, it's just too painful
Speaker 1: for me to be your brother anymore. So don't don't
Speaker 1: contact me. I don't want to have anything to do
Speaker 1: with you anymore. It was just a shock and surprised
Speaker 1: to me, although I had some precedent with his sort
Speaker 1: of out of the blue abuse of letters to our parents,
Speaker 1: angry letters to our parents. And also puts you in
Speaker 1: a situation where by choosing to love another person, you're
Speaker 1: losing this person who you love deeply. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like was Ted thinking that
Speaker 1: love is finite. You know that it's like a piece
Speaker 1: of pie, and if Linda gets a piece, he has
Speaker 1: less um. Now love isn't like that, it's it can
Speaker 1: expand um amazingly. You know, I thought maybe he just
Speaker 1: didn't understand that, maybe he felt abandoned in some way,
Speaker 1: and again my mother's request but I never abandoned came
Speaker 1: to mind at that point. But I was also pretty angry.
Speaker 1: I have to admit thinking, how dare he? You know,
Speaker 1: our parents were just I think, lovely parents and kind
Speaker 1: to him and generous to him, and he hurt them
Speaker 1: terribly and now he's lashing out as another person. But
Speaker 1: I love as it turned out from his diaries later. Ever,
Speaker 1: of course, nobody ever read his diaries until after he
Speaker 1: was arrested and the defense team and asked me to
Speaker 1: read through his diaries. It was like thirty thousand pages
Speaker 1: of diaries. It was unbelievable, um, But it was like
Speaker 1: opening a window into a tortured soul because I realized
Speaker 1: he had this tremendous longing for human contact, for companionship,
Speaker 1: would have liked nothing better than to be married and
Speaker 1: to have a family. We'll be back in a moment
Speaker 1: with more family secrets. David and Linda Settle into married life.
Speaker 1: David works as an assistant director of a shelter for
Speaker 1: runaway and homeless youth. Linda is a professor of philosophy
Speaker 1: at a local college. He and Ted are completely estranged.
Speaker 1: David's never even heard of the unibomber. Remember these are
Speaker 1: pre internet days, where news stories are run the old
Speaker 1: fashioned way, the literal actual newspaper, or, if the story
Speaker 1: is big enough, the nightly broadcast news. David and Linda
Speaker 1: are living in Schenectady, New York, and it's before the
Speaker 1: unibomber story makes headlines near them after a mail bomb
Speaker 1: kills New Jersey advertising executive Thomas Masser. At this time,
Speaker 1: the unibomber contacts several national newspapers and asks them to
Speaker 1: publish what he refers to as his manifesto. He says
Speaker 1: that if his manifesto is published, the bombs will stop.
Speaker 1: So then Linda, who's never met your brother, has this
Speaker 1: kind of lightning Boltova thought, And as to you, I
Speaker 1: think that Ted maybe the unibomber, and I was very
Speaker 1: moved by the way at the two of you navigated
Speaker 1: that whole period of time after the manifesto was published,
Speaker 1: because your your initial response was that that was completely
Speaker 1: out of the question, of which, of course it was.
Speaker 1: Of course it was. But then you read the manifesto
Speaker 1: and somewhere within you a tiny little sliver of doubt
Speaker 1: creeps in. There's a phrase that I came across when
Speaker 1: I was writing my most recent book. It's a psychoanalytic phrase,
Speaker 1: and it's the unthought known. What we what we know,
Speaker 1: but it's a live wire. We cannot it's way too
Speaker 1: dangerous to think. And so you're somewhere in the territory
Speaker 1: of the unthought known, and you and Linda are parsing,
Speaker 1: you know, the manifesto, looking for clues, and at the
Speaker 1: same time it's like played out against this backdrop of
Speaker 1: this profound impossible choice. When you finally do reach the
Speaker 1: sense that it's possible, you know that it's possible that
Speaker 1: Ted is the UNI bomber. I mean, can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. Of course I had talked
Speaker 1: a bit about my brother a lot. Perhaps Linda had
Speaker 1: many questions why he didn't come to the wedding. I
Speaker 1: hadn't showed her the letter that Ted had written to
Speaker 1: me because it was so awful. But you know, I
Speaker 1: remember some years earlier it was shortly after our father died.
Speaker 1: Ted reconnected with my mom briefly. Um she invited him
Speaker 1: to explain a little bit about why he had been
Speaker 1: so angry before, and then he wrote a letter that
Speaker 1: just sailed off back into that anger. And Mom sent
Speaker 1: me the letter. I showed it to Linda. Remember this
Speaker 1: is years before David or Linda have ever heard the
Speaker 1: term unibomber. Linda's looking at this letter. This is in
Speaker 1: so it's shortly after we're married. She's looking at this
Speaker 1: letter and she says, she looks up at me and
Speaker 1: she says, Dave, you know your brother is sick, don't you.
Speaker 1: I mean he's mentally ill. And I said, no, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's really really smart. He's got a you know, a
Speaker 1: genius like you, and this is the way he thinks.
Speaker 1: And Linda said, David, look at this passage. You know,
Speaker 1: people who are healthy in their minds don't think like this.
Speaker 1: She actually persuaded me at that point to bring some
Speaker 1: of my brother's letters to a psychiatrist who we knew socially,
Speaker 1: and his viewpoint was that yes was sick. He said
Speaker 1: he couldn't make a diagnosis based on some letters, but
Speaker 1: possibly it was schizophrenia, which ends up being because eventual diagnosis.
Speaker 1: So now we're in the mid nineties, you and a
Speaker 1: bomber has been at it for you. Between ninety he
Speaker 1: placed or mailed sixteen bombs that killed three people and
Speaker 1: injured twenty three others. Linda reads his manifesto and she's
Speaker 1: able to have the clarity of thought that this letter
Speaker 1: and the letter she read and had analyzed by the
Speaker 1: psychiatrist years earlier, may well have been written by the
Speaker 1: same person. Yeah, I mean, it was an impossible dilemma
Speaker 1: in the sense that we realized that any decision we
Speaker 1: made could lead to somebody's death, and my brother was
Speaker 1: the un obamber. Of course, we didn't know at this
Speaker 1: point that if it turned out he was and another
Speaker 1: person was killed, we'd have to go through the rest
Speaker 1: of our lives knowing that someone had died because we
Speaker 1: had failed to act. On the other hand, at this
Speaker 1: point in time, the un obamber was like public enemy
Speaker 1: number one, and if he was sentenced to death and executed,
Speaker 1: I had to ask myself, what would it be like
Speaker 1: to go through the rest of my life with my
Speaker 1: brother's blood in my hands. You know, Ultimately we realized
Speaker 1: there was one thing we could control. We could save
Speaker 1: the next person's life. We could set the violence, and
Speaker 1: then maybe, since you know, we had some evidence, we'd
Speaker 1: already gone to a psychiatrist, maybe we could convince the
Speaker 1: Justice Department that Ted was mentally ill and that there
Speaker 1: was reason to mitigate the sentence of death, and maybe
Speaker 1: he could get a prison sentence. Sad anyway, that was
Speaker 1: the hope. I'm struck again and again by the care
Speaker 1: and thoughtfulness David and Linda put into their impossible decision.
Speaker 1: They want to be certain, or at least as certain
Speaker 1: as possible. Linda's oldest friend is a private detective, and
Speaker 1: she submits one of Ted's letters anonymously to an expert
Speaker 1: in forensic analysis of language. The expert comes back at
Speaker 1: that the author of a letter and the author of
Speaker 1: the manifesto are one and the same person. Her father
Speaker 1: was gone at this point, but Mom was still alive,
Speaker 1: and we had another choice to make. Do we do
Speaker 1: involved Mom and this, Do we tell her what's going on?
Speaker 1: Do we ask her advice? Certainly she was a stakeholder
Speaker 1: in this thing, But you know, my sense at the
Speaker 1: time was, oh my god, I just can't this could
Speaker 1: kill mom, And what if Ted's innocent? You know that
Speaker 1: her paying her sleeplessness would be for nothing. Anyway. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that was the right decision, but we
Speaker 1: decided to go forward without telling them. But then ultimately,
Speaker 1: when it turns out that it is Ted and that's
Speaker 1: been confirmed and it's about to be public, you you
Speaker 1: go to your mom and she reacts really remarkably right right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's probably my defining memory of my mother.
Speaker 1: I mean, of all the memories I have of her,
Speaker 1: but the moment that I told her that I suspected
Speaker 1: Ted and that I had gone to the authorities, she
Speaker 1: looked at me for a moment like she just couldn't
Speaker 1: believe what she was hearing. And then she, you know,
Speaker 1: she got up and came up to me and put
Speaker 1: her arms around my She was very short woman, like
Speaker 1: five ft tall and about six ft tall, and so
Speaker 1: she had to kind of pull me down and put
Speaker 1: a kiss on my cheek, and then she said, David,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what you've been struggling with. But then
Speaker 1: she said the thing that I most needed to hear.
Speaker 1: She said, David, I know that you loved Ted. I
Speaker 1: know that you wouldn't have done this unless you truly
Speaker 1: felt that you had to, And that was that was
Speaker 1: the greatest relief I could have experienced at that moment.
Speaker 1: It was just amazing, and in some sense too, it
Speaker 1: exemplified the family values. The values were raised with to
Speaker 1: do the right thing. So David and Linda do the
Speaker 1: right thing. They are promised they'll be treated as confidential informants,
Speaker 1: that their names not be revealed publicly, But then the
Speaker 1: opposite happens. Their suburban home is surrounded by reporters and
Speaker 1: camera crews. Their names and faces are plastered everywhere. Someone
Speaker 1: in the huge chain of people, who I guess had
Speaker 1: knowledge of this, made a mistake. At this point, they
Speaker 1: had investigators planted in the woods around my brother's cap
Speaker 1: and apparently, from what I understand, one of them revealed
Speaker 1: things we should not have revealed to a person in
Speaker 1: the media. We were, in a sense barricaded in our house.
Speaker 1: At one point, there was this reporter who got up
Speaker 1: on a little ladder and tried to film something inside
Speaker 1: our house through one of our windows, and and I
Speaker 1: remember Linda putting a blanket over all the lower four
Speaker 1: windows to block the media's few of us, and you know,
Speaker 1: people were asking themselves questions like what kind of a
Speaker 1: family would produce the univalm or what kind of a
Speaker 1: brother would turn in his own brother. But there was
Speaker 1: one of the late night comedians, I think I didn't
Speaker 1: see this myself. I guess he thought it was being funny,
Speaker 1: but he says, yeah, I think of this um in
Speaker 1: one family. You've got the un Obama and the Unite snitch. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I thought that was called. When the authority surrounded and
Speaker 1: then swarmed Ted's cabin in the woods, any lingering doubts
Speaker 1: that David and Linda might have harbored about whether turning
Speaker 1: him in was indeed the right thing, we're starkly addressed.
Speaker 1: Among the incriminating evidence found was another live bomb beneath
Speaker 1: Ted's bed, wrapped up, ready to be mailed to someone.
Speaker 1: But though one very hard part of this story is over,
Speaker 1: Ted is a UNI bomber, he's now been arrested and
Speaker 1: can cause no more harm, another new, very hard part
Speaker 1: of this story has yet to unfold, a hard part
Speaker 1: that eventually becomes a beautiful part. David and Linda begin
Speaker 1: reaching out to Ted's victims, so does David's mom for
Speaker 1: a family who has always been set on trying to
Speaker 1: do the right thing, the ethical thing. It seems the
Speaker 1: next logical step, if anything here can be called logical.
Speaker 1: One of these victims is a man named Gary Wright.
Speaker 1: One February morning, Gary Wright pulled into the parking lot
Speaker 1: of a computer company he owned in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1: A piece of lumber appeared to be in his way,
Speaker 1: and when he went to move it, a homemade bomb
Speaker 1: blew up, grievously, injuring him. He went through three surgeries,
Speaker 1: spent three years in and out of casts, and had
Speaker 1: two hundred pieces of shrapnel removed. It was years before
Speaker 1: that bomb was connected to the unit bomber. I gave
Speaker 1: him a call and, UM, you know, my heart skin
Speaker 1: of in my throat, and at this point I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think what am I going to say, and don't
Speaker 1: want it to be too rehearsed. I wanted to be natural.
Speaker 1: And then I get this voice that says, you have
Speaker 1: reached the right house at the wrong time, please leave
Speaker 1: the enough So I wasn't prepared for that, but I awkwardly,
Speaker 1: you know, said you know my name is David Kazinski.
Speaker 1: I think you know who I am, and I would
Speaker 1: like to talk to you. If you're open to that,
Speaker 1: I'll try calling that. And then a few days later
Speaker 1: I called back and again I didn't didn't get Gary directly.
Speaker 1: I think it was his daughter and I heard her say, Dad,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these un a line for you,
Speaker 1: And then Gary came up. Though most of Ted's victims
Speaker 1: and their families wanted nothing to do with anyone named Kazynski,
Speaker 1: Gary Wright had a very different response. I wanted to
Speaker 1: understand what was going through Gary's head, how he was
Speaker 1: able to afford a sense of compassion for the brother
Speaker 1: of the man who nearly killed him. I've asked Gary
Speaker 1: Wright to join this conversation now here on family secrets.
Speaker 1: It was really kind of I guess for both of us,
Speaker 1: uh nervous dance if you will, in the beginning, But
Speaker 1: I think I quickly got over it in that I
Speaker 1: had had quite a bit of time to process, um,
Speaker 1: what I've been through, whereas David and his family had
Speaker 1: much less time. So um, when we first began to speak,
Speaker 1: you know, Dave called and said, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to apologize on behalf of my family, um for what
Speaker 1: had happened to you and you know, we're really sorry.
Speaker 1: And I just told him, I said, look, David, everybody
Speaker 1: has someone in their family they probably want to apologize for.
Speaker 1: And I know my family probably wants to apologize for
Speaker 1: me on a lot of fronts, maybe not at the
Speaker 1: same level, but um, you can't carry it up the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And we went back and forth
Speaker 1: a little bit and kind of chatted briefly, but I
Speaker 1: did let him know. I said, look, sometimes you might
Speaker 1: need to speak with someone outside of family, close friends
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, just even if it's the screaming get
Speaker 1: something off your chest. And I said, feel free to
Speaker 1: call me anytime. I mean Gary's invitation to talk at
Speaker 1: any time, I mean it was like wow. And believe me,
Speaker 1: he was incredibly helpful. Um. That's just the notion that,
Speaker 1: you know, the people affected in different ways could have
Speaker 1: something in common that we could not be divided by
Speaker 1: our relationship to Ted. Gary was Ted's victim, as Ted's brother,
Speaker 1: that if we could build a bridge across this chasms
Speaker 1: abyss of human suffering, then there was hope. And I
Speaker 1: really felt that deep in my heart. The first time
Speaker 1: that David and Gary actually meet, David is driving across
Speaker 1: country After Ted enters an insanity plea in court in Sacramento, California,
Speaker 1: the plea that will ultimately spare him the death penalty,
Speaker 1: David realizes that the drive will take him right through
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City, where Gary lives, and with that first
Speaker 1: meeting begins an important friendship that David describes in his
Speaker 1: book as being like virtual blood brothers. Our bond forged
Speaker 1: through violence is as powerful and deep as any other.
Speaker 1: He writes, nothing can compensate me for losing Ted, but
Speaker 1: I find a poetic balance in having gained a new
Speaker 1: brother in Gary. Our choices end up reshaping the universe,
Speaker 1: at least the universe we know. I'm so struck by
Speaker 1: this beautiful idea that our choices end up reshaping the universe.
Speaker 1: We know that really could be the model for this podcast.
Speaker 1: I think something that's very important when you take one
Speaker 1: of these risks to reach out to the what people
Speaker 1: think of is the other side, is is to do
Speaker 1: so without a lot of expectations, Like I couldn't say
Speaker 1: I want this from Gary, I want X, I want Y.
Speaker 1: I guess with openness comes some vulnerability, but you have
Speaker 1: to just be open, I think, and drop the expectations. David,
Speaker 1: you were describing what you and Linda were afraid of
Speaker 1: when the news broken. Your house is surrounding reporters are
Speaker 1: trying to, like, you know, crawl in through every cravass
Speaker 1: in your house, and that you know, it seems from
Speaker 1: what I've read and watched that your friendship in both
Speaker 1: directions has been I know I hesitate to you this word,
Speaker 1: but you know, a healing one. Would you characterize it
Speaker 1: that way? From my aspect? And I'm definitely one of
Speaker 1: the things I think that seems to be missing or
Speaker 1: has been pushed off to the side these days, just
Speaker 1: in regular day life is empathy and being able to
Speaker 1: visualize yourself in someone else's shoes. There's so much of
Speaker 1: the inwardly focused or you know, me focused stuff out
Speaker 1: there that I mean, there's just not that time taken
Speaker 1: to look at what would this be if it were me?
Speaker 1: And I think in my case, I feel like the
Speaker 1: ability to be empathetic with what I had seen David
Speaker 1: and his family go through UM and being open genuinely
Speaker 1: allowed for us to be able to have conversations and
Speaker 1: believe me, we've had crazy conversations, but it's really cathartic
Speaker 1: in a way, both on my end and I won't
Speaker 1: speak for David, but it's cathartic in that Number One,
Speaker 1: you realize there's a great human being on the other
Speaker 1: side of a divide, right um, the event doesn't describe
Speaker 1: an entire family, even though some families are completely stigmatized
Speaker 1: by an event that they had no control over. So
Speaker 1: you realize the human on the other side and the values,
Speaker 1: and you you get the opportunity to dig into what
Speaker 1: really lies behind a family. And when you do that,
Speaker 1: that's when the opportunity for friendship comes into play. And
Speaker 1: friendship in my case, you know, I count maybe on
Speaker 1: two hands who I call friends, and David is one
Speaker 1: of those. Right If I called him up and said, hey, Dave,
Speaker 1: I need a B C or D if it was
Speaker 1: within his power, he would do it. And if I
Speaker 1: needed him there and he could do it, he would
Speaker 1: be there. I'm thinking a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: the notion of rust, and it's been a bit of
Speaker 1: a theme of our conversation from the beginning, and where
Speaker 1: is that balance between you know, sort of trust and
Speaker 1: self protection. I think if I'm going to err, I
Speaker 1: probably want to err on the side of trust. David
Speaker 1: and Garry's friendship deepened into the two men doing healing
Speaker 1: work together, appearing at speaking engagements to spread their message
Speaker 1: of trust, healing and forgiveness. David and I have. He's
Speaker 1: been really gracious to invite me to a lot of
Speaker 1: events um to speak, but one of the things that
Speaker 1: has always stuck in my head from day one, the
Speaker 1: very first time we were ever asked to speak. I
Speaker 1: can still remember. My thought process was, if I can
Speaker 1: just shorten the amount of time that it takes a
Speaker 1: person to heal, and I'll do this forever. It could
Speaker 1: be a room of five hundred, but if one person
Speaker 1: goes away and says, wow, you made me think differently,
Speaker 1: or I can incorporate some of what you've been through
Speaker 1: into my own personal space and developed my own path forward,
Speaker 1: that was pretty much my motivating factor. I feel sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm just a human experiment on myself, on my own
Speaker 1: guinea pig, but happy to share the results. Gary describes
Speaker 1: picking up the phone and taking David's call as probably
Speaker 1: one of the top five decisions he's ever made in
Speaker 1: his life. Remember when I said earlier that something beautiful
Speaker 1: would come out of all this violence, pain, and horror.
Speaker 1: Just think what would have been lost if Gary or David,
Speaker 1: either one or both of them had shut down, Had
Speaker 1: either man allowed himself to be made smaller rather than
Speaker 1: larger by the circumstances he found himself in, then the
Speaker 1: ripple effect of the peace and healing each of them
Speaker 1: together and separately has brought into the world would never
Speaker 1: have happened. You know, we we live in a culture,
Speaker 1: be in a species that has practiced a lot of violence.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, violence looks powerful because you
Speaker 1: can impose on somebody else something that you know they
Speaker 1: can't change, and it may be irreversible. Violence has this
Speaker 1: illusion of power. But I think one thing that I
Speaker 1: feel I've truly learned is that violence is not powerful.
Speaker 1: It's it's weak. It it is only destructive. It only
Speaker 1: makes the world worse. Love doesn't look so powerful. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's works in more subtle ways. It's results are not
Speaker 1: immediate often. But I think I've known through my parents,
Speaker 1: through Linda, through Gary, through others, so many others, that
Speaker 1: love is by far the more powerful force in this world.
Speaker 1: And the more we recognize that love is powerful and
Speaker 1: violence as week um, the better chance we'll have to
Speaker 1: make this world a better place. Many thanks to David
Speaker 1: Kazinski and Gary Wright for speaking with me today. David
Speaker 1: is the author of Every Last Tie, the story of
Speaker 1: the UNI Bomber and his family, and Gary is an
Speaker 1: activist and speaker. Find out more about the work Gary's
Speaker 1: doing at g B Right dot com. Family Secrets is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer.
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas and beth Ann Macalouso are the executive producers.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: get in touch with us at listener mail at Family
Speaker 1: Secrets podcast dot com. You can also find us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at day any Writer, Facebook at Family Secrets Pod,
Speaker 1: and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more about my
Speaker 1: book Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts.
Speaker 1: For my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.