The serial killer unmasked by his own writing

The big breakthrough in the case came from an unlikely source, a US citizen holidaying in France with her husband, David Kaczynski. Linda Patrik, a philosophy professor, had been reading a series of articles about the Unabomber in the International Herald Tribune, an English-language newspaper published in Paris. She told the BBC in 2016: “Just about every other day, I’d look at these articles and kind of scratch my head and say, ‘wow, this kind of sounds like Dave’s brother’.” One report mentioned the suspect’s carpentry skills. Another described his aversion to technology. Others listed cities where bombs had detonated – places she knew David’s brother had lived or worked. Taken together, she said, the pattern became impossible to ignore. She had to ask him the awkward question: “I said, ‘Is it possible that your brother could be the Unabomber?'”

David did not believe this could be true, Patrik said, but when he read the manifesto he was stunned. “Dave sat there looking at the computer screen,” she said. “I could see him reading the first page and his expression changed radically.” It was a nightmarish scenario, David told the BBC. “I was literally considering the possibility that my brother was a serial killer, the most wanted person in America, perhaps in the whole world,” he said. The family’s dilemma was stark. If they stayed silent, their inaction could result in more carnage. But if Ted proved to be the Unabomber, he could face the death penalty. David said: “What would it be like to go through the rest of my life with my brother’s blood on my hands?”

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