By David S. Jackson
The cabin is gone now, packed up by FBI agents, its perimeter
ringed by a chain-link fence with a KEEP OUT sign that only the
occasional rabbit and passing deer will see. A few feet away,
the garden that Ted Kaczynski once tended so carefully has gone
to ruin; the red bicycle that he rode four miles down a dirt
road into town lies in pieces, rusting and overgrown with weeds.
In the town of Lincoln, Mont., no one talks much about the
ex-neighbor, the Unabomber suspect. Only strangers ask about
him. But two weeks ago, two strangers showed up at the small
strip of grocery stores, churches and cafes along State Route
200, and they had questions about Kaczynski.
Was he mentally ill? Or not? The inquisitive visitors were two
prosecution psychiatrists, and the answers they got may not help
the "mental defect" defense that Kaczynski's lawyers are
planning for his trial, which starts Nov. 12. "I can't imagine
anybody saying he's insane," says Becky Garland, 41, who
befriended Kaczynski while working at Garland's Town & Country
store in Lincoln. "You might say that anyone who makes mail
bombs is insane. But insane by law? I don't think he was that."
Her sister Teresa, who still works in the store, said she knew
"Ted didn't have much of a childhood, that he was very unhappy
because he always had to study, and he didn't spend much time
around other people." But she has no doubts about his sanity,
and she told the psychiatrists so. "They wanted to know if we
felt he was normal when he came into town," she says. "And I
think it's fair to say that, yes, he was."
Dan Rundell, who gave Kaczynski a bicycle and got a rare tour of
the hermit's garden-irrigation system in return, had the same
impression. "I always thought that he acted, for a person who
was a recluse, well within the bounds of society. He always
seemed a little jumpy. But I put that down to the fact that he
was not a social person."
In Helena, about 60 miles southeast of Lincoln, the
psychiatrists met with Jack McCabe, owner of the Park Hotel,
where Kaczynski stayed 31 times since 1980. "They wanted to know
what he was like, if he caused any trouble," McCabe said
afterward. "But Ted Kaczynski never bothered me any. I figured
he was some rancher from up in Lincoln who wanted to get away to
the big town for a day or two. Lot of them did."
Because of the abundance of physical evidence in the case, many
legal observers have assumed that his lawyers would try to raise
questions about his mental state at some point in the trial,
either in the guilt phase or during the penalty phase that would
follow a conviction, in an attempt to avoid a death sentence.
But proving such a defense is difficult. Instead of arguing that
he was insane, Kaczynski's lawyers seem to be planning a defense
that he suffered from a mental defect that impaired his ability
to form an intent to commit the crimes. Nevertheless, as far as
his old neighbors seem to think, Ted Kaczynski, the former math
professor, was gentle, soft-spoken and painfully shy. Last
Friday Kaczynski's lawyers said he was refusing to submit to
court-ordered psychiatric testing at the federal prison in
Dublin, Calif., where he is awaiting trial.
The defense lawyers have been waging a stubborn but losing
battle to keep out all the evidence found in Kaczynski's
mountainside cabin. They are certain to raise more questions
when the trial begins, but unless some unexpected decision turns
their way, they are going to have to explain to the jury why the
FBI says his home contained such items as a fully constructed
bomb, the Unabomber's manifesto, the typewriter it was typed on
and, most damaging of all, handwritten journals in which
Kaczynski recorded virtually every bombing. Last week
prosecutors released excerpts, including one that read, "I sent
these devices during 1993. They detonated as they should have."
His attorneys may have little choice but to reach for a
mental-disease or -defect defense. Says Joseph Russoniello, a
former U.S. Attorney in San Francisco: "The defense will need
people on that jury who are either incredibly gullible, or
cynical, to argue that this fellow did not know the difference
between right and wrong. He used incredible genius and guile and
eluded law-enforcement officials for all this time. And would
have until this day if it weren't for his family's turning him
in." Back in Lincoln, many of Kaczynski's old friends are glad
that a jury, not they, will decide his fate. But they still have
questions. Says Teresa Garland, leaning back from the cash
register at her store: "I've always wanted to just sit down and
ask him, 'Why?'"
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