Unabomber's Brother Spent Decades Sending Him Letters

In the spring of 1996, David Kaczynski picked up a pencil and started drafting a letter to his older brother—the brother he'd just outed as the Unabomber, the domestic terrorist responsible for nearly 20 years of deadly bombings. David wanted to explain, in person if possible, that he'd acted to stop the violence. Ted, however, responded with venom: "You will go to hell because, for you, seeing yourself as you really are will truly be hell," he wrote. David was undeterred. In a lengthy piece for the New York Times, Serge F. Kovaleski shares excerpts of the one-sided correspondence David kept up in an attempt to get the chance "to look into each other's eyes and share the truth of our principles and feelings." He never got it.

Through years of letters, David recounted memories—playing softball as kids, their adventures in the Yukon—and gave life updates. The holiday letter David mailed in December 2021 was returned from the Colorado federal supermax prison address he'd used for more than 20 years. It was only then that he learned his brother had been moved to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, and was dying of cancer. David doubled down on his writing until Ted's death by suicide in June 2023. "All those years of letters—even without an answer, they had kept a door wedged open," Kovaleski writes. The closing of it smarted. And one final point of pain: Ted's handwritten will specified no relative should have any ownership or control over his estate; despite his efforts, David has been unable to learn what became of his brother's remains. ( Read the full article.) (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)