Unabomber's death provides a powerful reminder of the danger of unchecked mental illness

Brooding, alone, posting hateful screeds, then targeting his victims.

He was the United States’ most prolific domestic terrorist — living at large for 17 years — before being apprehended in a 10-by-12-foot cabin in Lincoln, Montana.

Jamie Gehring is still surprised at some of the reactions she receives when talking about her former next-door neighbor.

“How many did he kill?” she is often asked.

The answer: Kaczynski killed three and injured 23 – a fact that seems somehow less appalling than the scores of people injured by mass shootings.

But for years, government officials, scientists and leaders worried about getting a bomb.

Gehring had literally grown up living next door to Kaczynski. Her journey to adulthood was paralleled by Kaczynski’s descent into madness and an escalation of terror. The man who would bring her parents a hand-carved cup to celebrate her birth was also the man she’d hide from when he knocked at the door and no one else was around.

She knew his death was imminent — he was in his 80s and had cancer.

“Honestly, it was a bit of a shock,” Gehring said.

The news of death on June 10 was sudden, and suicide was suspected. But Gehring has won praise for her treatment of Kaczynski’s life in her book, “Madman in the Woods,” which is part memoir, part investigating the question: What happened to transform a Harvard-trained math wiz into a reclusive terrorist?

Ted Kaczynski’s brother, David, said Gehring’s book “might well be the best attempt to yet understand the strange life and mind of my brother.”

Gehring said some of her emotions are tied up in her past, from family members dying of cancer.

“My feelings are complicated. There was grief,” she said. “But how could I possibly have those feelings for my childhood monster? Yet, they brought up feelings of grief about my father and sister’s passing.”

For her, Kaczynski’s death was another reminder of those moments in the past slipping farther away.

Now that she’s had some time to think about it, speak about, even write about it, she better understands what’s she feeling: A deep sense of loss – a loss of those who lost their lives; loss for those whose lives were changed; and the loss of moments that were interrupted by his violence. In this story, there’s not a lot of redemption, Gehring said.

“There is peace because he’s no longer with us,” Gehring said.

For the past five years, she’s been writing about the experiences growing up, culminating with her book.

She’s been able to process the feelings of fear and terror like the time Kaczynski pointed a gun at Gehring and her sister. They learned later that he had poisoned the family dog. She still remembers hiding in the closet when he knocked on the door.

“As I did my interviews and writing and learning about who Ted Kaczynski was, and who created him and you’ll never really know,” Gehring said. “But I have come to more of an understanding, and I could let go of some of the anger.”

Yet, she still thinks about many of the families of the victims for whom Kaczynski’s death will be nothing more than a relief that he won’t harm others.

“Those families are still hurting. Just because Ted has passed, it’s not that what he did can be erased,” she said.

The only redemption she could find is trying to stop the next genius-turned-hermit from becoming a terrorist.

“I believe it’s a reminder that every single person has a story. That’s not to excuse the action, it’s just important to understand the narrative,” she said.

While she was growing up, Kaczynski was growing more reclusive and violent.

“He wasn’t always so ominous. When I was young, he would have dinner at our house, and when my mother left to go do something, and came back, he stood up for her as a sign of respect,” Gehring said.

Still, she can’t help but wonder about the time they both met in the woods. She didn’t know that he had been testing bombs. She rounded the corner in the densely wooded area to find him.

“Looking back, I was definitely in a lot of danger, and things could have gone very differently if there would have been any small change,” she said.

Sometimes, she would hear him scavenging parts off old cars at her house. Those cars were close to her bedroom. She’d hear him rummaging around, right outside her bedroom window.

“What if I’d gone out there?” she asked.

In her mind’s eye, Kaczynski still looks more the part of a Harvard professor, maybe a bit dirty, than the wild-eyed man in an orange jumpsuit the world saw when it first caught a glimpse of the Unabomber.

She remembers being in California, after her parents divorced, and the disc jockey cut into an Alanis Morissette song to say authorities had captured the Unabomber – a man named Theodore Kaczynski of Lincoln, Montana.

“It still gives me chills talking about it,” she said. “Shocking doesn’t even describe it. Even then, it was odd because you’d continue to say things like, ‘if he is the Unabomber.’ I wouldn’t accept it. I think as an adult, there’s a part of you who wonders: How in the hell didn’t I know that? Of course, I was 16, and it shook me that this man who had been living next door to my dad did the atrocities he did.”

For years, she struggled with the “what-if” questions that followed – those moments of memory tinged with guilt that caused her and others in Lincoln to wonder: Could have I stopped him?

It wasn’t till she met an FBI profiler who had worked on the Unabomber case that she felt relief.

“He told me he would have committed violent acts anywhere,” Gehring said of the agent.

If there’s any hope, it’s a cautionary tale about unchecked mental illness.

“It’s an issue of mental illness and not addressing it the whole time he was growing up,” Gehring said. “Now we know so much more.”

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on Facebook and Twitter.