The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski - Book Review

Midwest Book Review

The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski - His 25 Years in Montana Chris Waits and Dave Shors Farcountry Press 2750 Broadwater Ave, Helena, MT Helena, Montana, 59602 https://www.farcountrypress.com 9781560371397, $35.16, Hardcover, $2.99, Kindle, 288 pages, www.amazon.com   What if you had a unique body of knowledge about highly publicized crimes? This was the predicament of Chris Waits, author (with Dave Shors) of THE SECRET LIFE OF TED KACZYNSKI - HIS 25 YEARS IN MONTANA. Montana was where Ted Kaczynski, over twenty-five years, lived, planned and documented his crimes (killing three people and wounding 22 by mailing bombs).   I searched out this book to learn more about Kaczynski's Montana years after seeing MANHUNT: UNABOMBER, DiscoveryTV's dramitization of the case from the FBI perspective. Waits' land was adjacent to Kaczynski's mountain cabin, and he had a friendly but wary relationship with Kaczynski; Waits allowed him free run of McClellan Gulch where lived and had his business.   Waits explains a remote rural and mountainous landscape unknown to many, how business was conducted, and how he was ultimately able to correlate his observations with circumstances and timelines of the crimes. Of great importance to him was how the content of Kaczynski's voluminous writings fit into the overall picture. Waits gives us detailed descriptions and musings about Kazinski's comings and goings and attitudes, especially his profound alienation and anti-social behavior.   A great deal of the book reads like a police procedural from the point of a super witness. In addition, unexpectedly evocative prose fills this true crime narrative: "A small spring - with water so clear each gray and reddish stone that made this natural mosaic was visible - flowed under my feet. Moss clung to every inch of the forest floor, light green and puffy proud about its existence."   I've always been fascinated by police procedural books and TV. Maybe it's because my role in producing business software was to document new processes, creating an ideal orderly world from chaotic and contradictory events and information. In a similar vein, police procedurals present a methodical world, disrupted by crime and human emotions, where order is always restored at the end. In this book, many dramatic discoveries, including a secret cabin and previously unknown crimes cause havoc, but peace and order are restored by the solution and prosecution of the case.   I don't agree with the heavy emphasis on explicating recovered Kaczynski writings to derive motivations. I guess it's because I am more interested in learning about the impact of crime on blameless witnesses and peaceful environments than on how crazed criminals see the world. All in all, the book achieves what many hope to achieve in writing - an incredibly exciting set of events and revelations told by a person who was there and was able and willing to write it down.