Unabomber Suspect's Letters Show Hatred Of Family

In a frantic, rambling letter filled with desperation, Ted Kaczynski pleaded for his brother's help in severing all ties with his family. Kaczynski had come to blame his parents for raising him to be a social misfit so fearful of rejection that he sought refuge in the Montana wilderness for nearly a quarter-century:

"It is a matter of life and death, and this is not an exaggeration," he declared in a handwritten screed to his brother, David, in the summer of 1991. "I seriously believe I will die if you can't accomplish this for me. . . . I won't be able to eat or sleep or stop my heart from pounding until this whole thing is settled."

"I have got to know, I have GOT TO, GOT TO, GOT TO know that every last tie joining me to this stinking family has been cut FOREVER and that I will never NEVER have to communicate with any of you again. . . . I've got to do it NOW. I can't tell you how desperate I am. . . . It is killing me," the 10-page letter said.

There were hundreds of missives Theodore Kaczynski sent to his family during the years he lived in a primitive cabin near the Continental Divide until he was arrested last April as the Unabomber suspect. The letters, never before disclosed, provide a penetrating look at his bizarre self-imposed solitude, a farrago of musings and rantings that reveal a brilliant but irrational soul whose hold on reality is fragile at best.

It is a chilling portrait of a man who lived in fear of social

rejection, who was desperate for a girlfriend, who was tormented by violent dreams, who blamed his mother for his plight. Scrawled by pen, crammed with a blizzard of words and some drawings, the writings have become a central part of a campaign by the Kaczynski family to persuade prosecutors not to seek the death penalty.

The 54-year-old, Harvard-educated mathematician is suspected of carrying out a 17-year, coast-to-coast bombing spree in which three people were killed and 23 injured, a reign of terror that was the focus of the longest manhunt in U.S. history. Grand juries in California and New Jersey have indicted Kaczynski on charges relating to the bombing deaths. Unpredictable mood swings

With the defendant confined to a Sacramento prison cell, Attorney General Janet Reno has received input from local prosecutors, victims' relatives and Kaczynski's family in weighing the capital punishment question.

The family, through Washington attorney Anthony Bisceglie, has petitioned Reno to spare Kaczynski's life partly because they believe he is mentally ill, arguing that under U.S. law this is a "mitigating factor" against capital punishment. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, David Kaczynski contended that the letters from his brother, turned over to federal investigators, capture how disturbed he is.

"Through the years, the letters have shown sudden and unpredictable mood swings, a preoccupation with disease, extreme phobias, compulsive thinking and an inability to let go of minutiae," David Kaczynski said. "One senses a psyche that feels itself terribly isolated and threatened in the world, tormented by its own complexities, unable to hold things in their proper perspective or to find comfort, security or rest for itself."

Justice Department lawyers have been struggling with the death penalty issue because of questions surrounding Kaczynski's mental health. The family also has urged Reno to reject the death penalty out of fairness because David Kaczynski was crucial to cracking the case. It was after reading the Unabomber's anti-technology "manifesto," published by The Washington Post and The New York Times in 1995, that he recognized aspects of his brother's thinking and writing.

"Our interest from the beginning was to protect life, and if this government were to process this like a cold and calculative machine, I would have to conclude my faith in that system was misplaced," David Kaczynski said. "What would a future family member in a similar situation think if I were repaid with my brother's death? It would be the ultimate disincentive for anyone else to cooperate with our justice system." Family visits prohibited

In the years that Ted Kaczynski lived a mountain man's existence, writing letters became his sole means of communicating with his family, except for occasional visits from his parents and brother, which he eventually prohibited.

One of his more alarming missives, in the summer of 1991, was sent to his mother. He wrote that his early life had been shaped by traumatic social experiences that had left him profoundly wary of others.

"Suppose that for a period of years whenever you touched - let us say - a banana, you got a severe electric shock. After that you would always be nervous around bananas, even if you knew they weren't wired to shock you," he said. "Well, in the same way, the many rejections, humiliations and other painful influence (sic) that I underwent during adolescence at home, in high school, and at Harvard have conditioned me to be afraid of people."

Kaczynski revealed that he is "always under stress" whenever he is around people, except those he has known for a long time. The reason is that he doesn't feel that people will accept him.

"This fear of rejection - based on bitter experience both at home and at school - has ruined my life, except for the few years that I spent alone in the woods, largely out of contact with people," he wrote.

While he has not made a friend during his entire adult life, Kaczynski noted, he nonetheless finds solitude "congenial." There are regrets, however - deep ones. Male friendships he can do without, but female companionship is another matter.

"Women are gentle, nice, pleasant to be with, they represent warmth, joy, family life, love and, of course, sex. Naturally, women have their faults too and moreover not all women have the good qualities I've just mentioned," he wrote. "But for 37 years I've desired women. I've wanted desperately to find a girlfriend or a wife but have never been able to make any progress toward doing so because I lack the necessary social self-confidence and social skills." He attributed his vivid ruminations about women to having made the mistake of going to a female doctor in town.

Kaczynski said he was 49 years old and would be an "old man" in a few years, one with no wife, children or any friends to speak of, and nothing to look forward to but old age and death. "I am tormented by bitter regret at never having had the opportunity to experience the love of a woman," he wrote.

The letter closed by accusing his mother of not nurturing in him the social skills that would have enabled him to relate to people. He wrote coldly that he will hate her forever "because the harm you did me can never be undone."

The family was confounded by another passage in which Kaczynski claimed that rejection he suffered at home and in school took a physical toll on him by stunting his growth. This, he believed, was the likely reason he was three inches shorter than his brother.

David Kaczynski said during the two-hour interview that Ted's recollections about his parents were farfetched. They seemed to be distortions, which sometimes plagued his memory, "amplifications or exaggerations of what happened that seem quite unreasonable, though they seem quite real to him," he said.