UNABOMBER Ted Kaczynski’s brother says his hospital ordeal at just nine months old may have set him on a path toward becoming a killer, as he breaks his silence on “totally fictional” scenes in Netflix’s new movie.
David Kaczynski, 79, spoke exclusively to The U.S. Sun following the release of the star-studded film Unabomber, which has shot to number one on the streaming service.
The film, starring Jacob Tremblay as a young Ted, Russell Crowe as Harvard psychologist Henry Murray and Shailene Woodley as FBI agent Joanne Miller, revisits the notorious killer’s troubled childhood, controversial Harvard years and eventual capture.
But David believes the story of what shaped his brother may have started long before Harvard, where Ted was subjected to a series of controversial psychological experiments involving intense questioning about his beliefs and personal views.
Ted was just nine months old when he was hospitalized with a severe rash and separated from his parents for around 10 days, an experience his family believes may have affected his ability to trust others.
David says the movie puts too much emphasis on the Harvard experiments as an explanation for his brother’s later crimes.
“I guess what I wouldn’t like anyone to take away from the movie is the idea that this was, like, a singular cause for his fall from grace,” he told The U.S. Sun.
Years later, David and his wife Linda would play a crucial role in bringing Ted’s crimes to an end.
They approached authorities after recognizing similarities between Ted’s writings and the Unabomber’s notorious manifesto, helping end a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others.
But David has now stressed that federal agents did not persuade him to give up the brother he had once idolized.
“No FBI agents ever convinced me,” he said.
“I turned in my brother, based on a long, very difficult, painful, ethical decision-making process that my wife and I went through.”
It differs from the version dramatized by Netflix, in which Woodley’s fictional Joanne becomes a driving force behind identifying Ted as the Unabomber.
Joanne is shown pursuing David and Linda’s tip despite skepticism within the FBI and later trying to convince David to cooperate.
In reality, David and Linda had already spent months wrestling with their suspicions before approaching Washington attorney Tony Bisceglie, who acted as an intermediary with authorities.
Experts then compared Ted’s writings with the Unabomber manifesto.
“It was a very, very difficult dilemma, but by the time we contacted the FBI, the decision was made,” David said.
“We were going to go forward, share everything we knew.”
Despite their suspicions, David desperately hoped investigators would discover they had made a terrible mistake.
“My hope was that they would investigate and find that my brother was innocent, that we were wrong,” he said. “But, of course, that did not happen to be the case.”
David has not watched the new Netflix movie himself but has been told about specific scenes.
“I haven’t seen the movie. I don’t have a Netflix subscription,” he said.
“[But] one of the friends who emailed me did tell me some things that were in the film that were totally fictional.”
David also revealed nobody behind the Netflix movie approached him before it was made, joking: “Maybe they didn’t want to pay me anything.”
David is played by Matthew Kevin Anderson in the film, while Tanya van Blokland portrays his wife Linda Patrik.
Another scene he disputes involves the controversial Harvard experiments Ted underwent after entering the university at just 16.
The movie suggests Ted forged his parents’ signature to gain access to the study, but David insists that never happened.
“One was that my brother had forged my parents’ signature to gain entrance into this study, and that’s not true,” he said.
“My mother did sign, and she actually had this hopeful sense of, ‘Ted has difficulty with social relationships, [maybe] it could help him.’ Obviously that was not what they were about. They weren’t about helping people.”
David believes the Harvard experiments may have damaged his brother, but warned against portraying them as the single explanation for Ted’s later crimes.
“I’m glad that they brought out this study, because it was unethical, it was harmful,” he said.
“It may have contributed to Ted’s problems throughout life, but human beings are much more complicated than this.”
Ted had been hospitalized at nine months old after developing a severe allergic reaction, with his parents unable to stay with him because hospitals at the time did not allow parents to remain with sick children.
Wanda later wrote to Ted that visits had been limited to one hour twice a week and recalled him screaming “Mommy, Mommy!” as a nurse forced her to leave.
She told him she believed the experience had been traumatic and was convinced it was behind his later problems trusting people.
“My mother always felt that his hospital experience as a nine-month-old child [when] we were not allowed to visit except, I don’t know, three times over 10 days or something, was [what caused] Ted’s difficulty in trusting people, his sensitivity, and so forth,” David told The U.S. Sun.
But Ted himself rejected the theory. In that same 1984 letter, Wanda told him: “I think, I am convinced, has its source in your traumatic hospital experience in your first year of life.”
Ted later called his mother’s account a “family myth,” arguing that he had not been unusually anxious about being separated from his parents.