Ted never paid back the loans. David began to suspect something in the summer of 1995, when news accounts about the Unabomber reported he was thought to have grown up in Chicago and to have lived in or around Berkeley and Salt Lake City, Utah, all places where Ted had spent time. When the manifesto was published a few months later, David thought he could hear his brother in its philosophy and language. It wasn't just the rote denunciations of technology, a sentiment familiar to anyone who ever cursed a computer. Ted and the Unabomber shared certain turns of phrase.
Most people say it the other way around.
Last October David brought his suspicions to Susan Swanson, a childhood friend of his wife's who works for the Investigative Group Inc., a prominent detective firm. She in turn contacted Clinton Van Zandt, a behavioral-science specialist, formerly the FBI's chief hostage negotiator, who runs a security consulting firm. Without saying who had written them, Swanson turned over typed copies of two of Ted's handwritten letters. She asked Van Zandt to compare them with the manifesto. Van Zandt also passed the material on to two specialists in communication.