It seems our Teddy fell in love and got himself a girlfriend while imprisoned.
Her name was Joy Richards, and she was an elementary school teacher who started off as a pen pal, and ended up not only his girlfriend, he also sold her his share of the Montana property.
( For $7,500. 00. What? Nothings for free, baby! This is what happened to that property 5 years after her death:
"The forested land [the price had been reduced to $69,000 by then] which had been listed at $154,500, does not have electricity or running water. Photos posted with the online listing show tall trees, chain-link fences topped by barbed wire and a tree with "FBI" carved into it, though it's not clear why."*)
Photo of Ted above is from 1999. Ted was in love, happy.
Below is Joy Richards
It's a damn shame none of those technological advances in cancer treatment like CRISPR, artificial intelligence, telehealth, the Infinium Assay, cryo-electron microscopy, or robotic surgery could help her, isn't it Ted?
"[Joy] is an angel. I mean a real one. I’m sure she could fly if she wanted to,” Kaczynski wrote to a pen pal in April 2002.
“My friend has suffered more than anyone deserves to suffer, and I can do nothing to help her."
“You don’t see her halo because she’s too modest to wear it. She keeps it hung up in her closet. But really she is an honest-to-goodness angel. Absolutely perfect.”
He drew her cards using colored pencils from the prison commissary and wrote her original pieces of classical music.
With help from other pen pals, he sent her books he thought she might like.
The lovebirds could never touch or kiss and were separated by a thick pane of security glass.
So under the circumstances, Kaczynski tried to be the best boyfriend he could be to the first girlfriend he’d ever had."
" Richards had to stop working as a teacher and had became increasingly religious and decided to move in with friends.
Her letters "cooled off", which created agony and despair for the murderer the convicted killer, sitting helplessly in his Colorado prison.
In one of his final letters to Joy, Kaczynski asks where to send the Christmas presents he has for her.
“I love this woman truly, even though her love for me has cooled,” he wrote to a pen pal.
Joy was reconciled with her family in her final days but they still did not help with her funeral arrangements.
Richards died on New Year’s Eve 2006 and one of Kaczynski’s pen pals from Los Angeles drove out to visit her and had one final message from Kaczynski for his Lady Love.
The man, a musician, put headphones on Richards and played a piece of music - “a trombone duet” - that Kaczynski had written for her and the man had performed on his synthesiser.
“I wouldn’t have wanted her to die thinking I had let her down,” he said."
" July 2006, doctors told Richards she had only months to live and Kaczynski had run out of money but one of the killer’s pen pals sent her $2,400 and promised more if she needed it.
But her health only worsened and Kaczynski wrote letters to the manager of her apartment complex and to members of her family. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead."
Ted had it bad for her.
Brush-off letters Ted needed to send to a different ardent admirer:
Ted Kaczynski does not lead the ladies on.
Especially if his main girlfriend/AKA Lady Love #1 said no to the threesome idea.
Juggling girlfriends, having others do his bidding, shuffling other people's money around, sending gifts, getting nice school teachers defy their families for him, fame, the fan letters, revered/reviled- attention, on his terms. Thru writing. Where the socially awkward and bookish are finally able to participate in the bamboozling of others!
He would have loved the internet.
* Here's a 1996 aerial view of his "cabin so remote, so hidden, so far from civilization he initially had trouble remembering how to speak when found" **.
This looks nothing like the rubbing-sticks-together, Jeremiah Johnson, noble but savage purist I've been led to believe in.
Here's what the locals in Lincoln, MT, four miles from the cabin had to say at the time:
""Everybody knows Ted. He just comes and goes and is a very nice guy," said Coleman. "I sure hope they're wrong about him."
Kaczynski has been in Lincoln -- or, more accurately, about four miles out of town -- for so long that he is a fixture. Life in this pristine patch of snow-sprinkled Rocky Mountains revolves around the lush forests, the flagging logging and mining industries, and hiking and hunting."
""He rides the four-mile gravel road from his house to town, winter or summer, rain or snow, and doesn't seem to mind it a bit," Pryor said with a chuckle. "But then that's not unusual around here either.""
"Sometimes Kaczynski would pedal in for a bag of groceries or to use the pay phone. But most every time he made sure to drop in on the library, a boxy, two-room building with plastic siding on the outer walls and well-worn oak tables inside alongside neat bookshelves."
Inside, and from, Ted's cabin. Bottom left clockwise:
-7 pairs of aviator shapes sunglasses. A master of disguise our Ted.
-1 lined jacket. Only four miles out of town, Ted knew to keep a smart sports jacket at the ready for when women dropped into his life. Ted likes the kind of ladies who
-Not adverse to plastic bags
-.... Or calumet baking powder.
-Owned a zither! ( Ted played trompbone in high school band. Ted wanted to attract the kind of ladies who knew their way around a Tommy Dorsey or Anton Karas album.)
-A tuning fork, a digital watch, and fresh unsharpened pencils.
**wait a minute. He retreated into the wilderness to get away from technology, yet the first digital watch was made in 1974?? I'm starting to think he wasn't being truthful about his stated goals...What's wrong with a sundial, Ted, hmm? .)
-Newspaper clippings from his mail bombs. The habits of a humble man who discovered that living off-grid life was indeed the answer to mankind's unhappiness, discontent, and anger. Like Ted! Who had never hurt a single person until he started living the life he insisted everyone else should emulate and adopt so they could be just as happy!
"I found paradise , you fucking assholes!! " vibes.
-Lots of books! Last of the Mohicans, The Arabs in History, and - let's give him credit, he was trying to turn his game around - - The Psychology of Women.
**That was partly about Selkirk. The Robinson Crusoe inspirer.
As a free man this serial killer never had a girlfriend, but as a notorious prisoner he attracted the interest of dozens of women and fell in love with one of them, this is their story.
au.news.yahoo.com
Town Was Natural Habitat for Reclusive Loner / Attention irks independent Montana...
www.sfgate.com
