For Lincoln librarian
Unabomber will always
be just 'Ted'

By Amy May

In 10 years, Sherri Wood has changed.

“I used to think I was such a good judge of character,” says Wood. “It’ll be a long time before I can truly trust people again.”

AP photo by Elaine Thompson

The man Sherri Wood thought she knew turned out to be the Unabomber. More than two months after his April 1996 arrest, Ted Kaczynski, wearing a white bulletproof vest, walks with U.S. marshals into the federal courthouse in Helena, Mont.

The self-proclaimed ex-hippie, born and raised in Montana, says she lost her sense of safety the day the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was arrested in Lincoln. She also lost the privacy she took for granted and a friend she thought she knew.

Today the Lincoln librarian sits at one of the few tables in the Lincoln Public Library and sips on a Diet Coke. As library patrons come through the door, she greets them by their first names. She hands them books she thinks they might like. Helps them sign up for their first library card. Guides them to the necessary tax forms, suggesting they take two because everyone messes up the first time.

Wood smiles and laughs, reminiscing about the times she spent with Kaczynski in the library.

“Some days Ted would come into the library all cleaned up, and we would tease him saying, ‘Ooohh it looks like you’ve got a hot date,’ ” says Wood. “He looked as good as you can living in a cabin with no electricity or running water.”

It has been 10 years since Sherri Wood has seen her friend Ted. And though she knows he killed three people and injured 23 others, Wood still says the Ted she knew was kind and gentle.

“I always felt safe when Ted was in the library,” says Wood.

She felt so safe around Kaczynski that Wood even allowed her son, Danny, to strike up a friendship with the man.

Kaczynski would often help the 12-year-old with his homework in math, a subject Danny struggled with. Wood says she remembers once ranting to Kaczynski and Danny about how useless she thought math was. Kaczynski just smiled. He never let on that he had a doctorate in mathematics, says Wood. 

Sherri Wood thought she knew Ted.

In March 1996, the opening of the 7-Up mine brought many new people to town. Among them was a group of about 15 undercover FBI agents who blended into Lincoln by posing as mine employees.

One of those agents was assigned to investigate Wood and the depth of her involvement with Kaczynski. The agent, “Ralph,” claimed to be from California and said he was in town to research and take pictures of the mines. 

“We all thought that was really funny because everyone knows you can’t get to the mines in the middle of March. There’s like 10 feet of snow,” says Wood.

But Ralph told Wood that he would stick around. Wood and her assistants helped the man find blueprints and maps of the mines in the area.

Ralph even befriended Danny and helped him get an A+ on a report about California.

Sherri Wood thought she knew Ralph.

On April 2, 1996, Wood traveled to the Lewis and Clark County Library to return books and pick up new ones for her library.

When she arrived, her boss, Deborah Schlesinger, invited Wood into her office. Inside, Wood found two federal agents.

The men handed Wood a piece of paper, which she had to read several times to understand. She got nervous.

“I thought they had found out about the bad things I had done in my hippie days,” she says.

But the investigators wanted information about her library patron and friend, Ted Kaczynski.

According to a transcript of the FBI’s interview with Wood, Kaczynski began coming to the Lincoln Public Library around the late 1980s or early ‘90s. He came to the library at least once a month, and Wood described him as “inoffensive” and “always courteous.”

Sherri Wood thought she knew a lot of things. But her life has changed in the past decade, and she has learned.

Kaczynski often requested books that the library in Lincoln did not carry. In such cases, Wood traveled to Helena every couple of weeks to exchange books with the Helena library.

“I couldn’t even pronounce some of the titles of books he wanted,” Wood says.

The investigators listed several titles and asked Wood if she recognized them as ones she had gotten for Kaczynski. Some of the titles she remembered, while others she did not: “Violence in America,” "New Scientist" and “Sanity, Insanity and Common Sense,” among others.

During the interview, which lasted several hours, the investigators also listed the names of the Unabomber’s victims. Most were unfamiliar to Wood.

“I think I would have recognized the names if I knew we were talking about the Unabomber, but I still didn’t know what the interview was about,” she says.

Before the interview ended, the FBI investigators showed Wood a court order forbidding her to disclose any information about the interview or anyone named in it.

“That was the worst night of my life,” Wood says.  “I was up and down all night long.  My husband even asked, ‘Are you going to divorce me?’ ”

When she opened the library the next day, the phone began to ring. Hundreds of reporters called Wood that day asking her to comment on the arrest of Ted Kaczynski.

“We stopped counting the phone calls after we got to 400,” says Wood.

In the next few days, requests for interviews bombarded Wood and her family. One reporter even offered to help the family with the mortgage on their house.

Only an hour after Kaczynski was arrested, Ralph, whose real name was John, came into the library to talk to Wood.        

“I saw him come in, and I just turned around and walked away,” says Wood. “I just felt so betrayed.”

Over the next week, John tried to make amends with Wood and her son. He took Danny out to lunch and explained that being an undercover agent meant that sometimes he had to lie, a part of his job he didn’t like.

“It was nice that he stuck around to make things right with us,” says Wood. “He could have just flown back to California.”

Sherri Wood thought she knew her community.

Like several other key players in the Kaczynski investigation, Wood shied away from the frenzy of media coverage. She and a group of her friends and neighbors leaned on each other for support.  Few of them gave interviews and mostly kept to themselves.

But others sought the spotlight during the subsequent media blitz.

“I could not understand why these people wanted this kind of attention,” Wood says.

In the aftermath of the arrest, Wood took Danny to the pastor at their church to help him deal with the recent traumatic events. The Woods and their pastor were unaware that a few members of the congregation lingered in the church and overheard the emotional conversation.

The next day, Wood awoke to a phone call from a reporter who knew about the conversation from those who had overheard it.

“We all felt so betrayed,” Wood says.

Soon after the arrest, a woman from Lincoln thrust herself into the media spotlight, implying that she was the head librarian in Lincoln and claiming to have known Kaczynski. In reality, the woman had volunteered at the library several years before the investigation and arrest. She had worked with Wood for only a few weeks before being told she would no longer be needed, Wood says.

The lies plagued Wood for years, as she was often mistaken as the woman from Lincoln who had sought so much publicity.

 “I used to believe everything I saw in newspapers and on TV and took them for truths,” Wood says.

Sherri Wood thought she knew the media.

Throughout the ordeal of the fake librarian, Wood began to believe that no one wanted to get the real story.

“It was like, ‘Is anyone even checking these facts?’ ” Wood says.  “Does anyone care about the truth?”

Photographers hid in the bushes outside the library. Requests for interviews invaded Wood’s life.

In the 10 years since the arrest, Wood has given only four interviews. Early on, she couldn’t have talked even if she had wanted to. Under a federal subpoena, Wood could not speak to anyone about the investigation because she was to be a witness in the trial.

But after Kaczynski admitted to his crimes in a plea bargain, Wood no longer needed to testify.

“I was so thankful when they told me I didn’t have to testify,” she says.

Until that time, Wood had asked not to be told what information she would need to testify about, not wanting to taint her testimony.

One piece of information Wood had that investigators wanted was that Kaczynski was able to get around on his own.

Wood remembered a day when she finally asked Kaczynski a question that had been plaguing her for some time. She had told him she simply could not figure out how he got all his groceries from Missoula to his little cabin because she had only ever seen him on a bicycle – and not a very good one at that. Kaczynski had laughed and showed Wood that he had a driver’s license. 

To get his supplies, he would ride the bus to Missoula, where he would rent an old car and buy groceries. He would drive back to Lincoln, drop off the food, return the car to Missoula and ride the bus back to Lincoln.

“He was much more mobile than any of us thought,” says Wood.

Everyone the FBI interviewed in Lincoln had a piece of the Kaczynski puzzle. 

“That was my piece, my big contribution,” she says.

For years Wood and her son corresponded with Kaczynski in prison. He often teased her by sending her “dumb blonde” jokes, noting that she might not understand them and would need to have her husband explain them.

Though she has not written back in several years, Kaczynski is still often in her thoughts, Wood says.

The University of Montana Mansfield Library has asked Wood to give them those letters from Kaczynski. Wood says she is considering the request so the letters can be properly cared for and so the public might see a different side of  Kaczynski.

Sherri Wood thought she knew a lot of things.

But her life has changed in the past decade, and she has learned.