His letter was a dud, thankfully.
A never-before-seen letter from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski surfaced in Ardsley, NY last week just days before the one-year anniversary of his suicide in federal prison.
The missive was mined from the childhood bedroom of Post reporter Jon Levine — me.
After finishing up a masters in political science at Columbia University — something I now recognize as a profound waste of money — I sent Kaczynski a letter in May 2010.
Kaczynski, then locked up at the infamous United States Penitentiary – Florence, Col., replied less than a month later in a letter dated June 3, 2010 on a single piece of yellow legal paper, disdainfully addressing the letter to “Jon A. Nonymous.”
(I left my surname off the letter for obvious reasons.)
“Dear Jon: To answer your undated letter postmarked 5/25/10 — you will find my advice in my new book titled “Technological Slavery,” Kaczynski said, requesting a $28.45 payment to his publisher Feral House, Inc.
The serial murderer — who killed three and injured 23 others across the country between 1978 and 1995 with a terror campaign of mail bombs — spent the majority of his response insulting my handwriting.
“I hope I have your address right. I can read your return address either as ‘Asaley” or “Ardsley. . . . Ardsley seems more plausible. It’s amazing how many letters I get from people who want a reply but don’t seem to realize that I can’t reply if I don’t have their address. They write their return address so sloppily that it’s almost impossible to decipher.”
Kaczynski’s penmanship was starkly meticulous and betrayed his training as a Harvard mathematics prodigy.
Having struggled with chicken-scratch handwriting my whole life, I was insulted.
At the time I wrote to him, I was mostly adrift and facing the prospect of an extended stay at home with my parents, something which would have made me an early adopter of a growing trend.
During this period I sent out roughly two dozen letters to America’s most notorious killers, all of them locked in the bowels of supermax facilities — and asked them what advice they would have for a recent college graduate.
I don’t recall exactly what possessed me to embark on this project.
I fancied vague notions that if I collected enough material, I could produce a quick-hit bestseller titled “Killer Advice” — it never materialized.
I gave as my address a simple P.O. Box used by my father, who was not informed of the project and reported to me at the time that its arrival caused quite a stir.
Father Levine refused to comment for this article.