Title: Ted Kaczynski's journal that included his plan to disfigure the face of a romantic interest
Subtitle: Journal Series 6, #2
Author: Ted Kaczynski
Date: 1978
Notes: From July 17, 1978, he records his day to day processing of his infatuation with a woman at his workplace, which includes the journal entry where he says that after being rejected by her, he planned to mutilate her face with a knife.
SKU: AEG02

July 17, 1978: For 2 or 3 weeks I have been working at Foam Cutting Engineers, where my father and brother work (my father got me the job there). The shop superior is a 30-year old woman named Ellen Tarmichael.

She has a beautiful face but a very mediocre figure (too much fat on her ass and thighs). Nevertheless she is very attractive because she has charm; her personality, so far as it is exhibited to the world at large, is very attractive, she is apparently very intelligent, and probably quite competent. The result was that I got infatuated - an unfortuante weakness to which I am occasionally subject.

I am now cured of the infatuation; but the story is interesting and possibly is not yet finished. ...

July 29. Yesterday I took Ellen Tarmichael to an expensive restaurant for supper. She then invited me to her apartment, where, she hastened to add, we would not be alone. ...

Aug 23. Despite the negative conclusions about Ellen that I reached, as stated above I couldn't help thinking about her constantly, especially since I was exposed to her charms every day at work, and especially since she seamed quite friendly to me. ...

There is only one way left to wipe out this shame, and that is with blood. Tommorrow I am going to get that bitch and mutilate her face.

Aug 26. (Sat.) Last Thursday morning I drove to the plant and parked in the lot, waiting for Ellen. When she arrived, I ran over to her car, said I wanted to speak to her briefly, and told her to move over so I could get out of the rain. This she did slowly and grudgingly, and I got into the drivers seat. I carried with me a knife concealed in a paper bag. I began by saying that she had intentionally humiliated me on Sunday. In the brief discussion that followed, she said that the reason she had been so cold on Sunday was that it “just struck her” at the beginning of the date that there was nothing between us no future in anything between us, because we had nothing in common. She also said that the first 2 times she went out with me she did so because she “really thought there might be something in it; friendship, or …” I had then, and still have, grave doubts about the truth of this last statement, because she has often seemed insincere in the past, and because the statement is contradicted by things she said earlier. Nevertheless, the statement cooled my anger, because if true, it would mean she was not just using me as a toy. So that was the end of that.

All I feel now about the whole thing is a kind of wistful melancholy about the whole affair, brought on by the thought of what a woman with some of Ellen's best qualities might have meant to me, if she'd been sincere, and if we'd had some common aspirations. I sent Ellen a long letter explaining everything from my point of view.