UNABOM SUSPECT'S KIN FEAR FOR HIS LIFE.(MAIN)

Byline: DAVID JOHNSTON AND JANNY SCOTT New York Times

NEW YORK -- Breaking his public silence, David Kaczynski described in an interview how he had reluctantly come to the horrible realization that his older brother, Theodore, could be the Unabomber.

The Schenectady resident recounted his anguished decision to turn him in to prevent more lives from being lost, and pleaded that his brother, if convicted, be spared the death penalty.

David Kaczynski, a 46-year-old social worker who works at Equinox, a shelter for runaways in Albany, detailed the life history of his 54-year-old brother thoughtfully, and at times emotionally. But David said part of his brother's mind remained obscure even to him, partly because of Ted's extremely private nature and the disparity in their ages.

Over six hours Tuesday, David Kaczynski recalled how he at first resisted his wife's suggestions last summer that Ted might be the Unabomber. When she prodded him to read the Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto on the Internet, he sat, in shock, before a glowing computer screen in the library of Schenectady's Union College where his wife, Linda Patrik, taught.

Dismay turned to anger, David said, when he and his wife realized they might have unwittingly helped finance two of the Unabomber's deadly attacks by agreeing to requests Ted made for money, $1,000 in 1994 and $2,000 in 1995, each about two months before a bombing. ``It was really chilling,'' David said.

It was Patrik, who had never met Ted, who was the first to mention the possibility that Ted may be the Unabomber, initially as a small joke …