His package bombs terrorized the United States for eighteen years before he was arrested in 1996 thanks to his brother. Ted Kaczynski, aka “Unabomber”, died Saturday in prison, aged 81.
“On Saturday, June 10, 2023, at approximately 12:25 p.m., inmate Theodore John Kaczynski was found unconscious at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, a correctional facility where he had been transferred in 2021 from the maximum security prison in Florence (Colorado ),” the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said in a statement. He received emergency treatment but was pronounced dead at the hospital, the BOP added.
From 1978 to 1995, this Chicago native with an atypical background, a brilliant mathematician turned recluse in a Montana cabin, terrorized the country by sending sixteen bombs, hidden in packages in the mail, to various people and companies, causing a total of three deaths and 23 injured.
His hunt, which ended in April 1996, mobilized hundreds of FBI agents. An image was then etched into the memories, that of his face with tousled hair and beard in his post-arrest identification photo.
A gifted student, educated at the prestigious Harvard University, a one-time professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, Theodore Kaczynski had embarked on a crusade against progress and technology, making his bombs from his shack without water, electricity or electricity.
His first targets are academics and airlines, giving the assassin the nickname “Unabomber” (for “University and Airline Bomber”). In 1985, the owner of a California computer store was killed by shrapnel from a bomb left in his parking lot.
From 1987 to 1993, people no longer talk about the “Unabomber”. In 1994, a 50-year-old publicist was killed when he opened a package bomb sent to his home in New Jersey. Then, in April 1995, the president of the California Water and Forest Association was killed while opening a package sent to the organization’s headquarters in Sacramento.
In September 1995, promising to stop sending bombs, the killer succeeded New York Times and washington post that they publish a 35,000-word manifesto in which he expresses his hatred of technology and the modern world and justifies his murderous campaign.
As he reads it, East Coast resident David Kaczynski sees a resemblance in it to the old writings of his brother Theodore, cut off from his family for years. He then alerted the FBI and in April 1996 allowed his arrest by dozens of agents around his cabin.
A diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia did not prevent him from being prosecuted and then sentenced to life in prison in 1998 after pleading guilty.
At the start of a trial in which the prosecution was led by current US Attorney General Merrick Garland, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and in 1998 was sentenced to life in prison. According to New York TimesKaczynski had maintained postal correspondence with “thousands of people, journalists, students and die-hard supporters” in prison.
