Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski mailed 16 homemade bombs to various targets in the U.S., ultimately killing three people and injuring at least 23 more
Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the man better known as the “Unabomber,” has died. He was 81.
Kaczynski was pronounced dead in police custody around 8 a.m. local time Saturday at a federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina, the Associated Press reported.
He was transferred to the center after he was found unresponsive in his cell early in the morning. A cause of death is not immediately known, according to the AP.
A representative from the Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to request for comment.
For 17 years, Kaczynski anonymously terrorized Americans with homemade explosives, primarily targeting people involved with progressing modern technology. His crime spree, which lasted from 1978 to 1995, killed three people and injured at least 23 more.
Following one of the most extensive FBI investigations in history, Kaczynski was finally identified as the Unabomber and apprehended in April 1996. He faced several charges stemming from his fatal bombings, and in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole, he pleaded guilty to each of them, thus avoiding the death penalty.
Kaczynski was incarcerated for more than 20 years at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. In December 2021, he was moved to a prison medical facility in North Carolina due to unspecified health issues, confirmed through the Bureau of Prisons.
From a young age, Kaczynski was regarded as a highly intelligent person, but according to several accounts, his obsession with learning — coupled with underdeveloped social skills — ostracized him from his classmates.
Kaczynski buried his head in schoolwork, finishing high school at age 15. By 16, he had enrolled at Harvard University on scholarship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvard in 1962 and immediately enrolled at University of Michigan, where he continued his mathematics education and completed master’s and doctoral degrees.
On the heels of defending an award-winning and highly complex dissertation, a 25-year-old Kaczynski was hired as an assistant math professor at UC Berkeley.
Kaczynski abruptly left his professorship at UC Berkeley after his second year of teaching, resigning not only from his job, but his career. He briefly returned to Illinois and lived under his parents’ roof before moving into a remote cabin he had built in Lincoln, Mont. that lacked electricity and running water.
There, as he read about technology’s negative impact on the world and watched industrialization creep in on his own private slice of wilderness, he grew angry toward modern society and staunchly anti-tech.
Living a primitive lifestyle with ample time on his hands, Kaczynski began writing his argument for destroying the “industrial system,” titled Industrial Society and Its Future.
It would later be dubbed the Unabomber Manifesto.
On May 25, 1978, a campus police officer at Northwestern University was injured by explosives while investigating a suspicious package directed at an engineering professor. The unexplained act would become clearer with time, as similar bombs were discovered the following year again on Northwestern’s campus and on an American Airlines flight out of Chicago.
Though the airplane bomb malfunctioned and only emitted smoke, it caught the attention of the FBI, which opened an investigation in 1979 titled UNABOM, short for University and Airline Bomber. Media outlets caught on, nicknaming the unidentified terrorist the Unabomber.
Between 1978 and 1995, the Unabomber anonymously delivered a total of 16 handmade bombs in eight different states, each bomb more sophisticated than the last. The explosives were most commonly delivered via mail, and while the targets were seemingly random, a few similarities emerged: many were scholars and businesspeople, several had a direct tie to modern technology such as computers and airplanes, and some regions were hit more than others.
Twenty-six people were injured during the 17-year bombing campaign, three of them fatally.
The first fatality occurred in 1985, when 38-year-old Hugh Scrutton, a computer store owner in Sacramento, Calif., was caught in a blast originating from the parking lot of his business. Nine years later, public relations executive Thomas J. Mosser, 50, was killed feet from his family when he opened a small package in the kitchen of his North Caldwell, N.J., home. In 1995, the Unabomber’s final attack — again in Sacramento — claimed the life of 47-year-old timber lobbyist Gilbert Murray, who opened a package addressed to his outspoken predecessor who had retired the year prior.
During the Unabomber’s reign of terror, a team of more than 150 investigators scoured every piece of evidence available in an attempt to identify the killer, according to the FBI. They analyzed bomb fragments and minute details of the victims’ lives, slowly piecing together an idea of who they might be dealing with.
Then, in 1995, the Unabomber sent the FBI a copy of Industrial Society and Its Future — Kaczynski’s completed essay about his views on modern society, and his motive for dismantling it. He said that if his 35,000-word manifesto wasn’t published in full in a major national newspaper, he would kill again. The Washington Post obliged, putting an end to the Unabomber’s violence.
With a deeper understanding of the Unabomber’s worldview, the FBI was able to hone its criminal profile, but Kaczynski wasn’t considered a prime suspect until his own brother contacted the FBI and told them the manifesto perfectly matched his sibling’s writing style — a tip confirmed through forensic linguistics.
On April 3, 1996, Kaczynski was arrested on his Montana property. When the FBI conducted a search of his cabin, they discovered bomb parts, 40,000 incriminating journal pages, and a live bomb that agents reported was ready to be mailed.
In 1998, he pleaded guilty to all charges relating to the bombings and murders and was ordered to spend the remainder of his life in prison.