Ted Kaczynski, ‘Unabomber’ Who Attacked Modern Life, Dies at 81

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is a notorious figure in American history. Born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, Kaczynski would go on to become one of the most prolific domestic terrorists the United States has ever seen.

Kaczynski was a child prodigy with an exceptional intellect. He entered Harvard University at the age of 16 and later earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan. Despite his academic success, Kaczynski developed a deep sense of disillusionment with modern society and its technological advancements.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kaczynski began a bombing campaign that targeted universities, airlines, and technology-related industries. His bombings resulted in multiple deaths and numerous injuries, as well as widespread fear and panic. Kaczynski meticulously planned his attacks, using homemade bombs disguised as common objects such as packages or letters.

For nearly two decades, the Unabomber eluded capture, leaving behind only cryptic letters and manifestos that espoused his anti-technology and anti-industrialization beliefs. His writings were eventually recognized by his brother, David Kaczynski, who turned them over to the authorities, leading to Ted's arrest in 1996.

In 1998, Ted Kaczynski was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. His trial and subsequent imprisonment sparked intense public interest and debate about the nature of his crimes, his mental state, and the impact of his actions on society. Some saw him as a deranged terrorist, while others sympathized with his critiques of technology's encroachment on human freedom and the environment.

Kaczynski's case also raised important questions about the ethics of technological progress and the potential dangers associated with it. His manifesto, titled "Industrial Society and Its Future" or the "Unabomber Manifesto," outlined his anti-technology philosophy and expressed concerns about the erosion of individual freedom in the modern world.

While Ted Kaczynski's crimes were undeniably heinous, his case serves as a reminder of the complex relationship between technology, progress, and the human condition. It underscores the need for careful consideration of the impact of technological advancements on society and the importance of addressing social and environmental issues while embracing innovation responsibly.

Alone in a shack in the Montana wilderness, he fashioned homemade bombs and launched a violent one-man campaign to destroy industrial society.

Theodore J. Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, who attacked academics, businessmen and random civilians with homemade bombs from 1978 to 1995, killing three people and injuring 23 with the stated goal of fomenting the collapse of the modern social order — a violent spree that ended after what was often described as the longest and most costly manhunt in American history — died on Saturday in a federal prison medical center in Butner, N.C. He was 81.

A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Mr. Kaczynski was found unresponsive in his cell early in the morning. The bureau did not specify a cause, but three people familiar with the situation said he died by suicide.

The bureau had announced his transfer to the medical facility in 2021.

Mr. Kaczynski traced a singular path in American life: lonely boy genius to Harvard-trained star of pure mathematics, to rural recluse, to notorious murderer, to imprisoned extremist.

In the public eye, he fused two styles of violence: the periodic targeting of the demented serial killer, and the ideological fanaticism of the terrorist.

After he was captured by about 40 F.B.I. agents in April 1996, Mr. Kaczynski’s particular ideology was less the subject of debate than the question of whether his crimes should be dignified with a rational motive to begin with.

Victims railed against commentators who took seriously a 35,000-word manifesto that he had written to justify his actions and evangelize the ideas that he claimed inspired them.

Psychologists involved in the trial saw his writing as evidence of schizophrenia. His lawyers tried to mount an insanity defense — and when Mr. Kaczynski rebelled and sought to represent himself in court, risking execution to do so, his lawyers said that that was yet further evidence of insanity.

For years before the manifesto was published, Mr. Kaczynski (pronounced kah-ZIN-skee) had no reputation beyond that of a twisted reveler in violence, picking victims seemingly at random, known only by a mysterious-sounding nickname with roots in the F.B.I.’s investigation into him: “the Unabomber.” It became widely publicized that some of his victims lost their fingers while opening a package bomb. Simply going through the mail prompted flickers of nervousness in many Americans.

After his arrest, Mr. Kaczynski’s extraordinary biography emerged. He had scored 167 on an I.Q. test as a boy and entered Harvard at 16. In graduate school, at the University of Michigan, he worked in a field of mathematics so esoteric that a member of his dissertation committee estimated that only 10 or 12 people in the country understood it. By 25, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Then he dropped out — not just from Berkeley, but from civilization. Starting in 1971 and continuing until his arrest, he lived in a shack he built himself in rural Montana. He forsook running water, read by the light of homemade candles, stopped filing federal tax returns and subsisted on rabbits.

Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto — published jointly by The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995 under the threat of continued violence — argued that damage to the environment and the alienating effects of technology were so heinous that the social and industrial underpinnings of modern life should be destroyed.

A vast majority of Americans determined that the Unabomber must be a psychopath the moment they heard of him, and while he was front-page news, his text did not generally find receptive readers outside a tiny fringe of the environmental movement. The term “Unabomber” entered popular discourse as shorthand for the type of brainy misfit who might harbor terrifying impulses.

Yet political change and the passage of time caused some to see Mr. Kaczynski in a new light. His manifesto accorded centrality to a healthy environment without mentioning global warming; it warned about the dangers of people becoming “dependent” on technology while making scant reference to the internet. To young people afflicted by social media anomie and fearful of climate doom, Mr. Kaczynski seemed to wield a predictive power that outstripped the evidence available to him.

In 2017 and 2020, Netflix released documentaries about him. He maintained postal correspondence with thousands of people — journalists, students and die-hard supporters. In 2018, Wired magazine announced “the Unabomber’s odd and furious online revival,” and New York magazine called him “an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes.”

Becoming ‘the Unabomber’

Mr. Kaczynski’s infamous label came from “UNABOM,” the F.B.I.’s code for university and airline bombing. That designation was inspired by his first targets, from 1978 to 1980: academics at Northwestern University, the president of United Airlines and the passengers of a flight from Chicago to Washington. The victims suffered cuts, burns and smoke inhalation. The authorities were aided in connecting several early attacks by the fact that the mysterious initials “FC” had been engraved on the bombs or spray-painted near the explosions.

The Unabomber struck one to four times a year for most years until 1987, when he left a bomb at a computer store in Salt Lake City. A woman remembered making eye contact with the man who had dropped off the package that later exploded, and soon a sketch was publicized of a mustachioed suspect wearing sunglasses and a hoodie.

Six years passed without an attack. Then, in June 1993, the Unabomber struck twice in the same week.

Packages containing bombs arrived at the home of Charles Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California San Francisco, and at the office of David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale University. Each man lost multiple fingers. Mr. Epstein sustained permanent hearing loss; Mr. Gelernter, whose office burst into flames, bled nearly to the point of death and lost much of the vision in his right eye.