His parcel bombs terrorized the United States for eighteen years, before his arrest in 1996 thanks to his brother. Ted Kaczynski, alias “Unabomber”, died Saturday in prison, at 81 years old.
“On Saturday, June 10, 2023, at approximately 12:25 a.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 in hospital, the BOP added.
From 1978 to 1995, this native of Chicago with an atypical background, a brilliant mathematician who became a hermit in a cabin in Montana, had terrorized the country by sending sixteen bombs, hidden in postal parcels, to various people and companies, causing a total of three deaths and 23 wounded.
His hunt, which ended in April 1996, mobilized hundreds of federal police (FBI) agents. An image was then imprinted in the memories, that of his face with shaggy hair and beard on his identification photo after the arrest.
A gifted student, trained at the prestigious Harvard University, a time professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, Theodore Kaczynski had embarked on a crusade against progress and technology, manufacturing his bombs from his cabin without water. current or electricity.
His first targets are academics and airlines, earning 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 spot.
From 1987 to 1993, “Unabomber” is no longer talked about. 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 obtained New York Times and washington post that they publish a 35,000-word long manifesto, in which he expresses his hatred of technology and the modern world and justifies his murderous campaign.
While reading it, a resident of the east coast of the United States, David Kaczynski, sees in it a similarity with 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 surrounding his cabin.
A diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia did not prevent him from being tried and then sentenced, in 1998, to life in prison, after pleading guilty.
At the start of a trial where the prosecution was led by current US Attorney General Merrick Garland, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced in 1998 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.