Ted Kaczynski, the man known as the “Unabomber,” has died in prison, the Associated Press reported, citing the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
ABC News, The New York Times, CNN, and other major news outlets reported that Kaczynski died of a possible suicide. ABC News reported that Kaczynski’s death was being investigated as a possible suicide, but there is no formal cause of death determination yet. The news sites cited unnamed sources.
According to ABC News, Kaczynski was found dead in his prison cell on the morning of June 10, 2023. He had been moved to a “medical facility in North Carolina in December 2021 due to poor health,” ABC reported.
According to the AP, the Bureau of Prisons declined to elaborate on Kaczynski’s medical condition when he was moved. He was 81-years-old when he died, AP reported. Heavy has reached out to the Bureau of Prisons for additional details.
Here’s what you need to know:
According to the FBI, the ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski Built Homemade Bombs That Killed 3 People & Injured ‘Nearly 2 Dozen More’
fbi.govTed Kaczynski, a/k/a the Unabomber.
According to the FBI, Theodore Kaczynski “came to our attention in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive homemade bomb at a Chicago university. Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that killed three Americans and injured nearly two dozen more. Along the way, he sowed fear and panic, even threatening to blow up airliners in flight.”
The FBI’s page on the Unabomber says the “big break in the case came in 1995.”
“The Unabomber sent us a 35,000 word essay claiming to explain his motives and views of the ills of modern society. After much debate about the wisdom of ‘giving in to terrorists,’ FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno approved the task force’s recommendation to publish the essay in hopes that a reader could identify the author,” the FBI reported. “After the manifesto appeared in The Washington Post, thousands of people suggested possible suspects.”
The Unabomber’s Brother Identified Him to Authorities, the FBI Says
GettyScreen shot, from WBBM-TV Chicago, shows a high school yearbook photo (from Evergreen, Illinois in 1958) of Theodore Kaczynski, April 3, 1996.
According to the FBI, after the publication of the manifesto, Kaczynski’s brother David Kaczynski came forward to authorities and “described his troubled brother Ted, who had grown up in Chicago, taught at the University of California at Berkeley (where two of the bombs had been placed), then lived for a time in Salt Lake City before settling permanently into the primitive 10’ x 14’ cabin that the brothers had constructed near Lincoln, Montana.”
The brother “provided letters and documents written by his brother. Our linguistic analysis determined that the author of those papers and the manifesto were almost certainly the same. When combined with facts gleaned from the bombings and Kaczynski’s life, that analysis provided the basis for a search warrant,” the FBI wrote.
“On April 3, 1996, investigators arrested Kaczynski and combed his cabin. There, they found a wealth of bomb components; 40,000 handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of Unabomber crimes; and one live bomb, ready for mailing,” the FBI continued.
According to the FBI, the deceased victims included the president of the California Forestry Association, an advertising executive, and the owner of a Sacramento computer store. The United Airlines president, a geneticist, and an engineering student were among the victims who survived attacks by the Unabomber, according to the FBI.
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