'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski Found Dead In Prison Cell
Ted Kaczynski, the man who set off more than a dozen bombs and became known as the “Unabomber,” has died.
Kaczynski was found dead in his prison cell on Saturday, according to multiple reports. He was 81. His cause of death has not been revealed, though in 2021 he was moved to a prison medical facility due to poor health.
Kaczynski set off 16 bombs that killed three people and injured 23 others in various parts of the country between 1978 and 1995. He was arrested in 1996 at his remote cabin in western Montana.
In this April 4, 1996, file photo, Ted Kaczynski, also known as the "Unabomber," is escorted into a federal courthouse in Helena, Montana.
Kaczynski went nearly 20 years without being captured and terrorized the country each time he set off homemade explosives, often through the mail.
On Nov. 15, 1979, an American Airlines flight heading from Chicago to Washington, D.C., filled with smoke after a bomb made by Kaczynski detonated in the luggage compartment. The plane was able to land safely and no one died, but the bombings continued.
Six years after that incident, in 1985, Kaczynski left a bomb in the parking lot of a California computer store, killing the store’s owner.
Kaczynski, who entered Harvard at 16 and received an undergraduate degree there, infamously wrote a 35,000-word manifesto railing against technology and industrial society. He successfully pressured The Washington Post and The New York Times into publishing his treatise in 1995, telling the newspapers that he would stop hurting people if they did so.
But the manifesto’s publication ultimately led to Kaczynski’s capture. When his brother and brother’s wife saw the text, they realized it sounded like Kaczynski and tipped off the FBI.
Kaczynski eventually pleaded guilty to the bombings rather than allow his legal team to claim that he was insane.
Hilary Hanson contributed to this report.
