The Federal Bureau of Prisons has announced that Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, was discovered dead in his North Carolina prison cell on Saturday. Kaczynski was serving a life term without the possibility of parole for a string of bombings around the United States that claimed the lives of three people. He was 81.
Kaczynski, who was found guilty of carrying out a string of bombs against scientists, was relocated from a maximum security Colorado jail to a facility in North Carolina in 2021 due to his failing health.
No specific cause of death was disclosed.
Kaczynski was in prison after being apprehended in 1996 in the rustic cabin he was residing in in western Montana. He admitted that between 1978 and 1995, he had set off 16 explosions across the nation, resulting in the deaths of three individuals and the injuries of 23 more.
The lethal homemade bombs that Kaczynski mailed, including one that detonated as intended on an American Airlines flight due to altitude, altered how Americans sent items and boarded aircraft.
Air travel and postal delivery were disrupted in 1995 after a threat to blow up a jet leaving Los Angeles before the end of the July 4 weekend. Later, The Unabomber insisted that it was a “prank.”
The Harvard-trained mathematician led investigators on the longest and most expensive manhunt in the country while railing against the impacts of modern technology. He was given the moniker “Unabomber” by the FBI since his initial targets appeared to be colleges and airlines.
His anti-technology polemic, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” was published in September 1995 by The Washington Post and The New York Times. Federal authorities pushed for the printing of the manifesto after the bomber threatened to stop using terrorist tactics if his book was published by a major newspaper.
