Ted Kaczynski The Unabomber Dead At 81

Ted Kaczynski the man the FBI dubbed The Unabomber was found dead in his prison cell at a Federal Medical Center

Ted Kaczynski was sentenced to multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to a series of bombings that left three people dead and dozens injured had been kept at the Supermax in Colorado was recently transferred to a Federal Medical Center due to failing health

The Unabomber was active in the United States from 1978 to 1995 where he would mail bombs that targeted Universities and airlines. His undoing came when he sent a thirty five thousand word manifesto to major newspapers. His brother recognized the way it was written and notified the FBI

Ted Kaczynski lawyers wanted to go for an insanity defense but he thought that was insulting so he plead guilty to all of the charges he was facing

Ted Kaczynski More News

Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81.

Branded the “Unabomber” by the FBI, Kaczynski died at the federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina, Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, told The Associated Press. He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., she said. A cause of death was not immediately known.

Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, he had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.

Years before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailing, the “Unabomber’s” deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes, even virtually shutting down air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.

He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation.

But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski’s brother David and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise’s tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the “Unabomber” for years in nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.

Authorities in April 1996 found him in a 10-by-14-foot (3-by-4-meter) plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.

As an elusive criminal mastermind, the Unabomber won his share of sympathizers and comparisons to Daniel Boone, Edward Abbey and Henry David Thoreau.

But once revealed as a wild-eyed hermit with long hair and beard who weathered Montana winters in a one-room shack, Kaczynski struck many as more of a pathetic loner than romantic anti-hero.

Even in his own journals, Kaczynski came across as not a committed revolutionary, but a vengeful hermit driven by petty grievances.

“I certainly don’t claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the ‘good’ (whatever that is) of the human race,” he wrote on April 6, 1971. “I act merely from a desire for revenge.”

FILE – Theodore Kaczynski looks around as U.S. Marshals prepare to take him down the steps at the federal courthouse to a waiting vehicle on June 21, 1996, in Helena, Mont. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” has died in federal prison. The cause of death was not immediately known. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
1 of 6
FILE – Theodore Kaczynski looks around as U.S. Marshals prepare to take him down the steps at the federal courthouse to a waiting vehicle on June 21, 1996, in Helena, Mont. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” has died in federal prison. The cause of death was not immediately known. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81.

Branded the “Unabomber” by the FBI, Ted Kaczynski died at the federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina, Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, told The Associated Press. He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., she said. A cause of death was not immediately known.

Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, he had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.
ADVERTISEMENT

Years before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailing, the “Unabomber’s” deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes, even virtually shutting down air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.

He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation.

But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski’s brother David and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise’s tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the “Unabomber” for years in nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.

Authorities in April 1996 found him in a 10-by-14-foot (3-by-4-meter) plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.

As an elusive criminal mastermind, the Unabomber won his share of sympathizers and comparisons to Daniel Boone, Edward Abbey and Henry David Thoreau.

But once revealed as a wild-eyed hermit with long hair and beard who weathered Montana winters in a one-room shack, Kaczynski struck many as more of a pathetic loner than romantic anti-hero.

Even in his own journals, Ted Kaczynski came across as not a committed revolutionary, but a vengeful hermit driven by petty grievances.

“I certainly don’t claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the ‘good’ (whatever that is) of the human race,” he wrote on April 6, 1971. “I act merely from a desire for revenge.”
ADVERTISEMENT

A psychiatrist who interviewed Kaczynski in prison diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic.

“Mr. Kaczynski’s delusions are mostly persecutory in nature,” Sally Johnson wrote in a 47-page report. “The central themes involve his belief that he is being maligned and harassed by family members and modern society.”

Kaczynski hated the idea of being viewed as mentally ill and when his lawyers attempted to present an insanity defense, he tried to fire them. When that failed, he tried to hang himself with his underwear.

Ted Kaczynski eventually pleaded guilty rather than let his defense team proceed with an insanity defense.

“I’m confident that I’m sane,” Kaczynski told Time magazine in 1999. “I don’t get delusions and so forth.”

He was certainly brilliant.

Ted Kaczynski skipped two grades to attend Harvard at age 16 and had published papers in prestigious mathematics journals. His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints. Later bombs bore the signature “FC” for “Freedom Club.”

The FBI called him the “Unabomber” because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines. An altitude-triggered bomb he mailed in 1979 went off as planned aboard an American Airlines flight; a dozen people aboard suffered from smoke inhalation.

Ted Kaczynski killed computer rental store owner Hugh Scrutton, advertising executive Thomas Mosser and timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray. California geneticist Charles Epstein and Yale University computer expert David Gelernter were maimed by bombs two days apart in June 1993.

Mosser was killed in his North Caldwell, New Jersey, home on Dec. 10, 1994, a day he was supposed to be picking out a Christmas tree with his family. His wife, Susan, found him grievously wounded by a barrage of razor blades, pipes and nails.

“He was moaning very softly,” she said at Kaczynski’s 1998 sentencing. “The fingers on his right hand were dangling. I held his left hand. I told him help was coming. I told him I loved him.”

When Kaczynski stepped up his bombs and letters to newspapers and scientists in 1995, experts speculated the “Unabomber” was jealous of the attention being paid to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

A threat to blow up a plane out of Los Angeles before the end of the July Fourth weekend threw air travel and mail delivery into chaos. The “Unabomber” later claimed it was a “prank.”

The Washington Post printed the “Unabomber’s” manifesto at the urging of federal authorities, after the bomber said he would desist from terrorism if a national publication published his treatise.

Patrik had had a disturbing feeling about her brother-in-law even before seeing the manifesto and eventually persuaded her husband to read a copy at the library. After two months of arguments, they took some of Ted Kaczynski’s letters to Patrik’s childhood friend Susan Swanson, a private investigator in Chicago.

Swanson in turn passed them along to former FBI behavior science expert Clint Van Zandt, whose analysts said whoever wrote them had also probably written the “Unabomber’s” manifesto.

“It was a nightmare,” David Kaczynski, who as a child had idolized his older brother, said in a 2005 speech at Bennington College. “I was literally thinking, ‘My brother’s a serial killer, the most wanted man in America.’”

Swanson turned to a corporate lawyer friend, Anthony Bisceglie, who contacted the FBI.

David Kaczynski wanted his role kept confidential, but his identity quickly leaked out and Ted Kaczynski vowed never to forgive his younger sibling. He ignored his letters, turned his back on him at court hearings and described David Kaczynski in a 1999 book draft as a “Judas Iscariot (who) … doesn’t even have enough courage to go hang himself.”

Ted Kaczynski was born May 22, 1942, in Chicago, the son of second-generation Polish Catholics — a sausage-maker and a homemaker. He played the trombone in the school band, collected coins and skipped the sixth and 11th grades.

His high school classmates thought him odd, particularly after he showed a school wrestler how to make a mini-bomb that detonated during chemistry class.

Harvard classmates recalled him as a lonely, thin boy with poor personal hygiene and a room that smelled of spoiled milk, rotting food and foot powder.

After graduate studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ted Kaczynski got a job teaching math at the University of California at Berkeley but found the work difficult and quit abruptly. In 1971, he bought a 1½-acre parcel about 4 miles (6 kilometers) outside of Lincoln and built a cabin there without heating, plumbing or electricity.

He learned to garden, hunt, make tools and sew, living on a few hundred dollars a year.

He left his cabin in Montana in the late 1970s to work at a foam rubber products manufacturer outside Chicago with his father and brother. But when a female supervisor dumped him after two dates, he began posting insulting limericks about her and wouldn’t stop.

His brother fired him and Ted Kaczynski soon returned to the wilderness to continue plotting his vengeful killing spree.

https://apnews.com/article/ted-kaczynski-unabomber-dies-federal-prison-95fdd4f398fbfe20aaadf5d53a91dc26

Ted Kaczynski Videos

Top 10 Supermax ADX Florence Inmates

supermax inmates adx florence

When you screw up in prison they send you to solitary confinement but when you continue to cause problems they will send you to a supermax or if your crimes are so atrocious or if you are considered to be so dangerous then the supermax could be your home for the rest of your life. When it comes to supermax facilities the worst of the worst is in Colorado known as ADX Florence. In this article on My Crime Library we are going to take a look at the top ten most notorious prisoners at ADX Florence.

1. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Supermax Inmate

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán adx florence

Everyone has heard of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is a notorious drug lord from Mexico who was responsible for shipping in tons of illegal drugs to the United States. After a number of successful escapes he was finally captured and shipped to the United States where he would be convicted of a number of crimes and would be sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years and had to forfeit more than 12 billion dollars. Needless to say with his ties to cartels, history of escapes and notoriety he will spend the rest of his life at ADX Florence supermax

2. Larry Hoover Supermax Inmate

larry hoover adx florence supermax

Larry Hoover was the founder of the Ganster Disciples a gang that would spread across the United States. Larry Hoover would be arrested and convicted of a murder that took place in 1973 and would be sentenced to over a hundred years in prison. However it would be his actions behind bars that would eventually to end up at supermax ADX Florence for Larry Hoover was still directing the Gangster Disciples behind bars and would later be convicted and sentenced to six more life sentences to be served at ADX Florence.

3.Tyler Bingham Supermax Inmate

tyler bingham supermax inmate

Tyler Bingham is a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood a powerful prison gang that started in California and spread across the country. Tyler Bingham (photo left side) would eventually be charged by the Federal Government for a series of murders, racketeering and other charges. Eventually Tyler Bingham and the other leaders (Barry Mills photo right side who would dies as a resident of ADX Florence) would ultimately receive multiple life sentences to be served at the infamous supermax

4. Kaboni Savage Supermax Inmate

Kaboni Savage supermax inmate adx florence

Kaboni Savage was a high level drug dealer in Pennsylvania who would ultimately be sentenced to death for ordering the firebombing of a home that would kill six people including four children. Kaboni Savage has been accused of ordering a number of other murders as well. Kaboni Savage is considered to be so dangerous that he is being kept at ADX Florence until its time for his execution.

5. Ted Kaczynski Supermax Inmate

Ted Kaczynski supermax inmate adx florence

Ted Kaczynski of course is better known as the Unabomber who was responsible for a series of bombing around the United States that left three people dead and dozens injured. Ted Kaczynski would ultimately plead guilty and would be sentenced to eight consecutive life terms to be served at the supermax

6. Luis Felipe Supermax Inmate

Luis Felipe supermax inmate adx florence

Luis Felipe is a former leader of the Latin Kings commonly referred to a King Blood. Luis Felipe who would ultimately be convicted and sentenced to life in prison for multiple murders had an interesting requirement to his life sentence. The judge considered Luis Felipe to be so dangerous that his sentence also stated that he have no contact with anyone other than his lawyers throughout his prison sentence.

7. Richard McNair Supermax Inmate

richard mcnair supermax inmate

Richard McNair was sentenced to spend his life in prison for the murder of a man during a robbery however that was not the reason McNair would end up in ADX Florence. Turns out Richard McNair nickname could me Houdini as he has escaped from a jail and two prisons including a BOP facility. McNair has been a resident of the supermax since 2007 and has not been able to make a prison break.

8. Terry Nichols Supermax Inmate

Terry Nichols supermax inmate

Terry Nichols has been a resident of the supermax ADX Florence for a long time since he and Timothy McVeigh were convicted of the Oklahoma City Bombing which took place in 1995 that claimed the lives of 168 people. Timothy McVeigh would be sentenced to death and would be executed in 2001. Terry Nichols would be sentenced to spend the rest of his life at ADX Florence

9. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Supermax Inmate

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev supermax inmate

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev were responsible for the Boston City Bombing and the murder of a MIT Officer. Tamerlan Tsarnaev would be shot dead by police and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be sentenced to death. Tsarnaev death sentence is currently up in the air due to potential jury bias.

10. Michael Swango Supermax Inmate

Michael Swango supermax inmate

Michael Swango was a former physician who would admit to killing four people however police and authorities believe he is responsible for the deaths of at least sixty patients and colleagues. Michael Swango weapon of choice was poison. Swango would be sentenced to three consecutive life terms