Ted Kaczynsk, The Infamous ‘Unabomber’ Found Dead In His Prison Cell

Ted Kaczynsk, The Infamous ‘Unabomber’ Who Attacked Modern Life, Dies at 81

TedKaczynski, the convicted terrorist known as the Unabomber, was found dead in his prison cell Saturday morning, according to a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson. He was 81.

Kaczynski was previously in a maximum security facility in Colorado but was moved to a medical facility in North Carolina in December 2021 due to poor health.

Kaczynski, who went nearly 20 years without being captured until his arrest in 1996, was considered America’s most prolific bomber.

 

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After he was captured by about 40 F.B.I. agents in April 1996, Mr. Kaczynski’s particular ideology was less the subject of debate than the question of whether his crimes should be dignified with a rational motive to begin with.

Victims railed against commentators who took seriously a 35,000-word manifesto that he had written to justify his actions and evangelize the ideas that he claimed inspired them.

Psychologists involved in the trial saw his writing as evidence of schizophrenia. His lawyers tried to mount an insanity defense — and when Mr. Kaczynski rebelled and sought to represent himself in court, risking execution to do so, his lawyers said that that was yet further evidence of insanity.

For years before the manifesto was published, Mr. Kaczynski (pronounced kah-ZIN-skee) had no reputation beyond that of a twisted reveler in violence, picking victims seemingly at random, known only by a mysterious-sounding nickname with roots in the F.B.I.’s investigation into him: “the Unabomber.”