A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press Saturday that Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, also known as “The Unabomber,” died in a federal jail.
Around 8 a.m., Kaczynski’s body was found in a federal jail in North Carolina. At first, no one knew what had caused the death.
After spending 20 years in a superfederal prison in Colorado because he was responsible for a series of bombs that hurt scientists, he was moved to a federal prison in North Carolina where he can get medical care.
After Kaczynski was caught living in a shack in western Montana in 1996, he was given a life term without the chance of parole. Between 1978 and 1995, he admitted to setting off 16 bombs in different parts of the country. Three people died and 23 were hurt.
In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a cabin in the woods near Lincoln, Montana, that didn’t have power or running water. There, he lived as a hermit and learned how to survive on his own. After seeing how the wilderness around his cabin is being destroyed, he thinks that living in nature is no longer possible. He decides to use terrorism to fight against industrialization and the destruction of nature that it causes. Before he was caught in 1979, Kaczynski was the subject of the FBI’s longest and most expensive investigation ever. Before his name was known, the FBI gave him the case number UNABOM, which stands for “University and Airline Bomber.” This is how the media came up with the name “Unabomber” for him.
In 1995, Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times saying that he would “avoid terrorism” if his manifesto was published in The New York Times or The Washington Post. He said that his bombings were extreme but important. Concerns about the erosion of human freedom and dignity are justified by modern technologies that require large-scale organization. The FBI and Attorney General Janet Reynolds pushed for the story to be published. It came out in September 1995 in The Washington Post. When Kaczynski’s brother David read it, he knew the writing style and told the FBI what he thought was going on. When he was caught in 1996, Kaczynski said he was sane and tried to get rid of the lawyers the court gave him because they wanted him to avoid the death penalty by claiming he was insane. In 1998, he admitted to all of the charges against him and was given eight life terms without the chance of parole.
