Officials found The Unabomber aka Ted Kaczynski unresponsive in his cell at approximately 12:23 a.m. on June 10, 2023. According to The New York Times, some people said that the reason for his death was suicide. Furthermore, at the time of his death, Kaczynski was suffering from late stages of cancer.
The Unabomber was 81 years old when he passed away. The man’s reign of terror lasted for a span of 17 years which led to the deaths of three individuals. His actions also injured 23 people. According to Britannica, he conducted a long bombing campaign because he wanted to bring about “a revolution against the industrial system.”
How was Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber caught?
It took officials a whopping 20 years to capture Ted Kaczynski. On April 3, 1996, a nine-man SWAT team went to Montana and apprehended him from the cabin that he built for himself to live in.
The credits for his apprehension go to his family members, Linda Patrik and David Kaczynski. David was Ted’s elder brother, while Linda was the domestic terrorists’ sister-in-law. Linda identified his brother-in-law as the Unabomber after reading his writings.
Ted regularly wrote letters to David and Linda, who realized that Ted’s thoughts and ideas were terrifyingly similar to those of the Unabomber.
According to ABC News, the couple gave an interview on 20/20 on ID Presents: Homicide in 2016. In this interview, Linda said, “I’d thought about the families that were bombed. There was one in which the package arrived to the man’s home and his little 2-year-old daughter was there. She was almost in the room when he opened the package. Luckily she left, and his wife left. And then he died.” She further stated, “And there were others. And so I spent those days thinking about those people.”
In the same interview, David Kaczynski explained how his wife made him realize that the Unabomber was none other than his own brother. He said, “When she said, ‘Well, I think maybe your brother’s the Unabomber,’ I thought, ‘Well, this is not anything to worry about. Ted’s never been violent. I’ve never seen him violent. I couldn’t imagine that he would do what the Unabomber had done.”
What was the Unabomber’s Manifesto?
In 1995, Ted Kaczynski composed an anti-technology essay called Industrial Society and Its Future aka the Unabomber Manifesto. It consisted of 35,000 words. This essay said that the Industrial Revolution created an environment of sociopolitical order that led to increased human dependency on technology. Also, human freedom and potential were being suppressed because of it.
According to the Washington Post, the introduction of the Unabomber’s Manifesto reads,
“The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling. have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.”
