Domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, better known as the “Unabomber” was found dead in his cell at around 8 a.m. on June 10, 2023, in a North Carolina federal prison. He was 81 years old.
While the formal cause of death has not been disclosed, sources say that he died by suicide, reports the New York Times.
Kaczynski was finally caught in western Montana in April 1996 after carrying out 16 bombings over a 17-year reign of terror in which he killed 3 people and injured 23 others. He had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
The New York Times described Kaczynski as a “demented serial killer” and a terrorist. He was also brilliant and well-educated.
After his arrest, Mr. Kaczynski’s extraordinary biography emerged. He had scored 167 on an I.Q. test as a boy and entered Harvard at 16. In graduate school, at the University of Michigan, he worked in a field of mathematics so esoteric that a member of his dissertation committee estimated that only 10 or 12 people in the country understood it. By 25, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Then he dropped out — not just from Berkeley, but from civilization. Starting in 1971 and continuing until his arrest, he lived in a shack he built himself in rural Montana. He forsook running water, read by the light of homemade candles, stopped filing federal tax returns and subsisted on rabbits.
Kaczynski carried out one to four bombings each year between 1978 and 1987. He stopped for six years but began again in June 1993, releasing two bombs in one week. In 1995, his 35,000-word manifesto was published by the Washington Post and the New York Times. This ultimately led to his capture after his brother and sister-in-law recognized his tone and tipped off the FBI. The FBI had been searching for the Unabomber for years, and this manhunt was the longest and costliest.
Breaking News: Ted Kaczynski, the "Unabomber," is dead at 81. He killed three people and injured 23 in attacks with homemade bombs from 1978 to 1995. https://t.co/r5ktBSdG6Q
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 10, 2023
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski 'died by SUICIDE' in his federal prison cell https://t.co/nTqiOzJjsb pic.twitter.com/11KirGFBAg
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) June 11, 2023
