Steph Deschamps / June 14, 2023
This Harvard-educated mathematician had eluded the FBI for almost 20 years. He died at the age of 81.
Ted Kaczynski, nicknamed "Unabomber" and whose parcel bomb attacks traumatized America between 1978 and 1995, was found dead in his cell at the age of 81, US media announced on Saturday, citing the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
From 1978 onwards, over a period of 18 years, this Harvard-educated mathematician sent sixteen bombs, concealed in postal parcels, to various individuals and companies, killing a total of three people and injuring 23 others. After a long hunt, he was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998.
According to the New York Times, citing the Federal Bureau of Prisons, he was found unconscious in his cell early Saturday morning, and the cause of death was not yet known.
Long held in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado -- known for housing notorious prisoners such as drug lord El Chapo -- he had been transferred in 2021 to a health-care facility in North Carolina.
A brilliant mathematician turned hermit, Theodore Kaczynski had embarked on a crusade against progress and technology, building his bombs in a cabin in the mountains of Montana (north-west) without running water or electricity.
His first targets were universities and airlines, earning the assassin the nickname "Unabomber" (for "University and Airline Bomber »).
In September 1995, promising to stop sending bombs, he got the New York Times and Washington Post to publish a long manifesto in which he expressed his hatred of technology and the modern world.
Upon reading it, David Kaczynski, a resident of the East Coast of the United States, saw a similarity with old writings by his brother Theodore, who had been cut off from his family for years. He alerted the FBI and, in April 1996, led to his arrest.
A diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia did not prevent him from being tried and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998, after pleading guilty.