Unabomber dead at 81

Ted Kaczynski was serving a life sentence for a bomb spree that spanned 17 years and killed three people and injured dozens

Ted Kaczynski, dubbed the Unabomber by the FBI, has passed away in a US prison at the age of 81. He was serving a life sentence for a deadly string of bombing attacks through which he hoped to bring about the end of industrial society.  

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Kaczynski was found unresponsive in his cell early on Saturday and was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.    

The FBI arrested Kaczynski in 1996 after a lengthy investigation, which some have described as one of the longest and most costly manhunts in US history. 

Authorities managed to track him down after his relatives recognized his style in a manifesto he had sent to several leading newspapers. The lone-wolf terrorist had vowed to refrain from further violence if the outlets agreed to publish it. By that time, he had killed three people and maimed 23 more. 

Between 1978 and 1995, the Unabomber mailed and placed a total of 16 bombs, targeting academics, businessmen, and others he believed underpinned industrial society.

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The latter, according to Kaczynski, had to be destroyed, including through violent means. He had lived as a recluse in a shack in rural Montana since 1971, and advocated the return to a primitive society and a peculiar strain of environmentalism.  

In his youth, Kaczynski was considered something of a mathematical genius, becoming an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, by the age of 25.

Kaczynski was transferred to ADX Florence supermax prison in the state of Colorado after a court in Sacramento, California, handed down a sentence of life without parole in 1998. In December 2021, he was moved to a federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, due to his deteriorating health.