Kaczynski, the Unabomber
Theodore “Ted” John Kaczynski was born in Chicago on May 22, 1942. A decade after he was born, in 1952, the Kaczynski’s moved to Evergreen Park, Illinois and Ted transferred into Evergreen Park Central Junior High School. Neighbors reported that the Kaczynski’s were "civic-minded folks" that "sacrificed everything they had for their children".
Ted was reportedly well-adjusted, and had until this socialized well with other children, but Ted was exceptionally bright; IQ tests showed his IQ to be over 150, and neighbors described him as smart but lonely even as a child. After skipping the sixth grade, he did not fit in, and experienced bullying from his fellow students, who were older than he was. At Evergreen Park Community High, Kaczynski played the trombone in the marching band and was also a member of the Biology Club, Coin Club, German Club, and Math Club.
He hung out with other kids that were into science, and were known as “the briefcase boys" because they carried briefcases around with them. Kaczynski skipped the eleventh grade as well and attended summer school to graduate high school at age 15 as a National Merit finalist.
He applied to Harvard and was accepted on a scholarship in 1958 at the age of 16. Other students at Harvard described Kaczynski as highly intelligent but extremely reserved; one Harvard classmate said that Kaczynski was unprepared for the Ivy League experience, "They packed him up and sent him to Harvard before he was ready… He didn't even have a driver's license.”
Kaczynski participated in a study at Harvard that sources suggest was part of the MKUltra project, a Central Intelligence Agency mind control research program. Subjects in this study were told by a Harvard psychologist named Henry Murray that they would discuss personal philosophies with another student, and were then asked to write essays detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations.
The essays were handed to someone who would belittle the subject using language Murray called "personally abusive;" the content of the essays written by the subject was ammunition for these attacks. This was filmed and later played back to the subjects to show them their anger and rage. This so-called “experiment” lasted three years, with someone verbally abusing and humiliating Kaczynski on a weekly basis, for over 200 hours in total.
Kaczynski survived these abuses and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Harvard in 1962, then enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned a master's degree in 1964 and a doctoral degree in mathematics in 1967.
"He was an unusual person. He was not like the other graduate students. He was much more focused about his work. He had a drive to discover mathematical truth."
— Professor Peter Duren, University of Michigan
"It is not enough to say he was smart."
— Professor George Piranian, University of Michigan
In 2006, Kaczynski said he felt the university had low standards and that he had unpleasant memories from his time there. He may have been referring to 1966 when he experienced several weeks of intense sexual fantasies about becoming female, and even decided to undergo a gender reassignment; he arranged a meeting with a psychiatrist, but changed his mind in the waiting room. In the emotional fallout of the blown off appointment, he became enraged, and debated killing the psychiatrist.
Kaczynski said, "I felt disgusted about what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do. And I felt humiliated, and I violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope."
In late 1967, Kaczynski took a job at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching mathematics. By September 1968, Kaczynski was appointed assistant professor, and on a track towards tenure. In spite of his career success outside the classroom, his teaching evaluations suggest he was somewhat uncomfortable teaching. He reportedly taught straight from the textbook and refused to answer questions, and as a result he was not well liked by his students.
Without explanation or warning, at the age of 28, Kaczynski resigned from his position on June 30, 1969. Initially, he moved to his parents' home in Lombard, Illinois; two years later, in 1971, he moved to a remote cabin he built outside Lincoln, Montana.
Kaczynski wanted to live autonomously, and his cabin was described by a census worker as containing books, a bed, two chairs, storage trunks, and a gas stove. He used an old bicycle to get around, and a volunteer at the local library said he visited frequently.
In 1975, Kaczynski first began committing acts of sabotage against real estate developments near his cabin, including arson and booby trapping.
It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very steeply in to cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there. It was about a two days' hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it ... You just can't imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge.
Starting in 1978, Kaczynski began a his series of increasingly sophisticated bombings. There were sixteen of these in total; Kaczynski's first mail bomb was delivered to Buckley Crist, a materials engineering professor at Northwestern University. On May 25, 1978, a package with Crist's return address on it was found in a parking lot at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
This package was then "returned" to Crist, who immediately contacted campus police. He had not sent a package. Officer Terry Marker opened it, triggering the bomb, but the explosion caused only minor injuries.
Kaczynski stayed in Chicago after the May 1978 bombing to work with his father and brother at a foam rubber factory but his brother fired him in August 1978 for writing insulting limericks about a female supervisor Ted was romantically interested in. She remembered Kaczynski as intelligent and quiet, and said there was no romantic relationship between them.
Kaczynski's second bomb was sent nearly one year after the first one, again to Northwestern University. This time it was concealed in a cigar box and left on a table, and again caused only minor injuries, this time to graduate student John Harris who casually opened it.
In 1979, another bomb was delivered to the cargo hold of a Boeing 727 owned by American Airlines, Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington, D.C. A faulty timing mechanism prevented this bomb from exploding, and it only released smoke. Pilots diverted the flight and made an emergency landing; authorities later said the bomb had enough power to "obliterate the plane.”
Kaczynski sent his next bomb inside of a copy of the book Ice Brothers, delivered to the president of United Airlines, Percy Wood, who received cuts and burns over most of his body. Wood survived, and died of natural causes 28 years later on June 23, 2008. Ice Brothers is a story about the U.S. Coast Guard in WWII operating off of the coast of Greenland; it is unknown if there was some special meaning to this choice.
Kaczynski left false clues in most of his bombs, including a note left in a bomb that did not detonate that said "Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV," and often used Eugene O'Neill one-dollar stamps as postage. These were intentionally misleading clues, part the extreme care in preparing his bombs; fingerprints found on some of the devices don’t match Kaczynski, even though he built them.
U.S. postal inspectors, who initially had jurisdiction over the case, labeled him the "Junkyard Bomber" because of the recycled materials he used to make the bombs, scrap that could be found almost anywhere. Kaczynski’s bombs varied as he refined them over the years. Many of the bombs contained metal plates stamped with the initials "FC," usually hidden in the pipe end cap. Kaczynski would later explain that the initials stood for "Freedom Club".
The FBI theorized Kaczynski's crimes involved a theme of nature, trees and wood. He included bits of tree branch and bark in his bombs; his selected targets included Percy Wood and Professor Leroy Wood. Crime writer Robert Graysmith cited his "obsession with wood" as "a large factor" in the bombings; investigators later learned that the victims were chosen randomly through research he conducted at the library.
In 1980, agents in the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit created a psychological profile of the bomber that described a man with above-average intelligence, connections to academia, and was later refined to describe a luddite with academic degrees in a hard science. This startlingly accurate criminal profile was discarded in 1983, and FBI analysts also developed a startlingly inaccurate profile in which the suspect was characterized as a blue-collar airplane mechanic.
In 1981, a package with the return address of a Brigham Young University Professor of electrical engineering, LeRoy Wood Bearnson, was found in a hallway at the University of Utah. It was brought to the campus police and defused by a bomb squad. In May 1982, a bomb was sent to Patrick C. Fischer, professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University. Fischer was on vacation in Puerto Rico but his secretary, Janet Smith, opened the bomb, resulting in injuries to her face and arms.
Kaczynski's next two bombs targeted people at the University of California, Berkeley. Engineering professor Diogenes Angelakos was injured in a bombing in July 1982, and in May 1985, John Hauser, a graduate student and captain in the United States Air Force, lost four fingers and vision in his left eye, which eventually returned.
A bomb sent to the Boeing Company in Auburn, Washington, was defused by a bomb squad in June of 1985, and in November 1985, professor James V. McConnell and research assistant Nicklaus Suino were both severely wounded after Suino opened a mail bomb addressed to McConnell.
In late 1985, a bomb left in the parking lot of a computer store in Sacramento, California, killed 38-year-old store owner Hugh Scrutton. A similar attack against a computer store happened in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 20, 1987. That bomb was disguised as a piece of lumber, and injured Gary Wright when he attempted to remove it from the parking lot. The explosion severed nerves in Wright's left arm and sent hundreds of pieces of shrapnel into his body.
Kaczynski was spotted while planting the Salt Lake City bomb, leading to the now iconic sketch of the Unabomber as a hooded man with a mustache and aviator sunglasses.
Kaczynski's father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 1990 and committed suicide by shooting himself on October 2, 1990. In 1993, Kaczynski mailed a bomb to the home of Charles Epstein from the University of California, San Francisco, who lost several fingers. The same weekend, Kaczynski mailed a bomb to David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale University. Gelernter lost sight in his right eye, hearing in his right ear, and four fingers from his right hand, which he remains without the use of today.
In 1994, Thomas J. Mosser was killed after opening a mail bomb sent to his home in New Jersey. In a letter to The New York Times, Kaczynski explained he targeted Mosser because of his public relations work after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The next bomb resulted in the 1995 murder of Gilbert Brent Murray, president of the timber industry lobbying group California Forestry Association, by a mail bomb addressed to previous president William Dennison, who had retired.
In 1995, Kaczynski mailed several letters to media outlets demanding a major newspaper print his 35,000-word essay Industrial Society and Its Future (the "Unabomber manifesto" name came from the FBI).
Before the manifesto's publication, the FBI held many press conferences asking the public to help identify the Unabomber, and were convinced the bomber was from the Chicago area because the first bombing took place there. They also believed that he worked in or had some connection to Salt Lake City, and had some association with the San Francisco Bay Area.
There was some controversy over whether the essay should be published, and what guarantee anyone had the bombings would stop. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh recommended publication, hoping that a reader could identify the author. The Washington Post published the essay on September 19, 1995. You can read it here.
Kaczynski used a typewriter to write his manifesto, capitalizing entire words for emphasis. He referred to himself as either "we" or "FC" ("Freedom Club"); there is no evidence that he worked with others. Industrial Society and Its Future begins with, "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."
The manifesto says that those who oppose industrial society must promote stress from within and promote an ideology that offers a "counter-ideal" in nature. He claims that technology has had a destabilizing effect on society, made life unfulfilling, and caused widespread suffering.
Kaczynski, an expert on systems theory, argued that the erosion of human freedom is the natural result of industrial society as "the system has to regulate human behavior closely in order to function." Reform of the system is impossible, Kaczynski claims, but it will break down if it cannot achieve significant control.
He states that it is likely this will be decided within the next century. Kaczynski goes on to say that a successful revolution will be possible only when industrial society is sufficiently unstable.
A significant portion of the essay is dedicated to politics, and Kaczynski blames many of society's issues on leftists, and discusses his belief that over-socialization and feelings of inferiority are the primary drivers of leftism, which he calls "one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world," adding that "leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology".
He also criticizes conservatives, describing them as "fools who whine about the decay of traditional values, yet… enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth."
James Q. Wilson, in a 1998 New York Times Op-Ed, wrote: "If it is the work of a madman, then the writings of many political philosophers… are scarcely more sane."
Further:
"The Unabomber does not like socialization, technology, leftist political causes or conservative attitudes. Apart from his call for an (unspecified) revolution, his paper resembles something that a very good graduate student might have written."
Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh got their wish; before the publication of Industrial Society and Its Future, Kaczynski's brother, David, was encouraged by his wife to follow up on suspicions that his brother Ted was the Unabomber, but David was dismissive. After the publication, David searched through old letters from the 1970s that Ted had written to send to newspapers in protest of the abuses of technology, and found that his brothers language was very similar to that in the manifesto.
Kaczynski's brother David hired private investigator Susan Swanson in Chicago to investigate his suspicions about Ted discreetly, and soon also hired Washington, D.C. attorney Tony Bisceglie to organize the evidence acquired by Swanson and contact the FBI.
Kaczynski's family wanted to protect him from the danger of an FBI raid, such as the debacles at Ruby Ridge and Waco. In early 1996, an investigator working with Bisceglie contacted former FBI hostage negotiator and criminal profiler Clinton R. Van Zandt, and asked him to compare the manifesto to typewritten copies of handwritten letters David had received from his brother.
Van Zandt's analysis determined that there was better than a 60 percent chance that the same person had written the manifesto, which had now been published for half a year, and Van Zandt recommended that they contact the FBI immediately.
Donald Wayne Foster analyzed the writing at the request of Kaczynski's defense team; he concluded that Kaczynski was the author. David Kaczynski had tried to remain anonymous, but he was soon identified, and within a few days an FBI team was sent to interview him and his wife with their attorney in Washington, D.C.
David provided letters written by his brother in their original envelopes, allowing the FBI task force to use postmark dates to add more detail to their timeline of Ted's activities.
David had assurances from the FBI that he would remain anonymous and that his brother would not learn who turned him in, but his identity was leaked almost immediately to CBS News in early April 1996. CBS anchorman Dan Rather called then FBI director Louis Freeh, who requested 24 hours before CBS broke the story. The FBI conducted an internal investigation but the source of the leak was never identified.
The FBI scrambled to finish the search warrant and have it issued by a federal judge in Montana; FBI agents arrested an unkempt, dishevelled, and filthy looking Ted Kaczynski at his cabin on April 3, 1996.
Their search of the cabin revealed bomb making components, 40,000 handwritten journal pages that included notes from bomb-making experiments, and one live bomb. They also found what appeared to be the original handwritten manuscript of Industrial Society and Its Future.
The Unabomber investigation was the most expensive investigation in FBI history at the time; a 2000 report by the United States Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement stated that the investigation cost over $50 million.
After his capture, theories emerged about Kaczynski being the Zodiac Killer, who murdered five people in Northern California from 1968 to 1969.
Kaczynski lived in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1967 to 1969 (the same period that most of the Zodiac's confirmed killings occurred in California)
both individuals were considered highly intelligent and both had an interest in bombs and codes
both wrote letters to newspapers demanding the publication of their works on the threat of continued violence
Kaczynski's whereabouts could not be verified for all of the killings, and since the gun and knife murders committed by the Zodiac Killer differed drastically from Kaczynski's bombings, authorities did not pursue him as a suspect. Robert Graysmith, author of the book Zodiac, called the similarities "fascinating but purely coincidental.”
A federal grand jury indicted Kaczynski in June 1996 on ten counts of illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs. Kaczynski's lawyers, Montana federal public defenders Michael Donahoe and Judy Clarke, attempted to enter an insanity defense to avoid the death penalty, but Kaczynski rejected this strategy, and on January 8, 1998, he asked to dismiss his lawyers and hire Tony Serra as his counsel. Serra had agreed not to use an insanity defense and instead promised to base a defense on Kaczynski's anti-technology views.
After this request was unsuccessful, Kaczynski tried to kill himself on January 9. Sally Johnson, the psychiatrist who examined Kaczynski, diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz said Kaczynski was not psychotic but had a schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder.
In his 2010 book Technological Slavery, Kaczynski said that two prison psychologists who visited him frequently for four years told him they saw no indication that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and the diagnosis was "ridiculous" and a "political diagnosis". Some authors have suggested that Kaczynski's brother and mother purposely spread the idea that Kaczynski was mentally ill to save him from execution.
Kaczynski pled guilty to all charges on January 22, 1998, accepting life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He later tried to withdraw this plea, arguing he had been coerced by the judge, but his request was denied, and the denial was upheld by the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In 2006, items from Kaczynski's cabin were sold at a "reasonably advertised Internet auction," and proceeds went towards the $15 million restitution awarded to Kaczynski's victims.
Kaczynski's correspondence and other personal papers were also auctioned, but with references to Kaczynski's victims removed; Kaczynski unsuccessfully challenged these redactions as violations of his freedom of speech. The auction ran for two weeks in 2011, and raised over $232,000. The U.S. government also seized Kaczynski's cabin, which they put on display at the “Newseum” in Washington, D.C., until late 2019, before it was transferred to a nearby FBI museum.
Kaczynski was sentenced to eight life sentences without the possibility of parole. Early in his imprisonment, Kaczynski befriended Ramzi Yousef and Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, respectively. The friendship lasted until McVeigh's execution in 2001.
On December 14, 2021, Theodore John Kaczynski, then 79-years-old, was transferred from the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado to the Federal Medical Center, Butner, North Carolina for undisclosed health reasons, where he died in Federal custody on June 10, 2023. According to anonymous sources, his death was by suicide of an unknown method. He was 81.
Kaczynski's views have inspired generations of online community of primitivists and neo-Luddites, and Kaczynski is also frequently referred to by eco-terrorists online. Although some fascist and neo-Nazi groups also idolize him for his accelerationist views, Kaczynski described fascism in his manifesto as a "kook ideology" and Nazism as "evil."
Anders Behring Breivik, responsible for the 2011 Norway shootings, published a manifesto that lifted large segments from Industrial Society and Its Future with terms like “leftists” substituted with "cultural Marxists" and "multiculturalists."
Kaczynski's correspondence now reside in the University of Michigan's special collections Library includes letters exchanged with over 400 people since his arrest, along with replies and legal documents, among other writing. In 2012, Kaczynski responded to the Harvard Alumni Association's inquiry for the fiftieth reunion of the class of 1962 by listing his occupation as "prisoner" and his eight life sentences as "awards."
University of Michigan–Dearborn philosophy professor David Skrbina helped compile Kaczynski's writings into the 2010 anthology Technological Slavery, including the original manifesto, letters between Skrbina and Kaczynski, and other essays. Kaczynski updated his 1995 manifesto as Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How to address advances in computers and the internet. He advocates protest but not violence. Kaczynski's manifesto draws on ideas from French philosopher Jacques Ellul, British zoologist Desmond Morris, and American psychologist Martin Seligman.
In the 1996 United States presidential election, a satirical campaign called "Unabomber for President" was launched, advocating Kaczynski for President through write-in votes. Various radical movements and extremists have been influenced by Kaczynski, from nihilists to anarchist, and eco-extremists to conservative intellectuals. His final resting place is unknown.