Domestic terrorists have an unflattering image, to say the least, about them. Their public image is that of an educated and bigoted slob who resorts to anger, violence, and mass killings when they don’t get their way.
While Ted Kaczynski is a U.S. domestic terrorist, he doesn’t fit the above bill. The man called the ‘Unabomber’ studied at Harvard University from 16 years old after graduating early from high school.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvard and then got his doctorate and master’s degrees in 1964 and 1967 from the University of Michigan in the same field. Right after that, he joined the University of California, Berkeley, and taught calculus and undergraduate geometry in 1969 before resigning. So he certainly was educated.
In fact, he had a shining future in front of him. So what made him become a destructive terrorist? And how did he get titled as the ‘Unabomber’?
Ted Kaczynski murdered three people and injured 23 more between 1978 and 1995 with homemade bombs that he would send through mail. The media crowned him the ‘Unabomber’ based on the F.B.I.’s code “UNABOM,” which signifies airline and university bombings as he targeted people from those professions.
The F.B.I. arrested Kaczynski in April 1996, where he pleaded guilty to 16 explosions. Today, the 81 years old man breathed his last at the Federal Medical Center in North Carolina.
Why Is Ted Kaczynski Called the Unabomber?
Ted Kaczynski began sending people homemade bombs in 1978 through the U.S. Postal Service. Also, some were hand-delivered by him. He first targeted Buckley Crist, Northwestern University’s engineering professor. Crist alerted the campus police, and when a security guard went to open the package, he got a hand injury. In the following seven years, Kaczynski mailed nine pipe bombs to varying people.
He sent these handmade bombs to academic administrators and workers at American Airlines and United Airlines. Several people were injured due to the bombs. The F.B.I. then named the investigation “UNABOM” because it was code for airline and university bombings. Kaczynski was given this designation because his initial targets between 1978 and 1980
were the United Airlines president, Northwestern University’s academics, and the passengers taking a flight from Chicago to Washington. The authorities were able to connect the attacks because the initials of “F.C.” were engraved or spray-painted on the bombs or near the explosions. As a result of the “UNABOM” code, the media named Kaczynski the “Unabomber.”
What Did Unabomber Do?
Ted Kaczynski struck between one to four times annually for most of the years till 1987. No one knew what he looked like, but a sketch was finally made when he made eye contact with a woman while dropping off the bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store. After that, there were no attacks for six years. Then he struck again in June 1993, and that too in the same week.
The University of California, San Francisco’s geneticist Charles Epstein and a Yale University computer scientist, David Gelernter, got the packages. Both of them lost several fingers. Mr. Gelernter’s office was consumed with flames, and he lost much of his right eye’s vision and almost bled to death. Mr. Epstein, on the other hand, suffered permanent hearing damage.
The first death due to Kaczynski’s attacks happened in December 1985. Hugh Scrutton, a Sacramento, California resident, and a computer Store owner, died after opening the package. His last attack was also in Sacramento on April 24, 1995. This time Gilbert Murray died, the president of a California Forestry Association lobbying group.
The blast mutilated him so severely that his family only saw him from the knees up. The other man the Unabomber killed was a New Jersey advertising executive called Thomas Mosser, who was married and had three children. After Mr. Murray’s killing, Kaczynski later revealed that the “F.C.” initials stood for “Freedom Club.”
Why Did the Unabomber Do What He Did?
Ted Kaczynski even had his manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.” He sent them to various publications and threatened to commit even more bombings if the essay wasn’t published. The 35,000-word essay was published by The Washington Post and The New York Times on September 1995, after permission from the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.
The manifesto claimed that “politicians, corporation executives, and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats” control “the life-and-death issues of one’s existence” in modern society.
So this makes the contemporary man depressed because he’s unlike the primitive men who got a sense of security and satisfaction from charting their own life and death in wild nature.
He claimed that technology was making Americans feel alienated and powerless. The Unabomber also believed that humans could not adapt to a technological society.
As a result, the continued technological development would lead to the destruction of humanity. He also said that since the technological system couldn’t be controlled or reformed, the system had to be overthrown to avert collapse.
Kaczynski explained that he was carrying out the attacks so that his message reached the public. Linda Patrik, the wife of David Kaczynski, read this manifesto. She told her husband that the writing style reminded her of his brother. David read it and agreed. He then informed the authorities.
After receiving information from David Kaczynski, The F.B.I., which had grown to a 150-strong team, went to rural Lincoln, Montana. They caught Ted residing in a 10 by 14 feet shack which didn’t allow much light to enter in April 1996. They found a coded diary, journals, two bombs, and explosives in the hut.
How Many People Did the Unabomber Kill?
Ted Kaczynski killed a total of three people and ended up injuring 23 more from 1978 to 1995 during his mail-bombing spree. He pleaded guilty to his crimes. In 1996, he was sentenced to imprisonment for life without any chance of parole. He died at 81 at the North Carolina Federal Medical Center in Butner.
Kaczynski had spent the last three decades at various U.S. prisons. But since May 1998, he had been in the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He was transferred in December 2021 after declining health issues. His cause of death isn’t clear as of now. B.B.C. reported that correctional officers had found his body at about 00:25 local time (04:25 GMT). B.B.C. wrote:
“Responding staff immediately initiated life-saving measures. (He) was transported by E.M.S. to a local hospital and subsequently pronounced deceased by hospital personnel”.
More information is awaited regarding his death.
What are your thoughts on Ted Kaczynski’s death?
Was he simply an unhinged domestic terrorist, or did he have some right ideas or motivations in his manifesto?
Let us know in the comments below.
Source: BBC
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