The Unabomber

The Unabomber For 17 years, an elusive criminal sent homemade bombs that targeted universities, airlines and computer stores, killing three people and injuring 23 others. The FBI branded Theodore Kaczynski a domestic terrorist, with the nickname the “Unabomber” (Unabomber). Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as a child prodigy, he excelled academically. He was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 16, where he graduated from four years later and then earned a PhD in mathematics several years after that.

He then accepted a position at The University of California, Berkley campus as an assistant professor at the age of 25 (Unabomber). After two years at Berkley, Kaczynski seemed to have lost interest in everything around him. He quit his job and moved to an isolated cabin, without electricity or running water, in Lincoln, Montana. He wanted to learn survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient (Kaczynski). After witnessing the wilderness and environment around him get destroyed by industrial development, Kaczynski decided to start a bombing campaign (Kaczynski).

From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent sixteen bombs to targets, including universities and airlines (Unabomber). The first mail bomb was sent in late May 1978 to materials engineering professor Buckley Crist at Northwestern University, where a policeman, Terry Marker, opened the package which exploded immediately, leaving him with severe injuries to his left hand (Unabomber). He not only mailed his bombs, but would also hand place them throughout the United States. In California Kaczynski hand placed a nail and splinter loaded bomb in a parking lot of a computer store.

When it was touched, it exploded, killing the 38-year-old computer store owner (Unabomber). Theodore was not just a murder with no motive, he proclaimed that humans were ruining the world through technology (Kaczynski). After 17 years of his bombing campaign, he sent his 35,000-word essay “Industrial Society and Its Future”, abbreviated to “Unabomber Manifesto” to major media outlets around the U. S. (Unabomber). The essay called for a worldwide revolution against the effects of modern society’s “industrial-technological system” (Kaczynski).

He stated that “the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race” (Kaczynski). Several months after the Unabomber Manifesto was printed on the Washington Post, Kaczinski’s brother and wife recognized his brothers writing styles and beliefs and tipped off the police. FBI officers arrested Kaczynski on April 3rd, 1996, at his remote cabin in Lincoln, Montana. Theodore thinks of himself as perfectly sane, with justifiable reasons connected to his crimes (Kaczynski). Theodore Kaczynski was sentenced to eight life sentences in prison with no possibility of parole.