1 of 1 Ted Kaczynski, known as “Unabomber”, in court in April 1996. — Photo: John Youngbear/Associated Press Ted Kaczynski, known as “Unabomber”, in court in April 1996. — Photo: John Youngbear /Associated Press
Theodore J. Kaczynski, a criminal known as “Unabomber,” died this Saturday (10) at the age of 81. Kaczynski, a Harvardeducated mathematician, was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 after killing three people and injuring 23 others in a series of bombings between 19978 and 1995.
According to the Associated Press news agency, he died in a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, USA. He was found lifeless in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US agency responsible for the country’s prisons, said. The cause of death was initially unknown.
Before being transferred to a prison medical facility, he had been in a maximumsecurity prison in Colorado since 1998 when he was sentenced to four life terms plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that put universities on high alert.
He admitted to carrying out 16 bombings between 1978 and 1995, maiming several victims.
Homemade “Unabomber” bombs changed the way Americans shipped packages and boarded planes years before the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks. In July 1995, air traffic on the west coast came to a virtual standstill.
The criminal even forced The Washington Post and The New York Times newspapers in September 1995 to publish his manifesto entitled Industrial Society and Its Future (Portuguese), in which he asserted that modern society and Technology leads to a feeling of powerlessness and alienation.
According to The New York Times newspaper, his biography was revealed after his arrest in 1996. Born in Chicago in 1942, he entered Harvard at the age of 16 and graduated from the University of Michigan where he majored in mathematics.
At age 25, he became an associate professor at the University of California, Berkley, where he abruptly resigned in the early 1970s. From that time until his arrest, Kaczynski lived in a cabin he had built in rural Montana.
He earned the nickname “Unabomber” after his first targets were universities and airlines. Only after his brother’s betrayal did the American police manage to arrest him.