The Unabomber

 

The Unabomber was the codename that the FBI gave to the terrorist Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski, who perpetrated a series of mail bombings to universities and airlines starting in the 1970s and ending in the 1990s. In the process, three people were killed, twenty-three wounded and hundreds more terrorised. His crimes prompted the most expensive manhunt ever mounted by the FBI.

An extremely intelligent, well-educated man, Kaczynski penned a paper called Industrial Society and Its Future and sent it to various media outlets, giving his reasons for his crimes. As he saw it, his atrocities were committed to draw attention to the problems of modern society, especially in terms of technological innovation. He believed that his campaign would help to cause the downfall of civilisation and halt the progress of technology. However, although he had a distinguished academic mind, it soon became clear that he was mentally unbalanced, and his crude bombs, which killed and maimed innocent victims, were obviously the work of a deranged killer.

 

The brilliant loner

 

Theodore John Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago. He grew up in Evergreen Park, a working-class area in the suburbs of Chicago. One significant episode that happened in his childhood was that, while he was still a baby, he was given some medicine that caused an extreme allergic reaction and had to be taken in to hospital. As was the custom of the day, during the time he was there, his parents were only allowed to visit him occasionally. According to Kaczynski’s mother, when he returned home, he had changed from being a contented baby into a fearful, withdrawn one, and he never again found it easy to establish relationships with other people. Today, the dangers of isolating babies and young children from their mothers or regular carers has been recognised, and it is known that such an experience can cause deep-rooted anxieties in adults.

Although he was very withdrawn and sensitive, the young Theodore, or Ted as he became known, was clearly very gifted and did brilliantly at school. Yet despite his intellectual prowess, he was lacking in social skills, and was unable to relate well to his peers or to adults. His academic success meant that he was able to skip several grades and graduate from high school early. Again, this process of fast-tracking gifted children and young people is now known to have some drawbacks, in that these individuals often find it difficult to establish relationships with their own age group, having been separated from them throughout their school career.

 

The drop-out

 

After leaving high school, Kaczynski went on to gain a degree in mathematics from Harvard, and then a master’s degree and a PhD from Ann Arbor University, Michigan. His teachers were amazed by his ability to solve mathematical problems, and he soon reached a level that marked him out as something of a genius. He was offered a fellowship at the university, and began to teach students. He worked for three years as a lecturer there, and during this time published important papers on mathematics. After that, he completed two years as an assistant professor in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Still only in his twenties, Kaczynski now looked set to reach the top of his career as a mathematician. However, in 1969 he suddenly resigned from the job, without explaining why. Not only did he leave Berkeley, he severed all ties with the academic world, to the puzzlement of his colleagues, who could not understand why this mathematical genius should decide to walk away from his career for no apparent reason.

 

University and airline bombs

 

After quitting his job, Kaczynski had very little income, and went to live in a remote wooden cabin in the countryside. He began to do odd jobs for local people, but was earning very little money, barely eking out an existence and living without basic amenities in the cabin. His family tried to help, but he maintained a distance from them as well as everyone else. The more isolated he became, the more cranky and disturbed his behaviour was, until in 1978, he began to send bombs through the mail.

His first target was Professor Buckley Crist at Northwestern University, who received a package in May 1978. The package had been left at a car park in Chicago University with a return address to Professor Crist. When the professor received the package, he became suspicious and had the package opened by a campus police officer, Terry Marker. It exploded, but fortunately Marker was only slightly injured. The bomb had been crudely assembled, and as a result it was not very effective. Evidently, although Kaczynski was a mathematical genius, he was not so good at DIY.

Next, Kaczynski began to target airlines, sending bombs designed to explode in airports and on aeroplanes. In 1979, a bomb placed in the cargo hold of American Airlines Flight 444 began to smoke, but fortunately it did not explode before the pilot made an emergency landing. Because of the seriousness of the crime, the FBI was called in to investigate. From this time on, Kaczynski stepped up his campaign with bombs that, while still primitive, were now lethal. In 1985, he sent one to the University of California, which resulted in a student losing four of his fingers and the sight in one eye. In the same year, he began to target computer stores, leaving nail bombs in the car parks outside these stores. In one case, the store owner was killed outright.

 

The Unabomber manifesto

 

After this atrocity, Kaczynski’s activities ceased for a while. However, in 1993 he targeted a computer science professor at Yale University, David Gelernter, who thankfully survived the bomb Kaczynski sent to him. Another academic, geneticist Charles Epstein, was not so lucky. He was maimed by one of Kaczynski’s bombs in the same year. The following year, Kaczynski targeted an advertising executive, and the year after, the president of the California Forestry Association. Meanwhile, the FBI seemed unable to make any progress on catching up with the Unabomber, who by now was terrorising the general public with these random terror attacks.

More clues came in when Kaczynski began to write letters to the newspapers, threatening to strike again if his articles were not printed. He demanded that a manifesto he had written, entitled Industrial Society and Its Future, be printed in one of the US’s major newspapers and promised that he would then end his bombing campaign. In order to try and resolve the situation, the New York Times printed his manifesto, which became known as The Unabomber Manifesto. A great deal of controversy surrounded this decision; in some quarters, it was felt that this was pandering to the murderer. However, the newspaper argued that printing the manifesto might help to solve the mystery for once and for all.

Kaczynski’s writing showed signs of mental disturbance, in that it was essentially a rant, although obviously the work of an intelligent, well-educated man. In it, he argued that human beings suffer from the ‘progress’ of technology, which harms the majority of people on the planet, and causes immense environmental damage. Kaczynski believed that the only way forward was through bringing technological progress to an end and returning to live as our ancestors did.

 

The net closes

 

As the New York Times editors had hoped, publishing the manifesto laid a trail of clues that led to the Unabomber’s door. David Kaczynski, Ted’s brother, recognised Ted’s writing style and train of thought, and felt compelled to contact the police to let them know who the Unabomber was. At one time, David had been very influenced by his brother’s ideas and had even helped to buy the plot of land where Ted now lived. However, since then he had distanced himself from his brother somewhat, feeling that Ted’s reclusive life was unhealthy. Ted had few social contacts, only seeing people when he needed to buy food, and living in a very restricted way, without electricity or running water. In addition, Ted had begun to show signs of serious mental disturbance.

Reading the Unabomber Manifesto in the newspaper, David realised that Ted was responsible for the bombing campaign. He contacted the police and told them where Ted was living, asking them not to let his brother know that it was he who had turned him in. Police offers duly arrested Ted Kaczynski at his cabin in Montana in April 1996. Unfortunately, David’s part in turning his brother in came to light. However, David used the reward money he received to pay his legal expenses, and also to compensate the victims’ families.

At the trial, Kaczynski refused to plead insanity, which was the most obvious defence in his case. A court psychiatrist diagnosed him as suffering from schizophrenia, but fit to be tried. Kaczynski initially pleaded guilty, but later withdrew his plea; however, this was not accepted, and he was convicted. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and incarcerated at Florence, Colorado, where he remains to this day.