Theodore Kaczynski, the man the FBI called the Unabomber, killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign that stretched from 1978 to 1995. His targets were individuals he believed were advancing modern technology and contributing to environmental destruction. Born in Chicago on May 22, 1942, Kaczynski was the son of working-class parents. He was a gifted student, but a childhood IQ test that revealed a score of 167 led to him skipping the sixth grade, an experience he later described as a turning point in his life.
The older students bullied him, and a former classmate recalled that he was viewed as “a walking brain” rather than an individual personality. He graduated from high school at age 15 and enrolled at Harvard on a scholarship, though a classmate later said he was not emotionally ready for college. During his second year at Harvard, he participated in a psychological experiment conducted by Professor Henry Murray. Subjects wrote essays about their beliefs and were subjected to what one observer described as “purposefully brutalizing” verbal attacks based on the content of those essays.
The experiment lasted three years, with Kaczynski reportedly humiliated each week. Kaczynski went on to earn both his master’s degree and doctorate in mathematics from the University of Michigan, where his dissertation was awarded a prize for the top mathematics thesis of 1967. He then took a position as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His teaching evaluations showed he was unpopular with students, who said he appeared uncomfortable while lecturing and refused to answer questions.
On June 30, 1969, Kaczynski abruptly resigned from his academic post. He moved to a remote cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, in 1971, a home without electricity or running water where he could live simply on very little money. He began engaging in acts of sabotage against developments near his cabin in 1975, and his brother David later claimed that the book “The Technological Society” became Kaczynski’s “Bible. ”
The first bomb attributed to Kaczynski was discovered in May 1978 in a parking lot at the University of Illinois at Chicago under suspicious circumstances.
When a campus police officer opened the package, it exploded, leaving him with minor wounds. The bombs were often marked with the initials “FC,” which Kaczynski later said stood for “Freedom Club. ”
Over the following years, the bombs escalated. In 1982, a professor at Vanderbilt University received a bomb that injured his secretary.
A professor at UC Berkeley was seriously injured in July 1982. In May 1985, a graduate student and U. S. Air Force captain lost four fingers and vision in one eye.
A computer store owner in Sacramento, California, was killed in 1987 when a bomb containing nails and splinters detonated in his store’s parking lot. After a six-year pause, Kaczynski resumed his attacks in 1993. A geneticist in Berkeley lost several fingers when he opened a package, and a Yale University professor lost part of his right hand, sight in one eye, and hearing in one ear. In 1994, an advertising executive was killed by a bomb delivered to his New Jersey home.
Kaczynski later claimed in a letter to the New York Times that he targeted the man because of his work restoring Exxon’s reputation after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In 1995, the president of the California Forestry Association was killed by a mail bomb. That same year, Kaczynski wrote letters to the media demanding that his 35,000-word essay, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” be published verbatim. He said he would stop his attacks if the demand was met.
The FBI called the document the Unabomber Manifesto. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh supported publishing it in the hope that a reader would identify the author. The manifesto led thousands of people to submit tips. One of them was Kaczynski’s own brother, David, who had begun to suspect Ted was the Unabomber.
David hired a private investigator and a Washington, D. C. , attorney to review his brother’s writings and pass the evidence to the FBI. Family members were reportedly concerned that an FBI raid could turn violent, citing incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco.
An FBI profiler noticed similarities between the manifesto and Ted Kaczynski’s essays. David had hoped to remain anonymous, but his identity was leaked to CBS News in April 1996. The FBI hurriedly completed a search warrant, and on April 3, 1996, agents arrested a disheveled Kaczynski at his cabin. The search of the cabin turned up roughly 40,000 handwritten journal pages, bomb-making experiments, descriptions of the crimes, a live bomb, and what appeared to be the first draft of the manifesto.
The manhunt had become the most expensive investigation in FBI history. After his capture, theories emerged linking Kaczynski to the Zodiac Killer due to his high intelligence, interest in bombs and codes, and time spent in the San Francisco Bay Area, though not all the Zodiac killings could be tied to his whereabouts.