THEODORE JOHN KACZYNSKI
1942-

TERRORIST

Antitechnology Serial Killer

Over a seventeen-year period, a mysterious terrorist mailed or planted sixteen package bombs that killed three people and wounded twenty-three others, and he managed to elude the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Postal Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms until 3 April 1996. He was dubbed the "Unabomber" because his first targets were related to universities (un) and airlines (a). His identity became known only when his brother recognized his antitechnology rantings in a manifesto published in the Washington Post and contacted federal authorities.

Background

Theodore John Kaczynski was born in Chicago on 22 May 1942. He went to Harvard on scholarship at age sixteen and then earned a Ph.D. in math from the University of Michigan. Upon graduation in 1967, he was appointed assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He resigned suddenly from that post in 1969 and then lived and worked in Salt Lake City through the mid 1970s. In 1978 he moved back to Chicago. In 1988 and again in 1991, Kaczynski wrote letters to mental-health professionals requesting counseling by mail rather than face-to-face sessions. In one of the letters he detailed his lack of friends, absence of social contact, and lack of social skills and self-confidence that led to his isolation. Kaczynski eventually began to live in a cramped hand-built cabin on a small plot of land he and his brother owned in Montana. That is where federal agents eventually found and arrested him.

The Bomb is in the Mail

The Unabomber first struck in May 1978. A package was found in a parking lot at the University of Illinois in Chicago with a return address of a Northwestern University professor. The package was addressed to a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. On 26 May the package was returned to Professor Buckley Crist at Northwestern, who was suspicious and contacted the University's Department of Public Safety. Public Safety officer Terry Marker opened the package, which exploded, leaving Marker with minor injuries. Over time the FBI came to realize that the Unabomber often addressed packages so that the return addressee was the intended recipient. Over the next nine years the Unabomber struck at Northwestern University, American Airlines, United Airlines, the University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, UC-Berkeley, Boeing, the University of Michigan, Rentech computer store in Sacramento, and CAAMS, Inc., in Salt Lake City. With the attack on American Airlines president Percy A. Wood in June 1980, the Unabomber began to use the initials "FC" to mark his work. During the 20 February 1987 attack at CAAMS, a secretary saw a man with a mustache in a sweatshirt placing a bomb next to a car. The employee's description became the basis for the widely used sketch of the Unabomber. After the CAAMS bombing, the Unabomber's attacks seemed to stop until 1993, when in June they resumed with mail bombs being sent to a geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a computer science professor at Yale University. The same day a bomb exploded at Yale, The New York Times received a letter mailed from Sacramento connecting "FC" to the two attacks and providing a nine-digit social security format number that it claimed would be used to authenticate future communications from "FC." In July of that year the UNABOM Task Force formed in San Francisco, made up of agents from the FBI, Treasury Department, and U.S. Postal Service.

The Unabomber Speaks

In December 1994 and April 1995, the Unabomber struck again, killing an advertising executive in New Jersey and a Forestry Association president in California. The same day as the Forestry killing, a number of letters with the "FC" identifying mark were received. A victim of one of the 1993 bombs received a letter stating that "there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world." Two researchers received letters warning them to stop their genetic research. That same day The New York Times received a letter from "FC" with the identifying number given in 1993. The author of the letter claimed to be part of an anarchist group and suggested that if Time, Newsweek, or The New York Times would publish a lengthy article telling his story the group would cease its "terrorist activities," although the group retained the right to engage in "sabotage," which was defined as the destruction of property. On 27 June 1995 The Washington Post received a letter from "FC" that repeated the offer to cease its terrorist activities if the Post would publish an enclosed manuscript. The next day The New York Times received another letter from "FC," including the same 35,000-word manuscript that was sent to the Post. The following day Penthouse received a letter in response to an earlier offer to publish the manuscript in the magazine. The letter expressed a preference for publication in the more "respectable" Post or Times and stated conditions for publication, although the group reserved the right to one additional bombing after the Penthouse publication. These letters left the publications with an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, if they published the manifesto, they could possibly save potential bombing victims. On the other, they would be acceding to terrorist demands and may well open the door for other murderous social critics to demand publication of their manifestos. Not to publish the document, however, could lead to public perception of the publications as accomplices if the Unabomber struck again. On 19 September 1995 The Washington Post and The New York Times split the cost of publication of the Unabomber's manifesto in the Post. Their joint statement also explained that they had chosen to print the document based on recommendations from the FBI and because of "public safety reasons." The rambling document was essentially an indictment of a technocratic society that crushed human freedom.

Caught

In February 1996, David Kaczynski contacted the FBI, voicing his suspicions that his brother may be the Unabomber. Federal agents arrested Ted Kaczynski at his Montana cabin on 3 April 1996. Kaczynski's trial began with jury selection on 12 November 1997. On 22 January 1998, Kaczynski pled guilty to thirteen counts for attacks in California, New Jersey, and Connecticut that killed three and injured two. He was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.