UNABOMBER (1942–)
aka Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski
The Unabomber, named for his initial attacks on universities and airlines, (“un” in his FBI code name was short for university, and “a” referred to airlines), was responsible for placing or mailing 16 package bombs and letter bombs that resulted in three deaths and nearly two dozen injuries in the United States.
After one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in the nation’s history, the FBI seized Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard-educated mathematician turned recluse, who later pleaded guilty for the attacks.
The Unabomber addressed his first package bomb, crudely made with plumbing pipe and electrical wire from a lamp, to a professor at the University of Illinois.
The package was found in a university parking lot on May 25, 1978, and sent back to the return address, at Northwestern University, where the bomb exploded, injuring one person. Although no link was made to Kaczynski at the time, later reports suggest that professors at both universities had rejected Kaczynski’s attempts to publish a treatise he wrote against technology and modernization.
The Unabomber struck three more times in the Chicago area—at Northwestern University, in the cargo compartment of American Airlines Flight 444, and at the home of the president of United Airlines— before expanding his scope to universities throughout the country, including two bombs mailed to the University of California, Berkeley. (Kaczynski had been an assistant math professor at the campus in the late 1960s.) Investigators knew that these bombings were linked because the perpetrator engraved the initials “FC” on parts of the bomb or spray-painted them nearby. Otherwise, the Unabomber never left a trace.
In 1985, the Unabomber’s attacks increased and became more dangerous. He bombed a computer room at UC Berkeley that May and sent another bomb to the Boeing Co. in Auburn, Washington, the following month (the Boeing bomb was safely disarmed). In November, a package bomb exploded at a University of Michigan professor’s home, injuring two. Finally, on December 11, 1985, the Unabomber’s most lethal bomb to date was placed in the parking lot of a computer store in Sacramento, California, killing the owner, Hugh Scrutton. For the first time in his seven-year bombing spree, the Unabomber had claimed a life.
Two years later, a police sketch gave the country the only image of the Unabom suspect—a mustached man in a hooded sweatshirt, wearing aviator glasses.
The bombings immediately stopped. For six years, the Unabomber remained inactive.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS.
In June 1993, shortly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Unabomber reemerged, sending a letter bomb to the home of a University of California geneticist, Dr. Charles Epstein, followed three days later by a bomb to David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale. Both men were seriously injured.
Breaking his silence, the Unabomber sent a letter to the New York Times, claiming that the bombings were the work of an anarchist group. More than 125 investigators from three different federal agencies were immediately committed to the case.
In December 1994, a package bomb killed Thomas J. Mosser at his home in New Jersey. Mosser was an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam, the parent company of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. An FBI Earth First! Investigation reported that Kaczynski had attended a meeting of several hundred environmentalists at the University of Montana, Missoula. At that meeting, speakers erroneously suggested that Burson-Marsteller designed the public relations campaign for Exxon following the massive Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Prudhoe Bay. One month later, Mosser was dead.
The Unabomber’s final attack came five days after Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. On April 24, 1995, a package bomb sent to the offices of the California Forestry Association killed Gilbert Murray, a timber lobbyist and the association’s president. That same day, in a letter to the New York Times, the Unabomber explained that he was targeting scientists and engineers, especially those involved with computers and genetics.
He called for the “destruction of the worldwide industrial system.”
Five months later, the Washington Post and the New York Times copublished the Unabomber’s 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” following his promise to stop his attacks. In that document, the Unabomber railed against technology, consumerism, advertising, “oversocialization,” the government, and corporations—all in relation to the individual’s loss of freedom. “Industrial-technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom,” he wrote. The manifesto also presented justifications for his violence, stating, “In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we had to kill people.”
Calls poured in to the FBI, but the real break in the investigation came when David Kaczynski recognized the similarities between the Unabomber’s manifestó and the writings of his older brother Ted, a brilliant mathematician who had left a tenure-track position at UC Berkeley’s math department to live a solitary life in a remote mountain cabin. Although torn, David Kaczynski nevertheless contacted the FBI. By February 1996, investigators began staking out the one-room cabin near Lincoln, Montana, where Ted Kaczynski had lived in self-imposed exile for more than 25 years.
On April 3, 1996, FBI agents, disguised as local mountain men, seized Ted Kaczynski. Inside his cabin, they found a fully constructed, unaddressed package bomb, countless bomb-making materials, the two typewriters that were used to write the Unabomber letters and the manifesto, and 22,000 pages of personal notes—in English, Spanish, and mathematical code— that linked Kaczynski to 18 years of bombings. He was indicted in Sacramento for the murders of Scrutton and Murray and the attacks against Epstein and Gelernter, and in New Jersey for the murder of Mosser.
Kaczynski’s trial, which began in November 1997, encountered significant delays and difficulties.
The judge twice rejected Kaczynski’s motions to fire his lawyers (in favor of a team who would defend the bombings based on a political argument) and later denied Kaczynski’s request to represent himself. Kaczynski did not want his defense to be based on the claim of mental illness.
The psychiatric evaluation performed by Dr. Sally Johnson was inconclusive— Kaczynski was found mentally competent to stand trial, but probably was also a paranoid schizophrenic.
On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski, in a plea bargain, pleaded guilty to 13 federal bombing offenses and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. He was placed at the federal Supermax prison in southern Colorado, where he shared one-hour workouts with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef (found guilty of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and McVeigh.[i]
See also: HAMAS
[i] Kushner Harvey W. UNABOMBER. In encyclopedia Of Terrorism. Sage Publications, Inc. London, 2003.
aka Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski
The Unabomber, named for his initial attacks on universities and airlines, (“un” in his FBI code name was short for university, and “a” referred to airlines), was responsible for placing or mailing 16 package bombs and letter bombs that resulted in three deaths and nearly two dozen injuries in the United States.
After one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in the nation’s history, the FBI seized Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard-educated mathematician turned recluse, who later pleaded guilty for the attacks.
The Unabomber addressed his first package bomb, crudely made with plumbing pipe and electrical wire from a lamp, to a professor at the University of Illinois.
The package was found in a university parking lot on May 25, 1978, and sent back to the return address, at Northwestern University, where the bomb exploded, injuring one person. Although no link was made to Kaczynski at the time, later reports suggest that professors at both universities had rejected Kaczynski’s attempts to publish a treatise he wrote against technology and modernization.
The Unabomber struck three more times in the Chicago area—at Northwestern University, in the cargo compartment of American Airlines Flight 444, and at the home of the president of United Airlines— before expanding his scope to universities throughout the country, including two bombs mailed to the University of California, Berkeley. (Kaczynski had been an assistant math professor at the campus in the late 1960s.) Investigators knew that these bombings were linked because the perpetrator engraved the initials “FC” on parts of the bomb or spray-painted them nearby. Otherwise, the Unabomber never left a trace.
In 1985, the Unabomber’s attacks increased and became more dangerous. He bombed a computer room at UC Berkeley that May and sent another bomb to the Boeing Co. in Auburn, Washington, the following month (the Boeing bomb was safely disarmed). In November, a package bomb exploded at a University of Michigan professor’s home, injuring two. Finally, on December 11, 1985, the Unabomber’s most lethal bomb to date was placed in the parking lot of a computer store in Sacramento, California, killing the owner, Hugh Scrutton. For the first time in his seven-year bombing spree, the Unabomber had claimed a life.
Two years later, a police sketch gave the country the only image of the Unabom suspect—a mustached man in a hooded sweatshirt, wearing aviator glasses.
The bombings immediately stopped. For six years, the Unabomber remained inactive.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS.
In June 1993, shortly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Unabomber reemerged, sending a letter bomb to the home of a University of California geneticist, Dr. Charles Epstein, followed three days later by a bomb to David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale. Both men were seriously injured.
Breaking his silence, the Unabomber sent a letter to the New York Times, claiming that the bombings were the work of an anarchist group. More than 125 investigators from three different federal agencies were immediately committed to the case.
In December 1994, a package bomb killed Thomas J. Mosser at his home in New Jersey. Mosser was an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam, the parent company of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. An FBI Earth First! Investigation reported that Kaczynski had attended a meeting of several hundred environmentalists at the University of Montana, Missoula. At that meeting, speakers erroneously suggested that Burson-Marsteller designed the public relations campaign for Exxon following the massive Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Prudhoe Bay. One month later, Mosser was dead.
The Unabomber’s final attack came five days after Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. On April 24, 1995, a package bomb sent to the offices of the California Forestry Association killed Gilbert Murray, a timber lobbyist and the association’s president. That same day, in a letter to the New York Times, the Unabomber explained that he was targeting scientists and engineers, especially those involved with computers and genetics.
He called for the “destruction of the worldwide industrial system.”
Five months later, the Washington Post and the New York Times copublished the Unabomber’s 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” following his promise to stop his attacks. In that document, the Unabomber railed against technology, consumerism, advertising, “oversocialization,” the government, and corporations—all in relation to the individual’s loss of freedom. “Industrial-technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom,” he wrote. The manifesto also presented justifications for his violence, stating, “In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we had to kill people.”
Calls poured in to the FBI, but the real break in the investigation came when David Kaczynski recognized the similarities between the Unabomber’s manifestó and the writings of his older brother Ted, a brilliant mathematician who had left a tenure-track position at UC Berkeley’s math department to live a solitary life in a remote mountain cabin. Although torn, David Kaczynski nevertheless contacted the FBI. By February 1996, investigators began staking out the one-room cabin near Lincoln, Montana, where Ted Kaczynski had lived in self-imposed exile for more than 25 years.
On April 3, 1996, FBI agents, disguised as local mountain men, seized Ted Kaczynski. Inside his cabin, they found a fully constructed, unaddressed package bomb, countless bomb-making materials, the two typewriters that were used to write the Unabomber letters and the manifesto, and 22,000 pages of personal notes—in English, Spanish, and mathematical code— that linked Kaczynski to 18 years of bombings. He was indicted in Sacramento for the murders of Scrutton and Murray and the attacks against Epstein and Gelernter, and in New Jersey for the murder of Mosser.
Kaczynski’s trial, which began in November 1997, encountered significant delays and difficulties.
The judge twice rejected Kaczynski’s motions to fire his lawyers (in favor of a team who would defend the bombings based on a political argument) and later denied Kaczynski’s request to represent himself. Kaczynski did not want his defense to be based on the claim of mental illness.
The psychiatric evaluation performed by Dr. Sally Johnson was inconclusive— Kaczynski was found mentally competent to stand trial, but probably was also a paranoid schizophrenic.
On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski, in a plea bargain, pleaded guilty to 13 federal bombing offenses and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. He was placed at the federal Supermax prison in southern Colorado, where he shared one-hour workouts with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef (found guilty of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and McVeigh.[i]
See also: HAMAS
[i] Kushner Harvey W. UNABOMBER. In encyclopedia Of Terrorism. Sage Publications, Inc. London, 2003.
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