Ted Kaczynski Biography

Ted Kaczynksi was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 for his crimes as the “Unabomber,” an anti-technology terrorist who began a series of sporadic bombings across the United States in 1978.

The first bomb was found in May of 1978 at the University of Chicago, in a package sent through the mail to a professor; it exploded and injured a university police officer. Over time, more bombs arrived, often targeting professors and airline employees. The bombs became more sophisticated and fatal, but there was still little known about the bomber’s identity besides a widely-circulated FBI sketch of a man wearing sunglasses and a hood. After 1980 he was dubbed the “Unabomber” because of what seemed to be his primary targets: leading figures at universities and airlines.

In 1994 the Unabomber began sending letters to authorities demanding publication of his “Manifesto,” a 35,000-word document railing against technology. The document’s publication in 1995 by the mainstream media led a man named David Kaczynski to suspect that his brother Ted was the Unabomber, and he turned him in.

Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April of 1996, after being surprised by federal agents at his one-room shack outside of Lincoln, Montana, where he had been living as a recluse since 1971. The agents found sufficient evidence there of bomb-making to conclude that he was, indeed, the Unabomber.

After a few years of legal wrangling, Ted Kaczynski pled guilty to his crimes in 1998 and was sentenced to life in prison. He then began serving out the rest of his life at the “supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado. He was found dead in his cell there 25 years later, on June 10, 2023.