'America’s most prolific bomber' Ted Kaczynski found dead in prison: report

10 June 2023

Convicted terrorist known as "America's most prolific bomber," Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, was found dead in his prison cell Saturday morning, ABC News reports.

Named the "Unabomber" by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), according to NPR, the 81-year-old "died at the federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina," at the age of 81.

Furthermore, ABC notes "the name Unabomber was inspired by the case name UNABOM, which is derived from the UNiversity and Airline BOMbing targets."

Arrested in 1996, officials say Kaczynski "placed or mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured two dozen others" — for nearly two decades — from 1978 to 1995.

NPR reports:

Years before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailing, the 'Unabomber's' deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes, even virtually shutting down air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.

Additionally, according to NPR, "The Washington Post printed" Kaczynski's "manifesto at the urging of federal authorities, after" he "said he would desist from terrorism if a national publication published his treatise."

Linda Patrik, Kaczynski's sister-in-law, according to ABC, "said she recognized familiar-sounding ideas in the manuscript from letters her husband David Kaczynski had received from his brother."

Patrik, along with her husband — Kaczynski's brother — David Kaczynski, "eventually decided to contact the FBI," leading to Ted's arrest in his Montana cabin, which contained a "wealth of bomb components" and "40,000 handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of Unabomber crimes."

ABC reports, "The prosecution of Kaczynski was supervised by the now Attorney General Merrick Garland when he was a senior Justice Department official. Garland also supervised the Oklahoma City Bombing investigation before he was Attorney General."

ABC News' full report is available at this link. NPR's report is here.

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