Theodore Kaczynski, the bomber known as the Unabomber who between 1978 and 1996 sent many parcel bombs that killed three people and injured more than twenty, has died. Kaczynski was 81 years old and was being held in a federal prison in South Carolina where he was serving a life sentence. According to a prison spokesman, Kaczynski was found dead on Saturday morning.
Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, he had taught mathematics for many years before retiring to a cabin in Montana, where he organized the bombings. He sent the first package bomb in 1978 Buckley Crist, a professor at Northwestern University: the package was opened by a police officer who was slightly injured. The explosions of the parcel bombs sent over the years caused the death of the owner of a computer store in California, an employee of the Burson-Marsteller company and Gilbert Murray, president of the California Forestry Association.
The FBI investigated for many years to try to trace the perpetrator of the attacks. The agents managed to obtain important leads when Kaczynski sent a 35,000-word manifesto to the newspapers. Reading the manifesto prompted Kaczynski’s brother David Kaczynski to link the document to his brother’s usual words. Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998.