Ted Kaczynski, a former math professor and 'twisted genius' who came to be known as the 'Unabomber' when he carried out a 17-year spree of mysterious bombings that killed three people and baffled the Federal Bureau of Investigation, died on Saturday (Jun 10) at the age of 81. Kaczynski, who made and sent m
Ted Kaczynski, a former math professor and"twisted genius" who came to be known as the"Unabomber" when he carried out a 17-year spree of mysterious bombings that killed three people and baffled the Federal Bureau of Investigation, died on Saturday at the age of 81.
Kaczynski's younger brother, David, tipped off police that the author's ideas sounded like those of Ted. Agents arrested the disheveled"Unabomber" at his cabin in April 1996. "He wasn't exactly gregarious, but he was extremely articulate," Dale Eickelman, Kaczynski's friend in his early high school years, told the Daily Southtown newspaper in Chicago after Kaczynski's arrest.
Others have cited a period in Kaczynski's childhood when he spent long periods in isolation due to a severe outbreak of hives. Kaczynski then took aim at a bigger target, placing a bomb in 1979 in the cargo hold of an American Airlines plane that gave off smoke during a domestic flight, forcing an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport near Washington.
As his bombs became more sophisticated, Kaczynski also killed New Jersey advertising executive Thomas Mosser, who had worked on improving the public image of oil major Exxon, with a mail bomb in 1994.