Notorious domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski was found dead in his federal prison cell Saturday morning, 27 years after his reign of terror came to an end.
Known throughout America as the “Unabomber,” while authorities desperately sought him from 1978 to 1996, he waged war on unsuspecting victims by mailing explosives through the U.S. postal system.
During a 17-year campaign, Kaczynski killed three people and wounded 23 others with 16 bombs.
But his descent into madness came after he became known as a prodigious Harvard-educated mathematician with a genius intellect, leading many to wonder where things went wrong for the notorious terrorist.
Ted Kaczynski was captured after an exhausting 17-year manhunt. In the photo he is escorted by US Marshals after his arrest in 1996
Who was Theodore ‘Ted’ Kaczynski?
Born on May 22, 1942, Ted Kaczynski was the son of second-generation Polish Catholics.
His father was a sausage maker and his mother was a housewife, and he grew up in Chicago with his younger brother David.
From an early age, it quickly became apparent that Kaczynski was a genius mathematician, and he skipped sixth and eleventh grades on his way to Harvard when he was just 16.
However, high school classmates remember the virtuoso as an outcast, with an ominous incident where he showed a fellow student how to make a mini-bomb that exploded during chemistry class.
Harvard classmates remembered him as a lonely, thin boy with poor personal hygiene and a room that smelled of spoiled milk, rotting food, and foot powder.
He went on to study at the University of Michigan before taking a job teaching mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1971, an unemployed Kaczynski bought a four-mile piece of land in the wilderness outside Lincoln, Montana, where he built a cabin with no heating, plumbing, or electricity.
While briefly working for his father and brother in Chicago in the late 1970s, he was abruptly dumped by a female co-worker after two dates. When Ted started posting offensive limericks about her, his brother fired him and sent him back to the woods where he plotted to terrorize society.
Ted Kaczynski (pictured) was behind a 17-year bomb explosion that killed three people and injured 23 others
Kaczynski was eventually captured living a hermit-like life in the Montana wilderness after retreating to a lonely cabin.
How did he come to be known as the ‘Unabomber’?
Kaczynski earned his nickname “Unabomber” from the FBI because many of his early targets were universities and airports.
The domestic terrorist used his knowledge of bomb making and engineering to hatch an insidious plot to spread fear and chaos across America, mostly by sending bombs to his unsuspecting victims through the US postal system.
His explosives were carefully tested and came in carefully handcrafted wooden boxes that were sanded to remove any possible fingerprints.
Although most of his victims were severely maimed by the explosives, he killed three: computer rental company owner Hugh Scrutton, advertising executive Thomas Mosser, and timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray.
Mosser was murdered at his home in North Caldwell, New Jersey, on December 10, 1994, a day when he was supposed to pick out a Christmas tree with his family. His wife, Susan, found him badly injured by a barrage of razor blades, pipes, and nails.
“He moaned very softly,” she said at Kaczynski’s sentencing in 1998. “The fingers on his right hand were dangling. I held his left hand. I told him help was coming. I told him I loved him.’
The terrorist sent explosives all over America. Pictured: An FBI reproduction of one of Kaczynski’s bombs
In April 1996, authorities found Kaczynski in a 10-foot-4-foot wooden cabin outside of Lincoln, Montana.
What did the Unabomber believe?
During the 17-year hunt for Kaczynski, the longest and coldest manhunt in U.S. law enforcement history, the bomber gained notoriety as an elusive and almost mystical criminal mastermind.
In 1995, he released his twisted manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” promising to stop sending bombs if it was published.
The 35,000-word tome argued that society was spiraling out of control with the rise of technology.
At the urging of authorities, it was publicized by major news outlets, leading to his brother acknowledging the bizarre belief system and tipping off the FBI.
His 1996 arrest revealed that the terrorist lived a hermit-like existence in the Montana wilderness, where he would make explosives miles from civilization before sending them across the country.
The domestic terrorist insisted he was not crazy when he carried out the series of bombings
David Kaczynski (right), brother of Ted Kaczynski, holds the hand of his mother Wanda (left) as they arrive at the Unabomber murder trial
How was the Unabomber arrested?
Kaczynski led authorities in the longest manhunt in U.S. law enforcement history from 1978 to 1996.
He left authorities baffled as he sent untraceable bombs across the US, leaving them with little evidence to track down the terrorist.
But they finally got a break in 1996 when Kaczynski tried to push his bizarre manifesto out into the world.
The previous year he had staged his bombs and sent letters to newspapers, with leading pundits speculating that the “Unabomber” was jealous of the attention paid to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
When The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, published his manifesto, his brother David and his wife Linda Patrik realized that Ted might just be the mystical bomber who terrorized America for nearly two decades.
Patrik claimed she had a disturbing feeling about her brother-in-law even before seeing the manifesto, and the couple enlisted the help of her childhood friend Susan Swanson, a private investigator, to verify the link.
Swanson in turn passed them on to former FBI behavioral scientist Clint Van Zandt, whose analysts said whoever wrote them probably also wrote the twisted manifesto.
“It was a nightmare,” David Kaczynski, who had idolized his older brother as a child, said in a 2005 speech at Bennington College. “I literally thought, ‘My brother is a serial killer, the most wanted man in America.'”
His tip led to federal agents tracking Kaczynski to his hideout in Montana, before he was arrested and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
He was found dead in his cell on Saturday, June 10 at the age of 81.