I don’t know about you but when I think about ways in which day to day life has changed in the past 20 or so years, a few things are pretty much guaranteed to jump to mind. Computers, the internet, the climate and shipping. More specifically domestic shipping, in 2020 alone there were 131 billion packages delivered worldwide. 20 years ago, hearing that number would have been an absurd proposition, not least because I only spent about 10 seconds finding that fact and about 4 seconds more verifying it.
The sheer volume of advancements that have occurred in these 22 years since the turn of the millennium are equal only to the number of innovations that occurred in the 60 years preceding it. Progress truly is increasing at an exponential rate, which for most people this is cause for celebration. There is however a sect of society who abhor these developments, people who believe that progress could only mean the death of freedom and so they remove themselves from society, return to nature and live as they see fit.
This is of course fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion and can choose to spend their life as they like. But what happens when someone feels so strongly about the dangers of the future that they decide to take matters into their own hands, what happens when they choose to exact revenge on the very system they cut ties with. Add to that a genius level intellect and you will have the protagonist of today’s episode. From a cabin measuring only 10 by 12 feet the UNABOMBER used the U.S postal service to exact an 18 year long bombing spree that claimed the lives of 3 people and cost the FBI 50 million dollars.
Universities, Airlines, Bombs (UNABOM)
On the Morning of May the 25th, 1978 amid the chorus of engines that mark the early morning rush hour, a box, wrapped in brown paper, is found in the car park of Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. The package was innocuous enough, neatly wrapped, bearing only an unknown recipient with a fake address, several stamps and the return to sender who was a materials engineering professor that worked at that very same university, one Buckley Crist. What was particularly odd about this package was that it was just a few feet away from a mailbox, the stamps were uncancelled and it was all ready to be posted except that it was just lying there.
A conscientious citizen finds the package and gives it to campus security who subsequently returns to a bemused Crist who had no recollection of ever sending such a package. Taking it to a university security guard, Crist explained that he wasn’t sure where this package had come from, but it certainly wasn’t from him. Terry Marker, the security guard, opens the package and it explodes. Well I say explode, it really just made a small bang and caught fire.
Hidden within this package was a primitive explosive. It only caused only minor cuts and burns to Marker’s face and hands and thankfully everyone involved could walk away from that exchange, shaken but mostly unscathed.
The authorities interviewed Crist and searched for the person the package was addressed to but as it turned out they were entirely fictional. Which meant that the someone had made that bomb with the intention of it being returned to Crist. Incidentally Crist knew of no one who might have this kind of a grudge against him and there was no forensic information that could be gathered from the remains of the device. All the pieces were made from common household items and there were no hairs, fingerprints or revealing clues of any kind.
The police would divert some resources to investigating but with little hope of finding a culprit. Which would mark the beginning of the most expensive criminal investigation in US history.
Just short of a year later; same university, same building, a package is placed on the desk of a graduate student, this one much smaller than the last but equally as effective. A small pop and then fire, similar injuries were sustained by the recipient, John Harris, but once again everyone involved could thankfully walk away from this exchange with their lives mostly unaltered. Same as last time forensic analysis was carried out, but same as last time no revealing clues could be pulled from the wreckage.
Then 6 months later on November 15th 1979, American Airlines flight 444 took off from Chicago international airport, bound for Washington D.C. Just after take-off an explosion can be heard from the cargo hold. Shortly after the air vents began blowing smoke into the plane cabin. Acting fast the pilots divert the flight to Dulles Airport, landing safely and evacuating all onboard.
Authorities quickly found the source of the smoke, a crudely made bomb disguised as a package and sent via air freight to an unknown location in Washington D.C. This new bomb that was theoretically powerful enough to blow a hole in the side of the plane. However, it had only partially ignited, with most of the explosive material being burned away in the ensuing fire. Fortunately for all on board the home-made altimeter that would have triggered the bomb once the plane reached 34,000 feet malfunctioned.
Once again fatalities were narrowly avoided and all could walk away from the event scared but relieved. However, to the authorities, this attack was more evidence of an alarming pattern that was beginning to form. Explosive weapons aimed at the general public that, had they gone according to plan, would have resulted in fatalities. In other words there was a serial bomber somewhere out there.
Which gave all the local authorities enough cause to make this a matter of Federal law, which requires federal investigators. So if you will pardon the cliché, they decided to call in the big guns, otherwise known as the FBI. Which I am sure makes Simon a very happy fact boi indeed. And, to quote how Simon so eloquently put it, ‘Yeah, the FBI, the CIA— They’re the ones, who— you know—They’re the best.’ So in 1979 an FBI-led task force was assembled including people from the ATF and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
It is worth mentioning that the moniker UNABOM was not yet coined, that would come later. As far as I can tell the most common name for him at this time was the scrapyard bomber, owing to his bombs being made from primarily scrap yard parts. Although for ease I am just gonna refer to him as the UNABOMBER from here on out.
As for the task force itself, they were a small collection of investigators and forensic analysts, most of which were dealing with other cases on top of this one. The few that were solely focused on this case could pull next to nothing from the parts left behind. They were inexpert, improvised explosives, created from scrap that could be found anywhere.
There were no fingerprints or defining features outside of little bits of wood and bark that were found in the Airline bomb. All the intended victims had no discernible connections to one another and none of them could think of a person that would have any reason to want them dead.
With very little to go on the task force probably felt as though they were fumbling in the dark, which they essentially were. So far, the individual had given them no clues, no motive and no pattern that could show them where he may strike next. What was becoming clear however, was that whoever was carrying out these attacks was becoming more competent at their craft and more ambitious in their methods.
Then, 7 months after the airline bombing the UNABOMBER struck again. On June 10th 1980 the President of United airlines, Percy Wood received a package containing a copy of the book “Ice Brothers” by Sloan Wilson, with a note attached encouraging him to read it. Fortunately, the concealed pipe bomb within did not kill him. However, unlike the previous attacks the UNABOMBER had finally managed to severely maim someone.
Causing severe burns and lacerations all over his body, Percy Wood, would be scarred for life by the incident.
This time there was little doubt that this was the work of the UNABOMBER, among the wreckage was a metal blasting cap with the letters F.C inscribed upon it. This would become the UNABOMBERS modus operandi. It would appear in near enough every bomb that would be sent. Many investigators were convinced that finding out what these letters stood for would be the clue that solved the case and in a way they were right however, that revelation was a long way off.
The next attack came on October the 8th of the following year at the university of Utah, placed by The UNABOMBER himself; it was simply a brown paper bag wrapped with string. This time he had used a new design that involved an incendiary component, with the obvious intention of setting the building on fire. The package had no address and was left, like the one in the car park, unattended.
A maintenance worker spotted the package lying on the floor and decided to investigate. After seeing that there was no address, and no doubt aware of the recent attacks on universities he became suspicious and called the police, who called the bomb squad, who inturn verified that it was indeed a bomb, removing it from the site and detonating it safely, injuring nobody. Though the bomb squad observed as much as they could of this package (from a distance) there was near to no hard evidence remaining after the blast, save for a detonating switch, some pieces of wood and a few metal fragments, one of which had the letters F.C engraved on its surface.
As for reasonable suspects, the police were stumped, by this point the investigation had been ramped up in its size, adding psychological analysts to their team. The psychological profiles that they produced were about as varied as you can get, ranging from an upset scientist to an illiterate with erectile dysfunction and several stops in-between. If you’re curious about that last one, it was because he seemed to be obsessed with wood, wooden construction of bombs, fragments of bark in the casings and several of his victims had names somewhat related to wood.
And so, the FBI pulled from that, that he couldn’t get… wood. As for the bit about him being illiterate, I guess they just didn’t like him. While wood was minutely related to the ideology of the UNABOMBER it is pretty clear to see that the investigators truly were lost.
As far as they were concerned this bomber was a phantom, a ghost that had the ability to materialise just long enough to post a letter before vanishing once again without a trace.
This ghost struck again on May the 5th, at another university, a package addressed to Professor Patrick C. Fischer was delivered to Pennsylvania State university. However, Professor Fischer hadn’t worked there for some 2 years, so the package was forwarded, by a secretary, to his current place of work at Vanderbilt University.
At that time Fischer was on holiday in Puerto Rico and his secretary, Janet Smith, was the one to open the package. By this point the Unabomber had refined his design enough to consistently cause serious injury to the recipient. This time though the Unabomber had gone a step further, small metal fragments and nails lined the inside of the bomb casing, to be sent flying, when it exploded, like pellets from a shotgun, imbedding themselves in the first solid thing they met, this being Janet Smiths, hands, face, and abdomen.
She too would survive the encounter though she would be severely scarred.
The next attack occurred just 2 months later on July 2nd, 1982. In UC-Berkeley, California, a professor of engineering, one Diogenes J. Angelakos, comes across what he described as ‘a piece of engineering equipment’ on the floor of the faculty lounge with a gallon of fuel sitting next to it.
Both the ‘piece of engineering equipment’ and the gallon container of fuel contained a pipe bomb. This one wasn’t disguised as a package, it wasn’t addressed, it was just lying there. Bending down to pick it up, the professor places his hand on the device, lifts it just a few inches, hears a click, a seconds pause and then the explosion.
Thankfully the gasoline did not ignite and similar to the last two bombs, sever injuries were inflicted with no deaths and no discernible identifiers, not even the FC stamped metal. However, the means of delivery was different, the UNABOMBER had been there, in that room, in the university, perhaps an hour or less ago. Despite this there were no witnesses, nobody saw anyone acting suspiciously, and yet he was able to enter the university, into the faculty lounge, long enough to place and arm a bomb, then leave the area, all without raising any suspicion or even being seen.
Imagine you were the investigator in this scenario, what kind of information could you pull from these attacks? No fingerprints, no witnesses, no forensics other than burned up bomb parts and shrapnel. No connection between the intended victims other than the fact that they work in science related fields and still no motive, no pattern and worst of all no mistakes, at least no mistakes that revealed the culprits identity directly.
What is there to know that someone could use in a profile other than, he can’t get it up. Clearly out of the box thinking was required and from this attack, the best that they could pull was that the bomber must have had some kind of affiliation with U-C Berkley to be comfortable enough to move around the campus and place himself within a room restricted to university staff only. There was also a mistake that the bomber had made, though it was miniscule. He had sent a bomb to the wrong place to start with.
Unaware Fischer had changed his university 2 years prior, he sent a bomb to Pennsylvania state. This told investigators one of two things, one, the culprit had known Fischer prior to his moving and had not been made aware, or 2, wherever he was getting his addresses, was at least 2 years out of date. Not much to go on but better than nothing.
Which was all that they had for the time being. Their near non-existent evidence room on the UNABOMBER remained as it was for nearly 3 more years. And then, seemingly out of the Blue the bombs began to fall again and this time it was at an alarming frequency.
Beginning again on the 15th of May, 1985 when John Hauser, an Air force Captain and graduate student working at Berkley discovers a 3 ring binder on his desk with a note, requesting him to review a student’s masters thesis on ‘the history of science’. Upon opening, the binder explodes, shattering several bones including his skull, partially blinding him in his left eye, causing severe trauma to the right hand, severing nerves, and losing four fingers. In a tragic turn of events, Diogenes Agelakos the victim of the July 1982 bombing, was just across the hall at the time of the explosion.
And was temporarily deafened by this explosion, despite this he was the first to attend to Hauser, who was still, thankfully, alive, using his tie as a tourniquet. And, impaled in the now blacked wall behind where Hauser had been standing just moments before was a small metal pin with the letters F.C engraved on the side.
Only a month later, a bomb was discovered in a Boeing manufacturing plant in Washington, however this was defused with no casualties. Then 4 months later in November, a package was delivered to James McConnell, a psychology professor at Michigan University. Attached to the package was a note prompting him to open it, in the room with him was Nick Sunino, McConnell’s assistant. The bomb inside peppered McConnell with shrapnel and caused severe burns.
Sunino was deafened in one ear and partially deafened in the other. However, once again both survived.
This new wave of attacks from the UNABOMBER had unleashed a hitherto unseen ferocity. After 3 years of dormancy the authorities were once again left without a clue, they had literally no means of predicting where or when he would strike next and only one thing was for sure, he was dead set on getting a kill, one way or another. And, with a trend of increasingly powerful and sophisticated bombs there was little doubt that sooner or later, he would achieve this goal.
Finally on December 11th, 1985, after 7 years and 10 bombs, he managed to achieve his goal. The day prior the UNABOMBER caught a bus that carried him to Sacramento, California. He had paid cash for a room in a motel, he finalized his plans and took some time to scout out his location at Century Plaza.
The following morning on the 11th, after completing his preparations, he set out for his chosen spot. A computer Rental business called RenTech. Upon his arrival, he walked around to the back of the business where there was an alley connecting the street with a car park.
He stops, looks around making sure that no one is looking before crouching down and placing a brown paper bag on the ground. Contained within in the bag was of course a small pipe bomb with shrappnel glued to the exterior. He then places 2 lead weights in the bag, on either side of the bomb, before loading the mechanism and arming the device.
He then stands up and calmly walks away.
Inside the store, the owner, Hugh Scrutton, was just getting ready to go for his lunch. He left someone to run the front desk before exiting the back door. Spotting a paper bag on the ground, he walked over and bent down to pick it up, perhaps thinking it was someone’s rubbish.
At roughly 12:04pm the explosive went off. Triggered when Scrutton picked it up. His chest took the brunt of the blast, throwing his body 10 feet backwards and collapsing on the tarmac.
The explosion had wrent the skin from his chest, burned the muscles and organs underneath and broke most of his ribs. Moments after the explosion a person within earshot came running. Seeing this person approaching Hugh Scrutton apparently cried out ‘Oh my god!
Help me!’. The scene that greeted the would-be savior was one of utter destruction. A smoking crater several inches deep and a man, lying on the floor, flesh blackened and blood pouring from the spot where his chest should have been.
An ambulance was called, but very little could be done. Hugh Scrutton was pronounced dead at Sacramento University Medical Center at 12:34pm, 30 minutes after the explosion.
The UNABOMBER had finally done it, he had hit back at the system that he so despised. At first it was hard to connect this bombing with him however, the discovery of a metal plug with the letters F.C stamped across it gave the investigators all they needed to know. This would have infuriated the investigators to no end, for a moment the UNABOMBER had materialised, long enough to enter an area, plant a bomb and leave, all without a single witness.
And, for another 14 months he would remain immaterial. After his surge of bombings, he clearly felt he needed a rest and perhaps, he even took a moment to consider the reality of taking a man’s life, or perhaps he was savouring it.
For those next 14 months the investigators had nothing more to go on, repeatedly going over the evidence, the clues and pulling no more concrete information from it than the day it had entered the evidence locker. And still was the enigma of FC, those two letters would dog investigators for nearly the entire investigation. They had no clues for what it may stand for, all they could do was guess.
And guess they did; from the names of prominent figures like Fidel Castro, to simple slogans, such as the impolite request for the procreation of cops. If they could find it they could then cut out the vast majority of the population and focus upon only those types of people that would attach themselves to those two letters. Whatever it stood for they would have to wait for the UNABOMBER to step into the open once again.
Whatever he was doing in that time, it took him 14 months before resurfacing again and in that time he had built a new bomb. Seemingly feeling confident with the success of his last attack, the next was also one that he placed himself, at a strip mall in Salt Lake City, Utah. This bumb, disguised as a piece of construction debris, a few planks of wood, nailed together with several nails sticking out. On the morning of the 11th of February 1987 a man walks into the parking lot outside of CAAMS inc. a computer hardware store.
He bends down, places a bomb on the floor, arms the mechanism and then looks at the store fronts around him. His eyes finally settle on the glass front of CAAMS hardware store, he straightens up, still staring at the storefront. A woman, in the store, is staring straight back at him. For a split-second, he holds her gaze before sprinting away.
Meanwhile in the store the woman summons her co-workers and says that she is concerned a person is trying to leave some kind of trap to blow out people’s car tires though they are distracted by customers and they forget about it. After a couple of minutes, a car pulls up to the parking lot. It is the vice-president of CAAMS, Gary Wright. He gets out, looking at the plank of wood with nails sticking out.
He walks over and gives it a probing kick; the device immediately explodes. More than 200 pieces of debris cover his body, the nails are launched into his left arm, severing his nerves. Gary Wright would survive to become another one of the UNABOMBER’s victims.
An ambulance and the police are called. The same as every other time the construction of the bomb leaves no clues save for a piece of metal with FC stamped upon it. The attack is connected to the UNABOMBER and true to type forensics can pull nothing from the device. However, this attack is different from every other, that is, when the Police begin interviewing all those who had been in the area.
A secretary, who works at CAMMS comes forward and claims to have seen the person setting the bomb, she gives a description to a sketch artist, who comes up with one of the most famous police sketches in history. The image of a man with aviators, a gray hoodie and a mustache. This image would eventually become known as the UNABOM sketch. For the first time to date the public and investigators at the task force had an image, proof that the UNABOMBER was indeed a real person.
Hiatus and Return
After 7 years, 12 bombs and 1 fatality. The UNABOMBER had finally slipped up. No doubt bolstered by the “success” of his previous attack he felt that he could pull off another just like it. He got confident and made a mistake.
He had been seen and he would not be identified again for more than a decade. Unlike many of the serial killers that we cover here, this one did not need the recognition and attention that came from his attacks. We know this because he would happily put an identifying trademark upon his bombs, he wanted his work to be recognised but never his name, never his face. Perhaps he knew what he was doing was wrong, perhaps unlike almost all other serial killers he wanted to be known for his achievements without the burden of being known.
Whatever his reasons he would not allow another mistake. For the nearly 5 and a half years he would not make another move, seeming to fall off the face of the Earth, no communication, no bombings, nothing. The investigation team began to dwindle, investigators got reassigned, interest from the public began to disappear. Officials thought, or rather hoped, that getting spotted had scared him off for good.
The risk of getting caught had become too great and he would desist for good this time. Leads dried up and evidence became little more than a place for dust to gather.
Then, one day, as with that first bomb, the silence was broken. Like most mornings June the 22nd 1993, began with the mail getting delivered. At Charles Epstein’s house his daughter finishes her breakfast, before going out to get it from the mailbox.
There are a couple of letters and a padded envelope containing a package. As she heads back inside, she sees that it is addressed to her father, so she leaves it on the kitchen counter and heads upstairs. Later that day Charles Epstein, a geneticist, returns home and finds the package on his counter.
He slips it open and puts one hand into the envelope, removing the wooden box. A spring loaded wooden catch, passes the lip of the envelope, flips and the package explodes. Epstein would survive but by now the UNABOMBER was well past his initial primitive bombs, if you were unlucky enough to be the recipient of one, there would be a very real possibility of death and serious harm was a guarantee.
Charles Epstein lost 4 fingers, suffered severe abdominal trauma, facial burns, lacerations and a broken arm.
The following day another package is delivered to Dr David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale University. The design was nearly identical to the one sent to Epstein. The explosion blew off several of his fingers, deafened him in one ear and blinded him in one eye. As odd as it sounds, nobody seemed to notice the explosion, nobody ran to his aid.
Whatever the reason for that was, Gelernter had no other option but to make his own way to find help, dragging his body down 5 flights of stairs to the university hospital where he received medical attention.
It was also on the same day that the UNABOMBER did something he had never done before, he sent a letter that didn’t explode. To an assistant managing editor at the New York Times newspaper. In the letter he connects the bombings of the last two days and specifies a 9 digit number, for which he can authenticate any future communications with the authorities and newspapers. For those of you who are interested this number is 553-15-4394. He then signs off the letter FC.
After years of silence the UNABOMBER began his reign of terror again, in two days he raised the collective tension of the entire nation. The FBI, who had been easing off their investigation, ramped it up to previously unseen levels, making it the largest ongoing investigation in the country. And it is here that we start to hear the first mentions of the word UNABOM and a central office is established in San Francisco.
With the massive boost in funds that came from this new wave of attacks, also came a swath of new investigators and a new head of the investigation, Terry Turchie, a veteran of the FBI’s counterterrorism division. Another new addition to the team was a psychological profiler: Special Agent Kathleen Puckett, a doctoral student working towards a Ph.D in clinical psychology.
A new look was required at the evidence and the investigation needed a new profile of the person they were now calling the UNABOMBER. Kathleen Puckett was the one to do it. She herself describes him as the most careful serial bomber anyone had ever seen.
The intention of bringing Puckett on board was to create an in-depth psychological profile, an avenue that hadn’t yet been considered. While they had created a character profile, Pucketts job was to try to understand precisely who he was, why he was doing what he was doing and from this they could try to find other information about him. At the time this was almost never an avenue that investigations went down, it was unproven and thought to be unreliable, appearing more like guess work than any kind of real investigation.
However, a closer look at the evidence was already giving new information. The first bomb, way back in 1978, began showing new clues. While at first investigators thought the package was simply left in the parking lot to gather attention, the fact that it was only feet away from a mailbox led the investigators to believe that he had intended on sending it.
A reconstruction of the package showed that it was left there because it wouldn’t have fitted in the postal slot. So, the bomber simply dropped it there and left. Though this seems like a useless detail the investigation was able to use this, and some other information gathered from the early bombings to surmise that the bomber was familiar with the Chicago area, meaning it was likely he had lived there at some point, perhaps even during the early bombings.
There was also the note that was left on the 3 ring binder, the UNABOMBER’s 8th bomb. Saying that the master thesis was on the topic of ‘The History of Science’ this was and still is a rather obscure area of study in the United States, their initial conclusion was that he could have been a student of the subject at some point. They interviewed all of the qualified professors in this field of which there were only a handful and got a list of all previous students of that subject. This turned up nothing in the way of suspects but according to Puckett the idea of the UNABOMBER being connected to the hard sciences stuck.
Then there was the letter sent to the New York Times, in it he states that FC was an anarchist group. And that by the time of reading something of significance would have occurred. These were the two most recent bombs that went off.
Within the letter he used the line “If nothing goes wrong” to qualify that one or both of the bombs could have malfunctioned. This line and his general means of proceeding thus far, gave Puckett the feeling that whoever they were dealing with was cautious, speculative, unimpulsive and because of this likely in the latter part of his life. These are some broad conclusions to pull from very little information but the Unabomber had left almost nothing behind for them to pull from, so they had to pull as much information as possible from this vast nothingness.
Then on the 10th of December the Unabomber struck again at the home of an advertising executive Thomas Mosser. In a truly harrowing statement Mossers wife, who was in the next room with their 15-month-old daughter at the time, recounted the events of that day. I will save you the gory details of what happens to a person’s body when a bomb filled with fragments of cut up razor blads, nails and other metal pieces goes off in their hands. It would only serve to cheapen the fact that Thomas Mosser lost his life.
Though a more agonizing death I can scarcely imagine.
Another attack and the UNABOMBER seemed to have perfected his design. True to type no clues except a metal shard marked FC was found. Then on the 24th of March in a batch of deliveries to a post box in California the UNABOMBER would finally make the mistake that resulted in his capture. Well, to call it a mistake is a little bit misleading, because it was intentional.
The day began with another bomb, delivered to Gilbert Murray at his work. Murray was the head of the California Forestry Association. This new design had resulted in another fatality. Bringing his murder count to 3 and 17 total bombs sent.
Later on that day, several letters are delivered to various recipients across the US. David Gelernter, the victim of the 1993 attack, received a letter ridiculing him for opening an unexpected package from an unknown source, calling him dumb, and a techno-nerd. Real hard hitting stuff. Joking aside, this must have been truly terrifying, having this unknown person reopen another line of contact. This form of childish goading only served to undermine the message that was contained in the other letters sent that day.
Two leaders in the field of genealogy, Dr. Philip Sharp at MIT and Dr. Richard Roberts would receive identical letters stating that “It would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics.” Clearly the UNABOMBER was growing discontent with the approach of the silent murderer. He had a point to put forward and he was doing so emphatically.
His final letter of the day was to the same editor at the New York Times. The one that had been contacted 2 years prior, connecting the Epstein and Gelernter bombings and provided the 9 digit identifying number. It explains that Mosser was the target of the most recent bombing because he had been the head of the marketing company that had handled the public relations of the Exxon company during the Exxon Valdez Oil spill. He felt that he deserved to die because he had worked to clean up the damage that had been done to the company’s public image.
The letter also spoke of an anarchist group that sought the breakdown of society into small, completely autonomous units, this group was of course FC. Who now had their name, ‘Freedom Club’. This was probably a little disappointing for the investigators who had hoped that by finding out what FC stood for they could narrow down the available pool of people who would associate themselves with such an acronym.
Unfortunately, as it turns out pretty much every American considers themself to be part of the Freedom Club, in fact by this point I think it’s just another name for American Citizenship. Just a very different kind of Freedom Club. Though FC would not bring them directly to the UNABOMBER, the remaining information contained in the letter would.
After explaining the intentions and origins of FC the UNABOMBER wrapped up with an offer to that editor of the New York Times: Publish a manuscript that would be delivered at a later date and in return FC would cease all terrorist activities.
Quite the offer when the alternative was a continuation of the bombings seen in last 17 years. However, the FBI’s first reaction was to say no, sticking to the moral line and stating that the US government does not negotiate with terrorists. However, someone must have been packing an Uno Reverse card somewhere because they did a complete 180 and agreed to publish. Remember that profiler Kathleen Puckett?
Well, she read the manifesto and put forth an idea. With their pool of suspects containing about half of all the men in the United States, the FBI were no nearer catching the UNABOMBER than they were catching bigfoot.
Extreme measures would have to be taken to find a suspect. So, she proposed that they make an appeal to the general public. As things stood, their most effective way of capturing the UNABOMBER was by simply interviewing every possible suspect they could find but like I say that list contained the vast majority of the male population in the United States so that was not exactly a practical solution.
And even if they did do that, the suspect could easily just mislead investigators and slip through the net. What Kathleen Puckett was suggesting was that they used the public as their interviewers. Surely the UNABOMBER must know someone, must have spoken to someone about their ideas, they hoped to find that person.
With the case being about as high profile as you can get at this point, publication would mean they could paint a picture of the UNABOMBER using the sketch, their character background and psychological profiles of him. They would publish the manuscript and use the inevitable high public interest to make every father, brother, mother, sister, daughter, son, friend and acquaintance a part of the investigation team.
This was about as long a shot as you can take in an investigation and in doing it they were in effect announcing to the entire country and likely the UNABOMBER himself, that they had no idea who he was. If it didn’t work they would have simply aided in spreading the ideology of a serial killer. However, Kathleen Puckett, based upon her own psychological profile of the UNABOMBER, said she felt certain that his offer to stop all terrorist activities was hollow.
For one thing he had stipulated that he reserved the right to take part in sabotage, stating that the difference was that he would stop bombing people but he would continue to bomb infrastructure. The discord this sewed was enormous; the issue made it all the way up to the desk of Head Justice Janet Reno, who on the recommendation of Turchie the head of the UNABOMB task force, agreed that publishing the manifesto would be the best course.
So when that day came they would publish the manifesto with a psychological profile and the now famous image of the UNABOMBER. This profile, thanks to the work of the task force and also the combined efforts of John Douglas and Kathleen Puckett, had come a long way from the pre-1993 profile. It stated that the UNABOMBER was likely a man in his late-40’s to early-60’s, he had a higher education, likely highly intelligent but was also a neo-luddite.
If he was married, then it was likely that he had a room in the house that no-one was allowed to enter. Regarding his movements, they suspected that he was born and grew up in Chicago before moving away for college. They suspected he had achieved a bachelors and a masters but failed at a doctoral dissertation.
He then returned to Chicago for several years before moving to Salt Lake City and then finally settling in the San Francisco Bay area. This would all be published as a precursor of the manuscript.
So, what about this manuscript, you may be thinking, what did it contain? Well lucky for you dear listener I have taken the liberty of reading it. This 35,000-word manifesto titled, ‘Industrial Society and it’s future’, describes the failings of modern-industrial society, it outlines how the freedoms of mankind are shrinking day-by-day, it provides examples, causes and effects. In short it lampoons the indefatigable technological progress of mankind and calls for an overthrow of the current system, stating that we should return to an anarchic system of dispersed communities, subsisting and providing only for themselves.
Even as I write this, I am fully aware that it sounds like the ravings of a serial killer and they are. However, it is also wholly convincing. As a little bit of a personal background, I am an engineer, technological progress is my business, so it is in my interest to disbelieve much of what he says about the flaws of technological progress.
But even I cannot argue with the points brought forward in the manuscript. In parts, yes, it just sounds like an eloquent child is writing about a kid they hate called ‘the system’. In other words the writing comes across and jaded and there are many unnecessary departures within that expose the author as the kind of person who harbors a deep seated, ill-conceived and yes, childish, hatred of the world.
However, in other parts he put forward predictions and points that are inarguable and in some cases rather alarming in their accuracy.
But this is not an essay discussing the flaws and merits of the UNABOMBER’s manifesto, more capable minds than I have seen to both of those already. What interested the FBI was the style of writing, the ideas, the idiolect, and the profile that would be provided alongside the publication. It was on the 27th of June that same year the manuscript was delivered to Michael Getler of the Washington post and Warren Hoge, the editor from the NY Times.
Both of which had been typed out on a typewriter, a promising clue which the FBI chased up, though through either careful planning or plain luck this typewriter was about as generic as you could get. There was also a third manuscript posted out to Jerry Roberts at the San Francisco Examiner, apparently the UNABOMBER was getting a little bored of waiting for the government to deliberate on publishing his manifesto because a letter was attached stating that a bomb had been sent using airmail and was going to be aboard a plane leaving LAX within the next 6 days. Which of course led to the shutdown of the entire airport.
It was at this point that the government formally agreed to publish the manifesto, stating public safety concerns. There was of course no bomb on the plane otherwise the Unabomber’s kill count would probably be significantly higher, in fact his stated reasons for lying about the bomb leaving LAX was that he wanted to prove that it was impossible for the system to truly value the lives of the individuals within it. This point is covered in the manifesto but in essence he says that the system (in its current form) cannot both function effectively and value the lives of the people living within it.
He proves this by forcing the government to shut down an airport in order to protect the lives of the passengers and in the process they must (if only for a short time) hemorrhage money in a way that would be unsustainable. In effect saying, the moment the system places its inhabitants first, it becomes unsustainable.
Perhaps this is true, though it feels to me like he’s just aggrandizing his newfound power over big companies. By September of 1995 the Washington Post was ready to publish the manifesto in their morning edition of the paper. On September the 19th it was released to the public and try as I might, I can’t seem to find any comment on just how many copies were sold on that day but it is safe to assume their sales didn’t do too badly.
Collectively the FBI held their breath, waiting and sure enough, tips started rolling in. At first hundreds and then thousands in the first few days alone. There were of course the crazy people turning in their dog walkers, neighbors, son.
Scorned Ex-wives, probably the odd Karen or two turning in the manager of their local eating establishments. These kinds of tips were to be expected and had been rolling in since the tip line had been set up. Sprinkled among them were the promising leads, concerned friends, sisters, and every other kind of connection you can imagine.
People that had read the manifesto and it reminded them of someone they knew. The FBI did investigate all of them, but nothing connected, they would check previous criminal records, educational achievements, records of where they lived in the past, where they came from. Finally, they would cross check it with their own list of suspects.
This turned up several hundred promising leads but even then, nothing. As the weeks turned into months, the flow of tips began to slow, and the pool of potential suspects began to dry up along with it. Eventually 1995 turned into 1996 and still no leads. Though the tips were still coming in they were of the kind that you could discount almost immediately.
Then, in the middle of February a letter from an anonymous source found its way into the inbox for the tip line. It was reviewed and passed up to the superiors in the investigation. Though it didn’t say who sent the letter it did have a name, known to the FBI as UNABOM suspect number 2,416, otherwise known to his brother as Ted.
A Prodigy is made
Theodore John Kaczynski was born unto the world on May the 22nd 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the first child of working-class, Polish-American parents and was named after his father Theodore, though he wasn’t given the name of Jr. Often serial killers are at least a partial product of their environment, they see violence early on or they are subject to violence from their parents, but this was simply not the case for young Ted.
His mother Wanda, stayed at home to raise him and his brother and his father, was a Sausage maker. Both parents had been born Catholic but became atheists and were cautious to allow their boys to choose their own beliefs, at the time this kind of freedom of voice was a rare one for the vast majority of children.
They were good parents in every regard, and they did all they could to care for and provide a stable household for both Ted and his brother David. As his mother recalls, Ted was a happy baby, although an incident stuck out in her mind that might suggest a partial reason for the person that he would become. When Ted was still an infant, he contracted severe hives and was sent to hospital.
It was common in those days for children to be kept in isolation, even from their parents, today psychologists call this maternal deprivation and it is advised that, during the first few years of a child’s life, it is to be avoided as much as possible. When this occurred to baby Ted is said to have displayed textbook symptoms of a child suffering maternal deprivation, he was highly distressed for several days, eventually becoming quiet and apathetic. Wanda recalls that he showed nothing of the happy baby that went into the hospital when she returned to get him.
Ted attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago and was described as a healthy and well-adjusted child. After his brother David was born the family moved to a suburb of Chicago called Evergreen Park. A friend of the family who was a psychologist, tested Ted and found that he had an IQ of 167. Later in life this would be tested as high as 187 which would put him firmly in the category of Genius.
At this time Ted showed a lot of promise as a student and it was recommended that he skip 2 years, moving him from a class of his peers to a class of much older children. He did not fit well with them and was persistently bullied from then until the time that he would graduate high school.
It was around this time that he would begin to remove himself from society, his father Theodore apparently adored the outdoors and would regularly take his sons out on camping trips, teaching them how to hunt, fish and survive in the wilderness. Both Ted and David, who were very close, enjoyed these excursions. David recalls that his brother would be happiest when he was out the house and exploring the wilderness.
A stark contrast to how he behaved in social situations. As he continued to be bullied and excluded by the kids in his classes he would isolate himself more and more. When his mother grew concerned of this isolation she would try to bring him to social events, but every time she did, he would become even more unresponsive and reclusive.
Concerned for his development she considered entering him into a study for autistic children, however she felt that the lead psychologist’s manor was abrupt and cold and she felt that it would only harm Ted to be in that kind of situation.
As Ted got older his capacity for learning only grew. He would find a select group of kids that he was comfortable socializing with. He was also part of several clubs, played the trombone, spoke German and most of all, excelled in his math classes. As he progressed through his teens Ted began spending less time outdoors and more time shut up in his room studying.
According to his family and teachers, Ted would willingly commit hours every day to studying advanced math problems. So much so that in 1957 after attending summer school he graduated and earned a full Scholarship to Harvard university at the age of only 15.
By 16 he had begun his studies at Harvard, spending his first year in a house for the younger members of Harvard, most of them prodigies like himself. The following 3 years he lived at Elliot house. His housemates at that time recall that Kaczynski was incredibly reclusive, he would rarely leave his room except to eat, attend classes and occasionally socialize. Late at night he would practice Trombone.
Most sources report Ted was a recluse at this time however, interviews with his classmate’s paint Ted as a reserved but passionate youth. He had friends and would socialize with them fairly regularly. In one interview a classmate of Ted’s said that he would come across as quiet and shy at first meeting, but it only took for him to trust you and he would become very talkative, eager to expound upon his views on both the world and mathematics.
In his second year Ted entered himself into a psychological study, with one of the universities head psychology professors, Dr Henry Murry. Out of roughly 200 other applicants Ted and 9 other boys were selected after extensive psychological testing. These tests were designed to find the most psychologically fragile of all applicants. These students would then be interviewed at length about their philosophies on life, their beliefs, and many other highly personal topics.
They were told to submit essays describing their own personal philosophies, beliefs, and aspirations.
These essays and an in-depth psychological analysis of the subject’s personality were given to an anonymous individual who sat down with Kaczynski and effectively ridiculed him for it. Making what Murry described as ‘vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive attacks’ Ted and the other subjects were strapped with electrodes to monitor their brain activity and their facial expressions were closely recorded, to see how they responded to these attacks. In later sessions these recordings of his expressions of rage and upset were played back to him. In all the study lasted 2 years, Ted would spend upwards of 200 hours as part of the study, being humiliated, ridiculed, and verbally abused for the vast majority of sessions.
This is often pointed to as a watershed moment in his life, one of the most direct causes of the kind of person he would become. However, Kaczynski insists that he was not adversely affected by these traumatic interviews.
Whatever the case, Ted graduated in 1962 aged 20 with a degree in mathematics. He would then enroll at the University of Michigan where he would earn both his masters and doctoral dissertation by 1967. Though he attended Michigan he also applied for postgraduate education at UC Berkeley and University of Chicago, both of which were universities that he preferred and both of which accepted him, however they did not offer him a teaching position or financial aid. Which Michigan had offered, paying him $2,310 annually, equivalent to $19,763 today and offering him a teaching post.
In his time at Michigan, Kaczynski specialized in Complex analysis and geometric function theory, all of which are about as boring as they sound. Believe me, I committed a whole hour of my life, just trying to understand precisely what those words mean. Why? I guess I hate myself.
Anyway, Kaczynski was apparently really good at this. According to his math professor Kaczynski was unusual, more focused than most other students and more committed to plumbing the depths of mathematical truth. Despite receiving his excellent marks Kaczynski says that his time at Michigan was not happy.
His teaching obligations made him feel resentful of the fact that he was having to spend his time teaching less capable minds than his own. Socially he was struggling to form any kind of romantic connection with a woman. They would either ignore him or lose interest after spending any amount of time with him. Though looking at pictures of him from this time, I would not judge him to be a bad looking guy.
He apparently took no interest in the social uproar that was the 1960’s instead dressing like a stuffy professor and avoiding social contact at all costs. No surprises why the girls weren’t fawning after him.
It was noted in a psychological evaluation of Kaczynski that he had a habit of becoming deeply infatuated with women that he interacted with. He would spend hours writing about them in his diary. The only issue was that these women gave absolutely no indication of reciprocation for these feelings. Which led to a pattern forming where Ted would become infatuated with someone, give said person no indication of his feelings due to his social anxiety, grow despondent at the lack of a connection between them, which would inevitably lead to venomous hatred against this entirely unsuspecting individual growing within him.
Then several years after beginning at Michigan Ted began to have intense erotic feelings about the idea of becoming a woman. Gender dysphoria can be caused by a multitude of things, which are very real and can deeply impact the life of a person who experiences it. To Ted it was highly sexual in nature, which would mean that it was not a true case of gender dysphoria. He believed that gender reassignment would give him some kind of sexual release.
So, he made an appointment at a university clinic to see a psychiatrist who specializes in gender reassignment with the idea that he would lie to the psychiatrist and convince him that he was suffering from real Gender Dysphoria. However, while sitting in the waiting room Kaczynski changed his mind. He told the psychiatrist that he was just depressed about the idea of getting drafted and was looking for a way out.
His diary on the other hand said something different: “I felt disgusted about what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do. And I felt humiliated and violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life.
Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope.” What was this new hope? It was to enact his hatred on those that he hated most, this was the experimenters that had tortured him while at Harvard, it was the therapist, it was everyone that he had grown to resent in his life, strangely enough some of the people he hated most were his family, whether they deserved it or not.
He “I will kill. But I will make at least some effort to avoid detection so that I can kill again.”. In a later interview he explained that he thought he wanted to kill the psychiatrist because his future looked empty.
However, in a sudden realization he found he didn’t care whether he lived or died and, in a leap of logic that for the life of me I cannot fathom, he concluded that if dying was not an issue to him, why not actually kill the psychiatrist and everyone else that he hated while he was at it. He describes the feeling as being liberated, like relinquishing the desire to live gave him the freedom to be daring, irresponsible or criminal. And he decided all of this on the walk home from the clinic.
This of course was all going on privately, deep within the disturbed psyche of Ted Kaczynski. On the surface however, it was smooth and unperturbed. He continued to teach and achieved his masters and PhD in “Boundary Functions” by 1967 winning the Sumner B Myers prize for best mathematics dissertation of the year. With these credentials he secured the assistant professor position at Berkeley that he had been denied years before and was on his way to receiving tenure. Bearing in mind he was only 25 at the time.
Same as his time at Michigan Kaczynski taught but was not well liked by those whom he taught, and same as when he was in Michigan he courted women but was unsuccessful. It was also at this time that he read a book called the “Technological Society” by Jacques Ellul. This book became his bible and many of the ideas listed in this book would reappear in the manifesto years later, though Kaczynski would progress the ideas to an extreme. Then in the summer of 1969, shortly before Ted was to attend a meeting to discuss his receiving tenure, he submitted a sudden and unexpected letter of resignation providing no explanation.
At least to the colleges this decision was sudden and unexpected, however to Ted this decision had been made 3 years ago on the same day that he attended the gender reassignment clinic. On his walk home, he had decided many things. One was that he was going to kill. Another was that he was going to exit society, his plan was to achieve his PhD and work until he could save up enough money to buy a piece of isolated land in Alaska or Canada that he could live off , in complete isolation.
Avoiding both people and the changing of the society around him.
Life as a Luddite
From Berkley Ted would return to living with his parents in 1971 for two years, until he moved into a cabin that he and his brother had purchased in Lincoln, Montana. To Ted this was bliss, a life away from government intervention, from deceitful and manipulative agents who would stop at nothing to abuse, slander, and belittle him… If that last bit sounds off, there is one little bit of Ted’s personality that, for narrative reasons, I forgot to mention. From a young age Ted would obsess over small things that were said to him.
Even the smallest comment about his personality, his intelligence, his ideas, anything, even if it was just a jovial comment, Ted would receive as an open and aggressive attack. Even things that weren’t negative he would obsess over. A notable incident occurred when Ted was 19 and a 45-year old woman said that Ted was “a handsome young man” most of us will have heard something like this from a kind motherly type at some point in our lives, it’s a nice thing to hear and of course they mean it.
Ted however, would hold onto this comment for the next 29 years. He would wonder why women were not interested in him if that 45-year-old woman had said that one thing to him when he was 19. We know this because in his diary he writes about this woman, whenever he begins to question why he is repeatedly unsuccessful finding a partner.
Something along the lines of, but if she said I was handsome why do I have no luck with girls. This all came to a head when, at the age of 47 he asked a neighbor what her opinion of him was and she replied that he was entirely average looking. Strangely enough Ted used this as evidence that he was simply unattractive to all women but on the contrary the woman said this implying that the vast majority of the population fall into the average category and therefore he should have been quite likely to find a partner.
Another issue was that while living in normal society Ted became convinced that people all around him were slandering him. It was a common occurrence that if he saw the woman he was obsessing over at the time, talking to another person, he would assume that this woman was talking about him, insulting him and generally sharing a negative opinion of him. He would also overhear his landlord regularly sharing nasty comments about him, though this would always be heard through a door or an open window.
He would never directly see it happening. When questioned about what it was that was being said, Ted wasn’t quite sure, just that they were negative comments. These are all symptoms of a paranoid mind with tendencies toward paranoid Schizophrenia.
But that didn’t bother Ted anymore, he was away, far away from all of that, cut off and unconcerned by the thoughts of others, he was living the life that he had sought to live for years and moreover he was living autonomously. He was isolated but happy. Or at least he thought he was, if being a writer has taught me anything it is that isolation is like a drug, even if it feels good, it is dangerous, the more you have the more you want and the more of it you have, the more damage it can inflict.
For a mind as fragile as Ted’s it can cause a spiral that is guaranteed to end in disastrous consequences. This is shown by the fact that every now and again he would commit small acts of arson here and there to the local logging industry but what’s a bit of arson between friends hmm?
He would occasionally move between Chicago and Salt Lake City in this time, working odd jobs, only for a month or two before returning to his cabin. This was his habit, and he stayed that way until 1978 when he moved to Chicago to work at the factory that his brother owned, working as a foam cutting engineer. During this time, he started a new obsession over the shift manager at the factory; however, this one was exceptional because he actually asked her out and she said yes. They had two dates that he felt had gone well, however she unfortunately did not and said she didn’t want to pursue a relationship with him, and Ted… Well, let’s just say that Ted did not take this rejection well.
The next day he turned up at work early, before anyone had arrived and stuck insulting limericks about the shift manager all over the factory. David, his brother, was the first to arrive and managed to get rid of them before others arrived. He confronted Ted about it, who argued but eventually David ended up firing him for it. Needless to say, this took an already distraught Ted and turned it up several thousand percent.
And, if any of you have been keeping up with the timeline, this would coincide with a certain bomb being placed in a Northwestern University parking lot.
And it is here that we have come full circle. After the placing of his first bomb Ted would return to his cabin and remove his brother as co-owner. He would then spend the next 17 years developing his ideology and his bombing techniques in complete isolation. He would build the devices in his cabin and catch a bus to a random location for sending, pay cash for all stamps and bus tickets, any accommodation he would give a false name and pay cash.
All of his victims were, for the most part, picked out randomly from listings of experts in certain fields that he found at his local library.
If you look back at the timeline of his life you have a person who doesn’t receive so much as a parking fine across their entire lifetime, he removes himself from society and gives no indication to anybody in his life that he has homicidal ideation. To the government he is barely a blip, they barely had any idea of his existence much less the kind of hatred that was seething beneath the surface. He chooses random targets; he even delivers his bombs in an anonymous manor.
On the odd occasion that he does enter society, he does so disguised and leaving no trace that he had ever been there. He is meticulous and intelligent, if he sets his mind to something he will understand all there is to understand about it even down to the choice of stamp, choosing one that would be most difficult to trace. This has got to be one of the only cases that I have ever heard of where both the criminal and the authorities aren’t incompetent, but at some point, one of them has to slip up.
Capture
And that brings us round to the tip sitting on the desk of the head of the UNABOM task force in San Francisco. This letter, sent by an anonymous man in Montana, said that the person who wrote the UNABOM manifesto shared a lot of similarities with his estranged brother. He attached letters that were sent to him years ago from his brother, describing anti-technology views and ridiculing him about how he was sacrificing his freedom by living in modern society. This was enough to pique the investigators interest and as they dug more, they began to connect the dots.
Born in Chicago, moved away for college, received his PhD, returned to Chicago before moving around. The only bit they got wrong was that he had not lived in Salt Lake City or the San Francisco Bay area, or he had, but only while he was studying and not during his bombing spree. At once they sent agents to begin surveilling his cabin in the woods. Watching to see his movements.
He would go out regularly, tend a small patch of crops and hunt. They contacted the lawyers office that had made the anonymous tip, insisting that they get through to whomever had made it.
This brought them through to David Kaczynski, now 47 years old and married. He and Ted had not spoken for years, although they had continued correspondence with letters. Fortunately for the FBI David had kept each one of them, David and his mother were interviewed about Ted, asked about his movements, his childhood, everything. They interviewed his professors, his colleagues at the university, and the people he worked with.
When they got to Montana, they began interviewing everyone in the town of Lincoln. They interviewed his neighbors and the more information they got the more certain that he was the UNABOMBER.
Eventually they had enough for a search warrant. Which posed a bit of a problem, because as his neighbors knew full well, Ted was not one to enjoy an unprompted visit, much less from complete strangers. Even less when those strangers were from the FBI. If they were right that he was the UNABOMBER, it would not be out of the question that he would have some kind of trap set up to catch any unwanted guests.
So, they had to be cunning. Out of all the townsfolk who knew of Ted, his neighbor knew him best. He was the only person to ever enter Ted’s cabin outside of Ted himself. So they got him and the local sheriff to agree to call upon Ted.
They used the excuse that they wanted to know where Ted’s land ended, so that a forestry company could start logging near him.
Early on April the 3rd 1996 a knock rang out on the door of Ted’s cabin. He didn’t answer at first, so the sheriff called for him and knocked again. After a moment, the door opened a crack, just enough for Ted to peer out with one eye.
The sheriff asked if he could just point out the Eastern stakes of his property line. He paused for a moment before opening the door a little wider. Looking suspicious he said that his land was clearly marked.
The sheriff said that they couldn’t find his markings. Finally, Ted opened his door fully and stepped out of his cabin. The moment he was clear of the door, the sheriff lunged at him, wrapping his arms around Ted’s chest, and pulling him to the ground outside of the cabin.
The Neighbour jumped in and grabbed Ted’s legs. At the same moment the FBI agents came running from behind the trees and began detaining him. He struggled for a moment but ultimately saw that he would not escape and gave up.
After 19 years of hunting, they finally had him.
Trial and imprisonment
With this search warrant approved the FBI could investigate every minute detail of this hermit’s life. What they found was a 10 foot by 12 foot cabin full to bursting with evidence. As you walk into the cabin there is a bed on your right, a desk on your left, with two typewriters on it. All over the walls there is shelves upon shelves filled with books, food, clothes, homemade guns, chemicals, and everything one might need to build a bomb.
Contrary to his promise to stop all bombings if they published his manifesto, there was a fully constructed bomb lying underneath Ted’s bed. On top of the desk there was an enormous notebook, outlining nearly every day of Ted’s life from the age of 20.
The day following the raid, Kaczynski was charged with possessing the components of a bomb, all based on evidence found in the search of his cabin. This is of course a pretty minor charge in the grand scheme of his crimes, but this was just so they could have a reason to detain him while they built a further case against him. This all came to a head when Kaczynski was indicted by a federal grand jury on ten counts relating to bombing attacks on Hugh Scrutton, Charles Epstein, Gilbert Murry and David Gelernter. He is then indicted by a separate federal grand jury, this one in New Jersey for the bombing of Thomas Mosser.
This was supposed to be an open and shut case, he was found in his cabin, with a notebook, detailing only things that the bomber would know, detailing, how to build a bomb of a similar specification to the one recovered at the Boeing factory, with supplies to build a bomb and with a pre-made bomb literally sitting underneath his bed. The evidence given by his family, combined with the evidence collected by the FBI over the course of his bombing spree and the evidence collected at his cabin, collectively made the largest volume of evidence applied to a single case in US history. Upon meeting his lawyers Kaczynski insisted on being heavily involved in his defense and that all motions must be ran by him. Kaczynski and his lawyers chose to plead not guilty, due to lack of evidence, which I will explain in a moment.
With control of his legal defense Kaczynski began filing a great many motions and some of them were pretty bazaar such as the request that no computers be used during the course of the trial, which was of course denied. Others were not quite as off the wall though, such as the motion that all evidence gathered from the cabin should be thrown out on the grounds that the warrant was obtained by giving false and misleading information to the judge that signed off on it. This motion brought to light the fact that DNA gathered from letters sent by Ted to his brother conflicted with the DNA found in his bombs.
The motion also stated that, when David Kaczynski gave the tip to the FBI it was based only on a suspicion that his brother was the UNABOMBER, not a certainty. However, when the warrant was submitted to the judge it made it appear that David was certain of his brother’s guilt.
I guess I should explain here, when a search warrant is issued by a judge, like the warrant to search Kaczynski’s cabin, it has to be done on the basis that the investigating body already has sufficient evidence to suspect the person of their guilt, or something like that perhaps Simon can correct me on the finer points there. The defense can challenge the validity of that search warrant at any time, so it is important that the evidence against them is air-tight. If the defense challenges the warrant and it is found that the evidence presented to the judge who issued the warrant was not sufficient it would make all evidence found during the search unusable in court proceedings.
Even if the evidence proved that the person was guilty, they would be unable to present it as it was not acquired lawfully. What Kaczynski was effectively saying here was that the FBI had not mentioned the discrepancy between the DNA evidence in the bombs and the DNA evidence on the letters that linked him to the bombs.
He also argued that the evidence that drew ideological similarities between the letters that he wrote to his brother and the ideology of the UNABOMBER were not sufficient evidence to warrant just cause for a search of his cabin. Every person has a distinct style of writing that can give details as to where they come from and the environment from which they learnt to speak and write. Take for example the word Mum, in America it is spelt and pronounced Mom, while over most of the UK it is spelt and pronounced Mum, more specific still, in certain parts of the UK people spell and pronounce it as Mam.
They all mean the same thing but can give you information about the background of the person talking, this is called a person’s idiolect. This was one of the areas that Kaczynski challenged, the FBI used similarities in his idiolect from the Manifesto and letters to his brother as evidence that they were the same person, which as far as I can tell had never been done before, which made it a shaky basis to build a search warrant upon. As this was the only thing connecting him and the evidence found in his cabin to the evidence acquired by the FBI during the course of the UNABOMBER’s reign, this would effectively make him innocent as nothing else would connect him to the bombings.
However, as you can probably tell Kaczynski was not granted this overhaul of the evidence and the judge ruled that the search warrant would be upheld, which was well received well in the press and was a huge blow against Kaczynski who continued to file for the case to be thrown out on various different grounds, up until the date that the trial commenced. That being the 12th of November 1997.
At the commencement of the trial Ted pled not-guilty however, the issue of psychological testing was raised. In essence Ted did not trust the government to psychologically analyze him, he believed they would send in a psychiatrist with a pre-decided diagnosis that would fit whatever narrative the prosecution wanted. At the same time, Ted had ordered several psychological analyses of his own but threw out all their evaluations after they diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. He did not want to be branded as insane and rather be found not guilty by some other means.
His defense pleaded with Ted to take the diagnosis and present it as a diminished responsibility defense. But he still refused. By this time the jury had been selected and court proceeds could begin, which brings us to the 5th of January 1998.
As soon as proceedings began however, Kaczynski stood up and announced that he had something important to discuss with the judge about his relations with his attorneys. Judge Burrell allowed this and he, Kaczynski and his attorneys all retreated to the judge’s chambers for a closed meeting. The issue was that Kaczynski’s attorneys were impeding him from pursuing any other defense than the insanity defense.
A lot of the Hollywood enactments of the UNABOMBER case have played on this part making it seem like his refusal to pursue an insanity defense was because it didn’t want his manifesto to be perceived as the ravings of a lunatic. In reality, he simply refused this defense because he didn’t trust psychologists.
The judge did not appreciate this argument and ruled that he could not make a last-minute switch of defense lawyer, despite receiving an offer from another lawyer earlier that day. Judge Burrell ruled that the trial would go ahead with his current team and that they would be allowed to provide evidence that painted Kaczynski as paranoid Schizophrenic. In effect he was saying that Kaczynski’s defense was out of his hands. Because opening arguments had been interrupted when the trial began, they needed to be pushed back to the following day.
However, that night, Kaczynski tried to hang himself in his cell, using his underwear. He was found before he could do any significant damage, but it showed that he was getting desperate. It seemed that he would rather die a sane man than live as a mentally ill one.
The next day, court recommenced and it seemed that the judge was not made aware of Kaczynski’s suicide attempt the previous night, if he was, things would have likely played out differently. As soon as the opening statements had begun, Kaczynski once again interrupted proceedings and announced his decision to dismiss his legal team and represent himself. Surprisingly the judge allowed this interruption and even more surprisingly agreed to allow Kaczynski to represent himself, on the condition that he submit to psychological evaluation to ascertain his competency. With no other option Kaczynski agreed but insists that both he and the prosecution can provide an expert of their choosing.
After a week of evaluation, a report is submitted to the court stating that Kaczynski is fit to represent himself but also states that he is likely Paranoid Schizophrenic with episodic symptoms. It also says that he likely has Paranoid Personality Disorder, with Avoidant and Antisocial Features. Both prosecution and defense agreed this meant Ted could represent himself but Judge Burrell, after saying he could represent himself, then rejected Kaczynski’s request saying that it would take too much time for Ted to build his own case.
As far as I can tell the judge only agreed to it in the first place as a way to get Ted to willingly submit to a psychological evaluation. Pretty much this meant that Ted would have to either represent himself now, with no preparation or make a plea deal. If Ted continued to plead not guilty but was found guilty, he would likely receive the death penalty.
The alternative was to plead guilty and make a plea deal. Ted took the latter, pleading guilty on all counts in return exempting himself from the Death penalty. On May the 4th Kaczynski was sentenced to four life sentences to be served consecutively, bringing an end to one of the most protracted and the most expensive man hunts in law enforcement history.
Wrap-up
At the sentencing hearing the court used excerpts from his diary as evidence to recommend that Ted be kept in a maximum-security prison for the entirety of his sentence. It was here that the court released the contents of the diary from which Kaczynski had documented the entire course of his bombing spree, it contained his Ideology, experiments that he conducted refining his bomb making skills, commentary on the UNABOM case, every thought he had, ever person he had met, every event that was noteworthy to Ted Kaczynski was written in this book. The image that Kaczynski had tried to craft with his letters and his manifesto, the image of the principled crusader, a martyr for the people, one that foresaw the dangers of technology and did all he could to warn the masses.
This image that he tried so hard to craft was entirely brought down by this book. I will give you two excerpts from it.
First was a commentary on the bomb that was placed by Kaczynski at U.C Berkeley. This was the bomb that injured Diogenes Angelakos. It reads: ‘Not long after foregoing, I think in June or July, I went to U. of California Berkeley and placed in computer Science Building a bomb consisting of a pipebomb in a gallon can of gasoline. According to newspaper, vice chairman of computer sci. dept. picked it up.
He wsa [was] considered to be ‘out of danger of losing any fingers’ but would need further surgery for bone and tendon damage in hand. Apparently pipebomb went off but did not ignite gasoline. I don’t understand it. Frustrated.
Trveling [Travelling] expenses for raids such as the foregoing are very hard on my slender financial resources.’
The second excert is on the Scrutton bomb, the first bomb that Kaczynski managed to get a kill with. He refers to the bomb as Experiment 97. Here is what he wrote: ‘Experiment 97. Dec.
11. 1985 I planted bomb disguised to look like scrap of lumber behind RenTech computer store in Sacramento. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 20, the ‘operator’ (owner? manager?)
of the store was killed, ‘blown to bits’ on Dec. 12. Excellent. Humane way to eiiminate [eliminate] somebody.
He probably never felt a thing. 25000-dollar reward offered. Rather flattering.’
During this script I have made an effort to describe the effects of Kaczynski’s bombs using only the facts of the event as they occured. I did this in order to not make a macabre spectacle of these people’s misfortunes, and suffering. The exception of this was the Hugh Scrutton bombing.
For that I made a point of researching the event as much as possible, finding reports on the effect that it had on his body, timings of events, locations, all that I could so I could describe the precise effect. Perhaps if Kaczynski had seen what this had done to Hugh Scrutton, he would not have described the kill as ‘excellent’, if he had seen that it took him half an hour to die, he would not have described it as ‘humane.’
Whatever you can say about Kaczynski, and you can say a lot about him, you cannot deny that he is an interesting case in the history and law enforcement, in psychology, in the world of mass murderers. In many ways he is a collection of walking, talking contradictions. A genius who didn’t have an ounce of emotional intelligence. A scientist who was incapable of questioning his own actions.
A prolific writer who spent the vast majority of his life avoiding people. A hermit who was more famous than most B-list celebrities. The list goes on but you get the point.
It is often the case that Hollywood deifies serial killers. They glamourise their crimes and their personalities into that of an infamous legend. In the case of Ted Bundy, it was the intelligent and good-looking guy, who could achieve anything through his sheer charm.
Ted Kaczynski’s legend was that of a genius who saw flaws in society and chose to live life his own way, on his own terms. Reprehensible yes but smart enough to run rings around the FBI for 18 years, in writing this is called the anti-hero. A person that for all their bad qualities has a redeeming quality, Bundy had his charm, Kaczynski had his intelligence.
But if writing this script has taught me only one thing it is that these legends are true works of fiction, Kaczynski was not a man acting on principle, he was a man who felt he had been mistreated by the world and was lashing out at those he felt responsible. He has nothing that makes him exceptional other than his ability to justify his misguided anger more eloquently than other serial killers.
I will leave you with a quote from the wife of Charles Epstien who spoke to Kaczynski during the sentencing hearing.
‘Given that your victims were blinded by your bombs may your eyes be deprived of the light of the moon, the stars, the sun and the beauty of nature for the rest of your life;
Given that your victims lost their hearing because of your bombs, may your ears become deaf as your eardrums implode from the stony silence of your surroundings for the rest of your life;
Given that your victims were maimed by your bombs, may your fingers, your hands, your arms, your legs and your body be shattered by the violence and hatred you wrought against others, the violence and hatred which has already mangled and distorted your mind;
Given that you victims were killed by your bombs, may your own eventual death occur as you have lived, in a solitary manner, without compassion or love.‘
Dismembered Appendices
If you picked up on it, Ted Kaczynski was on the list of potential suspects just not even in the top 1000, of their entire list the FBI had him placed at 2,416th in their list of likely suspects, so I mean, they may have gotten to him eventually… maybe.
During the 1993 bombing at Yale, I found several reports of a call that was made on the same day as the attack to a switchboard at the Veteran Affairs Medical Center. The anonymous caller simply said ‘You are Next’. And then hung up the phone. This was apparently aimed at David Gelernter’s brother Joel, who worked at the Veterans Affairs Hospital.
Now it wasn’t out of the question for Kaczynski to ridicule his victims, he did this on several occasions but I do find it very unlikely that he would do it in this way, based on what we know about him. First of all he was a notorious luddite and abhorred the use of phones, second was that David Gelenter was selected randomly from a list of Yale professors. Why would Kaczynski go to the trouble of finding out, not only who his brother was but where he worked and how to contact him, if only to call him and say ‘you are next’.
What is strange is that this event was mentioned in a couple of publications, which would mean that 1. This actually happened, which I find unlikely. 2.
That someone made it up for some unknown reason or 3. Just by coincidence on the same day that David Galenter received a bomb, his brother Joel recives a random phone call stating ‘you are next’ but the two incidents are just completely unrelated. There is also option 4.
That some piece of information has been misquoted at some point and then repeated by multiple press who misinterpreted the quote.
If you are interested, Ted Kaczynski is still alive, he is a prolific writer, and is in contact with many neo-anarchist philosophers. He spends something like 23 hours a day in solitary confinement of which he spends that time writing. And if you would like to contact him you can, although I wouldn’t recommend it, you’re likely just going to annoy some poor prison clerk who sifts through all of the letters sent to him. If you want his address, get involved with neo-anarchist philosophers, or contact a journalist that has spoken with him.
But I’d recommend you don’t give him your return address.
Key Takeaways
- Ted Kaczynski, the UNABOMBER, carried out an 18-year bombing campaign from a 10x12 foot cabin, killing 3 people and costing the FBI $50 million.
- The FBI’s investigation was severely hampered by Kaczynski’s meticulous anonymity, leaving no fingerprints, witnesses, or forensic evidence at bomb sites.
- Kaczynski was finally captured after his brother David recognized his anti-technology ideology in the published manifesto and anonymously tipped off investigators.
- Despite his public image as a principled anti-technology crusader, Kaczynski’s private diary revealed him as a vengeful killer who found his first murder ‘excellent’ and ‘flattering.’
- Kaczynski was ranked only 2,416th on the FBI’s suspect list before his brother’s tip, demonstrating how effectively he had hidden in plain sight.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does UNABOM stand for?
UNABOM stands for Universities, Airlines, Bombs.
When and where was the first UNABOMBER bomb placed?
The first bomb was placed on the morning of May 25th, 1978 in the parking lot of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.
What was the UNABOMBER’s cabin size?
The UNABOMBER’s cabin measured only 10 by 12 feet.
How long did the UNABOMBER’s bombing spree last and how much did it cost the FBI?
The UNABOMBER’s bombing spree lasted 18 years and cost the FBI 50 million dollars.
What were the initials ‘F.C.’ that appeared on the UNABOMBER’s bombs?
The initials ‘F.C.’ stood for ‘Freedom Club,’ an anarchist group the UNABOMBER claimed to represent.
Who was the first person killed by the UNABOMBER?
Hugh Scrutton, the owner of a computer rental business called RenTech in Sacramento, California, was the first person killed by the UNABOMBER on December 11th, 1985.
How was the UNABOMBER finally identified?
The UNABOMBER was identified after his brother David Kaczynski sent an anonymous tip to the FBI, noting similarities between the UNABOMBER’s manifesto and letters he had received from his estranged brother Ted.
What was the title of the UNABOMBER’s manifesto?
The UNABOMBER’s manifesto was titled ‘Industrial Society and its Future’.
What was Ted Kaczynski’s IQ?
Ted Kaczynski’s IQ was tested at 167 as a child, and later in life as high as 187, placing him in the category of genius.
What was the outcome of Ted Kaczynski’s trial?
Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty on all counts in exchange for exemption from the death penalty, and on May 4th was sentenced to four life sentences to be served consecutively.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Unabomber: The Biggest Manhunt in FBI History (Part 1)
- Hero image source by Eoghanacht / openverse, cc0.
