NewsNational News

Actions

"Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski found dead in prison cell

tedk.jpg
Posted
and last updated

Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the man known as the "Unabomber" for a series of bombings targeting scientists, was found dead in his prison cell Saturday morning, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons told CBS News.

Kaczynski was found unresponsive in his prison cell around 8 a.m. Saturday morning, the spokesperson, Kristie Beshears, said.

A cause of death was not immediately known.

tedk.jpg
Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski

At the time of his death, Kaczynski was being held at the U.S. Bureau of Prison's FMC Butner medical center in eastern North Carolina, where he had been transferred in Dec. 2021. The reasons for his transfer were not made public. Previously, he was serving a life sentence at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison in Colorado.

Kaczynski terrorized the nation with a mail bombing campaign that ran from 1978 to 1995. He sent homemade bombs to victims, CBS San Francisco previously reported, cumulatively killing three people and injuring 24.

The Harvard-trained mathematician and former UC Berkeley math professor targeted anyone having to do with the advancement of technology.
Kaczynski was captured on April 3, 1996, after an almost two-decade manhunt. He was found in Montana living near Lincoln in Lewis & Clark County in a 10-by-14 foot plywood and tarpaper cabin, where he'd been living since the 1970s.

KACZYNSKI CABIN
FILE - This April 6, 1996 file photo shows Ted Kaczynski's cabin in the woods of Lincoln, Mont. Twenty years after the arrest of Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, some Lincoln residents remember him as an odd recluse who ate rabbits and lived without electricity, while others say he had a funny, personable side. Kaczynski is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, for a series of bombings, most through the mail, that killed three people and injured 23 others over 17 years.

His brother David Kaczynski and wife Linda Patrik turned him in to the FBI. David Kaczynski recognized his brother's handwriting in an anti-technology manifesto, titled "Industrial Society and Its Future," was published in national newspapers.

Kaczynski pleaded guilty to charges including transportation of an explosive with intent to kill or injure, mailing an explosive device with the intent to kill or injure, and use of a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence.

Covering Kaczynski