Source: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images / Getty
Ted Kaczynski, the man known as the “Unabomber”, has reportedly died by suicide in custody at a federal prison medical center in North Carolina.
Kaczynski, 81, was found unresponsive at about 12:25 a.m. Saturday at Federal Medical Center Butner in Butner, North Carolina, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said in a news release. Staff undertook life-saving measures and requested EMS professionals, who transported Kaczynski to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Kaczynski was previously in a maximum security facility in Colorado but was moved to the federal medical center in Butner in December 2021 due to poor health.
Kaczynski is said to be America’s most prolific bomber. Between 1978 and 1995, he placed or mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured two dozen others, according to authorities.
In 1995, he demanded newspapers publish a long manuscript he had written, saying the killings would continue otherwise. Both New York Times and Washington Post published the 35,000-word manifesto later that year at the recommendation of the U.S. Attorney General and the director of the FBI.
Kaczynski’s sister-in-law, Linda Patrik, was one of the first to identify Kaczynski as the Unabomber after reading the Unabomber’s writing.
Patrik and Kaczynski’s brother eventually decided to turn him into the FBI, and on April 3, 1995, a 9-man SWAT team apprehended Kaczynski in his cabin in Montana.
Kaczynski went on trial in Sacramento, California. He pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for life in prison without parole in 1998.
