75 Facts About Ted Kaczynski

Ted Kaczynski was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle and lone wolf terrorism campaign to further his political agenda.

Ted Kaczynski murdered three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995 in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the natural environment.

Ted Kaczynski authored a roughly 35,000-word manifesto and social critique called Industrial Society and Its Future which opposes all forms of technology, rejects leftism and fascism, advocates primitivism, and ultimately suggests violent revolution.

In 1971, Ted Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills to become self-sufficient.

In 1979, Ted Kaczynski became the subject of what was, by the time of his arrest in 1996, the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 1995, Ted Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times promising to "desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary in attracting attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies.

Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and was sentenced to several consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

Theodore John Ted Kaczynski was born in Chicago on May 22,1942, to working-class parents Wanda Theresa and Theodore Richard Ted Kaczynski, a sausage maker.

From first to fourth grade, Kaczynski attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago, where administrators described him as healthy and well-adjusted.

In 1952, three years after his brother David was born, the family moved to suburban Evergreen Park, Illinois, and Ted Kaczynski transferred to Evergreen Park Central Junior High School.

Ted Kaczynski later described this as a pivotal event: previously he had socialized with his peers and was even seen as a leader, but after skipping ahead of them he felt he did not fit in with the older children, who bullied him.

Ted Kaczynski attended Evergreen Park Community High School, where he excelled academically.

Ted Kaczynski was always regarded as a walking brain, so to speak.

Ted Kaczynski became associated with a group of like-minded boys interested in science and mathematics, known as the "briefcase boys" due to their penchant for carrying briefcases.

Ted Kaczynski skipped the eleventh grade, and, by attending summer school, he graduated at age 15.

Ted Kaczynski was one of his school's five National Merit finalists and was encouraged to apply to Harvard University.

Ted Kaczynski earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Harvard in 1962, finishing with a GPA of 3.12.

In 1962, Ted Kaczynski enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned his master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics in 1964 and 1967, respectively.

At Michigan, Ted Kaczynski specialized in complex analysis, specifically geometric function theory.

Ted Kaczynski received one F, five B's and twelve A's in his eighteen courses at the university.

Ted Kaczynski arranged to meet with a psychiatrist but changed his mind in the waiting room and discussed other things instead, without disclosing his original reason for making the appointment.

Ted Kaczynski described this episode as a "major turning point" in his life.

In late 1967, the 25-year-old Ted Kaczynski became an acting assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught mathematics.

Ted Kaczynski assumed the position of the youngest assistant professor in the history of the university.

Ted Kaczynski added that "Kaczynski seemed almost pathologically shy", and that, as far as he knew, Kaczynski made no close friends in the department, noting that efforts to bring him more into the "swing of things" had failed.

Ted Kaczynski used an old bicycle to get to town, and a volunteer at the local library said he visited frequently to read classic works in their original languages.

Ted Kaczynski's cabin was described by a census taker in the 1990 census as containing a bed, two chairs, storage trunks, a gas stove, and lots of books.

Ted Kaczynski dedicated himself to reading about sociology and political philosophy, including the works of Jacques Ellul.

Ted Kaczynski's father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 1990 and held a family meeting without Ted Kaczynski later that year to map out their future.

On October 2,1990, Ted Kaczynski's father shot and killed himself in his home.

Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski mailed or hand-delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that cumulatively killed three people and injured 23 others.

Ted Kaczynski purposely left misleading clues in the devices and took extreme care in preparing them to avoid leaving fingerprints; fingerprints found on some of the devices did not match those found on letters attributed to Kaczynski.

Ted Kaczynski had returned to Chicago for the May 1978 bombing and stayed there for a time to work with his father and brother at a foam rubber factory.

Ted Kaczynski left false clues in most bombs, which he intentionally made hard to find to make them appear more legitimate.

Ted Kaczynski sent one bomb embedded in a copy of Sloan Wilson's novel Ice Brothers.

The FBI theorized that Ted Kaczynski's crimes involved a theme of nature, trees, and wood.

Ted Kaczynski often included bits of a tree branch and bark in his bombs; his selected targets included Percy Wood and Leroy Wood.

In 1993, after a six-year break, Ted Kaczynski mailed a bomb to the home of Charles Epstein from the University of California, San Francisco.

In 1995, Ted Kaczynski mailed several letters to media outlets outlining his goals and demanding a major newspaper print his 35,000-word essay Industrial Society and Its Future verbatim.

Ted Kaczynski stated he would "desist from terrorism" if this demand was met.

Ted Kaczynski used a typewriter to write his manuscript, capitalizing entire words for emphasis, in lieu of italics.

Ted Kaczynski always referred to himself as either "we" or "FC", though there is no evidence that he worked with others.

Ted Kaczynski argued that most people spend their time engaged in ultimately unfulfilling pursuits because of technological advances; he called these "surrogate activities", wherein people strive toward artificial goals, including scientific work, consumption of entertainment, political activism, and following sports teams.

Ted Kaczynski predicted that technological advances would lead to extensive and ultimately oppressive forms of human control, including genetic engineering, and that human beings would be adjusted to meet the needs of social systems rather than vice versa.

Ted Kaczynski called for a revolution to force the collapse of the worldwide technological system, and held a life close to nature, in particular primitivist lifestyles, as an ultimate ideal.

Ted Kaczynski argued that the erosion of human freedom is a natural product of an industrial society because, in his words, "the system has to regulate human behavior closely in order to function", and that reform of the system is impossible.

Ted Kaczynski said that the system has not yet fully achieved control over all human behavior and is in the midst of a struggle to gain that control.

Ted Kaczynski stated that the task of those who oppose industrial society is to promote stress within and upon the society and to propagate an anti-technology ideology, one that offers the counter-ideal of nature.

Ted Kaczynski added that a revolution would be possible only when industrial society is sufficiently unstable.

Ted Kaczynski defined leftists as "mainly socialists, collectivists, 'politically correct' types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like".

Ted Kaczynski believed that over-socialization and feelings of inferiority are primary drivers of leftism, and derided it as "one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world".

Ted Kaczynski added that the type of movement he envisioned must be anti-leftist and refrain from collaboration with leftists as, in his view, "leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology".

Ted Kaczynski never tried to align himself with the far-right at any point before or after his arrest.

Ted Kaczynski wrote a second book in 2016 titled, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, that does not include the manifesto, but delves deeply into an analysis of why technological society cannot be reformed and the dynamics of revolutionary movements.

Ted Kaczynski searched through old family papers and found letters dating to the 1970s that Ted had sent to newspapers to protest the abuses of technology using phrasing similar to that in the manifesto.

Ted Kaczynski forwarded the essay to the San Francisco-based task force.

Ted Kaczynski had received assurances from the FBI that he would remain anonymous and that his brother would not learn who had turned him in, but his identity was leaked to CBS News in early April 1996.

Kaczynski's lawyers, headed by Montana federal public defenders Michael Donahoe and Judy Clarke, attempted to enter an insanity defense to avoid the death penalty, but Kaczynski rejected this strategy.

Sally Johnson, the psychiatrist who examined Ted Kaczynski, concluded that he suffered from "paranoid" schizophrenia, though the validity of this diagnosis has been criticized.

Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz said Ted Kaczynski was not psychotic, but had a schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder.

Ted Kaczynski later tried to withdraw this plea, claiming the judge had coerced him, but Judge Garland Ellis Burrell Jr.

In 2006, Burrell ordered that items from Ted Kaczynski's cabin be sold at a "reasonably advertised Internet auction".

Almost immediately after being convicted, Kaczynski began serving his life sentences without the possibility of parole at ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Early in his imprisonment, Kaczynski befriended Ramzi Yousef and Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, respectively; they discussed religion and politics and formed a friendship which lasted until McVeigh's execution in 2001.

In October 2005, Kaczynski offered to donate two rare books to the Melville J Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois, the location of his first two attacks.

Ted Kaczynski's writings are among the most popular selections in the University of Michigan's special collections.

In 2011, Ted Kaczynski was a person of interest in the Chicago Tylenol murders.

Ted Kaczynski complained of rectal bleeding in March 2021, and on December 14,2021, he was transferred to Federal Medical Center, Butner, in North Carolina.

Ted Kaczynski was receiving biweekly chemotherapy until March 2023, when he began to decline all treatment due to unpleasant side effects and his poor prognosis.

In May 2023, Kaczynski was noted by a prison oncologist to be "depressed" and was referred for a psychiatric evaluation.

At 12:23 am on June 10,2023, Ted Kaczynski was found in his cell unresponsive with no pulse after hanging himself from a handicap rail with a shoelace.

Ted Kaczynski was taken to Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, where his blood pressure remained low until he was pronounced dead at 8:07 AM EDT.

Ted Kaczynski has been portrayed in and inspired artistic works in popular culture.

Ted Kaczynski was referenced by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in the 2000 Wired article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us".

Joy stated that Kaczynski "is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument".