Ted Kaczynski went from being a teenage math prodigy to one of the most notorious criminals in US history. Known as the “Unabomber,” he carried out a bombing campaign that lasted nearly two decades. Now, Netflix’s Unabomber is bringing his story and the deadly attacks back into focus,
How many people did the Unabomber kill and injure?
Netflix’s new film, Unabomber, directed by Janus Metz, has drawn attention to the real story of Ted Kaczynski.
Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski sent or placed 16 bombs across the US, killing three people and injuring 23 others, according to Cosmopolitan.
His bombing campaign began in May 1978, when a package bomb was found at the University of Illinois at Chicago, injuring a campus security officer. Over the following years, he sent or placed bombs at universities, on an aircraft, and at the homes or workplaces of people he considered connected to technology and industry.
His victims included Hugh Scrutton, Thomas Mosser, and Gilbert Murray, who were killed in the attacks, as per TIME.
The FBI called its investigation “UNABOM,” a shorthand linked to its early focus on university and airline bombings. The media later turned that into “Unabomber.”
Also read: ‘Unabomber’ review: The education of a terrorist on Netflix
Who was Ted Kaczynski?
Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski was born in Chicago in 1942 and showed exceptional mathematical ability from an early age.
At just 16 years old, he entered Harvard University, later earning a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Michigan. He then became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, but resigned in 1969, as per TIME.
He eventually moved to a remote cabin near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived without electricity or running water, growing increasingly hostile to modern technology and industrial society.
Also read: Ted Kaczynski, known as ‘Unabomber’, found dead in US prison
What happened to Ted Kaczynski after his arrest?
On April 3, 1996, federal agents arrested Kaczynski at his cabin. Inside, they found bomb-making materials, a typewriter, coded diary entries, around 40,000 pages of handwritten notes, and a completed bomb.
Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998 to federal charges connected to the bombings and was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years, with no possibility of parole. He was held in a high-security prison in Colorado before being transferred to a federal medical center in North Carolina in 2021.
While in prison, Kaczynski was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by a psychiatrist, though he rejected the idea that he was mentally incapable of understanding his actions. Kaczynski died in prison on June 10, 2023, at age 81, two years after being diagnosed with rectal cancer.