American assassin Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” has died in prison at the age of 81. The U.S. Department of Prisons said Kaczynski was found unconscious in his cell on Saturday night. Employees had taken life-saving measures and had him taken to the hospital. There he was declared dead. The authorities initially gave no information on the cause of death.
The former Harvard graduate and declared enemy of technology killed three people and injured 23 others in a series of parcel bomb attacks between 1978 and 1995. According to a psychiatric report, he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and murdered out of abysmal hatred of technical progress. His victims were mainly employees of universities (Un) and airlines (Airlines – A) – hence the term “Unabomber”.
Most recently, according to authorities, Kaczynski was housed in a medical unit at a detention center in the state of North Carolina. He was previously held in a maximum security prison in Colorado.
One of the most wanted people in the US for 18 years
Kaczynski was considered a highly talented and mathematical prodigy. At the age of 16 he began to study at the elite Harvard University. He later became a mathematics professor himself. However, Kaczynski broke off his academic career early and in 1971 retired to a lonely cabin in the mountains of the state of Montana, where he lived like a hermit without running water or electricity.
He wrote down his hatred of technological progress in a manifesto that he sent to two well-known US newspapers. In it he said the attacks he had carried out were “extreme but necessary”. For 18 years he was one of the most wanted people in the United States. He was caught in 1996 after his brother betrayed his hiding place in Montana. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
In a 1999 interview with Time magazine while in prison, Kaczynski said he would rather have been sentenced to death than to life imprisonment. He accused his brother of handing him over to the police after 18 years underground. “He knows very well that imprisonment is an unspeakable humiliation for me and that I would have preferred death without hesitation.”
