Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, has died in federal prison in the US, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons said on Saturday.
Kaczynski (81) was found dead at about 8am at a prison in North Carolina. The cause of his death was not known.
He had been moved to the prison medical facility in North Carolina after spending two decades in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado for a series of bombings that targeted scientists.
Kaczynski was serving life without the possibility of parole following his 1996 arrest at the cabin where he was living in western Montana.
He pleaded guilty to setting 16 explosions that killed three people and injured 23 others in various parts of the country in 1978-1995.
Years before the September 11th attacks, the Unabomber’s deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans posted packages and boarded aircraft, even virtually shutting down air travel on the west coast in July 1995.
He forced the Washington Post, in conjunction with the New York Times, in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation.
But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski’s brother David and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, recognised the treatise’s tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in the nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.
Authorities in April 1996 found him in a 10ft by 14ft plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, which was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs. – PA