Inside the True Story Behind “Unabomber”

The subject of the Netflix thriller killed three people and injured 23 over nearly two decades

NEED TO KNOW

• Ted Kaczynski was the “Unabomber,” targeting those he believed harmed the environment through technology
• His 17-year bombing spree killed three people and injured 23, leading to the FBI’s longest and costliest investigation
• Kaczynski’s sister-in-law and brother recognized his writing in the published Unabomber manifesto, leading to his 1996 arrest and imprisonment

The “Unabomber” Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski terrorized the United States for 17 years.

He killed three people and injured at least 23 more during his spree, which began in 1978 and concluded in 1995.

He mainly targeted individuals who he felt encouraged technological progression at the cost of the environment. He sent most of his homemade explosives through the mail, though he planted some bombs at specific sites, including a computer store, himself.

The Netflix film Unabomber, which premiered on Sept. 25, dramatizes the FBI’s hunt for Kaczynski, which was the longest and most expensive in the agency’s history.

Find out the true story behind Unabomber, which stars Jacob Tremblay as a young Kaczynski and Shailene Woodley as one of the FBI agents who ultimately took him down.

He was regarded as a genius from childhood

Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago. A child prodigy in mathematics, he graduated high school at 15 and enrolled at Harvard University on a scholarship at 16. After earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1962, he obtained his master’s and doctorate’s degrees from the University of Michigan. In 1967, he became the youngest assistant professor ever at University of California, Berkeley.

While he excelled academically, Kaczynski struggled with interpersonal relationships. Kaczynski’s brother, David, previously told PEOPLE that while they were close as children, Kaczynski was cold to their parents. David recalled that his brother spent most of his time alone in his room and had few friends in high school and none in college.

He allegedly had paranoid schizophrenia, though his diagnoses have been contested

Kaczynski resigned abruptly from UC Berkeley after two years and moved back in with his parents in Illinois, where David said he became “extremely depressed” with no plans for his future. He later built his infamous cabin in Montana.

David also alleged that as an adult, Kaczynski wrote their parents a letter saying he didn’t believe they ever loved him as a person and that they only ever valued his intellect. When their father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died by suicide in 1990, Kaczynski did not attend his memorial, but did call his mother.

Over time, David said, it became clear that Kaczynski was increasingly paranoid, and later a government psychiatrist diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, though that has been debated, according to the Indiana Law Journal.

He took part in a psychological experiment in college

When Kaczynski was a teenager at Harvard, he agreed to participate in psychological experiments led by Dr. Henry Murray, a psychologist who previously worked in the governmental Office of Strategic Services working to develop personality tests for employees and monitor brainwashing tactics done by the military, per The Guardian.

Participants in the study Kaczynski took part in were told that they would debate another student for the experiment, but in reality, the experiments measured participants’ heart and breath rates while a lawyer interrogated, berated and mocked them about their personal and philosophical beliefs about the world. Murray and his research team observed the interactions from behind a one-way mirror.

The Washington Post reported that the experiments may have been part of MKUltra (the CIA’s mind control program) and possibly exacerbated Kaczynski’s alleged delusions.

He built his own home off the grid

In 1971, David told PEOPLE, Kaczynski left his parents’ home and wrote them a note that made them fear he was experiencing suicidal ideation. Weeks later, he arrived at David’s apartment in Montana, and the brothers purchased 1.4 acres of land together in Lincoln. There, Kaczynski built a cabin from the ground up. It had no running water or electricity.

About five years later, David moved to Texas, and he and Kaczynski exchanged letters monthly. He was initially worried about Kaczynski being isolated, but said he was later relieved to find that Kaczynski seemingly had a sense of community from his local librarian and mailman.

He killed three people and injured 23 others over 17 years

Kaczynski’s first known bombing was in May 1978, when he mailed a homemade explosive to a professor at the University of Illinois’ Chicago Circle campus, The New York Times reported. The package had a Northwestern University return address and was returned to its ostensible sender. A Northwestern campus security guard opened it on May 25, 1978, and was badly injured.

His second was less than a year later, when he left a bomb in a box at a Northwestern University Technological Institute on May 9, 1979, which injured the student who opened it, per the FBI. That November, a bomb he mailed detonated on an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., injuring 12. The media dubbed him the “Unabomber” from the FBI’s case code “UNABOM,” or “University and Airline bomber.”

Kaczynski next mailed a bomb to United Airlines president Percy A. Wood, who was injured when he opened it on June 10, 1980.

From 1981 through 1985, Kacynzski planted or sent bombs to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Berkeley (one in a faculty lounge and another in a computer lab), the Boeing Company in Auburn, Wash. and a University of Michigan professor’s home, injuring six people. In December 1985, one of his bombs killed Sacramento computer store owner Hugh Scrutton.

In February 1987, Kaczynski planted a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store, injuring its owner — and was spotted by a witness for the first time. A woman in the location at the time of the bombing gave investigators his description, providing the famous bearded, hooded police sketch of Kaczynski.

The domestic terrorist lay low for more than six years before his next bombing on June 22, 1993, which injured a geneticist in Tiburon, Calif. Two days later, another of his bombs injured David Gelernter, a Yale computer science professor.

Kaczynski’s final two bombings killed their recipients: He mailed a bomb to advertising executive Thomas J. Mosser’s North Caldwell, N.J., home, killing him in December 1994, and on April 24, 1995, he killed Gilbert Murray, the president of the California Forestry Association with another homemade explosive.

He published his manifesto in a major newspaper — and it helped him get caught

Under the name “Freedom Club,” Kaczynski repeatedly sent letters to The New York Times and The Washington Post demanding they publish an essay he wrote or more people would face violence. In 1995, under direction from the FBI, The Washington Post published his manifesto, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future.”

In his essay, Kaczynski argues that the Industrial Revolution and technology increased human suffering.

David and his wife, Linda, recognized similarities between the Unabomber’s manifesto and letters they’d received from Kaczynski. Linda’s childhood friend, a private investigator, brought the letters to a linguistics expert, who said there was an 80% chance the same person wrote the manifesto. At that point, David and Linda flew to Washington, where they met with the FBI and told them where Kaczynski lived.

On April 3, 1996, federal agents surrounded Kaczynski’s Lincoln, Mont., cabin and arrested him. When they searched the property, they found incriminating journals, bomb-making supplies and a live bomb.

The New York Times later reported that David and Linda collected the $1 million reward the FBI promised for information leading to Kaczynski’s arrest and conviction.

He pleaded guilty

In June 1996, Kaczynski was indicted on 10 weapons charges, as well as three murder charges for the deaths of Scrutton, Mosser and Murray. His legal team planned to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, citing Kaczynski’s paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis, but Kaczynski refused, denying he was mentally ill.

In early January 1998, The New York Times reported that Judge Garland E. Burrell, Jr., denied Kaczynski’s request to fire his public defenders because it was too close to the scheduled trial date. Kaczynski then requested to represent himself in court and was denied once more, per the Times.

On Jan. 23, 1998, Kaczynski agreed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. He received multiple life sentences with no chance of parole.

According to Time, Kaczynski served his sentence in a supermax prison in Florence, Colo., and at various times counted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as fellow inmates.

He died in June 2023

Kacynzski, who told Time in 1999 that he “[didn’t] want to live long,” died by suicide on June 11, 2023. He was 81 years old.

Kaczynski was diagnosed with late-stage rectal cancer and transferred to a North Carolina prison medical facility from the supermax Colorado facility prior to his death.

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