Unabomber (1942–)

aka Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski

The Unabomber, named for his initial attacks on universities and airlines, (“un” in his FBI code name was short for university, and “a” referred to airlines), was responsible for placing or mailing 16 package bombs and letter bombs that resulted in three deaths and nearly two dozen injuries in the United States. After one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in the nation's history, the FBI seized Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard-educated mathematician turned recluse, who later pleaded guilty for the attacks.

The Unabomber addressed his first package bomb, crudely made with plumbing pipe and electrical wire from a lamp, to a professor at the University of Illinois. The package was found in a university parking lot on May 25, 1978, and sent back to the return address, at Northwestern University, where the bomb [Page 379]exploded, injuring one person. Although no link was made to Kaczynski at the time, later reports suggest that professors at both universities had rejected Kaczynski's attempts to publish a treatise he wrote against technology and modernization.

The Unabomber struck three more times in the Chicago area—at Northwestern University, in the cargo compartment of American Airlines Flight 444, and at the home of the president of United Airlines—before expanding his scope to universities throughout the country, including two bombs mailed to the University of California, Berkeley. (Kaczynski had been an assistant math professor at the campus in the late 1960s.) Investigators knew that these bombings were linked because the perpetrator engraved the initials “FC” on parts of the bomb or spray-painted them nearby. Otherwise, the Unabomber never left a trace.

In 1985, the Unabomber's attacks increased and became more dangerous. He bombed a computer room at UC Berkeley that May and sent another bomb to the Boeing Co. in Auburn, Washington, the following month (the Boeing bomb was safely disarmed). In November, a package bomb exploded at a University of Michigan professor's home, injuring two. Finally, on December 11, 1985, the Unabomber's most lethal bomb to date was placed in the parking lot of a computer store in Sacramento, California, killing the owner, Hugh Scrutton. For the first time in his seven-year bombing spree, the Unabomber had claimed a life.

Two years later, a police sketch gave the country the only image of the Unabom suspect—a mustached man in a hooded sweatshirt, wearing aviator glasses. The bombings immediately stopped. For six years, the Unabomber remained inactive.