1996: Ted Kaczynski is arrested by the FBI at his cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. The Unabomber's reign of terror is over.
Kaczynski turned his anti-technology, anti-industrial obsessions into the most sustained mail-bombing campaign in American history. Between 1978 and 1995, he mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured another 23. Although most of his intended victims were college professors and scientists, Kaczynski targeted others as well, including an advertising executive and the head of the California Forestry Association. Both were killed.
His "Unabomber Manifesto," which read like a deranged libertarian screed as much as anything else, assailed leftists and their "collectivism" even as it warned of technology's dangers. It preached an extreme form of individualism, positing an anarchic world where people would be free to "control the circumstances of their own lives." It was a rambling, occasionally incoherent diatribe.
But a verbatim publication of his 35,000-word Manifesto was a condition the Unabomber demanded for ending his bombing campaign and, upon urging from the Justice Department, both The New York Times and Washington Post complied, printing the entire document in their Sept. 19, 1995 editions.
Kaczynski had baffled investigators for years but his luck finally ran out when his younger brother, David, recognized the writing style behind the Manifesto and alerted authorities. With a suspect to work with, the FBI quickly pieced together enough evidence to make an arrest.
Kaczynski plea-bargained his way into a life-without-parole sentence at the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, where he languishes to this day.
In a final, ironic twist, a number of items seized from Kaczynski's Montana cabin during his arrest were auctioned off over the internet in 2006.
(Source: Various)
This article first appeared on Wired.com Apr. 3, 2007.
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