Unabomber Ted Kaczynski dead in US prison at age 81

HOUSTON, United States

Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, died Saturday in a federal prison in the US state of North Carolina, according to officials.

The Bureau of Prisons in the town of Butner, 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of the state capital of Raleigh, said Kaczynski, 81, was found in his cell at 12.25 a.m. local time.

"Inmate Theodore John Kaczynski was found unresponsive at the Federal Medical Center," according to officials. "Mr. Kaczynski was transported by EMS to a local hospital and subsequently pronounced deceased by hospital personnel."

Kaczynski gained worldwide notoriety as the Unabomber after mailing and hand-delivering homemade pipe bombs over a nearly two-decade period from 1978 to 1995 which killed three people and injured 23 others.

He targeted workers from United Airlines, American Airlines and Boeing as well as academic administrators at universities throughout the US, including Yale, Vanderbilt, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, University of Utah, University of California, Berkeley and University of Illinois, Chicago.

The FBI conducted what has been described as the most expensive investigation in its history during the 17-year manhunt for Kaczynski. The term Unabomber derived from the code name UNABOM which was given to the case.

Kaczynski was a Harvard-educated math professor who sent US newspapers a 35,000-word manifesto in 1995 known as the Unabomber Manifesto which ultimately helped lead to his arrest. He pleaded guilty in 1998 and was sentenced to eight life sentences.

He had been serving his sentence at a Supermax prison in Colorado before being transferred to the North Carolina facility in December 2021.