Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski is led to a car in federal court in Helena, Montana, on April 4, 1996. © John Youngbear/AP/dpa
From child prodigy to mathematics professor, then to dropout and serial assassin: The life of the American Ted Kaczynski is an unusual and bitter story. Now he is dead.
Washington - American assassin Ted Kaczynski, known as the "Unabomber," has died in custody at the age of 81. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons said Kaczynski was found unconscious in his cell on Saturday night. Employees had initiated life-saving measures and had him brought to a hospital. There he was declared dead. The authority did not initially provide any information on the cause of death.
Between 1978 and 1995, the former Harvard graduate and declared enemy of technology killed three people and injured 23 others in a series of parcel bomb attacks. According to a psychiatric report, he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and murdered out of an abysmal hatred of technological progress. He chose as victims mainly employees of universities (Un) and airlines (Airlines - A) - hence the name "Unabomber".
Most recently, Kaczynski was housed in a medical unit of a detention center in the state of North Carolina, according to authorities. He had previously been detained in a maximum security prison in the state of Colorado.
One of the most wanted people in the U.S. for 18 years
Kaczynski was considered a highly gifted and mathematical prodigy. At the age of 16, he began studying at the elite Harvard University. Later he became a professor of mathematics himself. However, Kaczynski broke off his academic career early and retired in 1971 to a lonely cabin in the mountains of the state of Montana, where he lived like a hermit without running water or electricity.
He wrote down his hatred of technological progress in a manifesto that he sent to two renowned US newspapers. In it, he said that the attacks he carried out were "extreme, but necessary". For 18 years, he was one of the most wanted people in the United States. In 1996, he was caught after his brother revealed his hiding place in Montana. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
In an interview with Time magazine in 1999 during his imprisonment, Kaczynski said he would have preferred to be sentenced to death rather than life imprisonment. He accused his brother of handing him over to the police after 18 years in the underground. "He knows very well that imprisonment is an unspeakable humiliation for me and that I would have preferred death without hesitation." dpa
