Ted Kaczynski.
He is infamously known as the Unabomber. He led the longest and most expensive investigation in FBI history. By all accounts, he was nothing short of a genius. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard. In 1962, he enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned a master's degree and a doctorate in mathematics in 1964 and 1967, respectively.
Maxwell Reade, a member of his dissertation committee, estimated that "maybe 10 or 12 people in the country understood" Kaczynski's thesis. Allen Shields, Kaczynski's dissertation supervisor, called Kaczynski's work "the best he has ever supervised."
He was the youngest assistant professor of mathematics to teach in the history of the University of California, Berkeley.
And then, on June 30, 1969, Ted resigned.
After resigning, he built a secluded cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. He figured he could live a simple life with very little money and without electricity or running water. By 1978, he felt that simply isolating himself from society in nature wasn't enough. Self-sufficiency wasn't enough. He felt that technology was destroying the one thing he loved: nature.
His cabin and its interior
He started building bombs. Here is a table of all the bombs the FBI believes he sent:
He killed three people and injured twenty-three others.
And that's where he made things really difficult. These bombs were delivered by hand or sent through the mail. Over time, the bombs became more sophisticated. Sometimes, Kaczynski would put strange initials or fingerprints on them that weren't his own.
His first series of bombs included one placed in the cargo hold of an American Airlines flight. It was defective and failed to detonate. It released smoke and caused an emergency landing. Had the bomb exploded, it would have "annihilated the aircraft," as its potential explosive power demonstrates.
Kaczynski left false clues all around each bomb he sent. Metal plates with initials on them. Sometimes there were small notes inside bombs that didn't explode. He used $1 stamps to mail the boxes. One of his bombs was inside a Sloan Wilson novel. There were branches and pieces of wood in other boxes.
The lack of a clear pattern and the almost random targeting made him virtually impossible to detect. He took extreme care never to leave fingerprints. When the FBI found fingerprints from some of his later devices, they did not match Kaczysnki's.
The investigators had literally nothing. Not even nearly 20 years after Ted started making bombs. That is, until his brother's wife insisted he understand Ted's whereabouts.
In 1978, Ted worked at his brother and father's rubber foam factory. His brother fired him for writing insulting notes to a supervisor he wanted to date.
In 1995, Ted sent letters to the media asking them to publish his 35,000-word essay entitled " Industrial Society and Its Future ." This essay was later dubbed "the Unabomber manifesto " by the FBI.
When his brother, David, read the manifesto, he noticed the writing style. When he looked through old family papers, he found letters Ted had sent to newspapers protesting the impact of technology on nature and humanity. His brother then hired a private investigator and a lawyer to gather details to send to the FBI.
The FBI had a $1 million reward for information leading to the Unabomber's identification. The problem was that many letters claimed to be from this person, and the FBI was overwhelmed with thousands of false leads and suspects to investigate.
After 20 years, the only flaw in Ted's plan was his attempt to communicate with the media and the fact that he had a brother who took an interest in the case. Otherwise, no one would ever have found him.
The FBI, prior to David's involvement, was convinced that Kaczynski was from the Chicago area, had ties to Salt Lake City, and, in the 1990s, had ties to the San Francisco area.
In other words, they had nothing. After 20 years of searching.
It was his brother who identified him. Who gave the FBI crucial information about where he was living in the Montana backcountry.
I don't think any human being can justify what Ted Kaczynski did. It's nothing short of disgusting and inhumane.
Nothing less than terrorism.