Ted Kaczynski

When Ted Kaczynski was working in a factory with his brother in 1978 in Chicago he had an affair with a female supervisor. But the relationship didn’t go further and turned sour. As the relationship ended, Kaczynski humiliated her by writing crass limericks about her. This resulted in his dismissal from the factory.

Ted Kaczynski was born on 22 May 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were Wanda and Theodore who were Polish Americans. He has a younger brother named David Kaczynski.

When he was a baby, he suffered allergic reaction due to some medication. As a result of this allergy, he was advised to spend some time in isolation while recovering. It was during this time, he started to show changes in his behaviour.

Some reports even claim that the birth of his brother, David, also had severe effect on him.

His family moved to Evergreen Park which was a suburb of Chicago. Kaczynski was a bright child and was often regarded ‘different’ due to his intelligence. He also took part in German language and chess clubs.

Ted Kaczynski went to Evergreen Park Community High School in Illinois, southwest of Chicago. He was a bright student and excelled in all the subjects. In this particular period, Kaczynski began to show more interest towards Mathematics.

In 1967, Ted Kaczynski was the youngest assistant professor to teach Mathematics in the University of California, Berkeley. He used to teach geometry and calculus to undergraduate students.

He wasn’t popular with the students and his teaching was straight from textbook. Due to his complex behaviour, he found it difficult to associate with the students.

When things were supposed to move smoothly, Kaczynski started to have problems with his professional life. He found it hard to deliver lectures and to strike a connection with the students. He abruptly decided to leave the job and resigned from his assistant professorship in 1969.

His resignation came as a shock to the chairman of the department of mathematics who were impressed by his dissertation, publications and knowledge in the field of Mathematics.

After leaving his job, Ted Kaczynski went on drifting from city to city. Finally, he managed to take a plot and built a cabin near Lincoln where he lived in isolation. There was no electricity or running water in the house. He would spend most of his time reading books and writing down manuscripts which were later known as ‘Unabomber Manifesto’.

In 1978, Kaczynski delivered his first mail bomb to Buckley Crist who was a professor of engineering at Northwestern University. On May 25, 1978, Crist received the package in a parking lot at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Crist grew suspicious of the package and contacted the campus police. The package was opened by Officer Terry Marker which resulted in explosion and left injuries on his left hand. Marker only suffered minor injuries.

His next target was bigger as Kaczynski went after American airline companies with two bombs. One bomb was planted in 1979 in the cargo hold of American Airlines Flight 444 which could not explode on the flight due to faulty timing mechanism. While the other was directed towards the president of the United Airlines who also suffered minor injuries.

Since bombing an airline is a federal crime, FBI also got involved in the case. The case was named by the acronym UNABOM which was named after UNiversity and Airline BOMbing, and Kaczynski was known as ‘Unabomber’.

In December 1985, Kaczynski’s first victim died. He was a computer store owner who died after the bomb exploded outside his shop. Over the next decade, two more deaths and few injuries happened due to Kaczynski’s bombs.