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KILLER'S END
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski found dead in prison cell at 81 after terrorizing US with nearly 20-year bombing spree
UNABOMBER Ted Kaczynski has been found dead in his prison cell.
The body of Kaczynski, 81, was discovered Saturday morning at a medical facility in North Carolina.
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The death was confirmed by a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, per . Sources told the that he died by suicide, but an official cause has not been revealed.
Kaczynski was previously held in a Colorado maximum security facility until December 2021, when he was moved to North Carolina due to his declining health.
After evading law enforcement for around 20 years, the Unabomber was caught in 1996.
The FBI said that Kaczynski set off 16 bombs that three people and injured around 24 others.
In 1978 at a university in Chicago, Illinois, Kaczynski sparked terror after setting off his first homemade bomb.
For the following 17 years, he then created more complex explosives through mailed or hand-delivered packages.
He also threatened to take down passenger planes mid-flight.
Kaczynski's nickname as the Unabomber came in 1979 after the FBI led a task force that consisted of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to solve the case they dubbed "UNABOMB."
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Over time, the case team grew to around 150 personnel, but they still found it difficult to identify Kaczynski due to his methods of preparing the devices.
Not only did he ensure not to leave forensic evidence behind, but the Unabomber's devices were always made from "scrap materials," according to the FBI.
Victims were even chosen at random from library research, investigators later discovered.
This combination made it incredibly challenging for the case team, but several arrived at the conclusion that the Unabomber must have grown up in Chicago and then moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and San Francisco, California.
They ended up being correct, but still could not confirm If the Unabomber was male or female and what their occupation was.
Finally, in 1995, the Unabomber sent the FBI a 35,000-word essay explaining motives and negative views on society, which the bureau published.
Thousands of people reached out about suspects, but David Kaczynski, Ted's brother, caught the attention of investigators.
David told the FBI that his brother "had grown up in Chicago, taught at the University of California at Berkeley (where two of the bombs had been placed), then lived for a time in Salt Lake City before settling permanently into the primitive 10’ x 14’ cabin that the brothers had constructed near Lincoln, Montana."
He also provided the bureau with other written documentation from his brother, which linguistic analysts later matched.
Enough information was gathered for a search warrant on April 3, 1996, where officials found bomb materials, one live bomb, and "40,000 handwritten journal pages."
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Kaczynski pleaded guilty in January 1998.
He was then sent to the so called Supermax facility in Colorado and placed in an isolated cell until 2021.
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