FBI's Longest Case!!

| UNABOM Case
The UNABOM case was a series of terror bombs sent through the postal service by Ted
Kaczynski. He targeted academicians, businessmen and other innocent people. It took 17 years
for the FBI to solve the series of crimes committed by Kaczynski, a mathematical genius. The
case started from the 1970s to 1996 which has killed 3 people and injured 23 others.
What was behind Kaczynski's crimes? How did he finally get caught? And what makes this case
so hard to solve? We will talk more about this case but don't forget to like, comment and
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The Beginning of the Unabomber
Ted Kaczynski was born in Evergreen Park, Illinois on May 22, 1942. He is the oldest of two
brothers, his youngest brother named David Kaczynski. He was born into a working-class family
of Polish descent.
Kaczynski was known as a less social child, but he had excellent academic achievements,
especially in mathematics. While attending Evergreen Park Community High School, he
accelerated to the 12th grade. At only 16 years old, he received a full scholarship to Harvard
University.
His personality has not changed at all, he is still known as a quiet, intelligent student. During his
pursuit of his undergraduate degree, he participated in a controversial experiment led by
psychologist Henry Murray. The experiment initially asked participants to write an essay on their
philosophy of life. When connected to electrodes to measure the writer's physiological responses,
they were subjected to hours of insults and personal attacks.
Kaczynski participated in this experiment for 3 years and approximately 200 hours. It was from
this experiment that his mental and emotional health began to suffer. Nonetheless, he eventually
got his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1962. In the same field, he earned a master's degree
in 1964 and a doctorate in 1967 at the University of Michigan.
At the age of 25, he was hired as the youngest assistant professor at the University of California
at Berkeley to teach calculus and geometry courses in the winter of 1967. However, he decided
to quit his job in 1969 without giving any reason.
Kaczynski returned to live with his parents in Evergreen Park. After two years of living with his
parents, his brother David invited him to buy a piece of land in Linclon, Montana in 1971.
Kaczynski built a cabin measuring 10 feet by 12 feet or about 3 by 4 meters, he lived for the next
24 years there.
The cabin was built without water, electricity, or heat. He spent his time reading books he
borrowed from the library and working on the first draft of his manifesto. He tried to learn to be
independent with his little money by farming and hunting. Sometimes he also worked odd jobs
around the cabin or was supported by his family.
In 1978, Kaczynski worked at his relative's factory in Illinois with his father and brother. It
wasn't long before he was fired for insulting a female supervisor's personal romantic life. Since
1975, he has been bothered by the many real estate developments and the rapid industrial
development around his home. Through the writings of anarchist French Christian philosopher
Jacques Ellul, Kaczynski began to vandalize construction buildings around Lincoln to thwart
development.
After that, he went back to his cabin and started making deadly pipe bombs that would terrorize
many universities.
The Start of the Unabomber Terror
Kaczynski’s first target was a professor of Engineering at Northwestern University named
Buckley Crist. He received a package from the Postal Service on May 25, 1978. The package
was wrapped in a brown paper bag found in the parking lot of his office delivered by his own
address. Crist, who did not send the package, returned it. A security guard opened it, and the
package exploded, injuring his hand.
A year later, on May 9, 1979, a package was left in a room at Northwestern University. A
graduate student picked up the package, when he opened it the package exploded and injured
him.
On November 15 of the same year, a bomb exploded on American Airlines flight 444 from
Chicago to Washington, DC. The bomb exploded in the cabin section and came from a package
sent from Elgin, Illinois. Fortunately the plane landed safely, although 12 passengers had to use
smoke inhalation. The increasing number of bomb delivery cases are still being investigated as
separate cases, which means that the perpetrators are different.
Percy Wood, President of United Airlines received a letter signed by Enoch W. Fisher which.
The letter informed him that he would receive a book about social significance on June 3, 1980.
A week later on June 10, Wood received a copy of Sloan Wilson's book Ice Brother. When he
opened the book, it exploded and injured him.
Reports of a bomb exploding in Wood's house reached the Postal Inspector. Without knowing
about the explosion on flight 444, the Inspector contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation or
FBI. The agents began to realize the similarities between the bomb that exploded on flight 444
and the bomb that exploded at Wood's house. The similarities included that the bombs were
made by the bomber himself by utilizing junk items because the wood used in the bombs was of
low quality. The soldering was also done rigidly. This means that the bomber is the same person.
The bombs were made with such good calculations that officers have had difficulty identifying
the perpetrators since the first bomb attack in 1978.
Then the FBI created a special team to investigate this case called UNABOM, which stands for
university and United Airlines bombing. This organized team consisted of FBI and Postal
Inspection Service agents. The case involved places where the bomb was delivered such as
Northwestern University, United Airlines, and the first delivery address, Renssaeler
Polytechnical Institute. The perpetrators are suspected to be students because they always attack
university areas. The media dubbed the perpetrator the UNABOMber.
In the midst of a still vague investigation, another attack occurred at the University of Utah on
October 8, 1981. A student found a package in front of the computer center room that had been
there for several days. At first the student wanted to move it, but he became suspicious and
contacted university security. University security officers arrived, they took it and blew it up in
the women's bathroom. Campus security immediately contacted the UNABOM team.
In May 1982, Patrick C. Fisher, a professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee received a
package sent from his old work address at Penn State University. Since he had not worked there
for two years, the package was sent to his office at Vanderbilt University. His secretary checked
the package was from a professor at Brighan Young University in Utah. She opened the package
which exploded and injured her. The UNABOM team arrived and realized the bomb had a cover
on the end of the wooden bomb body.
On July 2, 1982, Diogenes Angelakos picked up a package in the teachers' lounge of the
University of California at Berkeley. The package, which turned out to contain a bomb, exploded
and left him with minor injuries. Kaczynski had developed his pipe bombs as his attacks became
more powerful. The bomb had an elaborate-looking dial and handle, but was actually just a pipe
bomb in a gasoline can. The explosion was accompanied by a note that said, "Woo, it worked! I
told you it would work. RV." The note was written on the same paper as the electrical insulators
used in the bomb. This means that the culprit remains the same.
Unabomber attacks stopped for 3 years. A control office was built in Salt Lake City. There they
started to investigate and compile the bomb. Officers concluded the perpetrator had rubber
stamps to mark priority packages or other, he also had a manual typewriter. Although the devices
had become more sophisticated with a stronger impact, the perpetrators began to be more careful
in their actions. The first explosive bomb to use a metal cover that was much more damaging
than a wooden cover. The bomb was made using twin-initiator construction.
In November 1985, a package from University of Utah doctoral student Ralph Kloppenburg
arrived at Professor James Mc.Connell's residence in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The letter contained
Kloppenburg's request for McConnell to review his thesis, specifically Chapters 11 and 12. The
package had been sent since November 12, but it was only opened by McConnell's student
secretary who ended up being injured in the explosion.
In the same year, the Unabomber claimed its first victim. On December 11, Hugh Scrutton, the
owner of a computer rental shop saw a package behind a shopping center in Sacramento,
California. He picked up the package, which was kept in the parking lot, while bending down,
but suddenly the package exploded and he was killed instantly.
The Unabom team was contacted by a Boeing Corporation fabrication factory located near
Seattle, Washington. A package bomb was sent to their office, which they left for a month. The
bomb did not explode because it had run out of batteries. The team immediately took pictures of
it, took it outside the factory area and exploded it.
Now the criteria for the perpetrators are getting wider. Other than students or alumni of the 5
universities, the perpetrators could be employees or customers of the 3 companies that had been
attacked. The team then deleted data on students born before 1955 and focused on people from
the Chicago and San Francisco Bay area.
In February 1987, an attack targeted another computer rental store called CAAMs, Inc. in a
residential area of Salt Lake City, Utah. At around 11 a.m., Gary Wright, the owner of the store
noticed the device in the parking lot. He got out of his car and kicked it until it exploded,
severing a nerve in his arm.
Two eyewitnesses said there was a man in the parking lot behind the CAAMs store wearing a
hoodie and sunglasses. Although the testimony is less clear, the first sketch of the Unabomber
was made by a Canadian sketch artist. The team concluded that the suspect was young and from
a wealthy family.
For the next six years, there were no bomb attacks. Perhaps because a sketch of his face had been
spread, the Unabomber had stopped to hide. On June 22, 1993, the attack began again at the
home of Charles Epstein, a geneticist. He was sent a manila envelope, when he opened it it
exploded and injured him. Two days later on June 24, the same envelope was delivered to the
office of Professor David Gelerntner, in New Haven, Connecticut. A computer scientist from
Yale University, he too was injured by the explosion after opening the envelope. It is known that
the envelope was sent from Sacramento, California on June 18. Over the past six years, the
Unabomer has improved his device to be much shorter but deadlier than his 1980s device.
The second victim who died from the bomb attack occurred on December 10, 1994. The package
was delivered to the home of advertising executive Thomas Mosser in North Caldwaell, New
Jersey. The package, sent from San Francisco, California a week earlier, exploded when he
opened it, killing him. The last victim also died, a California Forestry Association president
named Gilbert Murray. He opened a package addressed to his colleague William Dennison on
April 24, 1995. The package, sent on April 20, exploded, killing Murray on the spot.
The Arrest and End of Unabomer
On June 28, 1995, The New York Times and Washington Post were sent letters by someone
claiming to be the Unabomber. Kaczynski said he was a representative of a group known as FC.
If either of these newspapers published the manifesto he had written, then he would end his
bomb attacks.
The letter was immediately forwarded to the UNABOM team who confirmed that the letter was
indeed from the Unabomber. US Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh
approved the publication of the 3,500-word manifesto. Although their decision led to a dispute as
to how they would deal with an ultimatus from a criminal.
On September 19, 1995, the manifesto titled Industrial Society and Its Future was published as
an 8-page appendix in both newspapers. The manifesto was about a corrupt technological-
industrial society, Kaczynski wrote that technology and industrial society had destroyed freedom
because it was necessary to be strict in order for human action to function. Academics and critics
read the contents of the manifesto as quite reasonable, but still Kaczynski deserved punishment
after his bomb attacks.
After the manifesto spread, a social worker came to the FBI suspecting that it was his brother
who sent the manifesto. They had not communicated for a long time, so he had brought letters
sent by his brother many years ago. Investigators then compared the letters with the original
manifesto, both in terms of the typewriter used and the language used by the author. According
to linguistics experts, the author was most likely the same.
The social worker, who wanted to remain anonymous, was later revealed to be David Kaczynski,
Kaczynski's younger brother. The information was leaked to a reporter named Dan Rather of
CBS News.
The FBI arrested Kaczynski on April 3, 1996 after obtaining permission from a federal judge in
Montana to arrest Kaczynski at his cabin. They found Kaczynski amidst bomb-making tools and
notes for compiling a manifesto.
He was imprisoned for fifteen months while he was interrogated and evidence of his crimes was
collected. Evidence such as his journal entries, descriptions of bombing targets, tools used to
assemble the bombs and a handwritten draft of his manifesto were found in his cabin. His trial
began on Monday, December 29, 1997 in Sacramento, California.
He was convicted on 10 counts of illegally using and sending bombs through the postal service
as well as three counts of murder. Kaczynski's lawyers later entered a mental health plea, but he
refused and admitted to all charges on January 22, 1998. He was sentenced to serve the rest of
his life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Supermax security prison in Florence,
Colorado.
While in prison, Kaczynski spent his time writing books. He managed to publish two books,
Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski and Anti-Tech
Revolution: Why and How which contains the development of ideas from his manifesto.
In 2021, Kaczynski was transferred to the federal prison medical center in Butner, North
Carolina. On June 10, 2023 at midnight, he was found unconscious in his cell and pronounced
dead at the age of 81. It is suspected that he committed suicide.

DESCRIPTION
Ted Kaczynski, everyone knows him as a quiet and unsociable man who excelled in academics.
With his degree, he was able to get a good job. Unfortunately, he instead chose to become a
fugitive nicknamed the Unabomber that the FBI had been searching for for 17 years.
THUMBSNAIL
The UNABOM: The case that took 17 years to solve!!! A mathematician who sent bombs to
several universities!!!