The Unabomber case: what the namesake of two Polish presidents is serving for life

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On April 3, 1996, an army of FBI agents surrounded a small mountain hut near Lincoln, Montana. A local forester named Jerry Barnes knocked on the door to summon its inhabitant, former mathematics professor Theodor Kaczynski, to talk. As soon as he took a step over the threshold, they pounced on him and tied him up. One of the most wanted criminals in US history, who has been hunted for 18 years, has finally been caught.

At the beginning of this story, as they say, "nothing foreshadowed." A young guy, a child prodigy, from a good family, at the age of 20 he graduated from Harvard and entered the University of Michigan, where he defended his dissertation and received a Ph. D. In 1967, at the age of 25, Ted Kaczynski became an Assistant Professor at the renowned University of California, Berkeley. Reviews of friends and colleagues from those times about him were not even positive, but enthusiastic. “I really respect him. And I know that everyone at the faculty treated him with respect. Actually, I am proud to know him,”said George Perinian, professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, in an interview.

Amazing, right? In the world of exact sciences, such dizzying ups are extremely rare - you can literally count them on the fingers of your hands. Einstein, Abel, Landau, Hawking … and most of them, at 23, are just graduating from university. The sudden "fall" of Theodore Kaczynski was no less rapid than his rise: after working at Berkeley for a little over a year, he quit and simply disappears from everywhere.

The first explosion occurred 10 years later.

On a May morning in 1978, a postman knocked on the door of Northwestern University materials science professor Christ Buckley. He brought a package, which the scientist apparently forgot in the parking lot, leaving his return address on the package. Buckley was very surprised, because he was not going to send anything to anyone, and the inscription on the wrapper was clearly not his hand. Just in case, he decided to open the "surprise" in the presence of a policeman, and he was right - when he tried to pull the ribbon, the bag exploded. The professor was not injured, police officer Marker was slightly wounded in the arm.

A year later, another bomb exploded in the very building of Northwestern University, but fortunately, there were no casualties. In the same year, another explosive device found itself aboard an American Airlines Boeing en route Chicago-Washington. Fortunately for the passengers, this bomb did not work, and instead of an explosion began to smoke heavily, for which the pilots had to land the plane. After conducting research, FBI experts said that the explosive charge in the device was sufficient to cause fatal damage to the Boeing.

The bomb from the plane and the wreckage of successfully exploded devices were striking in their artlessness. They were made from scraps of metal pipes, boxes, pieces of wood, and their "fuses" were made from nails and match heads. Often these bombs did not even have a striking element. FBI officers have awarded the unknown terrorist with the comic nickname "landfill bomber." After the unsuccessful detonation of the plane, another one was added to it - Unabom, which meant University and Aircraft Bomber.

But so far, the crooked hands of the unknown bomber did not add clarity to the investigation. While making his handicrafts, he did not leave the slightest trace - not a hair, not a drop of blood from a cut, not even the most overwhelming fingerprint. Nothing but a small iron plate with the letters FC on it. Many considered these letters an abbreviation for the neoluddite slogan "Fk Computers", until the terrorist himself got in touch and announced the existence of an organization called the Freedom Club, that is, the "Freedom Club".

The Unabomber prepared his next "parcels" more carefully, so in the early 80s the first crippled ones appeared. And then the first corpse appeared on his account - the owner of a computer store in California, Hugh Scutton. This time, the Unabomber did not forget about the striking element and stuffed the bomb sent to him with nail scraps.

In 1987, the Unabomber unexpectedly interrupted his actions and "fell silent" for six years. Meanwhile, the FBI were desperately trying to find any traces. But there was no clue, so the task force created in the Unabomber case had to appoint a fabulously high reward of one million dollars to anyone who would provide information that could help the investigation.

In 1995, the Unabomber unexpectedly appeared himself and demanded from the largest American media to publish his treatise "The Industrial Society and its Future". Penthouse magazine first decided to take up publication, but the terrorist rejected him, considering it not serious enough and handed the manuscript to The New York Times and Washington Post.

This brochure has now been translated and published everywhere under the title The Unabomber Manifesto, so anyone can read it simply by googling. There is nothing destroying consciousness there: a mixture of neo-luddism with the ideas of radical ecologists and anarchists, skepticism towards science and modern civilization mixed with curses against the left. The main idea was that human society, having embarked on the path of industrial development, made every single person unhappy, placing him in "unnatural" conditions and forcing him to continuously lie to himself and others. And now people need external control and continuous duping with drugs and products by the entertainment industry just to forget. In a word, all to the garden, gentlemen, all to the garden!

It was this text that gave the FBI the coveted clue. They were unexpectedly approached by David Kaczynski, who said that the syllable of the Manifesto of the Unabomber was very similar to that of his brother, besides the terrorist had exactly the same habit of highlighting logical accents in capital letters. All this time, the failed scientist lived in a tiny secluded hut in the mountains near Lincoln, receiving money from his parents. It is not clear what he spent them on, since he fed himself, trapping wild rabbits and digging up edible tubers.

The FBI surrounded the area from all sides, establishing close surveillance, and finally, in April 1996, Theodor Kaczynski was arrested. During a search in the hut, they found a bomb ready to be dispatched and the original of the Manifesto. By that time, the Unabomber had managed to commit 16 terrorist attacks, killing three people and making six disabled. In 1998, Kaczynski fully admitted guilt for all these crimes in exchange for replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment.

That's all? Signed and stamped, turned the pages and archived? But in the Unabomber case, to this day, there are more questions than answers. For example, why in his "Manifesto" the terrorist constantly used the plural pronouns "we" and "us", and the FBI representatives later claimed that they always had only one suspect? By the way, fingerprints were found on some of the bombs … not belonging to Theodore Kaczynski. But they did not even try to find his alleged accomplices. By the way, the only identifier in the case, compiled from the words of a witness to the bombing of a computer store in Salt Lake City, depicts a man with a wide face and red curly hair, not at all like Kaczynski.

The FBI say they removed "several trucks of evidence" from Kachinsky's hut. This hut can be seen today in one of the halls of the Washington Museum of Journalism and News … or rather the remaining wooden box of 3 by 4 meters in size. All personal belongings of Kachinsky-Unabomber were quickly sold at auction in favor of the victims. But excuse me, 3 by 4 meters is less than the smallest "Khrushchev" … then how did these "several trucks" fit there?

By the way, Kachinsky's neighbor, who regularly visited this hut, testified at the trial that he had never seen in it any traces of a "dynamite workshop", blanks for bombs or tools.

But the American authorities did everything to present the Unabomber as a typical lonely psycho. Already in prison he was diagnosed with "paranoid schizophrenia", although the harmony of his conclusions and the testimonies of those with whom he communicated before and during his hermitage suggest otherwise. In photographs from university times, we see a stately young man in a good suit and stylish hair. Even if he had, as claimed, problems with women, it is hardly significant.

By the beginning of the trial, the FBI picked up several witnesses from the town of Lincoln, who claimed that Kaczynski "smelled unpleasant", but other residents recalled that he was always decently dressed and did not exude any miasms. The photographs of a shaggy "bumpy" type with bags under the eyes and a sparse beard, with which the entire Internet is clogged today, were taken after ten years in prison.

Finally, Kachinsky was never allowed to use the services of lawyers hired by his family at the trial, and instead were provided with “appointed defenders”. Those who are familiar with the realities of trials know that such “lawyers” most often work on the side of the prosecution.

In the near future, we are unlikely to know whether Kaczynski was in fact the Unabomber or simply joined his organization and wrote the famous Manifesto. Or maybe the FBI just tried to end the high-profile investigation at any cost, substituting Kaczynski and planting evidence on him? Or did he refuse to hand over his comrades and was named the main suspect? It is possible that in 50 years, when the archives are opened …

A huge resonance in society caused and spy drama with a tragic ending … Many have not been able to answer the question for themselves: why the Rosenberg spouses were executed.