Ted Kaczynski, aged 81, has reportedly taken his own life while serving four life terms in a federal prison for a decades-long period of violence that left three people dead and nearly two dozen injured by sixteen homemade bombs.
Officials at the federal medical prison in Butner, North Carolina did not disclose how he died, but multiple sources reported to The New York Times that it was suicide. They declined to provide more information on the cause of death, but said he was found unresponsive in his cell.
Kaczynski, a native of Chicago, had received an education at Harvard and UC-Berkeley before turning to a hermit’s life in a cabin in Montana. He had been in a maximum security prison in Colorado, but was moved to the medical facility in North Carolina in December 2021 due to health issues. His first explosive was sent to Northwestern University engineering professor Buckley Crist Jr. in 1978, with his name as the sender. When asked about the incident on Saturday by The Post, Crist responded that he had never met or known Kaczynski, nor had any idea why he would be involved.
In the decades after Kaczynski’s 1996 capture, a new generation began to revere him for his anti-technology manifesto, dubbing him “Uncle Ted”. This phrase trended on Twitter as the news of his death spread.