Notorious, vengeful, reclusive 'Unabomber' Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski dead at 81

Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski, the vengeful bomber who killed three people in a series of attacks over a nearly two-decade span before his own relatives helped authorities identify him, has died. He was 81.

Kaczynski, known as the "Unabomber," died at the federal prison medical centre in Butner, N.C., Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, told The Associated Press.

He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and pronounced dead at about 8 a.m. local time, she said. A cause of death was not immediately known.

Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, Kaczynski had been imprisoned at the so-called supermax federal prison in Florence, Colo.

After attacks at two Illinois universities and one on an American Airlines cargo hold in 1978-79, Kaczynski was given the nickname Unabomber by an FBI-led task force.

It was a shortened handle for University-and-Airlines-Bomber, although ultimately the three men who died in Kaczynski bombings between 1985 and 1995 were a computer store owner, a public relations executive and a forestry executive.

Kaczynski's attacks across eight U.S. states — many of them delivered through the postal system — would also injure 23 people. Some were targeted by name even though he didn't personally know them, and others were the victims of cruel randomness. Some of the injured lost vision or body parts.

While not as brutal a toll as the domestic terrorist had wished — as expressed in voluminous journals Kaczynski wrote — the attacks vexed and alarmed authorities during a period where there were multiple American casualties in bombings aboard a Pan Am flight, as well as at the World Trade Center in New York and a federal building in Oklahoma City.

The manhunt was said to involve hundreds of personnel over its duration, and cost millions of dollars. A $1-million US reward and one of the most well-known suspect sketches ever did not specifically lead to this arrest. Kaczynski proved elusive by hand-crafting his bomb components, while not leaving fingerprints, at his remote Montana cabin.

Ultimately, Kaczynski's need to explain his actions doomed him. The New York Times and Washington Post, in a controversial decision in September 1995, published his 35,000-word manifesto entitled Industrial Society and Its Future. The FBI feared publicizing the words of a murderer but reasoned that the tactic would be fruitful with the internet newly accessible to millions.

Calling the industrial revolution "a disaster for the human race," the author said in his manifesto that "in order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people," falsely implying he was part of a group.

The Unabomber excoriated the increased role of super-intelligent computers and genetic engineering, as well as the environmental damage caused by humans in the name of advancement.

"The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown," the author wrote.

His sister-in-law, Lindra Patrik — who had never met the reclusive Kaczynski — saw it. She recognized similar thought patterns and linguistic expressions in the manifesto's rant against technology and government intrusion compared to a 1971 Kazcynski screed her husband once had her read.