Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81 (article available here).
Branded the "Unabomber" by the FBI, Kaczynski died at the federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina. He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m. A cause of death was not immediately known.
Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, he had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge.
Kaczynski, who went nearly 20 years without being captured until his arrest in 1996, was considered America's most prolific bomber. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.
Kaczynski skipped two grades to attend Harvard at age 16 and earned a Ph.D. in math at the University of Michigan had published papers in prestigious mathematics journals. His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints.
If it hadn't been for the suspicions of his brother and sister-in-law, Kaczynski might never have been caught.