Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998 to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to life without parole. After more than 20 years at Colorado’s ADX Florence, he was transferred to a North Carolina medical facility in 2021 and died by suicide in 2023, aged 81.
Kaczynski was identified after his brother, David, and sister-in-law, Linda, recognized similarities between his writing and his manifesto. After The New York Times and The Washington Post published it in September 1995, they contacted the FBI. A SWAT team arrested him at his Montana cabin on April 3, 1996; agents found bomb components, 40,000 pages of handwritten diary entries and a live bomb. His 16 bombs killed three people and injured 23 over 17 years.
Kaczynski was diagnosed with rectal cancer in March 2021 and received chemotherapy every two weeks until March 2023, when he refused further treatment because of side effects and a poor prognosis. A 2001 bid to withdraw his guilty plea and seek a retrial was rejected by a federal appeals panel.
