1985 : Unabomber Strikes Ann Arbor

When:
November 15, 2021 all-day
2021-11-15T00:00:00-05:00
2021-11-16T00:00:00-05:00

 The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski by [Shors, Dave, Waits, Chris]

 

November 15, 1985.

A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes  The professor James V. McConnell would experience hearing loss, Nicklaus Suino burns and scrapnel wounds.  In all, 16 bombs — which injured 23 people and killed 3 — were attributed to Kaczynski from 1978 to 1995.

Theodore John Kaczynski (born May 22, 1942), also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned an academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle. Then between 1978 and 1995 he killed three people, and injured 23 others, in a nationwide bombing campaign targeting those involved with modern technology, in an attempt to start a revolution. In conjunction, he issued a social critique opposing industrialization and advancing a nature-centered form of anarchism.

In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient. In 1978, after witnessing the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin, he concluded that living in nature was untenable and began his bombing campaign. In 1995, he sent a letter to The New York Times and promised to “desist from terrorism” if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require large-scale organization.

Kaczynski was the target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) longest and costliest investigation. Before his identity was known, the FBI used the acronym “UNABOM” (UNiversity and Airline BOMber) to refer to his case, which resulted in the media calling him the “Unabomber”. The FBI, as well as Attorney General Janet Reno, pushed for the publication of Industrial Society and Its Future, which led to his brother, David Kaczynski, recognizing his style of writing and beliefs and tipping off the FBI. After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski tried unsuccessfully to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wanted him to plead insanity in order to avoid the death penalty, as he did not believe he was insane. In 1998 a plea bargain was reached, under which he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Sources :

Ted Kaczynski wikipedia entry

Unabomber : a desire to kill / by Robert Graysmith.  Washington, DC : Regnery Publishing ; Lanham, MD : Distributed to the trade by National Book Network, [1997]

Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski / by Chris Waits and Dave Shors.  [Helena, Mont.] : Helena Independent Record : Montana Magazine, [1999]

The net. The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet / produced by Lutz Dammbeck Filmproduktion ; written and directed by Lutz Dammbeck.  [United States] : Other Cinema, [2006]   Explore the incredibly complex back-story of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. Exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th century web of technology.

Unabomber : The True Story / Tobin Bell, Robert Hays, Dean Stockwell. [United States] : Direct Source, 2007.

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