On this day in 1998, in a Sacramento, California, courtroom,
Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him,
acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package
bombings attributed to the “Unabomber.”
Born in 1942, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and received a
PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He worked as an
assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at
Berkeley, but abruptly quit in 1969. In the early 1970s, Kaczynski began
living as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12 foot cabin
without heat, electricity or running water. From this isolated location,
he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure
more than 20 others.
The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on
an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the
president of United Airlines in 1980. After federal investigators set up
the UNABOM Task Force (the name came from the words “university and
airline bombing”), the media dubbed the culprit the “Unabomber.” The
bombs left little physical evidence, and the only eyewitness found in
the case could describe the suspect only as a man in hooded sweatshirt
and sunglasses (depicted in an infamous 1987 police sketch).
In 1995, the Washington Post (in collaboration with the New York
Times) published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a
person claiming to be the Unabomber. Recognizing elements of his
brother’s writings, David Kaczynski went to authorities with his
suspicions, and Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April 1996. In his cabin,
federal investigators found ample evidence linking him to the bombings,
including bomb parts, journal entries and drafts of the manifesto.
Kaczynski was arraigned in Sacramento and charged with bombings in
1985, 1993 and 1995 that killed two people and maimed two others. (A
bombing in New Jersey in 1994 also resulted in the victim’s death.)
Despite his lawyers’ efforts, Kaczynski rejected an insanity plea. After
attempting suicide in his jail cell in early 1998, Kaczynski appealed
to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. to allow him to represent
himself, and agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed
psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and Judge Burrell ruled
that Kaczynski could not defend himself. The psychiatrist’s verdict
helped prosecutors and defense reach a plea bargain, which allowed
prosecutors to avoid arguing for the death penalty for a mentally ill
defendant.
On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison
without the possibility of parole in return for a plea of guilty to all
federal charges; he also gave up the right to appeal any rulings in the
case. Though Kaczynski later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea,
arguing that it had been involuntary, Judge Burrell denied the request,
and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Kaczynski was remanded to
a maximum-security prison in Colorado, where he is serving his life
sentence.
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