Infamous murderer, the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, dies in federal prison

The death of the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, seems worth blogging in part because the threat of the death penalty seemingly played a role in Kaczynski’s willingness to plead guilty and accept multiple LWOP federal sentences.  (Also, in my sentencing classes, I have long used the rich facts of Kaczynski’s crimes and history to explore with students capital sentencing theories and procedures.)  This lengthy Washington Post piece provides lots of details about his life and crimes, and here are short excerpts:

For 17 years, he picked his victims with cold deliberation, leaving a grisly trail of nail- and razor-blade-packed pipe bombs across the nation that killed three people and injured 23 others, several of them maimed for life.

He knew none of his victims and struck unpredictably from coast to coast in seemingly random acts from 1978 to 1995, baffling law enforcement officers and gripping the country in a kind of menacing unease — until his capture in early 1996 in the remote mountains of Montana.  There, Ted Kaczynski, the scrawny, bearded anti-technology anarchist popularly known as the Unabomber, surrendered peaceably at the primitive plywood cabin he had called home for 25 years….

The Harvard-trained mathematics prodigy turned lone serial bomber died June 10 at a federal prison medical facility in Butner, N.C.  He was 81…. Tracking down the Unabomber led to one of the nation’s longest and most expensive investigations. Then came years of research tracing his habits, propensities and psychological markers.  Still, a veil of mystery remained over the ultimate purpose of his acts beyond simple anger at a world that wouldn’t listen to him….

In September 1995, he sent his manifesto, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future,” to The Post and the Times….  The rambling prose seemed eerily familiar to David Kaczynski, a social worker at an Albany, N.Y., shelter for runaway youths. He began to suspect, reluctantly, that his brother was the Unabomber….

David took his suspicions to the FBI, and analysts quickly spotted close parallels in phraseology, even misspellings. Directed by David, agents massed at the cabin in the Montana woods on April 3, 1996, and took Ted into custody. Inside the cabin, they found a cache of bombmaking components.  David received the FBI’s $1 million reward and said he would use it to aid families who suffered because of his brother’s actions.

On Jan. 22, 1998, after extensive legal jockeying to avoid both the death penalty and an insanity defense, Mr. Kaczynski pleaded guilty and acknowledged all 16 bombings and the deaths and injuries they caused.  Unrepentant, he was sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 30 years by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. in Sacramento.

UPDATE: The latest reporting is that Kaczynski killed himself as noted in this New York Post headline: “Unabomber Ted Kaczynski reportedly committed suicide inside his jail cell.”