Who was Ted Kaczynski? How the 'Unabomber' went from Harvard prodigy to notorious domestic terrorist

Infamous domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski was found dead Saturday morning in his cell in federal prison, 27 years after his reign of terror was brought to an end. 

Known across America as the 'Unabomber' while authorities desperately sought him from 1978 to 1996, he waged war on unsuspecting victims by mailing explosives via the US postal system. 

Over an 17-year campaign, Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 more with 16 bombs. 

But his descent into madness came after he became known as a prodigious Harvard-educated mathematician with a genius-level intellect, leading many to question where it went wrong for the notorious terrorist.  

Ted Kaczynski was captured after an exhaustive 17-year manhunt. He is pictured being escorted by US Marshals in 1996 after his arrest 

Who was Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski?   

Born on May 22, 1942, Ted Kaczynski was the son of second-generation Polish Catholics. 

His father was a sausage maker and his mother was a homemaker, and he grew up in Chicago with his younger brother David. 

From a young age it quickly became apparent that Kaczynski was a genius-level mathematician, and he skipped the sixth and 11th grades on his way to attending Harvard aged just 16. 

However, high school classmates remember the virtuoso as an outcast, with one ominous incident seeing him show a fellow student how to make a mini-bomb that detonated during chemistry class. 

Harvard classmates recalled him as a lonely, thin boy with poor personal hygiene and a room that smelled of spoiled milk, rotting food and foot powder. 

He went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan, before he got a job teaching math at the University of California at Berkeley. 

In 1971, an unemployed Kaczynski bought a 4-mile parcel of land in the wilderness outside Lincoln, Montana, where he built a cabin without heating, plumbing or electricity. 

While briefly working for his father and brother in Chicago in the late 1970s, he was abruptly dumped by a female colleague after two dates. When Ted began posting offensive limericks about her, his brother fired him, sending him back to the woods where he hatched his plot to terrorize society.  

Ted Kaczynski (pictured) was behind a 17-year mail bomb spree that left three people dead and wounded 23 others

Kaczynski was eventually captured living a hermit-like life in the Montana wilderness after retreating to a solitary cabin 

How did he become known as the 'Unabomber'? 

Kaczynski earned his moniker 'Unabomber' from the FBI because many of his early targets were universities and airports. 

The domestic terrorist used his knowledge of bomb making and engineering to hatch an insidious plot to spread fear and chaos across America, usually by posting bombs to his unsuspecting victims via the US postal system. 

His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints.

While most of his victims were severely maimed by the explosives, he did kill three - computer rental store owner Hugh Scrutton, advertising executive Thomas Mosser and timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray. 

Mosser was killed in his North Caldwell, New Jersey, home on Dec. 10, 1994, a day he was supposed to be picking out a Christmas tree with his family. His wife, Susan, found him grievously wounded by a barrage of razor blades, pipes and nails.

'He was moaning very softly,' she said at Kaczynski’s 1998 sentencing. 'The fingers on his right hand were dangling. I held his left hand. I told him help was coming. I told him I loved him.' 

The terrorist mailed explosives across America. Pictured: An FBI reproduction of one of Kaczynski's bombs

In April 1996 authorities found Kaczynski in a 10-by-14 foot wood cabin outside Lincoln, Montana

What did the Unabomber believe? 

Throughout the 17-year hunt for Kaczynski, which was the longest and coldest manhunt in US law enforcement history, the bomber shot to infamy as an elusive and almost-mystical criminal mastermind. 

In 1995, he released his twisted manifesto, 'Industrial Society and Its Future', and promised to stop mailing bombs if it was published. 

The 35,000 word tome argued that society was spiraling out of control due to the emergence of technology. 

At the urging of authorities, it was published by major news outlets, which led his brother to recognize the outlandish belief system and tip off the FBI. 

His capture in 1996 revealed that the terrorist was living a hermit-like existence in the Montana wilderness, where he would construct explosives miles from civilization before sending them across the nation. 

The domestic terrorist insisted he was not insane when he carried out the series of bombings 

David Kaczynski (right), the brother of Ted Kaczynski, holds hands with his mother Wanda (left) as they arrive to the Unabomber's murder trial 

How was the Unabomber arrested? 

Kaczynski led authorities on the longest manhunt in US law enforcement history from 1978 to 1996. 

He left authorities baffled as he mailed untraceable bombs across the US, leaving them with little evidence to track down the terrorist. 

But they finally caught a break when Kaczynski attempted to push his outlandish manifesto on the world in 1996. 

The year before, he had stepped up his bombs and letters to newspapers, leading experts to speculate the 'Unabomber' was jealous of the attention being paid to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. 

When The Washington Post, in collaboration with The New York Times, published his manifesto, his brother David and his wife Linda Patrik realized Ted may be the mystical bomber terrorizing America for almost two decades. 

Patrik claimed she had a disturbing feeling about her brother-in-law even before seeing the manifesto, and the couple enlisted the help of her childhood friend Susan Swanson, a private investigator, to verify the link. 

Swanson in turn passed them along to former FBI behavior science expert Clint Van Zandt, whose analysts said whoever wrote them had also probably written the twisted manifesto.

'It was a nightmare,' David Kaczynski, who as a child had idolized his older brother, said in a 2005 speech at Bennington College. 'I was literally thinking, ‘My brother’s a serial killer, the most wanted man in America.’'

His tip-off led federal agents to trace Kaczynski to his Montana hideout, before he was arrested and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole. 

He was found dead in his cell on Saturday, June 10, aged 81.