- 3 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:04Tonight, an evil genius uses homemade bombs to terrorize a nation.
00:10It was designed to create a mass explosion, which would have brought that plane down.
00:14Millions of Americans are terrified as to where the next bomb is going to end up.
00:20He leaves no trace, no fingerprints, no DNA.
00:24It's like hunting a ghost.
00:25Federal agents join forces and launch a massive manhunt.
00:30But still, this mastermind is always one step ahead.
00:34It seems like he's taunting law enforcement.
00:37And to him, it's kind of a game of cat and mouse.
00:40Now, we'll explore the top theories in the FBI's hunt for one of history's most notorious criminals,
00:47as they finally crack the case of the Unabom.
01:0711.50 a.m., November 15th, 1979.
01:1430 minutes after departing Chicago, passengers aboard an American Airline 727, bound for Washington, D.C.,
01:22hear a muffled thump in the baggage hold, followed by a sucking sound.
01:28Following that noise, you start to get this chemical smell in the cabin of the plane.
01:34The pilot makes an initial announcement to the passengers on board, all 72 of them,
01:38and explains that, oh, we just have a problem with the valve in the plane, nothing to worry about, folks.
01:43Everything's going to be fine.
01:4520 minutes after the pilot's announcement, however, you start to get all of this thick smoke filling the cabin, filling
01:51the fuselage.
01:52The crew doesn't know what happened.
01:54All they know is a big bang went off.
01:58All the passengers in the cabin are now putting on their oxygen masks, and there's a lot of smoke, and
02:04they've got to get that plane down.
02:06The real fear is that this fire might end up actually reaching either the hydraulic system of the plane or,
02:12worse, the fuel tanks of the plane, which would cause it to explode.
02:16The pilot comes on and says to the passengers, brace for impact.
02:22We're going to land 20 minutes at Dulles Airport.
02:26The plane descends at over 600 miles an hour, twice the normal speed of approach, as fire trucks and ambulances
02:34scramble to the runway.
02:36Thankfully, the pilot is able to successfully land the plane.
02:40All the passengers are safely evacuated.
02:43And at least 12 passengers are rushed to the hospital for potential smoke inhalation.
02:49The terror and trauma are palpable, but it could have been so much worse.
02:55Eventually, they manage to extinguish the fire, and they discover the source of the explosion.
03:00It's a pipe bomb that's housed inside a wooden box.
03:04It's wrapped in craft paper and been completely covered in stamps to make it look like a nondescript package.
03:11It's been mailed from a fairly large facility in suburban Chicago.
03:16Now, at the time, air mail wasn't regularly scanned by metal detectors before being put onto a plane,
03:22so the bomb was able to make it very easily onto the aircraft with no real suspicion by anyone.
03:30Post-analysis identified that this was a very sophisticated bomb in that the trigger mechanism was what we call an
03:37altimeter bomb.
03:38So when the plane reached a certain height, the bomb would detonate.
03:43If the bomb had gone off the way the bomber had intended, there would have been a major fire on
03:49that plane blowing out the fuselage and bringing that plane down.
03:55Normally, when you have a fairly intact bomb, it's pretty easy for investigators to use the components to trace the
04:02origins of that bomb.
04:03But in this case, they find that whoever built this bomb did a really good job of removing any kind
04:09of traceable or identifiable information from the components.
04:14The FBI conducts a nationwide search for any bombings that used similar devices and find two matches in a pair
04:23of attacks at Chicago's Northwestern University.
04:27The first took place a year and a half earlier.
04:30May 25th, 1978, Northwestern University.
04:35A woman sees a package on the ground in the parking lot, picks it up.
04:42She brings it to campus police, who open it up.
04:48It's a loud explosion.
04:50Everybody's scared.
04:52But nobody's really hurt.
04:54Cut to a year later, in May of 1979, also Northwestern University.
04:59You have a grad student who also gets a package, and when he opens it, the package explodes.
05:06And this time, the grad student receives minor cuts and minor burns.
05:11So here you have two bombs in 1978 and 1979 that really don't garner much attention, either nationally or even
05:18within the FBI.
05:19Then you have, again in 1979, the bomb going off on the airline.
05:24That gets national attention.
05:26That's spread all across the national media.
05:29The FBI, once they finished their post-investigation, made the determination that the airplane bomb was constructed in exactly the
05:36same manner as the other two bombs,
05:38leading them to conclude that the individual who placed the bomb on the plane was, in fact, the same individual
05:44who placed or sent the other two bombs.
05:46And their concern is that if they don't find this person soon, these bombs are just going to become more
05:53and more sophisticated and ultimately more and more dangerous.
05:57But before the FBI can develop any viable leads, the so-called junkyard bomber strikes again.
06:05On June 10, 1980, in the exclusive Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Percy Wood, the president of United Airlines, opens
06:15a parcel delivered to his home mailbox.
06:19Percy Wood is celebrating his 60th birthday. He thinks it's maybe a belated birthday present. And when he takes a
06:25look at it, it looks like the book, The Ice Brothers, which has to do with World War II. That's
06:30something he might be interested in.
06:32Wood is examining the book. As he turns it back to the cover, he notices that several of the pages
06:36are glued together. And it's at this point, boom.
06:40The bomb exploded in Wood's hands late this afternoon. He is now being treated in a hospital just outside Chicago.
06:46He gets shrapnel in his face, in his body. You've got three-quarter pipe that rips across his thigh.
06:52Wood is alive, but he requires emergency surgery. And it definitely seems that the bomber is honing his skill. These
07:00bombs are getting more and more deadly.
07:01Agents from the FBI, ATF, and U.S. Postal Service now join forces and race to identify the attacker.
07:10They also give the manhunt a new case name, Unibomb, short for University and Airline Bomber.
07:19And the attacker, he's now known as the Unibomber.
07:23This mysterious attacker will continue to strike for many years to come.
07:29Over the course of 18 years, the Unibomber sends 16 bombs to homes, institutions, and offices across the country.
07:38In all, 23 people are injured, three people die.
07:42And millions across America are terrified.
07:46This is no longer a localized incident.
07:48The Unibomber investigation would involve ultimately more than 150 special agents across the country.
07:55And it would cost more than $50 million.
07:58That's more than any investigation in history up until that point.
08:04Federal agents are increasingly desperate to catch this phantom and end his deadly reign of terror.
08:11But first, they have to figure out who is the Unibomber.
08:15Experts start digging through the devices to see whether or not they might have missed a clue as to who
08:20this Unibomber might be.
08:21One of the things that they notice is that the metal pieces on the bombs are fused together in a
08:27way that an airline worker would fuse metal together.
08:30And so this clue leads investigators to who they think the Unibomber might actually be.
08:41Looking at the welding of these bombs, and they're very similar one to the other, maybe the universities were test
08:48drives for what the bomber really wanted to do, which is take down an airline.
08:52So the FBI early on tries to get a profile, and this is honed as cases go on.
08:59But at first, they thought somebody maybe in their 30s to 40s, male, blue collar welder.
09:06The bombs were housed in a custom-made wood casing.
09:09The individual took great care in constructing the bombs.
09:12The FBI concluded that this individual had some obsessive-compulsive tendencies, perhaps was a loner, had isolated themselves from mainstream
09:20society.
09:21Imagine you've been fired from American Airlines or United, and you're angry about that.
09:26This is a way to get back.
09:28And that's what the FBI thought.
09:29They looked for recent fires at American Airlines.
09:32They cross-checked with criminal history with those people.
09:35They went out and interviewed these people.
09:37We're talking about thousands and thousands of man-hours trying to track down hundreds and hundreds of employees from different
09:45airlines.
09:45But despite all of these efforts, it turns out that all of their leads for any potential airline workers being
09:52the Unibomber come up empty.
09:55All investigators can ultimately do is wait to see if the Unibomber strikes again and hope that in his next
10:01attack, he slips up.
10:07May 5th, 1982, Nashville, Tennessee.
10:11A secretary working in the computer science department of Vanderbilt University opens a package addressed to her boss and gets
10:20a horrifying surprise.
10:22It immediately explodes, peppering her entire upper body with powder burns and lacerations.
10:28She's rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, but she does survive.
10:32When this bomb goes off and hurts a secretary in Tennessee, they realize the Unibomber is back, and now he
10:41or she is targeting universities again.
10:44Now the task force shifts his focus to, okay, maybe this isn't somebody who's an airline employee, but maybe it's
10:50somebody that actually just holds a resentment towards higher education.
10:59The first four bombings are originating from Chicago, so they think this is maybe a Chicago bomber.
11:05Then there's a bombing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and then they find out a few months earlier there's been
11:11an attempted bombing in Salt Lake City, Utah.
11:14With the bomb that was defused out west at the University of Utah, agents start to think, maybe we've been
11:20looking in the wrong spot, and they start to focus their efforts out west.
11:24Sure enough, the Unibomber's next attack takes place at the University of California, Berkeley.
11:32Now in 1982, a professor of electrical engineering, he sees this package on the floor with a wire sticking out
11:40of it.
11:40He's just headed to go get a cup of coffee, but he picks it up to be a nice guy.
11:45Anyway, the bomb explodes, the right side of his body, his face, his arm, everything is hit by shrapnel.
11:55Three years later on the very same campus, the Unibomber strikes again, this time at a computer lab.
12:02A Berkeley graduate student notices an unclaimed binder attached to a plastic box.
12:09John Hauser, he's an Air Force captain and an astronaut candidate.
12:13He decides to investigate further and unlatches the plastic box.
12:18When he ends up opening the box, it detonates.
12:23The ring on his right hand just gets blown off, flies six feet, and embeds itself into the plaster wall
12:30nearby.
12:31It also destroys his right arm, it does severe nerve damage, and it also blinds him in his left eye.
12:37He is lucky to have survived the blast, but his dreams of becoming an astronaut are over in a flash.
12:45Explosive experts confirm this is the work of the Unibomber.
12:50It's his eighth known attack, and his bombs are getting more sophisticated.
12:54These bombs are more lethal, they're exploding at a higher pace, and they're causing greater injury.
13:03Unlike the previous Unibomber devices, which were mailed to their targets, the two Berkeley bombs were hand-delivered to the
13:09building, which suggests that whoever the bomber is, is really familiar with the Berkeley campus.
13:16So task force members decide to pull Berkeley employee records to try to see if they can find any employee,
13:23possibly a professor, because again, highly intelligent individual, who may hold a grudge toward the university.
13:30Berkeley's significant.
13:31Berkeley's one of the centers of the counterculture in the 1960s.
13:35There are a ton of student protests against the Vietnam War.
13:43But once again, the task force is unable to identify any viable suspects, and the Unibomber carries on with a
13:52new boldness.
13:541985 turns out to be a pretty busy year for the Unibomber because the ninth device that goes off is
14:00a mail bomb that explodes at a Boeing plant in Washington state.
14:04And then you have a tenth bomb, another mail bomb, at the University of Michigan.
14:09The bomber is getting better, and yet the FBI and the ATF are no closer in getting their man or
14:15woman or organization.
14:17They don't know.
14:19As 1985 continues, things get even more frustrating for law enforcement.
14:25As the bomber turns to what feels like a random target, this time with a lethal result.
14:32It's December 11, 1985, at a Sacramento, California computer store.
14:38The manager of the store, 38-year-old Hugh Scrutton, goes outside to move this pile of lumber with nails
14:45inside of the boards from behind his car.
14:48As he goes to move the wood, he detonates a pipe bomb.
14:53It explodes right there in front of him.
14:58He's injured terribly and dies 30 minutes later.
15:02For the first time on device number 11, the Unibomber has killed someone.
15:07This elevates it to a new level.
15:11All these years, they've been focusing on universities and airlines.
15:17And here you have a manager of a computer store.
15:21What rhyme or reason can the FBI make of what's going on?
15:28Then, in early 1987, the FBI catches a break.
15:35On February 20th, 1987, at a second computer store, this time in Salt Lake City, Utah, an employee spots a
15:43suspicious man lurking near her car.
15:46She sees the man pull something suspicious out of a canvas bag and place it near her tire.
15:51So she asks another employee to go check it out.
15:54And within seconds, it explodes.
15:59There, for the very first time in the investigation, there's someone who thinks they've seen the bomber.
16:07So the FBI bring in a sketch artist who then begins to put together what the Unibomber or what this
16:15individual looked like.
16:17White male, approximately 5'10", 160 pounds, with curly reddish hair, wearing sunglasses and a hoodie.
16:24Federal agents have released the picture of a suspected mass bomber.
16:29This sketch is later revised and becomes the now infamous image of the Unibomber.
16:35Investigators finally have a real lead to share with the public.
16:40Everybody's looking for the Unibomber.
16:43And then nothing happens.
16:45For six years.
16:48No bombings.
16:50So the FBI begins to think that it's never going to come out again.
16:54And what happens here is that the FBI almost gets rid of the task force.
17:00But there are individuals in the FBI, other agents, that say, don't close it up just yet.
17:05They believe that all he's doing is laying low and continuing to hone and refine his bomb-making skills so
17:14they can be that much more deadly.
17:20It is now 1993, six years after the Unibomber's last attack.
17:26That June, two mail bombs strike in quick succession, again to what feel like random targets.
17:34A prominent scientist, a geneticist named Dr. Charles Epstein, who lives in Tiburon, California, across the bay from San Francisco.
17:43Dr. Epstein receives a package in the mail.
17:46It turns out that the package is a bomb.
17:48Violence shattered the life and career of one of the West's most prominent genetic researchers.
17:52A package bomb blew as Dr. Charles Epstein opened his mail at his home late Tuesday.
17:58The force of this bomb blows out the kitchen window, knocks out the table legs.
18:04This bomb is in a small package, but it's got a lot of force.
18:08The explosion is so powerful that Epstein suffers damage to his right hand.
18:14He gets shrapnel lodged in his abdomen, and he also suffers permanent hearing damage.
18:19Just two days later, another professor is attacked, this time across the country at Yale University.
18:28Bomb number 14 is sent to a computer scientist named David Galerntor.
18:32He opens up a small, padded envelope.
18:37Authorities believe a Yale computer scientist...
18:39Not only is the size of the bomb different, gone from being housed in this wooden box
18:45to being in just a padded envelope, but the detonation got stronger.
18:52The FBI is able to look at the typewriting on the mailing labels,
18:59and they note that both of the bombs have these labels from the same typewriter.
19:07So what the task force realizes immediately is,
19:11the Unabomber is back, and he or she is much more forceful.
19:18On June 24th, the same afternoon as the Yale bombing,
19:22a third envelope shows up, this time at the New York Times.
19:28This envelope doesn't contain a bomb, it contains a letter.
19:31And what's written in that letter raises the possibility for the first time
19:35that the Unabomber might not be working alone.
19:37The letter is supposedly written by a member of a group with the initials FC,
19:43which stands for Freedom Club.
19:47The author of the letter claims that they're writing this letter to the Times
19:50for two main reasons.
19:52One, to establish the group's identity, to let people know who Freedom Club is.
19:57The second reason is so that they can provide a secret code in all further communication
20:03so that no one else can take responsibility for bombings that are carried out by Freedom Club.
20:09The public doesn't know this at the time,
20:11but each of the devices that the Unabomber had sent
20:14had contained a metal disc with the letters FC engraved in them.
20:18And that disc was designed to withstand the blast.
20:22So it's kind of like a calling card.
20:24In their analysis, the FBI is also able to determine
20:28that the letter is off the same typewriter
20:33as all of the other mailing labels on all of the other bombs.
20:37So they know that it is the Unabomber calling themselves FC Freedom Club.
20:43The letter's author calls the club an anarchist group.
20:47This letter gives us the first glimpse into what could be
20:51the inner workings of the mines behind all of the bombings thus far.
20:59Despite revealing the group's alleged identity in the letter,
21:02the author refuses to reveal their motive.
21:06Is this anarchist group FC really a thing?
21:09What do we do with this?
21:11So many of the clues in Unabomber like that.
21:13Where does it lead us?
21:14But in sending this letter, the Unabomber may have inadvertently revealed something new.
21:22As they analyze the letter, they notice there's an indentation.
21:25It's not written out in pencil, but as if someone was writing something on top of the letter.
21:30And there was a mark left from the writing that says,
21:33call Nathan R. Wednesday, 7 p.m.
21:37What does that mean?
21:39So investigators are now thinking, who is this Nathan R.?
21:42Could this person be a member of the Freedom Club?
21:45Could this be a clue that leads us to the identity of the Unabomber?
21:50So they started digging into the Nathan R's in the United States.
21:54And you can only imagine how many there must be.
21:57They looked at more than 10,000 individuals to see if there was anything that might somehow correlate to a
22:04person who might be the Unabomber.
22:07But despite all of their Herculean efforts, nothing comes of it.
22:12It ends up being just another dead end.
22:14And they start to think, well, maybe they just indented this handwriting onto that letter to serve as a sort
22:19of distraction.
22:20To move the search forward, the FBI opens up a tip line with a $1 million reward for information leading
22:28to the Unabomber's arrest.
22:30People have lots of suspicions about who this could be.
22:33Maybe it's someone they know.
22:34Maybe it's a family member.
22:36So the Unabomber task force is being inundated with information.
22:40When the tip line is opened, thousands of tips start coming in.
22:44And all of them are investigated.
22:46Many of them really don't lead to anything.
22:49However, there is one name that comes in from numerous individuals over and over again.
22:58By the mid-1990s, the failure to catch the Unabomber creates a climate of fear.
23:04People are terrified to open packages or fly in planes for fear of being killed or maimed by a hidden
23:12pipe bomb.
23:13And so far, it feels like there's nothing the FBI can do to end this reign of terror.
23:22Adding to the concern, the Unabomber launches two more fatal attacks, but these seem much more random.
23:30The first victim is attacked in December of 1994.
23:33It's an advertising executive named Thomas Mosser, and the attack takes place at his home in New Jersey.
23:39The second victim, four months later, is a timber industry lobbyist that goes by the name of Gilbert Murray.
23:45And that happens in Sacramento, California.
23:48Why these two guys?
23:50I mean, they really don't have anything in common with each other, nor do they have anything in common with
23:55the rest of the people who have been victims of the Unabomber.
23:58He's gone from someone who was struggling to make devices that even went off, to someone who seems to be
24:05able to kill at will.
24:06That summer, with the FBI scrambling to get any leads on who the Unabomber might be,
24:13a notorious fugitive joins the suspect list.
24:21James Kilgore is a California grad student turned political activist,
24:25and will later become a soldier in the Symbionese Liberation Army, which is this radical left-wing group.
24:32This is a group that becomes famous or infamous for the kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974.
24:40It's believed that he helped Patty Hearst escape from the FBI during a shootout with police.
24:44He was responsible for planting bombs under police cars all across the state of California,
24:50and thankfully, none of those ever detonated.
24:54As law enforcement's closing in on the SLA, Kilgore was wise enough to escape the area, and he's never been
25:01heard of since.
25:02And just before Kilgore goes underground, he puts out a communication to all of his followers
25:08that he's going to continue the fight against this tyranny of government.
25:1520 years later, after he was involved with the SLA,
25:18they're wondering if James Kilgore is now making good on those threats by all of these bombs.
25:24He certainly would have the expertise to do it, and certainly the anger to do it.
25:30Kilgore's ties to Berkeley and his history with explosives aren't his only similarities with the Unabomber.
25:38Digging into Kilgore's past turns up even more.
25:43They find that James Kilgore was raised about 20 miles north of Berkeley, California,
25:47and that his father is a lumber broker in Northern California.
25:51And this makes the FBI think that maybe there's a connection here,
25:54because a lot of these early devices from the Unabomber have a through line that deals with wood.
26:00The bombs are made of wood, which is very unusual.
26:04You have one of the fourth target is Percy Wood, who lives in Lake Forest, Illinois.
26:11One of these devices was sent to somebody that lives on Aspen Drive.
26:15And then you have Gilbert Murray, one of the victims, who is somebody that also worked in the lumber industry.
26:21During the case, investigators noted really interesting similarities
26:24between the way in which the SLA bombs were constructed in those early days
26:29and the way in which Unabomber was constructing his bomb.
26:34Investigators note the strong similarity between Kilgore and that infamous sketch.
26:40By now, he's somebody that would have been in about his 40s.
26:43And the last time he's seen, he stands at about 5'10", weighs about 170 pounds,
26:50and he has this reddish-brown hair.
26:53Looking at Kilgore as a suspect made perfect sense.
26:56The idea that this 70s terrorist was now reinventing himself wasn't out of reach.
27:03But those who know James Kilgore insist he doesn't fit the profile of a serial killer.
27:10For starters, Patty Hearst describes Kilgore in her book as a, quote, model of reason.
27:16The other challenge in pinning Kilgore down is that the FBI can't find him.
27:22They don't know where he's at.
27:23Meanwhile, the Unabomber seems to be getting more brazen,
27:28taunting the media as well as his victims.
27:32A letter arrives at the San Francisco Chronicle.
27:35And it's a short letter.
27:36And it says that the Unabomber is going to place a bomb on an airplane out of LAX in the
27:42next six days.
27:43And this sends the entire country into a panic.
27:46And it turns out this whole thing was a hoax.
27:49The Unabomber then sends more letters to the Washington Post and the New York Times.
28:03He sends a letter to the Washington Post and the New York Times saying that he will, FC will, stop
28:12bombings if they publish their 35,000-word manifesto.
28:17What is this manifesto about?
28:20It's a diatribe against the industrial complex that computerization is going to kill our society and must be thwarted.
28:29If the papers publish his manifesto, FC says they will stop bombing.
28:34The papers aren't sure what to do and consult with Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh.
28:43Do we give in to this guy's demands?
28:46Do we publish this in the hopes that he really will stop bombing?
28:51Or do we refuse to publish it because what kind of an example does this set?
28:58Ultimately, the FBI tell the New York Times and the Washington Post, go ahead and publish the manifesto.
29:03We realize that there's a risk involved, but it might be worth the risk.
29:06The Washington Post published his words only after speaking with Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI officials.
29:12The Justice Department hopes to use his own words to lead investigators to one of the most hunted men in
29:18the country.
29:19I think if he wrote one sentence or 37,000 words, he's revealing more of himself every time he writes
29:24anything.
29:25The manifesto is published on September 19, 1995.
29:29Millions of people read this manifesto and following its publication, you have thousands of new tips that are coming into
29:36that tip line that the FBI set up that are providing potentially hundreds of new suspects.
29:46On November 12, 1995, two months after the Unabomber's manifesto is published, journalist Tom Bates at the Oregonian says he
29:57knows who the Unabomber is, a criminal on the FBI's most wanted list.
30:02Bates claims that the language used in the manifesto and the ideas that are espoused in that writing match up
30:10to someone that is known to have planted bombs and explosives on university campuses in the past and is someone
30:16who is a pretty famed fugitive.
30:20On August 24, 1970, at 3.40 in the morning, the group pull up in a van that they've loaded
30:28with 2,000 pounds of explosives, preparing to detonate a bomb at a university.
30:33And the man who allegedly built this bomb and dreamt up this scheme was a 22-year-old student named
30:40Leo Burt.
30:45Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Burt came to the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s to row varsity crew.
30:54But after being cut from the team, his interest turned more political.
31:00So he works at the student newspaper as student journalist, but one reason for him wanting to carry out these
31:05forms of protest is because he actually covers the shooting that happens at Kent State.
31:11And he's badly beaten by a police officer that's putting down that protest that day.
31:16But over time, his protest starts to lean in a more violent direction.
31:22On New Year's Eve 1969, Burt and three associates steal a small plane.
31:27They drop homemade bombs on the Badger Army ammunition plant, but they don't detonate.
31:34That summer, Burt sets his sights on a new target.
31:39On the campus of University of Wisconsin-Madison at the time, there is the Army Mathematics Research Center, which is
31:47a government-funded think tank known as Army Math.
31:50Army Math, as it was known, was despised by many anti-war activists who believed that the center was responsible
31:58for much of the death and destruction in Southeast Asia and had no place on a government-funded campus.
32:05Burt and his New Year's Eve associates, they steal a van from a campus parking lot and fill it with
32:11six barrels of fertilizer and fuel oil.
32:14They wait until the wee hours of the morning, and they drive the van to Sterling Hall.
32:18At 3.42 a.m., they light the fuse.
32:25The bomb explodes, and this huge rattle is felled all across campus.
32:32Now, the Army Math building itself isn't really touched, but everything around Army Math and near Army Math is basically
32:40destroyed, including a physics lab in which you have a 33-year-old graduate student who is working late that
32:47night.
32:48He ends up dying in the blast.
32:52And there are also five other people in the lab that are critically injured.
32:57Burt's three co-conspirators are caught, tried, and sentenced, but Burt himself remains a fugitive throughout the Unabomber's active years.
33:06Journalist Tom Bates writes a book about Burt and the Sterling Hall bombing.
33:11Years later, when the Unabomber's manifesto is published, he insists that it has to be the work of the fugitive
33:17campus bomber.
33:18Bates cites a magazine article written by Burt called, Do We Need a National Organization?
33:24The writing is similar, the style is similar, and so Tom Bates makes the argument that just looking at the
33:31language and the way that the manifesto is written, it's very much like what Leo Burt wrote many years ago.
33:37He also says that Burt is somebody that really has no regard for loss of life, as evidenced by the
33:44fact that the Sterling Hall explosion kills that graduate student, and Burt shows no empathy, instead just decides to flee.
33:52Federal agents investigate Burt, claiming that he can't be completely discounted while still at large, but someone else reading the
34:01manifesto hears a different voice.
34:04She recognizes the style, the tone, and the anger that's present in the manifesto, because she's seen this, but much
34:14closer to home.
34:20It's now late 1995, 17 years after the Unabomber first began his terrifying attacks.
34:29Linda Patrick, a philosophy professor from Schenectady, New York, is in Paris on sabbatical.
34:36She's reading an English-language newspaper with excerpts of the recently published Unabomber's manifesto, and the words seem eerily similar
34:45to something she's read before.
34:48This writing contains striking similarities to some letters that had been sent to her husband, David Kaczynski, from his estranged
34:56brother.
34:57He was furious that David was marrying Linda, despite never having met her, and he wrote long, vengeful letters disparaging
35:05their marriage and the institution of marriage itself.
35:09Shortly after the manifesto was released, David comes to Paris for a visit, and Linda shares her concerns that his
35:17brother Ted might be the Unabomber.
35:20He doesn't believe it at first. He hasn't read the manifesto yet. He said, I know my brother. He's a
35:26little wacky. He's out there living off the grid. I know he's strange, but he's sweet. He wouldn't hurt a
35:33fly.
35:35He says to Linda, I think there's one in a thousand chance that my brother could be the Unabomber. And
35:41she says, well, one in a thousand is significant. We need to start thinking about this.
35:45And that's when Dave looks up the manifesto. He's able then to get all the letters he's received over the
35:51years from his brother.
35:53As he and his wife look through all of these letters, they realize that there is a very striking similarity.
36:04In February 1996, David reaches out to the FBI to share his suspicions and turns over a trove of Ted's
36:14writings for comparison.
36:15After looking into more than 2,000 suspects, the task force may finally have their man.
36:23Ted Kaczynski is born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942 to working class parents.
36:30But he's an incredibly gifted student, especially in mathematics.
36:36He actually scores a 167 on an IQ test, and he even skips two grades in high school, graduates by
36:42the age of 15, and is immediately accepted to Harvard.
36:46Once he finishes at Harvard, he then goes on to University of Michigan to obtain his master's and then later
36:51his doctorate degree.
36:53He's quickly hired by the University of California at Berkeley.
36:56He's put on a tenure track as a professor in his mid-20s.
37:00And so this is a guy who seems to have a huge future ahead of him.
37:08So that's one story of Ted Kaczynski.
37:11The other story of Ted Kaczynski is that this is someone who always felt alienated from his peers.
37:17He's always had difficulty making friends.
37:20At Berkeley, he's not well-liked by his students.
37:23They think that he's dull and unengaged and pathologically shy.
37:27And so in 1969, he resigns without any explanation.
37:31In 1971, he moves to a tiny remote cabin in Lincoln, Montana, where he lives a life off the grid
37:39without electricity or running water.
37:41Despite the peaceful setting, his mind is not at rest.
37:48Now Ted Kaczynski is living off the grid, as he wanted, but he's still writing letters to his family.
37:55Diatribes against the government and socialization and computerization.
38:00Ted Kaczynski is not a happy guy.
38:04The FBI is optimistic.
38:07Now they have a real lead.
38:09They speak with David.
38:10They speak with Linda.
38:12And more that they compare letters that he's written to them in the past, they think they have their guy.
38:17On April 3rd, 1996, the FBI finally shows up at the Montana cabin.
38:25They bring their operations teams to Lincoln, Montana.
38:29They have snipers.
38:30They have everyone ready in case things go wrong.
38:33Probably most importantly for them, they want to have all of their evidence intact.
38:37So for 18 years, the FBI has been chasing a ghost.
38:41Someone they believe who's highly intelligent, well-educated, trained and versed in terrorism and counterterrorism activities.
38:48But when they arrest Ted Kaczynski, they find something completely different.
38:55His clothes have all of these holes in them.
38:59He's covered in ash.
39:00His face, his hair is matted.
39:03He smells.
39:05As soon as they enter the cabin, it becomes clear they essentially have a confession to the unabomb attacks in
39:10physical form.
39:15It's a treasure trove of evidence.
39:41Ted Kaczynski is proud of his work.
39:44Ted Kaczynski is proud of his work, and he writes about it in these journals.
39:46Under the bed, they find an aluminum-wrapped package addressed to an aerospace company in Texas.
39:53And sure enough, there is a live bomb inside.
39:58One of the longest and most expensive manhunts in U.S. history is finally over.
40:05But the quest to fully understand the unabomber carries on.
40:09So what exactly were the unabomber's motives?
40:12Was this person just evil?
40:15Were they somebody that was just insane?
40:19Look, Ted Kaczynski could have gotten away with this for years longer than he did.
40:25And it was really his wanting that attention and wanting that recognition and getting that manifesto published that led to
40:34his arrest.
40:37In January of 1998, Ted Kaczynski pleads guilty and is moved to an isolated cell in a Supermax prison in
40:46Colorado, where he dies by suicide in 2023.
40:51David Kaczynski, long torn by his decision to turn in his own brother, collects the $1 million reward, but turns
40:59it over to the families of his brother's victims.
41:02I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching this Case Closed episode of History's Greatest Mysteries.
Comments