Global Courant
Ted Kaczynski, the convicted terrorist known as the Unabomber, was found dead in his prison cell early Saturday, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. He turned 81.
Kaczynski was found unconscious in his cell around 12:30 a.m. ET and transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Kaczynski was previously in a maximum security facility in Colorado, but was moved to a federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina in December 2021 due to ill health.
Without the suspicions of his brother and sister-in-law, Kaczynski may never have been caught. Kaczynski’s sister-in-law, Linda Patrik, was one of the first to identify Kaczynski as the Unabomber after reading the Unabomber’s writings.
In an interview with “20/20 on ID Presents: Homicide” in 2016, Patrik recalled the first time she suspected Kaczynski was responsible for the serial bombings.
“I thought about the families that were bombed. There was one in which the package arrived at the man’s house and his little 2-year-old daughter was there. She was almost in the room when he opened the package. Luckily she left and his wife left. And then he died,” Patrik said. “And there were others. And so I spent those days thinking about those people.”
