Original subtitles

[suspenseful music]

- Tonight, an evil genius uses homemade bombs

to terrorize a nation.

- It was designed to create a mass explosion,

which would have brought that plane down.

- Millions of Americans are terrified

as to where the next bomb is going to end up.

- He leaves no trace, no fingerprints, no DNA.

It's like hunting a ghost.

- Federal agents join forces and launch a massive manhunt,

but still, this mastermind is always one step ahead.

- It seems like he's taunting law enforcement,

and to him, it's kind of a game of cat and mouse.

- Now, we'll explore the top theories in the FBI's hunt

for one of history's most notorious criminals

as they finally crack the case of the Unabomber.

[rousing music]

[suspenseful music]

- [Laurence] 11:50 a.m., November 15th, 1979.

30 minutes after departing Chicago,

passengers aboard an American Airlines 727

bound for Washington DC

hear a muffled thump in the baggage hold,

followed by a sucking sound.

- [Sami] Following that noise,

you start to get this chemical smell

in the cabin of the plane.

The pilot makes an initial announcement

to the passengers on board, all 72 of them, and explains that,

"Oh, we just have a problem with a valve in the plane.

Nothing to worry about, folks.

Everything's gonna be fine."

[passengers panicking]

20 minutes after the pilot's announcement, however,

you start to get all of this thick smoke filling the cabin,

filling the fuselage.

- The crew doesn't know what happened.

All they know is a big bang went off.

All the passengers in the cabin

are now putting on their oxygen masks,

and there's a lot of smoke,

and they've gotta get that plane down.

- [Sami] The real fear is that this fire

might end up actually reaching

either the hydraulic system of the plane,

or worse, the fuel tanks of the plane,

which would cause it to explode.

- The pilot comes on and says to the passengers,

"Brace for impact.

We're gonna land, 20 minutes, at Dulles Airport."

[passengers screaming]

- [Laurence] The plane descends at over 600 miles an hour,

twice the normal speed of approach,

as fire trucks and ambulances scramble to the runway.

- [Kavitha] Thankfully, the pilot is able

to successfully land the plane.

All the passengers are safely evacuated,

and at least 12 passengers are rushed to the hospital

for potential smoke inhalation.

[siren wailing]

- [Laurence] The terror and trauma are palpable,

but it could have been so much worse.

- Eventually they managed to extinguish the fire,

and they discover the source of the explosion.

It's a pipe bomb that's housed inside a wooden box.

It's wrapped in craft paper,

and been completely covered in stamps

to make it look like a nondescript package.

It's been mailed from a fairly large facility

in suburban Chicago.

- Now, at the time, air mail wasn't regularly scanned

by metal detectors before being put onto a plane,

so the bomb was able to make it very easily

onto the aircraft with no real suspicion by anyone.

- Post-analysis identified

that this was a very sophisticated bomb,

in that the trigger mechanism was

what we call an altimeter bomb.

So when the plane reached a certain height,

the bomb would detonate.

[explosion thumping]

- If the bomb had gone off the way the bomber had intended,

there would've been a major fire on that plane,

blowing out the fuselage and bringing that plane down.

- Normally when you have a fairly intact bomb,

it's pretty easy for investigators

to use the components to trace the origins of that bomb.

But in this case, they find that whoever built this bomb

did a really good job of removing any kind of traceable

or identifiable information from the components.

- [Laurence] The FBI conducts a nationwide search

for any bombings that used similar devices

and find two matches

in a pair of attacks at Chicago's

Northwestern University.

The first took place a year and a half earlier.

- [Lis] May 25th, 1978, Northwestern University.

A woman sees a package on the

ground in the parking lot,

picks it up.

She brings it to campus police, who open it up.

[explosion booming]

It's a loud explosion.

Everybody's scared, but nobody's really hurt.

- [Sami] Cut to a year later, in May of 1979,

also Northwestern University.

You have a grad student who also gets a package,

and when he opens it,

the package explodes, and this time, the grad student

receives minor cuts and minor burns.

- [Lis] So here you have two

bombs in 1978 and 1979

that really don't

garner much attention,

either nationally or even within the FBI.

Then you have, again in 1979,

the bomb going off on the airline.

That gets national attention.

That's spread all across the national media.

- The FBI, once they finished their post investigation,

made the determination that the airplane bomb

was constructed in exactly the same manner

as the other two bombs, leading them to conclude

that the individual who placed the bomb on the plane

was in fact the same individual

who placed or sent the other two bombs.

- And their concern is that

if they don't find this person soon,

these bombs are just going to become

more and more sophisticated

and ultimately, more and more dangerous.

- [Laurence] But before the FBI

can develop any viable leads,

the so-called Junkyard Bomber strikes again.

On June 10th, 1980, in the exclusive Chicago suburb

of Lake Forest,

Percy Wood, the president of United Airlines,

opens a parcel delivered to his home mailbox.

- [Lis] Percy Wood is celebrating his 60th birthday.

He thinks it's maybe a belated birthday present,

and when he takes a look at it,

it looks like the book, the "Ice Brothers,"

which has to do with World War II.

That's something he might be interested in.

- Wood is examining the book.

As he turns it back to the cover,

he notices that several of the pages are glued together,

and it's at this point, boom.

- The bomb exploded in Wood's hands late this afternoon,

and he is now being treated

in a hospital just outside Chicago...

- He gets shrapnel in his face, in his body.

You've got three-quarter pipe that rips across his thigh.

- Wood is alive, but he requires emergency surgery,

and it definitely seems that the bomber is honing his skill.

These bombs are getting more and more deadly.

- [Laurence] Agents from the FBI, ATF, and US Postal Service

now join forces and race to identify the attacker.

They also give the manhunt a new case name, UNABOM,

short for university and airline bomber.

And the attacker, he's now known as the Unabomber.

This mysterious attacker will continue to strike

for many years to come.

- Over the course of 18 years, the Unabomber sends 16 bombs

to homes, institutions, and offices across the country.

In all, 23 people are injured, three people die,

and millions across America are terrified.

This is no longer a localized incident.

- The Unabomber investigation would involve

ultimately more than 150 special agents across the country,

and it would cost more than $50 million.

That's more than any investigation in history

up and to that point.

- [Laurence] Federal agents are increasingly desperate

to catch this phantom and end his deadly reign of terror.

But first they have to figure out, who is the Unabomber?

- Experts start digging through the devices

to see whether or not they might have missed a clue

as to who this Unabomber might be.

One of the things that they notice

is that the metal pieces on the bombs

are fused together in a way that an airline worker

would fuse metal together.

And so, this clue leads investigators

to who they think the Unabomber might actually be.

[suspenseful music]

- [Lis] Looking at the welding of these bombs,

and they're very similar one to the other,

maybe the universities were test drives

for what the bomber really wanted to do,

which is take down an airline.

So the FBI early on tries to get a profile,

and this is honed as cases go on.

But at first they thought,

somebody maybe in their 30s to 40s,

male, blue collar welder.

- [Michael] The bombs were housed in

a custom-made wood casing.

The individual took great care in constructing the bombs.

The FBI concluded that this individual

had some obsessive- compulsive tendencies,

perhaps was a loner, had isolated themselves

from mainstream society.

- Imagine you've been fired from American Airlines or United

and you're angry about that.

This is a way to get back,

and that's what the FBI thought.

They looked for recent fires at American Airlines,

they crosschecked with criminal history with those people,

they went out and interviewed these people.

We're talking about thousands and thousands of man hours

trying to track down hundreds and hundreds of employees

from different airlines.

- But despite all of these efforts,

it turns out that all of their leads

for any potential airline workers being the Unabomber

come up empty.

All investigators can ultimately do is

wait to see if the Unabomber strikes again,

and hope that in his next attack he slips up.

[suspenseful music]

- May 5th, 1982, Nashville, Tennessee.

A secretary working in the computer science department

of Vanderbilt University opens a package

addressed to her boss and gets a horrifying surprise.

- It immediately explodes, peppering her entire upper boy

with powder burns and lacerations.

She's rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery,

but she does survive.

- [Lis] When this bomb goes off

and hurts a secretary in Tennessee,

they realize the Unabomber is back,

and now, he or she is targeting universities again.

- Now the task force shifts its focus to,

okay, maybe this isn't somebody who's an airline employee,

but maybe it's somebody that actually just holds

a resentment towards higher education.

[suspenseful music]

- [Eric] The first four bombings

are originating from Chicago,

so they think this is

maybe a Chicago bomber.

Then there's a bombing

at Vanderbilt University

in Nashville.

And then they find out a few months earlier

there's been an attempted bombing in Salt Lake City, Utah.

- [Sami] With the bomb that was defused out west

at the University of Utah, agents start to think,

"Maybe we've been looking in the wrong spot,"

and they start to focus their efforts out west.

- [Laurence] Sure enough, the Unabomber's next attack

takes place at the University of California Berkeley.

- Now in 1982, a professor of electrical engineering,

he sees this package on the floor

with a wire sticking out of it.

He's just headed to go get a cup of coffee,

but he picks it up to be a nice guy.

[explosion booming]

The bomb explodes.

The right side of his body, his face, his arm,

everything is hit by shrapnel.

- [Laurence] Three years later on the very same campus,

the Unabomber strikes again,

this time at a computer lab.

A Berkeley graduate student notices

an unclaimed binder attached to a plastic box.

- [Kavitha] John Hauser.

He's an Air Force captain and an astronaut candidate.

He decides to investigate further

and unlatches the plastic box.

- [Sami] When he ends up opening the box, it detonates.

[explosion booming]

The ring on his right hand just gets blown off,

flies six feet, and embeds itself

into the plaster wall nearby.

It also destroys his right arm,

it does severe nerve damage,

and it also blinds him in his left eye.

- He is lucky to have survived the blast,

but his dreams of becoming an astronaut are over in a flash.

- [Laurence] Explosive experts confirm,

this is the work of the Unabomber.

It's his eighth known attack,

and his bombs are getting more sophisticated.

- These bombs are more lethal,

they're exploding at a higher pace,

and they're causing greater injury.

- Unlike the previous Unabomber devices,

which were mailed to their targets,

the two Berkeley bombs were hand delivered to the building,

which suggests that whoever the bomber is

is really familiar with the Berkeley campus.

- So task force members decide to pull

Berkeley employee records to try to see if they can find

any employee, possibly a professor,

'cause again, highly intelligent individual,

who may hold a grudge toward the university.

- Berkeley's significant,

Berkeley's one of the centers of the counterculture.

In the 1960s, there are a ton of student protests

against the Vietnam War.

Is this someone who has been part of that movement?

- [Laurence] But once again,

the task force is unable to identify any viable suspects,

and the Unabomber carries on with a new boldness.

- 1985 turns out to be a pretty busy year for the Unabomber,

because the ninth device that goes off is a mail bomb

that explodes at a Boeing plant in Washington state,

and then you have a 10th bomb, another mail bomb,

at the University of Michigan.

- The bomber is getting better,

and yet the FBI and the ATF are no closer

in getting their man, or woman, or organization.

They don't know.

- [Laurence] As 1985 continues,

things get even more frustrating for law enforcement,

as the bomber turns to what feels like a random target,

this time with a lethal result.

- [Sami] It's December 11th, 1985,

at a Sacramento, California computer store.

The manager of the store, 38-year-old Hugh Scrutton,

goes outside to move this pile of lumber

with nails inside of the boards from behind his car.

As he goes to move the wood,

[explosion booming]

he detonates a pipe bomb.

It explodes right there in front of him.

- He's injured terribly, and dies 30 minutes later.

For the first time, on device number 11,

the Unabomber has killed someone.

This elevates it to a new level.

- [Lis] All these years, they've been focusing

on universities and airlines,

and here you have a manager of a computer store.

What rhyme or reason can the FBI make

of what's going on?

- [Laurence] Then, in early 1987, the FBI catches a break.

- On February 20th, 1987,

at a second computer store,

this time in Salt Lake City, Utah,

an employee spots a suspicious

man lurking near her car.

She sees the man pull something suspicious

out of a canvas bag and place it near her tire.

So she asks another employee to go check it out,

and within seconds, it explodes.

- There for the very first time in the investigation,

there's someone who thinks they've seen the bomber.

- [Michael] So the FBI bring in a sketch artist,

who then begins to put together what the Unabomber,

or what this individual, looked like.

White male, approximately 5'10", 160 pounds,

with curly, reddish hair, wearing sunglasses and a hoodie.

- Federal agents have released the picture

of a suspected mass bomber.

- [Laurence] This sketch is later revised,

and becomes the now infamous image of the Unabomber.

Investigators finally have a real lead

to share with the public.

- Everybody's looking for the Unabomber,

and then nothing happens,

for six years,

no bombings.

So the FBI begins to think

that he's never gonna come out again,

and what happens here is that the FBI

almost gets rid of the task force.

- [Sami] But there are individuals in the FBI,

other agents that say, don't close it up just yet.

They believe that all he's doing

is laying low and continuing to hone and refine

his bomb making skills so they can be that much more deadly.

[suspenseful music]

- [Laurence] It is now 1993,

six years after the Unabomber's last attack.

That June, two mail bombs strike in quick succession,

again to what feel like random targets.

- A prominent scientist,

a geneticist named Dr. Charles Epstein,

who lives in Tiburon, California,

across the bay from San Francisco.

Dr. Epstein receives a package in the mail.

It turns out that the package is a bomb.

- [Reporter] Violence shattered the life and career

of one of the West's most

prominent genetic researchers.

A package bomb blew as Dr. Charles Epstein

opened his mail at his home late Tuesday.

- The force of this bomb blows out the kitchen window,

knocks out the table legs.

This bomb is in a small package,

but it's got a lot of force.

- The explosion is so powerful

that Epstein suffers damage to his right hand,

he gets shrapnel lodged in his abdomen,

and he also suffers permanent hearing damage.

- [Laurence] Just two days later,

another professor is attacked,

this time, across the country at Yale University.

- Bomb number 14 is sent to a computer scientist

named David Gelernter.

- He opens up a small, padded envelope.

- [Reporter] Authorities believe a Yale computer scientist...

- Not only is the size of the bomb different,

gone from being housed in this wooden box

to being in just a padded envelope,

but the detonation got stronger.

[typewriter keys clicking]

The FBI is able to look at the typewriting

on the mailing labels,

and they note that both of the bombs

have these labels from the same typewriter.

[suspenseful music]

So what the task force realizes immediately is,

the Unabomber is back, and he or she is much more forceful.

- [Laurence] On June 24th,

the same afternoon as the Yale bombing,

a third envelope shows up, this time at the New York Times.

- This envelope doesn't contain a bomb,

it contains a letter,

and what's written in that letter

raises the possibility for the first time

that the Unabomber might not be working alone.

- [Laurence] The letter is supposedly written

by a member of a group with the initials FC,

which stands for Freedom Club.

- The author of the letter

claims that they're writing this letter to the Times

for two main reasons.

One, to establish the group's identity,

to let people know who Freedom Club is.

The second reason is so that they can provide a secret code

in all further communication

so that no one else can take responsibility

for bombings that are carried out by Freedom Club.

- The public doesn't know this at the time,

but each of the devices that the Unabomber had sent

had contained a metal disc

with the letters FC engraved in them,

and that disc was designed to withstand the blast.

So it's kind of like a calling card.

- [Lis] In their analysis,

the FBI is also able to determine

that the letter is off the same typewriter

as all of the other mailing labels

on all of the other bombs,

so they know that it is the Unabomber,

calling themselves FC, Freedom Club.

- [Laurence] The letter's author

calls the club an anarchist group.

- This letter gives us the first glimpse

into what could be the inner workings of the minds

behind all of the bombings thus far.

[suspenseful music]

- [Laurence] Despite revealing the group's

alleged identity in the letter,

the author refuses to reveal their motive.

- Is this anarchist group FC really a thing?

What do we do with this?

So many of the clues in Unabomber are like that.

Where does it lead us?

- [Laurence] But in sending this letter,

the Unabomber may have inadvertently

revealed something new.

- [Eric] As they analyze the letter,

they notice there's an indentation.

It's not written out in pencil,

but as if someone was writing something on top of the letter

and there was a mark left from the writing that says,

"Call Nathan R., Wednesday 7:00 p.m."

What does that mean?

- So investigators are now thinking, who is this Nathan R?

Could this person be a member of the Freedom Club?

Could this be a clue

that leads us to the identity of the Unabomber?

- So they started digging into the Nathan Rs

in the United States,

and you can only imagine how many there must be.

They looked at more than 10,000 individuals

to see if there was anything that might somehow correlate

to a person who might be the Unabomber.

- [Sami] But despite all of their Herculean efforts,

nothing comes of it.

It ends up being just another dead end,

and they start to think,

well, maybe they just indented this handwriting

onto that letter to serve as a sort of distraction.

- [Laurence] To move the search forward,

the FBI opens up a tip line with a $1 million reward

for information leading to the Unabomber's arrest.

- People have lots of suspicions about who this could be.

Maybe it's someone they know, maybe it's a family member.

So the UNABOM task force

is being inundated with information.

- When the tip line is opened,

thousands of tips start coming in,

and all of them are investigated.

Many of them really don't lead to anything.

However, there is one name

that comes in from numerous individuals,

over and over again.

- By the mid 1990s, the failure to catch the Unabomber

creates a climate of fear.

People are terrified to open packages or fly in planes

for fear of being killed or maimed by a hidden pipe bomb,

and so far, it feels like there's nothing the FBI can do

to end this reign of terror.

- Adding to the concern,

the Unabomber launches two more fatal attacks,

but these seem much more random.

The first victim is attacked in December of 1994.

It's an advertising executive named Thomas Mosser,

and the attack takes place at his home in New Jersey.

The second victim, four months later,

is a timber industry lobbyist

that goes by the name of Gilbert Murray,

and that happens in Sacramento, California.

- Why these two guys?

I mean, they really don't have

anything in common with each other,

nor do they have anything in common

with the rest of the people

who have been victims of the Unabomber.

- He's gone from someone who was struggling

to make devices that even went off,

to someone who seems to be able to kill at will.

- That summer, with the FBI scrambling

to get any leads on who the Unabomber might be,

[suspenseful music builds]

a notorious fugitive joins the suspect list.

- James Kilgore is a California grad student

turned political activist, and will later become a soldier

in the Symbionese Liberation Army,

which is this radical left wing group.

This is a group that becomes famous, or infamous,

for the kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974.

It's believed that he helped Patty Hearst

escape from the FBI during a shootout with police.

- He was responsible for planting bombs under police cars

all across the state of California,

and thankfully, none of those ever detonated.

As law enforcement's closing in on the SLA,

Kilgore was wise enough to escape the area

and he's never been heard of since.

And just before Kilgore goes underground,

he puts out a communication to all of his followers

that he's gonna continue the fight

against this tyranny of government.

- 20 years later after he was involved with the SLA,

they're wondering if James Kilgore

is now making good on those threats by all of these bombs.

He certainly would have the expertise to do it,

and certainly the anger to do it.

- [Laurence] Kilgore's ties to Berkeley

and his history with explosives

aren't his only similarities with the Unabomber.

Digging into Kilgore's past turns up even more.

[pensive music]

- [Sami] They find that James Kilgore was raised

about 20 miles north of Berkeley, California,

and that his father is a lumber broker

in Northern California.

And this makes the FBI think

that maybe there's a connection here,

because a lot of these early devices from the Unabomber

have a through line that deals with wood.

- The bombs are made of wood, which is very unusual.

You have one of, the fourth target is Percy Wood,

who lives in Lake Forest, Illinois.

- One of these devices was sent to somebody

that lives on Aspen Drive.

And then you have Gilbert Murray, one of the victims

who was somebody that also worked in the lumber industry.

- During the case, investigators noted

really interesting similarities

between the way in which the SLA bombs

were constructed in those early days

and the way in which Unabomber was constructing his bombs.

- [Laurence] Investigators note the strong similarity

between Kilgore and that infamous sketch.

- By now, he's somebody

that would've been in about his 40s,

and the last time he's seen,

he stands at about 5'10", weighs about 170 pounds,

and he has this reddish, brown hair.

- [Mike] Looking at Kilgore as a suspect made perfect sense,

and the idea that this '70s terrorist

was now reinventing himself wasn't out of reach.

- [Laurence] But those who know James Kilgore

insist he doesn't fit the profile of a serial killer.

- For starters, Patty Hearst describes Kilgore in her book

as a, quote, "model of reason."

The other challenge in pinning Kilgore down

is that the FBI can't find him.

They don't know where he's at.

- [Laurence] Meanwhile,

the Unabomber seems to be getting more brazen,

taunting the media as well as his victims.

- [Eric] A letter arrives at the San Francisco Chronicle,

and it's a short letter, and it says that the Unabomber

is going to place a bomb on an airplane out of LAX

in the next six days,

and this sends the entire country into a panic,

and it turns out that this whole thing was a hoax.

- [Laurence] The Unabomber then sends more letters

to the Washington Post and the New York Times,

but these are very different

and give investigators fresh insights

into the bomber's motives.

- He sends a letter to the Washington Post

and the New York Times saying that he will, FC will,

stop bombings if they publish their 35,000-word manifesto.

What is this manifesto about?

It's a diatribe against the industrial complex,

that computerization is going to kill our society

and must be thwarted.

If the papers publish his manifesto,

FC says, they will stop bombing.

- [Laurence] The papers aren't sure what to do,

and consult with Attorney General Janet Reno

and FBI Director Louis Freeh.

- [Eric] Do we give in to this guy's demands,

do we publish this in the hopes

that he really will stop bombing,

or do we refuse to publish it

because what kind of an example does this set?

- Ultimately, the FBI tell the New York Times

and the Washington Post,

"Go ahead and publish the manifesto.

We realize that there's a risk involved,

but it might be worth the risk.

- [Reporter] The Washington Post published his words

only after speaking with Attorney General Janet Reno

and FBI officials.

The Justice Department hopes to use his own words

to lead investigators

to one of the most hunted men in the country.

- I think if he wrote one sentence or 37,000 words,

he's revealing more of himself

every time he writes anything.

- [Sami] The manifesto's published on

September 19th, 1995.

Millions of people read this manifesto,

and following its publication,

you have thousands of new tips

that are coming into that tip line that the FBI set up

that are providing potentially hundreds of new suspects.

- [Laurence] On November 12th, 1995,

two months after the Unabomber's manifesto is published,

journalist Tom Bates, at the Oregonian,

says he knows who the Unabomber is,

a criminal on the FBI's most wanted list.

- Bates claims that the language used in the manifesto

and the ideas that are espoused in that writing

match up to someone that is known to have planted

bombs and explosives on university campuses in the past

and is someone who is a pretty famed fugitive.

- On August 24th, 1970, at 3:40 in the morning,

the group pull up in a van that they've loaded

with 2,000 pounds of explosives,

preparing to detonate a bomb at a university.

And the man who allegedly built this bomb

and dreamt up this scheme was a 22-year-old student

named Leo Burt.

[suspenseful music]

- [Laurence] Born and raised in Pennsylvania,

Burt came to the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s

to row varsity crew.

But after being cut from the team,

his interests turned more political.

- So he works at the student newspaper

as a student journalist, but one reason

for wanting to carry out these forms of protest

is because he actually covers

the shooting that happens at Kent State,

and he's badly beaten by a police officer

that's putting down that protest that day.

But over time, his protest

starts to lean in a more violent direction.

- On New Year's Eve 1969,

Burt and three associates steal a small plane.

They drop homemade bombs

on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant,

but they don't detonate.

- [Laurence] That summer,

Burt sets his sights on a new target.

- [Sami] On the campus of

the University of Wisconsin Madison at the time,

there is the Army Mathematics Research Center,

which is a government funded

think tank known as Army Math.

- Army Math, as it was known,

was despised by many anti-war activists,

who believed that the center was responsible

for much of the death and destruction in Southeast Asia

and had no place on a government-funded campus.

Burt and his New Year's Eve associates,

they steal a van from a campus parking lot

and fill it with six barrels of fertilizer and fuel oil.

They wait until the wee hours of the morning

and they drive the van to Sterling Hall.

At 3:42 a.m., they light the fuse.

[explosion booming]

[dark tense music]

- [Sami] The bomb explodes,

and this huge rattle is felt all across campus.

Now, the Army Math building itself isn't really touched,

but everything around Army Math

and near Army Math is basically destroyed,

including a physics lab

in which you have a 33-year-old graduate student

who is working late that night.

He ends up dying in the blast.

And there are also five other people in the lab

that are critically injured.

- [Kavitha] Burt's three co-conspirators

are caught, tried and sentenced,

but Burt himself remains a fugitive

throughout the Unabomber's active years.

Journalist Tom Bates writes a book about Burt

and the Sterling Hall bombing.

Years later when the Unabomber's manifesto is published,

he insists that it has to be the work

of the fugitive campus bomber.

Bates cites a magazine article written by Burt

called, "Do We Need a National Organization?"

- The writing is similar, the style is similar,

and so, Tom Bates makes the argument that,

just looking at the language

and the way that the manifesto is written,

it's very much like what Leo Burt wrote many years ago.

- [Sami] He also says that Burt is somebody

that really has no regard for loss of life,

as evidenced by the fact that the Sterling Hall explosion

kills that graduate student and Burt shows no empathy,

instead just decides to flee.

- [Laurence] Federal agents investigate Burt,

claiming that he can't be completely discounted

while still at large,

but someone else reading the manifesto

hears a different voice.

- She recognizes the style, the tone,

and the anger that's present in the manifesto

because she's seen this, but much closer to home.

[suspenseful music]

- [Laurence] It's now late 1995,

17 years after the Unabomber

first began his terrifying attacks.

Linda Patrik, a philosophy professor

from Schenectady, New York

is in Paris on sabbatical.

- She's reading an English language newspaper

with excerpts of the recently published

Unabomber's manifesto,

and the words seem eerily similar

to something she's read before.

This writing contains striking similarities

to some letters that had been sent to her husband,

David Kaczynski, from his estranged brother.

He was furious that

David was marrying Linda

despite never having met her,

and he wrote long, vengeful letters

disparaging their marriage

and the institution of marriage itself.

- [Laurence] Shortly after the manifesto was released,

David comes to Paris for a visit

and Linda shares her concerns

that his brother Ted might be the Unabomber.

- He doesn't believe it at first.

He hasn't read the manifesto yet.

He said, "I know my brother.

He's a little wacky.

He's out there living off the grid.

I know he is strange, but he's sweet.

He wouldn't hurt a fly."

[welding torch sparking]

- He says to Linda,

"I think there's one in a thousand chance

that my brother could be the Unabomber."

And she says, "Well, one in a thousand is significant.

We need to start thinking about this."

- [Lis] And that's when Dave looks up the manifesto.

He's able then to get all the letters

he's received over the years from his brother.

As he and his wife look through all of these letters,

they realize that there is

a very striking similarity.

- [Laurence] In February 1996, David reaches out to the FBI

to share his suspicions,

and turns over a trove of Ted's writings for comparison.

After looking into more than 2,000 suspects,

the task force may finally have their man.

- [Sami] Ted Kaczynski is born in Chicago, Illinois in 1942

to working class parents,

but he's an incredibly gifted student,

especially in mathematics.

He actually scores a 167 on an IQ test,

and he even skips two grades in high school,

graduates by the age of 15,

and is immediately accepted to Harvard.

Once he finishes at Harvard,

he then goes on to University of Michigan

to obtain his master's, and then later his doctorate degree.

- He's quickly hired

by the University of California Berkeley.

He's put on a tenure track as a professor in his mid 20s.

And so, this is a guy who seems to have

a huge future ahead of him.

So that's one story of Ted Kaczynski.

The other story of Ted Kaczynski is that this is someone

who always felt alienated from his peers,

he's always had difficulty making friends.

- At Berkeley, he's not well liked by his students.

They think that he's dull,

and unengaged, and pathologically shy.

And so, in 1969, he resigns without any explanation.

In 1971, he moves to a tiny remote cabin in Lincoln, Montana

where he lives a life off the grid

without electricity or running water.

- [Laurence] Despite the peaceful setting,

his mind is not at rest.

[suspenseful music]

- [Lis] Now, Ted Kaczynski is living off the grid,

as he wanted,

but he's still writing letters to his family,

diatribes against the government,

and socialization and computerization.

Ted Kaczynski is not a happy guy.

The FBI is optimistic.

Now they have a real lead.

They speak with David, they speak with Linda,

and the more that they compare letters

that he's written to them in the past,

they think they have their guy.

- [Laurence] On April 3rd, 1996,

the FBI finally shows up at the Montana cabin.

- They bring their operations teams to Lincoln, Montana.

They have snipers,

they have everyone ready in case things go wrong.

Probably most importantly for them,

they wanna have all of their evidence intact.

- So for 18 years, the FBI has been chasing a ghost,

someone they believe who's highly intelligent,

well-educated, trained, and versed in terrorism

and counter-terrorism activities.

But when they arrest Ted Kaczynski,

they find something completely different.

- [Sami] His clothes have all of these holes in them.

He's covered in ash.

His face, his hair is matted.

He smells.

- As soon as they enter the cabin, it becomes clear

they essentially have a confession

to the UNABOM attacks in physical form.

- [Laurence] It's a treasure trove of evidence.

- Bomb making materials.

There are things linked to the attacks,

like the Smith Corona typewriter

that was used to type copies of the manifesto,

that was used to type some of the letters.

- [Lis] They find 40,000 pages, journal pages,

which explain every single bomb,

how to build a bomb even.

But Ted Kaczynski is proud of his work,

and he writes about it in these journals.

- Under the bed, they find an aluminum wrapped package

addressed to an aerospace company in Texas,

and sure enough, there is a live bomb inside.

- [Laurence] One of the longest

and most expensive manhunts in US history is finally over,

but the quest to fully understand the Unabomber

carries on.

- [Sami] So what exactly were the Unabomber's motives?

Was this person just evil?

Were they somebody that was just insane?

- Look, Ted Kaczynski could've gotten away with this

for years longer than he did,

and it was really his wanting that attention

and wanting that recognition,

and getting that manifesto published

that led to his arrest.

- In January of 1998, Ted Kaczynski pleads guilty,

and is moved to an isolated cell in a Supermax prison

in Colorado, where he dies by suicide in 2023.

David Kaczynski, long torn by his decision

to turn in his own brother, collects the $1 million reward,

but turns it over

to the families of his brother's victims.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching this Case Closed episode

of History's Greatest Mysteries.

[suspenseful music]