Unabomber

[Legend]

Ted Kaczinski died by suicide over the weekend.

One of the stranger criminals in history.  A true genius intellect, and a complete hermit who failed against technology and society.

He definitely falls into the category of a really smart guy with a really salient message who chose to be a terrorist instead.

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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)

[Mick1]

He seems like a particularly troubled, particularly odd oddball from a very early age, to wit:

• Tested IQ of 167.
• He skipped 6th and 11th grades. Just a coincidence, but both my father-in-law and I skipped an early grade, and we both point back to it as the one occurrence in our lives that we could change if we could. It put us a year behind the other kids, particularly male students. TK skipped two grades. He stated that skipping sixth grade was a pivotal event, and that prior to skipping, he had socialized with peers and was somewhat of a leader, but that the older children bullied him.
• He was known as a very odd child. Son of second generation Polish Catholics. Played Trombone in school band, collected coins.
• He built bombs in high school, with batteries, wire leads, potassium nitrate and other items.
• Supposedly had really poor hygiene, was lonely and thin, his room smelled of spoiled milk and rotten food.
• Participated in an infamous science experiment at Harvard (one of 22 people) that subjected volunteer students to hours of extreme verbal and emotional abuse to measure how people handled stress. The subjects wrote a paper, then the content of the paper was used to belittle them. The experiment lasted three years and TK participated for more than 200 hours. He may have used LSD, and the program was thought to be part of the CIA’s Project MKUltra. The professor had worked for the OSS and wrote a paper on Adolf Hitler’s personality and brainwashing.
• He self-isolated from a very early age, buying 6,600 square yards in Montana and building a tar paper shack. He vandalized construction sites in the area when he realized that development was encroaching on his wilderness.
• He worked at a foam rubber products manufacturer outside Chicago with his father and brother.
• He dated a female supervisor who dumped him after two dates, then he started to harass her and his brother fired him.
• First bomb, 1978.
• It’s well-known that his brother turned him in. Less well-known is that his sister-in-law, Linda Patrik, suspected TK and convinced her husband David K. to read the manifesto at the library.
• David had asked that his role in his brother’s capture be kept secret, but someone at the FBI leaked the information to Dan Rather at CBS.
• They argued for two months, then took some of TK’s letters to a private investigator that Patrik knew, who passed the letters to FBI behavioural science expert Clint Van Zandt. He said that whoever wrote those letters probably wrote the Unabomber’s manifesto.
• Investigation and prosecution was overseen by the current Attorney General, Merrick Garland
• TK tried to fire his attorneys who wanted to present an insanity defense.
• Not surprisingly, TK literally turned his back on his brother at the court hearings and referred to him as Judas Iscariot.
• TK sent an alumni status update to Harvard listing his occupation as “prisoner”…which they published in the alumni book. He also listed his published manifesto as  his achievement and under awards listed “Eight life sentences issued by U.S.D.C. / Eastern district of California.”
• Harvard ultimately apologized for including the update.

Audaces fortuna iuvat

[Hurlburt88]

I hope playing trombone is HS band is not “too” odd . . . I particularly loved playing trombone in jazz band

 

On a more serious note, very informative post, Mick

[Author]

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