Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Killed So Many People - The Unabomber / Ted Kaczynski Story

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was a Harvard-educated mathematician who abandoned academia to live in a remote Montana cabin, and between 1978 and 1995 carried out a nationwide bombing spree targeting universities, airlines and individuals he believed were advancing technology.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. So this super genius is about to go crazy and kaboom blow a bunch of people up. Now the guy's name is Ted and Ted is 25 years old and like I said, he's a genius working as an assistant professor at the University of California. And he's a really smart dude. However, Ted has a problem. He doesn't like being around people because who does? He also hates technology and thinks it's taking away real freedom from people. So he wants nothing more than to live alone, far away from society and its stupid machines.

So one day in 1969, he quits his university job and he moves back to Chicago to live with his parents. And there he mostly keeps to himself in his bedroom spending hours writing letters to newspapers, magazines, and public figures, ranting about everything he believes in, how motorcycles and snowmobiles create noise pollution, and how advertisers manipulate people to buy things that they don't really need. I guess he just feels good letting it all out. But here's what really sucks for Ted. His parents keep pressuring him to get a job. But Ted doesn't want a job.

He just wants to be left alone. So after about two years, he decides to move out of his parents' place and he buys a 1.4 acre piece of land in Lincoln, Montana. And there he builds himself a cabin to live in. No electricity, no. running water, no heat, no technology, just how he likes it. And so live it in this cabin, he grows a garden, he hunts for food, and he lives off whatever he can from nature or, you know, from his parents.

And it's peaceful there, it's quiet, it's exactly what he wants. But then, over the years, the worst thing happens to Ted. Society starts moving in. Sawmills are cutting down trees near the place, planes start flying overhead, new roads are built right through the woods, motorcycles keep roaring by. Even worse, more people start living in the area. And that is when Ted finally just snaps. All he wanted was some peace and isolation, and he can't even enjoy that. And so he decides to fight back. And he starts setting booby traps on the motorcycle trails. He wrecks multiple cabins. He dump sand into the machines at the sawmill.

he pour sugar into the snowmobile gas tanks, he sets logging equipment on fire, but that still doesn't feel like it's enough for Ted. He wants to go bigger. So he comes up with a wild plan to make bombs and send them to people who he believes represent the system he hates so much. Basically, university professors and airline employees and anyone related to technology. And by 1978, he finds his. first victim. An engineering professor at Northwestern University. And so Ted builds a bomb and he hides it in a package and he leaves it in a parking lot with the professor's return

address on it. Later someone finds it and gets it sent to Northwestern and the professor sees it and he's like, well this is weird. I can't remember sending this out. So he calls campus security in to check it out and kaboom it explodes injuring the officer who opened it. The next year, Ted sends another bomb again to Northwestern University. This time, a grad student picks it up and, kaboom, it explodes in his hands, giving him some burns, but you know, nothing too serious. Then Ted decides to go even bigger. He hides a bomb in the cargo hold of an airplane. And later, while that plane is in midair, kaboom, the bomb goes off, filling the cabin with smoke and forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. Luckily,

no one dies. Now at this point, the feds, they've been investigating all this and they start piecing it together and all the bombs seem to come from the same person. So they start calling this person the Unabomber, short for university and airline bomber. Then the FBI alerts the public of this madman sending out bombs to random people and suddenly the public is freaking out and no one wants to open their mail anymore. Meanwhile, Ted is still hiding out in his remote cabin, and he's reading about all the chaos he caused. And the next year, he mails another bomb, this time inside a book to the home of the president of United Airlines. And the guy opens the package and the book and kaboom.

It blows up, and the poor guy gets injured pretty badly. Two years after that, he mails another bomb to a professor at Vanderbilt University. That professor's secretary opens it and kabobu. Boom, she's injured. Then he sends two more bombs to his former workplace, the University of California, Berkeley, and kaboom, two more people are injured. Then he sends another to a professor in Michigan, and kaboom, both the professor and his secretary get hurt. I mean, you get the point.

He's blowing up a lot of people. But here's where the story gets even darker. With each attack over the years, Ted, he's gotten better and better at building fun. And because of that, they've become more advanced, more precise, and deadlier. And up to this point, all his bombs have only injured people, not killed them. But that's until one day in 1985. He mails one to a computer rental store in California. And then the store owner finds a package in the parking lot, he picks it up, and

kaboom, it explodes, killing him instantly. Two years later, Ted travels to Utah, and he takes it. and he plants a bomb outside another computer store, and the owner then goes to pick it up, and kaboom, it explodes, and it doesn't kill him, but he's seriously injured. However, this time someone actually saw Ted. A woman spotted him dropping off the package, and later she helps the police make a composite sketch of him,

and that sketch is then published in newspapers and magazines all across the country. And Ted, he sees this, and he knows they're onto him, and he's like, oh shit! and he disappears, goes off the grid, and he doesn't bomb anyone for a while. But six years later, it's now 1993, and he gets right back in the game, and he starts sending more bombs. One to a geneticist. Two days later, another bomb goes off at Yale University, injuring a professor. A year later, he sends one to an advertising executive, and kabboom, straight up kills him. Then another to a timber industry boss, which instantly kills him too. And at this point, Ted's been bombing people like this for like over 17 years. He's

injured more than two dozen people. He's killed three people. Now the FBI, they're working hard to catch him. But, you know, they don't really have much because Ted's a really smart guy and he's not about to let himself get caught. And by 1995, I guess bro is starting to feel unstoppable. And it just seems like they're never going to catch him and he's just going to keep terrorizing people across the U.S. for as long as he can. Until. Here's the thing. Most people have no idea why Ted's doing any of this. They just think he's some crazy person randomly mailing bombs for fun.

And Ted, he hates that. He wants people to know that there's a motive behind it, at least in his head. And so he decides to explain himself. And he writes a 35,000 word manifesto about how industrial society is to destroying humanity and how there needs to be a revolution against technology and all that stuff. Then he sends it to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and he threatens to keep bombing people unless they publish it. And so they do, they publish it. And the manifesto goes public. And suddenly, everyone is reading the words of the man who's been terrorizing the country for years.

But this is where Ted finally screws up. Because a lot of people read that manifesto. And one of those readers is Ted's younger brother, this guy, David. And David, he reads it and he just feels that the style of writing sounds eerily similar to those letters Ted used to send to magazines and newspapers all those years ago. And so David, he goes and he reports all this to the FBI. And so the feds, they find Ted's cabin and bam, they finally arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

And ultimately, he pleads guilty and he's sentenced to life in prison. And in 2021, while in prison, he unalives himself.