Unabomber: The True Story Behind the Netflix Movie, Explained
Netflix has built a reputation as the hub of true crime, both documentaries and dramatised retellings of some of the biggest, most disturbing crimes in modern human history.
This time around, in a movie starring Jacob Tremblay, the streaming service is delving into the mind, past, and capture of the 'Unabomber,' a former child prodigy-turned domestic terrorist with a genius IQ and an axe to grind against modern technology.
Over the course of 17 years, Theodore 'Ted' John Kaczynski killed three people and injured a further 23 with his homemade mail bombs. As director Janus Metz explains to Netflix’s Tudum: “Unabomber is a story about a young man who feels increasingly disenfranchised by society and decides to take up violence as a means of revenge.”
But how did this twisted execution of revenge transpire? Here’s what we know.
The Unabomber’s Background
Kaczynski was a maths genius. He won a scholarship to attend Harvard at just 16 years old. But it was there that the trouble began. During his time as an undergraduate, he was one of the students recruited for a psychological experiment by the now-controversial professor Henry A. Murray. The students were told to write an essay on personal beliefs and their life philosophy. Then, they were taken into a room, hooked up to monitoring equipment, and had somebody not just challenge their beliefs, but engage in vicious personal attacks.
The students were not aware that they’d be confronted in this way, and that this was part of an experiment to examine stress responses. They were also forced to watch the attacks back on tape. While Kaczynski disputed this, it is widely claimed that this experiment contributed to his crimes and fractured state of mind.
As History.com reports, after graduating from Harvard, he became the youngest maths professor ever at the University of California, Berkeley. However, this tenure only lasted two years. Kaczynski then went on to live a more reclusive life away from modernity. He started living in the woods, hunting, and foraging for food.
The Bombings, Explained
The bombings started on May 27, 1978. At the University of Illinois in Chicago, a package was found that was supposedly returned to its sender at Northwestern University. The professor in question obviously never mailed the package. It was given to campus security, where it exploded and injured the security officer.
Two other significant bombings happened in 1979: one at Northwestern University, and another aboard an American Airlines flight from Chicago to DC. Another significant bombing included one that ended up significantly injuring Percy Wood, president of United Airlines.
While the bombs were mostly made from scrap materials, like fishing wire, wood, nails, and tape, History.com noted that the bombs started to become more dangerous and more sophisticated. In 1985, a computer store owner in Sacramento died from one of the bombs. Two years later, a woman claimed to see the suspected Unabomber moments before the bomb went off. On this basis, the infamous police sketch was drawn.
There were no more attacks for six years until 1993. That year, two university professors in Connecticut and San Francisco were targeted. Other significant bombings occurred in 1994 and 1995, which resulted in one death each. The Unabomber struck a total of 16 times.
How Did They Catch The Unabomber?
In 1995, the New York Times and Washington Post agreed to publish the Unabomber’s manifesto. Bizarrely, he promised to stop killing if they did. As reported by the BBC, the manifesto essentially argued that modern life had ruined human dignity and freedom, and that the only way forward was to completely get rid of technology.
The Unabomber’s brother, David Kaczynski, ended up alerting the authorities after his wife, Linda Patrik, started putting the pieces together. "Just about every other day, I'd look at these articles [about the Unabomber] and kind of scratch my head and say, 'Wow, this kind of sounds like Dave's brother',” she told the BBC. After relaying her suspicions to her husband, David ended up reading the manifesto. From there, it became clear to him that it was indeed his brother. "Dave sat there looking at the computer screen," she recounted. "I could see him reading the first page, and his expression changed radically."
The FBI then searched David and Ted’s mother’s home, where they found a handwritten letter by John from 1971 which reflected a lot of the same ideas in the manifesto. From there, they got enough evidence to get a warrant to search Ted’s cabin. When inside, they found countless pieces of evidence that led to his arrest.
He was jailed for life and diagnosed with schizophrenia before killing himself in 2023 at the age of 81.
