The brother of Ted Kaczynski, the domestic terrorist known as the “Unabomber,” said Tuesday he hopes the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson doesn’t view his brother as a “key model” and is saddened that actions from decades ago could spark violence today.
Ted Kaczynski carried out deadly bombings for 20 years, killing three people and wounding 23 others, until he was captured in the Montana wilderness in 1996. Kaczynski had taunted officials with a rambling manifesto and was apprehended after one of the longest FBI manhunts in history.
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The suspect in Thompson’s murder, Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League technology graduate, had reviewed Kaczynski’s “Industrial Society and Its Future,” also known as “The Unabomber Manifesto,” in January, writing on the book review site Goodreads: is easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as a madman’s manifesto, to avoid confronting the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it is simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society came true.”
Ted Kaczynski, with federal marshals, in Helena, Mont., on April 4, 1996.
But David Kaczynski said his brother, who died by suicide in federal custody in 2023, should not be someone to root for.
“His actions are like a virus,” David Kaczynski said in a telephone interview. “They can look like a virus unless they understand that he was a very angry and disturbed man. That doesn’t mean his ideas are the ideas of a madman, but his behavior is, I believe, the behavior of a madman.’
“To the extent that he has attributed at all to normalizing or recasting the violent acts as beneficial to humanity, that is a terrible mistake,” David Kaczynski added.
Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard-educated mathematician, denounced the technology in his writings and planted homemade pipe bombs — targeting universities, an American Airlines flight and others — from 1978 to 1995, federal prosecutors said. He wrote a 35,000-word manifesto against the “industrial-technological system” that he hoped would revolutionize modern society.
Mangione, 26, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics while simultaneously earning a degree in computer and information science, the school said.
He was arrested Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a days-long manhunt following Thompson’s death last Wednesday. The 50-year-old CEO was shot outside a New York City hotel in what the NYPD said was a “premeditated, pre-planned targeted attack.”
During a hearing Tuesday afternoon in Pennsylvania, Mangione opted to fight extradition to New York, where he would face second-degree murder charges, among other charges. Bail was refused.
Before entering the courthouse, Mangione shouted at reporters: “It is totally unacceptable and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their experiences!”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters Monday that investigators found a handwritten document that “speaks to both his motivation and his mindset.” No further details were made public, but NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny added that Mangione appeared to harbor “ill will toward corporate America.”
In a preliminary analysis of the shooting by the NYPD, investigators said they are looking into whether the attack was the culmination of the suspect’s apparent problems and list of grievances, including that the killing was a “symbolic takedown” in a battle against “power plays” of the business community. “
Researchers also indicated that he may have admired Kaczynski’s previous attacks, and that he had reportedly echoed his own concerns about technological advances.
Mangione’s Goodreads account said he had read 65 titles on topics ranging from Elon Musk to diets. He rated Kaczynski’s book four out of five stars. He also quoted “a recording” he found online that he said was “interesting.”
The online commentary about Kaczynski read in part: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but when you look at things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”
David Kaczynski left with his mother, Wanda, and their attorney Anthony Bisceglie, in Sacramento, California, on January 5, 1998.
David Kaczynski was instrumental in capturing his brother. After The Washington Post printed “The Unabomber Manifesto” in 1995, David Kaczynski realized his sibling could be one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives and worked with the agency to capture him.
David Kaczynski said he understands that people to this day can still look at his brother’s writings and relate to his belief that rapid technological progress is eroding human freedom. But violence, he added, cannot bring change.
“I think we always have to remember that human motivation is extremely complicated,” said David Kaczynski. “There are a lot of factors that go into what motivates someone to behave so drastically, and I hope my brother wasn’t in some way a key model for him.”
David Kaczynski declined to comment on his brother’s death in prison in June 2023. Ted Kaczynski was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole and was diagnosed with rectal cancer when he committed suicide at age 81, alone in his cell at the Federal Medical Center. Center in Butner, North Carolina. His autopsy, obtained by NBC News in April, revealed that he had been “depressed and sent for psychiatric evaluation” a month before he committed suicide.
“Just as acts of love can radiate waves of benefit to other people, to humanity at large in ways we can see and in ways we cannot see,” said David Kaczynski, “acts of violence do the same, albeit in a very negative way. It truly causes me great personal pain to think that my brother’s actions in any way helped influence a man like this to kill an innocent human being.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
