The Unabomber’s brother turned him in. Then spent 27 years trying to win him back
29 years ago, this man’s tip to the FBI unmasked one of the US’ most notorious serial killers: the Unabomber. For years after, he tried to rebuild a relationship with his brother Ted, who was serving a life sentence, only to be told that he’d “go to hell”
It was May 1996, and David Kaczynski, a counselor for troubled youth in upstate New York, sat down to write a letter to his brother Ted. A month earlier, his brother had been shockingly unmasked as the shadowy Unabomber, responsible for a 17-year campaign of bombings that had killed and maimed people across the country.
Ted Kaczynski, a brilliant but mentally troubled mathematician who had retreated years earlier to a remote hovel in Montana, had been arrested based on information from a tipster to the FBI, ending one of the longest and most expensive searches in American history. He was now in custody and facing what would almost certainly be a lifetime behind bars, if not a death sentence.
