Theodore J. Kaczynski, “The Bomber,” who killed 3 people and injured 23 in a bombing that lasted from 1978 to 1995, has died by suicide at a prison medical center. federal government in North Carolina early Saturday morning, according to three people familiar with the situation. .
Emergency personnel were called to Mr. Kaczynski’s cell at 12:23 a.m. at Federal Medical Center, Butner, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Attempts to revive him in prison and in an ambulance were unsuccessful, and he was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, officials said. He was 81.
The FBI has been informed of his death. The North Carolina Office of Medical Examiner confirmed in an email that it conducts autopsies of the deaths at the federal medical center in Butner, but did not offer a timetable for when it could be completed. to perform an autopsy on Mr. Kaczynski.
The circumstances that led him to commit suicide are unclear and it is uncertain whether prison officials could do more to ensure his safety. But the self-inflicted death of another famous inmate, four years after accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself at a federal detention center in Manhattan, is sure to raise questions. New questions about quality security, surveillance and healthcare in trouble, often lack of staff federal prison system.
Epstein’s death has fueled many unfounded speculations that he was murdered, even after that theory was dismissed by Justice Department officials, who ruled it a suicide. The death of Mr. Kaczynski, himself a conspiracy theorist who wrote a lengthy manifesto in a desolate secluded chalet, will almost certainly lead to similar speculations.
The investigators determined that neglect and practice lax patrols, instead of playing bad, gave Mr. Epstein the opportunity to take his own life before appearing in court on sex trafficking charges. The defense union blamed staffing shortages on Mr Epstein for three hours.
The Bureau of Prisons, which holds about 160,000 inmates around the country, has struggled to retain and hire guards, along with medical and mental health professionals who can often find work. less stressful, better-paying jobs elsewhere.
While the suicide rate in federal facilities – between 300 and 400 per year — still lower than local and state prisons, the office, like all other correctional systems, saw a huge spike in suicides during the pandemic has only begun to abate this year.
The Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which has been investigating Epstein’s death for the past two years, is wrapping up its work and is expected to issue a report in the next few months documenting staff, management, and supervisory failures in the Epstein case.
This year, the inspector general recorded a Notable series of administrative, incompetent, and health system failures inside the federal prison system that led to the untimely death of notorious Boston gangster James (Whitey) Bulger hours after he was transferred to a West Virginia prison in 2018.
The inspector general determined that officials in the Federal Bureau of Prisons approved the downgrade of Mr. Bulger’s official medical status for the sole purpose of moving him out of the safe zone in the Florida prison to his home. Hazelton federal prison. The move, made after Mr. Bulger threatened a nurse, was approved even though officials knew he had a life-threatening heart condition.
Mr. Kaczynski, who has had health problems in recent years, was transferred to the prison medical facility in North Carolina at the end of 2021, after serving more than 25 years at the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colo.
Kaczynski, a Harvard graduate mathematician, has stated that his goal is to cause the collapse of the modern social order through targeted assassinations. He was arrested in 1996 at the log cabin in western Montana, where he lived, without running water or electricity, and built many of the 16 homemade pack bombs he sent to his targets. Mr Kaczynski was arrested after his brother contacted authorities, suspecting he might be behind a wave of mysterious attacks, including planting a bomb that could bring down an American flight. Airlines if it doesn’t malfunction.
Merrick Garland, now attorney general, was then the mid-level federal prosecutor who oversaw the team prosecuting Mr. Kaczynski.
Mr. Kaczynski turned down his lawyer’s offer that he plead for dementia and plead guilty to murder. He received eight consecutive life sentences.
He is not the first famous inmate to die at the federal prison hospital in Butner, NC. In 2021, Bernard L. MadoffThe man who ran the largest and possibly the most devastating Ponzi scheme in financial history, has died at the age of 82 after entering the last stage of kidney disease.
Remy Tumin contribution report.
