The Hunt for America's Smartest Killer

0:02 My motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge. I do not expect to accomplish anything by it. Lincoln, Montana 1996. This cabin is the chosen home of Theodore J. Kazinski, more commonly known as the Uni Bomber. He's long been feared as America's smartest criminal, a serial bomber who's killed and wounded targets across the country with no clear connection. For 17 years, he's eluded the FBI. It's the largest, most expensive manhunt in the bureau's history. He's the evil genius they simply can't catch. Likely history's most intellectual serial killer. He's terrorized the nation

0:48 instilling fear in Americans about opening their mail and getting on planes. And he did it all from his cabin. Here is where he built his bombs where he wrote his manifesto, and where he evaded capture for nearly two decades. It's where he turned from off the grid recluse to world famous murderer. This cabin contains all the evidence the FBI will need to convict him. It's located deep in the Montana wilderness. Back in 1969, Ted moved here from California where he left behind a shining career as a math professor at UC Berkeley. He wanted to get closer to nature and far far away from everyone who pisses him off, which is most people. He built this cabin with his

1:33 brother back when Ted still talked to him, but it's got no electricity, no plumbing, just a wood stove, a bed, and a whole lot of books. Right now, Ted is building another bomb. They're meticulously crafted, and he's continuously improving his technique. Every year they become more lethal. In fact, he's got another one under his bed, wrapped and ready to go. But he won't get a chance to send it because despite his intellect, he made some pretty dumb mistakes. [Music]

2:18 Time keeps slipping. Set yourself for the [Music] trail. Goodbyes ticket. Call it read that t. You've got me. You've got me. You've got me. This video is largely based on these two books. Links are in the description. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions

3:04 radically different from those under which the human race evolved. Born in 1942, Ted grows up in a pretty average family in the suburbs of Chicago. They're workingclass Polish Americans. His parents are politically progressive, bookish, and intellectual and really into the outdoors. They're strict, but loving. At least that's how they remember it. It becomes obvious at a young age that Ted is exceptionally gifted, so his parents push him to succeed. He skips two grades and easily aces every class. He's a pretty normal kid for someone with an IQ of 168. Sure Ted is quiet, shy around girls, and arrogant, but he has a core circle of friends, and plenty of hobbies. Like his

3:50 parents and brother, he loves playing music, reading, and camping. People like Ted. They'll later remember him as a sensitive, respectful kid. All that starts to change when Ted enrolls at Harvard University at just 16 years old. Like many college freshmen Ted struggles to adjust. Here, he no longer feels like the smartest person in every room. And as a working-class kid thrown into the world of America's elite, he's a fish out of water. Other students and even faculty mock his shabby clothes and blue color background. He's deeply bothered by their snobbery, pain that will follow him through life.

4:35 Ted's also just really young, younger than almost everyone else on campus. As an adult, Ted will write his mother furious letters about this. He demands apologies for pushing him out of the house before he was ready. Ted becomes depressed and his grades suffer. His classmates describe him as a total loner, moody, rude, and virtually mute. He's that guy on the dorm floor who only leaves his room to go to class, who ignores everyone else. who slams doors. There's a stench of rotting food wafting from his room. Ted doesn't know it yet but his withdrawn and alienated demeanor has caught the eye of a psychology professor. Dr. Henry A. Murray is very famous with an on-ampus research center named after him. He's basically a god in the social sciences. Murray is looking out for particular types of students

5:21 those who will make excellent guinea pigs for an experiment. his final most elaborate experiment, the capstone of a long and illustrious career. It also happens to be a CIA funded project designed to cause extreme distress and break down the subject's sense of self. Clearly, we are in a position to do a great deal of damage, and it does appear that the FBI is not going to catch us anytime soon. The FBI is a joke. [Music] It's the 1970s in San Francisco. The city is a hotbed of anti-government activity. There's outrage over the Vietnam War. Protest bombings are a regular occurrence. Explosions happen

6:07 every week up through the mid80s. The FBI dubs it the Belfast of North America. Radical far-left groups like the Weather Underground and the Symbion Liberation Army claim credit for many of the bombings. So most of the cases are pretty straightforward in terms of understanding motive and perpetrator. But amidst all of this, the FBI San Francisco bomb squad makes a shocking discovery. 12 mysterious, similarly built bombs can be linked to one elusive killer or group. They have next to nothing to go on. Just for whatever unknown reason, this string of explosives seems to target universities and airlines. Whoever is building these bombs is an expert crafter and careful to not leave any DNA behind. Not a hair not a fiber. They're encased in

6:53 beautiful handmade wooden boxes. There are no eyewitnesses to the bombings and no letters from organizations claiming credit. The victims appear to be scattershot of random people. The unknown perpetrator is referred to by the code Unibomb for University and airline bomber. So far, his bombs have killed one person and injured 20 others across five different states. Unlucky recipients of the Uni Bombers's early packages include a campus security guard, a handful of graduate students and professors, a secretary, an airline executive, and passengers on a flight from Chicago to DC. Some are injured quite badly. The first death is in 1985. Hugh Scrutin, a guy who owned a computer store in Sacramento and was about to get

7:38 married. What does he have to do with anything at [Music] all? Far away in his cabin, Ted reads about his death and chuckles to himself. He hears that the FBI offers a $25,000 award for any information. He's flattered. The uni bomber is making waves. Not bad for the actions of one man in a 10x 12 ft shack with no electricity, running water, or phone service. Pretty hard to imagine now. These days, connection isn't optional. It's how we get around, check in, look stuff up, call for help, all of it. That's where SY comes in. With affordable global data in over 200 destinations in eight regions, SY is the eSIM provider that keeps you online while abroad. Forget hunting down local SIM cards or getting slammed by roaming

8:25 charges. With SY, you'll be covered before you even leave home. Just download the app, pick your destination and activate your plan. Once you arrive at your destination, your SY data plan will activate automatically and you'll never get stranded without service again. SY gives you a heads up when your data is running low. You can top up in seconds. Simply download the SY app and use code Fern TV to get an exclusive 15% discount on your first purchase. Money back guarantee in case your device is not compatible. Back to Ted here in his cabin. He's got everything he needs. snowshoes, maps, a homemade chair, a cot, a typewriter, and hundreds of books. Scraps from junkyards and jars of chemicals for making his bombs. Binders and binders full of notes. All kinds of disguises for delivering the bombs, like

9:12 wigs and sunglasses, and shoes with fake souls. It's cramped to the gills, but meticulously organized. At this point, the FBI has zero promising leads, and by the end of it all, they'll never actually find the perpetrator themselves. The bomber is always several steps ahead of them. They'll pursue thousands of dead ends spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, and pour countless man-hour into this case. They have no idea why he's targeting the people that he is. But the bombs are so precise, so wellcrafted. There's got to be a motive right? In 1987, there's finally a break in the case. The uni bomber plants a package outside a Salt Lake City computer store, and a lady spots him.

9:59 He's wearing a gray hoodie, sunglasses and sporting a mustache. The police create a sketch and post it all around the country. The bombings immediately stop, and for 5 years, nobody hears anything from the uni bomber. All kinds of people call him with tips, but the leads go nowhere. The case pretty much goes cold, but the FBI know that it's only a matter of time before he'll strike again. They're sure he's using the time to perfect his bombs. And they're right. In his cabin, Ted is finessing his technique. The upcoming bombs will be a whole lot more lethal. But as the world will soon find out, he is also busy writing. He doesn't just want his explosives to do the talking. He's crafting a manifesto, one that claims to explain what the mysterious string of bombings is all about.

10:50 The technopiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Back at Harvard in 1958, the United States is experiencing huge shifts in culture. The button-up 50s are drawing to a close and the nation becomes swept up in the space race, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, the environmental movement the explosion of drug culture, and all the while the Cold War is escalating. The American military is paranoid that communists have developed mind control drugs and brainwashing techniques, and they're eager to catch up. So, they're covertly experimenting with ways to manipulate behavior. US intelligence officials are especially interested in developing a perfect truth drug for interrogating enemies. and they believe LSD might be it. But they're also testing a wide range of ways that psychological

11:36 manipulation could bend the will of anyone to do whatever the US military wants. They've even enlisted help from the Nazi scientists who experimented on docow inmates with hallucinagens and interrogation methods. The military illegally smuggles these war criminals over to get their advice on brainwashing as part of Operation Paperclip. Over the course of at least 11 years thousands of Americans are subjected to unethical psychological experiments that include sensory deprivation hallucinogenic drugs dose without consent, subliminal messaging, hypnosis electroshock therapy, and even icepic lobotoies. And that's just the stuff we know about. When the project becomes public knowledge in the 1970s, the CIA director orders most of the records to be destroyed. The program is codenamed MK Ultra. Many of the test subjects are

12:24 vulnerable populations like prisoners and hospital inmates, but also students. Students are prime subjects for these experiments because of their frequent contact with professors who play a big part in MK Ultra. Some of the professors know the role they play. Many don't. During the postwar period, the CIA becomes the largest employer of college professors and the military is by far the biggest source of funding for psychological research. Professors acted as consultants and researchers for militarybacked projects. They used their status to encourage their students to participate in experiments, often involving drugs like LSD. Afterwards, they reported back to the government. Harvard becomes heavily involved in army sponsored studies. One of the CIA's main men on campus is the

13:10 superstar psych professor Henry Murray. Murray is well known for his studies of personality, and since the CIA's beginnings, his theories have influenced how they recruit new agents and how they interrogate suspects. When Murray and young Ted Kazinski cross paths, Murray is at the end of his career, and he recruits Ted for his final most elaborate experiments. They're meant to assess the effects of stress and harsh interrogation on gifted male students. Murray wants to know, "What will it take to break an educated, intelligent man?" The setup is simple. Ted and 21 other students are asked to write an essay about their most deep-seated beliefs. Then they're told they'll discuss their beliefs with a fellow undergrad. The experiment aims to compare the effects of stress on college men who seem psychologically healthy and well adjusted with students who seem alienated, pessimistic, and lacking in

13:57 identity. Ted is most likely recruited for the second group because he's showing signs of depression. Ted's personal essay stands out as the most pessimistic of them all. It suggests that he was already vulnerable before the abusive test began. He is also the youngest and the poorest in the group. The students are told this exercise is just to study different personalities. In truth, now the real experiment begins. The essays are handed to lawyers trained in manipulation who are instructed to attack the values expressed in them. The students endure harsh interrogations in brightly lit rooms. They face calculated personal critiques designed to humiliate and erode their sense of self. All the while electrodes monitor their stress responses. Later, they have to watch these stressful and humiliating moments on video over and over again for 3

14:44 years. As Mura himself describes it, the tests were designed to be abusive. He's had a lifelong fascination with pain and stress and is known to have a sadistic streak. Plenty of participants will later report the experience to be deeply unpleasant with lasting trauma. But Ted's responses are the most extreme in every category. Murray's team identifies him as the most traumatized of [Music] all. Yes, Ted Kazinski got MK Ultra. You can read all about it at cia.gov. And consequence, many claim the CIA created the uniomber, but that's an oversimplification. It's not so easy to prove how much effect the experiments had on Ted's turn to terrorism. None of the other students in the experiment are known to have become killers. Some

15:31 psychologists believe the experiments were stressful enough to create anger problems in TED or even aggravate latent schizophrenia. But other psychologists evaluate him as undeniably sane. Ted himself dismissed the idea that the tests were anything resembling psychological torture. He was very invested in being seen as psychologically healthy until the bitter end. He's taking great pains to not be painted as damaged or crazy. He wanted his murders to be understood in the context of his beliefs, not his personal history. If people saw his actions as a result of trauma or madness, it would invalidate his ideas. Ideas that formed his last year at Harvard. Ted becomes increasingly disillusioned with the industrial technological system. He comes to believe that technology is slowly destroying humanity and eroding our

16:17 freedom. He's horrified by widespread psychological suffering and how industrial technology has severely damaged the planet. He's certain that it will only get worse the more technology develops. So, anyone who helps advance technology in any way is the enemy. Scientists, engineers, business people what Ted calls the technician class. Ted starts having revenge fantasies and becomes obsessed with how society enforces obedience with psychological controls. He daydreams about breaking away from society and living off the grid. Ted graduates Harvard and goes on to get his PhD in math at the University of Michigan. He's quickly establishing himself as a brilliant mathematician and is offered a tenure track position at UC Berkeley as their youngest professor ever. His students don't like him very much, but he's publishing groundbreaking

17:03 papers on boundary functions. But Ted resigns one day without warning. He tells his family that he's done with teaching math to future engineers. Engineers who will advance the industrial technological system and continue destroying the planet. Ted buys a bit of land near Lincoln, Montana, and builds a cabin with his brother. He's ready to escape the advanced technology that surrounded him at UC Berkeley. He wants to live a simpler life, far away from everyone he's ever known. And then he starts to build his first bomb. Through our bombings, we hope to promote social instability, an industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas, and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial

17:49 system. In 1993, the uni bomber strikes twice after a 6-year hiatus. Two prominent researchers, a computer scientist and a geneticist, receive packages the size of a VHS tape. The bombs detonate upon opening and both professors are badly injured. Shortly after, the New York Times receives a typewritten letter. It claims credit for the bombs and says the public should expect more to come. In 1994 and 1995, the uni bomber succeeds in killing two people with his mail bombs, an advertising executive and a forestry lobbyist. As feared, his explosives have become notably more sophisticated. Bombings are usually accompanied with demands. Demands for money or some kind of action. What made the uni bomber so difficult to

18:35 understand and to find is that his bombs never came with any requests. They seem to be built only to cause fear, injury and death. 17 years after starting his bombing spree, the uni bomber finally makes his demands known. He writes the New York Times again announces that he will permanently desist from terrorist activities if they publish a 56-page manifesto. The request kicks off a fierce debate within the FBI and the newspaper, to publish or not to publish. The FBI has a clear policy to not negotiate with terrorists, but they also believe he'll honor his promise and stop killing people. After all, this is what the bombs were seemingly for, to force people to pay attention to his views. Plus, they still lack leads. If the public reads the manifesto, someone might be able to identify the uni bomber. So, the manifesto is published.

19:22 The FBI decides it should just be the Washington Post, though, because it has fewer readers and the newspaper stands will be easier to surveil, so they think. Interest in the Uni Bomber is huge. Newspaper sales hit a record high that day with lines snaking around the block. Across the country, Americans are eager to finally read what the Uni Bomber has to say. The manifesto opens with an iconic line. The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. And though the manifesto is an argument that calls for dismantling industrial society, it's also unwittingly a self-portrait. Within its pages, the Uni Bomber has accidentally unmasked himself. David and Ted, though 7 years apart and very different, grew up close and loved each other very much. As

20:08 adults, they had impassion philosophical debates by male and shared a lot of the same views. David also worried about technologies destructive effect on humanity. He'd also spent some time living off the grid in a self-made cabin. But David wasn't a killer. When the manifesto is published, he hasn't spoken to his brother in a long time. Ted cut him out when David got married and refused to answer any of his letters. David's wife, Linda, a philosophy professor, has a funny feeling about Ted, whom she never met. As the bombings stack up and some of the timings coincide with Ted's travels Linda tells David, "You've got a screwy brother. Maybe he's the uni bomber." David doesn't want to hear it. Linda doesn't know Ted the way David does. He'd never kill anybody. As a kid, Ted used to cry at the thought of animals getting hurt. But when the manifesto is

20:54 finally published, David avoids reading it. He doesn't want to admit the similarities, that like the Uni Bomber Ted is an excellent carpenter, and that he had a lifelong fascination with explosives, and that some of the dates match up perfectly with Ted's travels. David only reads it when Linda insists. His jaw literally drops from the first few lines. The killer, like Ted, also hates technology. As he continues, David recognizes idiosyncratic word choices and logical arguments that Ted uses all the time. There is no escaping the truth. Ted is the uniomber. So, after some moral qualms about betraying his brother, David alerts the FBI.

21:41 They are bound to make me out to be a sicky and to ascribe to me motives of assorted or sick type. Many tamed conformist types seem to have a powerful need to depict the enemy of society as sorted, repulsive, or [Music] sick. Lincoln, Montana, April 1996. With a tip from David, the feds are staking out Ted's cabin. The investigation is meant to be conducted quietly, but they're interviewing local towns people, trying to collect more evidence on Ted. Right now, all they have is the linguistic similarities in the manifesto and old letters from Ted that David gave the FBI. Not exactly cold, hard proof, enough for a search warrant, but not an arrest. Rumors start to spread around town that Ted Kazinski

22:27 their very own angry hermit, is the uni bomber. The plan is to draw Ted out of his cabin and get inside before he can escape or destroy any evidence. But they don't know if he has it tricked out with explosives. Nobody would be surprised if he did. Ted has no idea he's under surveillance. So when someone knocks and says some land surveyors need to talk he believes them and opens the door. He wasn't expecting visitors. These days, he's busy with a dirty job. He's in the middle of rasping aluminum blocks to make powder for more bombs. He's covered from head to toe in the dust. He's rail thin because the rabbit hunting was scarce this season. Ted's hair is wild and his clothes are literally rotting off of his body. But what does he care? He's not trying to impress anyone, and he can clean up fast if he needs to blend into society. Too

23:13 bad for Ted. He'll be photographed in the state, filthy, emaciated, and in severe need of a shave. The image will circulate around the globe and will not help Ted's desire to seem sane. When the feds swoop in, they find 40,000 pages of journals and plans, most written in code. The code is more complex than anything the FBI had ever seen, more convoluted than codes the KGB used during the Cold War. But Ted also left the key to the code in the cabin. Without it, the FBI wouldn't be able to decipher the decades of written confessions that definitively tied Ted to the bombings. They also find a bomb under the bed ready to be mailed to an aerospace company in Dallas. Now the FBI has all the evidence they need. They lock up the cabin and take Ted to prison. He does not dispute that the journals with the confessions are his.

23:59 In fact, he wrote them partially so that nobody would try to say he was crazy. Ted's family and his defense team attempt to convince the jury and the world at large that he is mentally ill. They're doing anything they can to avoid the death penalty, which frustrates him. He tries to fire his lawyers than defend himself. He would rather die than allow his lawyers to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Ted pleads guilty to his crimes and is sentenced to life in prison. Behind bars, he never stops writing. He publishes two books and keeps up a lively correspondence with a wide array of journalists and admirers. He also finally makes some human connections. He strikes up a friendship with Timothy McVey, the Oklahoma City bomber who killed 168 people in 1995. Ted and McVey are briefly on the same prison block and find they have a lot of

24:44 views in common before McVey is carded off to death row. Ted even finds love for the first time in his life. After a lifetime of struggling to connect with women and never going beyond a few kisses, Ted suddenly has dozens of women writing him romantic or salacious letters. But only one captures his heart, a school teacher he calls his lady love. They spend thousands of hours talking by mail or in visiting booths but they are never able to touch. He writes classical music for her before she dies of lung cancer. Later, Ted also develops cancer. When the condition becomes advanced, he dies by suicide in June 2023 at 81 years old. [Music] This is not to be a political revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the

25:30 economic and technological basis of the present society. In the decades since his arrest, Ted Kazinski continues to fascinate and sometimes inspire. The manifesto's central argument is that technological advancements since the industrial revolution have robbed people of their freedom and well-being. These advancements are supposedly responsible for widespread psychological suffering and environmental devastation. It's a revolutionary call to dismantle industrial society altogether and warns that technology will inevitably overpower human autonomy. Many of Kazinsk's observations in the manifesto are true. Some of his predictions are preient and a lot of the grievances are understandable. It's not hard to find people who are also frustrated with surveillance or sad about environmental destruction. At the time of his capture, Time

26:16 magazine wrote, "There's a little bit of the uni bomber in most of us." Nowadays Ted Kazinski continues to find admirers online. From teens on Tik Tok depressed about climate change, half ironically saluting Uncle Ted, to the extreme right mass murderer Anders Bavik, who heavily quoted Kazinski's industrial society in his own manifesto. But even if most people can find parts in the manifesto they agree with, most people are not willing to kill. Kazinski knew that most people would be repelled by his crimes but committed them anyway. Those who find the ideas compelling might want to check out Jacquel, the thinker whose ideas most inspired the manifesto. The philosopher never advocated killing. They also should check out Ted Kazinski's diaries. They lay bare the personal motivations that drove the uni bomber beyond the manifesto that was polished for public

27:01 consumption. Technological society really did seem to anger Ted, but Ted was also very, very angry in general. In his diary, Ted Kazinski writes that he was happy to kill innocent civilians. He took pleasure in causing people pain. He killed at least nine dogs just because they barked too loud. He hated leftists. He hated doctors. He hated women. He fantasized about killing them just for rejecting him. He fantasized about killing his neighbors just because they annoyed him, including a toddler. He condemned technology as slavery and glorified simpler times that ran on actual slavery. Kazinski wasn't even much of an environmentalist. He made fun of them in his diaries. He littered proudly. He poached illegally. He logged on protected lands. You might get the sense that he only used environmentalism

27:47 as a post hawk justification for his murders. a cynic who identified ecological concerns as the most acceptable excuse for killing. [Music]