Brother of 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski: It's a 'terrible mistake' if Luigi Mangione was influenced by him

NBC News ^ | 12/10/2024 | Erik Ortiz

[DFG]

The brother of Ted Kaczynski, the domestic terrorist known as the "Unabomber," said Tuesday that he hopes the man accused in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson didn't view his brother as a "key model" and is distressed that his brother's actions decades ago may motivate violence today.

For two decades, Ted Kaczynski waged a deadly bombing spree that killed three people and injured 23 others until his capture in the Montana wilderness in 1996. Kaczynski had taunted officials with a rambling manifesto and was apprehended following one of the longest FBI manhunts in history.

The suspect in Thompson's killing, Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League tech 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: "It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out."

But David Kaczynski said that his brother, who died by suicide in federal custody in 2023, should not be someone to aspire to.

"His actions are like a virus," David Kaczynski said in a phone interview. "They could be like a virus unless they understand he was a very angry and disturbed man. It doesn't mean his ideas are ideas of a lunatic, but his behavior, I believe, is the behavior of a lunatic."

"To the extent that he may have attributed at all to sort of normalizing or recasting the violent acts as beneficial to humanity is a terrible mistake," David Kaczynski added.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

"It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out."

I don't see much room for doubt there.

[gundog]

I think there’s room for grammatical improvement.

[Rummyfan]

The Mangiones are a big successful family in the greater Baltimore area. This young man was valedictorian at Gilman, probably the best private prep school in the Baltimore area. What went wrong with him?

[Sacajaweau]

His brother knew it was him...how many died before he squealed.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Ted’s brother didn’t know until he put out his manifesto and saw similar speech patterns in his writing. 125 pages I do believe. This Luigi fella’s manifesto was what-5 pages? That’s not even a term paper-essay maybe.

What’s interesting is many of Luigis friends and family could have recognized him. Whether or not they reported him to law enforcement is open to question. I think it was easy.

[Sacajaweau]

Ted’s brother lied his a** off.

[SaxxonWoods]

Nice try, too late.

[Sacajaweau]

And the brother got $1 million for turning in his brother.

[jocon307]

I’ve always felt very bad for this man. He had to rat his brother out, I’m sure that was terrible for him. He did the right thing, of course, but it’s really not a great thing to have to do.

[TornadoAlley3]

If his parents decide to pay for best attorney and money no object, who is best criminal defense attorney in NY?

[baclava]

Forget all that manifesto crap

Dude had spinal surgery and now his dick don’t work

He hates, he kills

It happens