Unabomber updates Harvard University alumni book

DENISE LAVOIE

Asso­ci­ated Press

BOSTON — Har­vard Uni­ver­sity alumni attend­ing their 50th class reunion this week are get­ting updates on class­mates, but one per­son stands out among those shar­ing news about career moves, retire­ments and grand­kids — Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Kaczyn­ski grad­u­ated in 1962 and is locked up in the fed­eral Super­max prison in Col­orado for killing three peo­ple and injur­ing 23 dur­ing a nation­wide bomb­ing spree between 1978 and 1995. In an alumni direc­tory, he lists his occu­pa­tion as “pris­oner” and says his awards are “Eight life sen­tences, issued by the United States Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia, 1998.”

It’s an update the alumni asso­ci­a­tion now regrets.

“While all mem­bers of the class who sub­mit entries are included, we regret pub­lish­ing Kaczynski’s ref­er­ences to his con­vic­tions and apol­o­gize for any dis­tress that it may have caused oth­ers,” the Har­vard Alumni Asso­ci­a­tion said in a state­ment Wednes­day evening.

The alumni asso­ci­a­tion said all class mem­bers, includ­ing Kaczyn­ski, were invited to sub­mit entries for the class report, dis­trib­uted for reunion activ­i­ties dur­ing com­mence­ment week.

A Har­vard spokesman said the update was sub­mit­ted by Kaczyn­ski but could not imme­di­ately say how the uni­ver­sity con­firmed that. A mes­sage seek­ing com­ment was left with Kaczynski’s attorney.

Kaczyn­ski is a Harvard-trained math­e­mati­cian who also got master’s and doc­toral degrees from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

He lived as a recluse in a Mon­tana cabin, railed against tech­nol­ogy and led author­i­ties on the nation’s longest and costli­est man­hunt. He was caught in 1996 when his brother rec­og­nized his idio­syn­cratic writ­ings and tipped off authorities.

Kaczyn­ski pleaded guilty two years later to avoid a trial at which his lawyer had planned to offer an insan­ity defense. The guilty plea also saved him from the death penalty.

Items seized from his cabin were auc­tioned last year by the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice for more than $200,000 to ben­e­fit his victims.

Posted by AP News on May 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.