Like its name suggests, Manhunt: Unabomber is an American drama mini-series based on the hunt for [easyazon_link identifier=”1932595805″ locale=”US” tag=”tvovermind00a-20″]Ted Kaczynski[/easyazon_link], who was called the Unabomber as shorthand for the University and Airline Bomber. In total, it consists of eight episodes, which started broadcasting with two episodes on August 1 of 2017 and will continue broadcasting one episode on each following week for two weeks. Some people might recognize the actors playing Ted Kaczynski and the FBI profiler Jim Fitzgerald as Paul Bettany and Sam Worthington of Avengers and Avatar fame.
Unfortunately, the reviews for the drama miniseries have been less than encouraging. Some of them mention solid performances from the actors that were bogged down by a less than stellar script, which wasn’t helped by the narrative choice to remove much of the tension from the chase by switching between it and the immediate events proceeding the trial. Furthermore, the reviewers made note of the repetitiveness as well as the cliched storytelling that made it plodding in more than one sense of the word. Still, people who are curious about one of the most famous criminal cases in American history should consider seeing Manhunt: Unabomber so as to form their own opinions about the matter.
Who Is the Unabomber?
People past a certain age might not have heard much about the Unabomber, who terrorized the United States with a series of bombs from 1978 to 1995. In brief, [easyazon_link identifier=”1595948155″ locale=”US” tag=”tvovermind00a-20″]Ted Kaczynski[/easyazon_link] was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who resigned his position so that he could live in a self-sufficient manner in a cabin that he had built on his own. He was hostile towards modern technologies, so much so that he decided that the modern way of life had to be brought down via violent means. In total, Kaczynski killed 3 people and wounded more than 20 others with 16 separate bombings.
Who Is Jim Fitzgerald?
While the Unabomber serves as the focus for Manhunt: Unabomber, there can be no doubt about the critical importance of Jim Fitzgerald, who is a real life ex-FBI agent who had an important role in hunting down Kaczynski. After all, he was the man who convinced the FBI to convince both The New York Times and The Washington Post to publish Kaczynski’s political manifesto, which the man had demanded in exchange for the promise to stop his bombings. The hope was that someone would recognize the ideas presented in the political manifesto, which would provide the FBI with new clues about the person carrying out the bombings.
As it turned out, Fitzgerald’s choice was justified when Kaczynski’s brother became more and more suspicious of his brother once he had read the political manifesto. As a result, he started looking at his brother’s previous writings while also contacting a private investigator to look into what his brother had been doing before presenting the results to the FBI. In time, this led to a search warrant, which uncovered more than enough evidence to put Kaczynski away for the rest of his life.
With that said, it should be noted that Jim Fitzgerald continued working with the FBI on some of its most famous cases after Kaczynski was arrested, tried, and sentenced. Although Fitzgerald is now retired, he remains involved with forensic linguistics investigations as well as other important projects, meaning that he continues to have a significant influence on criminal investigation as a whole.
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