It Might Be Impossible to Get Away With Crime Some Day

Somewhere in the 20,000 genes and 3.2 billion base pairs that make up the genome of Ted Kaczynski lie the genetic codes for madness. It wouldn’t be easy, even today, to tease out those genes, and it was even less possible in 1996, when the man better known as the Unabomber for the 16 bombings he carried out over 17 years was at last apprehended. There are a number of locations on the human genome that have been implicated in the development of schizophrenia, and Kaczynski has been variously diagnosed as schizophrenic or at least schizoid or schizotypal — lesser related forms of the condition. Whatever his diagnosis, you don’t wind up in a tar paper shack in a remote corner of Montana mailing out package bombs to strangers if you don’t have at least a few genetic wires crossed. As it turned out, even if DNA science has not helped diagnose Kaczynski, it did help the FBI nab him. After The New York Times and Washington Post published the Unabomber’s 35,000 word manifesto in exchange for a pledge from the to “desist from terrorism,” Kaczynski’s younger brother David thought he recognized something familiar in the manifesto’s writing style. He called the FBI to report his suspicions and investigators compared the DNA in saliva traces from the envelopes that had been sent to the Times and the Post to others Kaczynski had sent his family. A match was confirmed. “It was a very limited amount of DNA; it was a very low level ...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized ballistics Crime Department of Forensic Sciences DFS DNA FBI fingerprints forensics o.j. simpson Ted Kackynzki Unabomber Source Type: news