Episode 57: The archivist and the Unabomber, featuring Julie Herrada

Listen in, Michigan

In June 2023, the world learned that the notorious "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski had died At 81, the domestic terrorist was undergoing cancer treatment while serving multiple life sentences in a high-security North Carolina prison.

For Julie Herrada, news of Kaczynski's death was unexpected but not surprising. What was surprising was the "official pronouncement" he died by suicide. Herrada, the longtime curator of the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan Library, was dubious.

"I do not believe it," says the archivist, historian, and expert on political activism and social protest movements. "That was not his style at all. He would have sent a million instructions ahead of time. He would have had it all planned out. He was meticulous about everything."

Herrada speaks from what can only be termed personal experience. The librarian began corresponding with Kaczynski in 1997, about a year after his 1996 arrest for a string of deadly bombings -- many of which arrived by mail -- that baffled law enforcement for 17 years.

Listen in, as she describes her relationship to Kaczynski, the people he attracts, and the contents of his controversial archive.

Read more at michigantoday.umich.edu