Stairway to heaven

'Sphynxe' by Joseph Urban, 1903.

Theodore Kaczynski “The Unabomber” Yearbook Photographs.

A Japanese firefighter covered in bandages, circa 1915

Various photos of Ted Kaczynski outside his parents’ home in west suburban Lombard in 1978, the year he delivered his first bomb. The bomb never made it to its designated addressee, an engineering professor in Troy, N.Y., instead detonating when it was opened by a Northwestern University police officer. The bomb was weak, injuring the officer’s hand. In a journal entry from 1977, Kaczynski laid out his plans to kill. “I emphasize that my motivation is personal revenge. I don’t pretend to any kind of philosophical or moralistic justification. … My ambition is to kill a scientist, big businessman, government official or the like. I would also like to kill a Communist.”