Eric Rudolph Slept Here (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine September 2003

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Eric Rudolph Slept Here (Cont.)

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE has charged Rudolph with four bombings committed between July 1996 and January 1998. The first and most notorious—the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta's Centennial Park—killed one woman and injured more than 100 people. The last, involving a pipe bomb packed with two-and-a-half-inch flooring nails, killed a security guard and maimed a nurse at a women's health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. In between, Rudolph allegedly rigged explosive devices in Atlanta that injured four people at an abortion clinic and five people at a lesbian bar. Law enforcement officials theorized that Rudolph's choice of targets was inspired by his bizarre Christian Identity theology, a conspiracy-laced doctrine whose adherents hate Jews, nonwhites, homosexuals, abortion, the U.S. government, the United Nations, and anything smacking of one-world multiculturalism.

Rudolph was steeped in this stuff. Born in 1966, the youngest son in a family of six children, he grew up in Homestead, Florida. When he was 15, his father died of cancer and his mother moved the family to Nantahala, North Carolina, a hamlet about 18 miles northeast of Murphy and the gateway to the Nantahala Gorge, a whitewater rafting and kayaking mecca.

Patricia Rudolph didn't come for the water. She wanted to live among the handful of white supremacists who had set up shop in the region, including Nord Davis Jr., a Christian Identity supporter and a notorious author of hate literature. Davis's 1993 booklet "Star Wars" calls for perpetual combat between Christians and Jews.

Another neighbor, Tom Branham, may have taught young Eric how to translate those ideas into action. It was Branham, a

When the Feds raided his trailer, they found the lights on, the front door open, and Rudolph gone. It was assumed that he'd fled into the wilderness.

Nantahala sawmill owner and Christian Identity follower, who talked Patricia Rudolph into relocating, and it was Branham who reportedly stepped in as a father figure after Rudolph's dad died. In 1984, when Rudolph was 18, Branham was arrested when federal agents found dynamite, blasting caps, a submachine gun, and other illegal materials in his home. His conviction on federal weapons charges was later overturned; Branham still lives in the area and declines interviews.

After dropping out of high school, Rudolph alternated between spending time in the woods—hunting, fishing, hiking, and caving—and spending time on the couch smoking pot. Following a brief stint at Western Carolina University, he joined the Army at 19, hoping to become a Special Forces soldier, but washed out after 18 months. Rudolph went back home and supported himself with part-time carpentry work. He also apparently became a marijuana grower and dealer (a secret grow room was discovered in his trailer by the FBI). In a 2001 interview in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, a publication that keeps tabs on the extreme right, Rudolph's former sister-in-law, Deborah Rudolph, claims that he made up to $60,000 a year selling pot.

According to Deborah, who divorced Eric's brother Joel in 1991, Eric's increasingly conspiratorial and hateful views began to alienate members of his family in the early nineties. She said he couldn't watch TV—which he called "the electronic Jew"—without deconstructing the supposedly offensive aspects of each show. "You could be watching a 30-minute sitcom," she told the Intelligence Report, "and the credits would roll and there'd be Jewish names and, excuse my expression, but he would say, 'You fucking Yids.'"

Rudolph did not become a suspect in the bombings until January 29, 1998, the day of the Birmingham clinic blast. One witness reported seeing a man walking away from the scene who fit his description; another witness saw this man putting items into a gray 1989 Nissan pickup, and took down the plate number. North Carolina records listed the owner as 31-year-old Eric Rudolph, then living in a rented trailer outside Murphy. When federal agents raided his trailer the next day, they found the lights on, the front door open, and Rudolph gone.

It was assumed from the start that Rudolph had fled into the Nantahala National Forest, about 20 miles south of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the forgotten corners of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina meet. At the height of the manhunt, more than 200 agents combed the hills around Murphy, in an effort that eventually cost upwards of $20 million.

The search turned up no traces of the fugitive. But six months later, Rudolph appeared at the home of 71-year-old George Nordmann, a former neighbor and the owner of an area health-food store, who lived near Nantahala Lake. Rudolph had a list of needed provisions; Nordmann didn't hand over the requested beans and batteries, but he didn't alert the police, either. A few days later Rudolph apparently stole the old man's truck and about 100 pounds of canned goods from Nordmann's home, leaving behind five $100 bills. Nordmann waited two days before reporting the theft, and two days after that his truck was found at a public campground 18 miles east of Murphy.

The search dragged on for a year, then three, then five, by which time the FBI had long worn out its welcome. In the end, Jeff Postell, a 21-year-old rookie in the Murphy Police Department, caught Rudolph dumpster-diving behind a Save-A-Lot supermarket at 3:30 a.m. on May 31. Rudolph had lost weight but was otherwise in good shape. He was wearing dark-blue work pants, a camouflage jacket, and old sneakers, and his hair was cropped short. He had a thin mustache and chin stubble—nothing like the Ted Kaczynski wildman look that many people expected. The cops gave him biscuits and gravy and he wolfed them down.

Rudolph now sits in the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham, awaiting trial early next year on five counts related to the clinic bombing, after which he will be transferred to Georgia to face trial for the three Atlanta bombings. In early June, he pleaded innocent to the Birmingham charges. The U.S. attorney prosecuting that case has indicated that she may seek the death penalty.

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