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Outside Magazine September 2003
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Eric Rudolph Slept Here (Cont.)

ERIC RUDOLPH SEEMS to have had enough know-how and money—recall the marijuana dealing and the $100 bills left for George Nordmann—to go anywhere in America, yet he chose to hide out near the family home. Why did he stay?

I'm inclined toward Sheriff Woody's theory: Rudolph made plans. I think he stayed in the Nantahala woods because he knew them, and it seems plausible that he'd spent more than a decade preparing to live in a survivalist mode, perhaps in anticipation of a future race war. The war turned out to be more lopsided than he'd anticipated—Eric against the world—but it came nonetheless. And survival turned out to be tougher than he thought. The fat of the land wasn't so fat. When his supplies ran out, it's possible he turned to the mountain people for help.

But something is nagging at me. When Officer Jeff Postell confronted Rudolph, the fugitive could have easily hopped the fence and disappeared across the darkened field next to the Save-A-Lot. Postell wouldn't have shot him. Why did Rudolph give himself up?

"Think about how close his camp was to the high school," Brown says. "He would have seen and heard those kids every day. That could have been excruciating."

"Few fugitives escape to the woods and stay there," Reeve observes. "They'll always come back to society."

Eric Rudolph was woodsman enough to elude the FBI, but after five years on the run, maybe he grew tired of himself. The consolation of wilderness was not enough.
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