Rudolph, Eric (1966–)

Eric Robert Rudolph remains one of the FBI's “10 most wanted” for his role in a two-state bombing spree from 1996 to 1998, including the first fatal bombing of a U.S. abortion clinic, in Alabama; a series of bombings in the Atlanta area; and the Centennial Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

Initially, the Atlanta-area bombings were believed to be part of the ever-growing antiabortion violence throughout the southern United States. In the early-morning hours of January 16, 1997, two bombs exploded at the Sandy Springs Professional Building, just north of Atlanta, injuring seven. The first bomb blasted through the operating and waiting rooms of the abortion clinic; the second, authorities believed, was deliberately timed to injure rescue workers rushing to the scene. A month later, two similarly manufactured bombs exploded in midtown Atlanta's Other Side Lounge, a gay/lesbian nightclub, injuring four.

On February 24, 1997, media outlets received a letter claiming responsibility that was signed the Army of God, a shadowy antiabortion group active since 1982. In it, the bomber railed against abortion, the “agents of the so-called federal government” and against the “sodomites” at the Other Side Lounge. The sign-off threatened, “Death to the New World Order.”

Not until June 1997 did authorities link the two bombings to the 1996 Centennial Park bomb during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, which killed one person and injured more than 100 others. A Turkish cameraman at the scene died of a heart attack. Six months later, after another deadly explosion at the New Woman All Women Health Center in Birmingham, Alabama, in which a security guard was killed and a nurse was gravely injured, investigators announced they finally had a suspect—Eric Rudolph.

Rudolph's gray 1989 Nissan pickup truck was quickly linked to the scene of the Birmingham clinic bombing. Although Rudolph was initially sought only [Page 320]as a material witness, when hunters in the woods near Murphy, North Carolina, found Rudolph's abandoned pickup, the investigation intensified. Shortly thereafter, the FBI found in Rudolph's storage facility in Marble, North Carolina, a book titled How to Build Bombs of Mass Destruction

On February 14, 1998, Rudolph was named as the suspect in Birmingham clinic bombing. By May, he was on the FBI's “10 most wanted” list. Five months later, Attorney General Janet Reno charged him with all three Atlanta-area bombings.

By that time, Rudolph had long been hiding in the caves and mines of the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina, using survivalist skills learned in his 18-month stint in the U.S. Army. He was last seen in July 1998, rumored to have left $500 in exchange for a six-month supply of food and a pickup truck (later abandoned) taken from the home of his girlfriend's father. Members of the Southeast Bomb Task Force—a collaboration between the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Department of Justice, and local trackers—continue to search the Smokey Mountains for signs of Rudolph.

As the investigation progressed, authorities found links between Rudolph and the Christian Identity Movement—a quasi-neo-Nazi group that is both anti-gay and antiabortion. However, investigators believe Rudolph has more in common with antigovernment terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh than to the anti-abortion activists before him, such as Michael Griffin or Paul Hill.