Original subtitles

[audio logo]

EMILY LYONS: It was premeditated.

Oh, my god.

EMILY LYONS: He planned it.

[explosion]

Run!

EMILY LYONS: He made those bombs.

WOMAN (ON PHONE): A bomb explosion.

MAN (ON PHONE): A bomb explosion.

EMILY LYONS: He killed those people.

There's not a day goes by that I don't think about him.

There's not a day goes by that I don't think about him.

There's not a day goes by that I don't think about him.

There's not a day goes by that I don't think about him.

He is always in my head.

People told me I should have died.

Out!

Back up.

Back up, people!

[screaming]

[theme music]

Hello and welcome to How It Really Happened.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

There is a specter hovering over the 1996 Summer

Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Someone planted a bomb designed to kill or maim

spectators at Centennial Park.

And when a second device explodes at another location

just 15 miles away, investigators

suspect there is a serial bomber stalking Atlanta.

This is part two of Atlanta Bombing.

[suspenseful music playing]

RICK SCHWEIN (VOICEOVER): There is entertainment

at Centennial Park, the beating heart at night of the Olympics.

Oh, yeah.

You having a good time?

[cheers, applause]

[explosion]

We have had word now of an explosion

at the Centennial Olympic Park.

RICK SCHWEIN (VOICEOVER): Security guards were saying, get

out, get out, get out, get out.

[whistling]

Hey!

Hey!

RICK SCHWEIN (VOICEOVER): I looked around

and people were screaming.

Many injured laying around.

REPORTER: At this point, we understand

that we have 110 injured and two people who have died.

RICK SCHWEIN (VOICEOVER): So now, you've

got a bombing at an Olympiad.

What's the motivation behind the bombing?

At this point, we don't know because we don't

have the bomber identified.

[police sirens]

MAN (ON PHONE): This was a loud explosion about 9:30 this

morning in a professional building,

mostly housing medical offices, including an abortion clinic.

TOM BUSH: The first bomb device had gone off

in the rear of the building into the windows

of the abortion clinic.

There's still a very initial response is underway.

REPORTER: Some windows broken.

Eyewitnesses said that the explosion shook nearby office

buildings as well.

As we say, no injuries reported so far

and no cause of the explosion.

We're standing there talking about next steps.

[explosion]

TOM BUSH: And that second device goes off

and the level of noise and first reaction

is literally, what was that?

ALAN DUKE (ON PHONE): The second explosion

was outside the building near the entrance to this

professional services clinic.

It happened about 25 yards from where I was.

I certainly felt the force of this blast.

And immediately in front of me, the people standing right

in front of me were hit, and they're bleeding

from the head and elsewhere.

And it's quite a chaotic scene here.

HENRY SCHUSTER: This idea of having a secondary device

at the abortion clinic is something that other bombers

had used in other places.

It's something that Al-Qaeda and its operatives

would use to great effect.

The bomb goes off.

People come out.

Law enforcement comes out.

The media comes out.

The secondary device goes off.

[explosion]

This was meant to kill.

Go!

Go!

Go!

BILL CAMPBELL: It was directed at the abortion clinic.

We have been the scene of a number of abortion protests

here, Operation Rescue, and a number of others that took place

over the last several years, but never

the type of violence that occurred here today.

JOE KENNEDY: We started to put together a picture of what

for both devices were made of.

And in both cases, we had evidence of mechanical timers.

There were nails in secondary device.

MIKE RISING: There were 26 sticks of dynamite

in it, 5 pounds of masonry cut nails.

JOE KENNEDY: Dynamite is a high explosive that can only

be initiated with a detonator.

Dynamite went off.

It blew it all into one direction.

[explosion]

MIKE RISING: With all the cut nails.

MAN: Oh, my god.

RICK SCHWEIN: So you set a device off.

First responders arrive at the scene,

and then you set another device that you either detonate

remotely or is timed to go off sometime after the first device,

you're doing that to kill the people that are responding.

That's a different level of evil.

BILL CAMPBELL: The first act is a political statement.

The second one is a particularly heinous act that seemed designed

to injure those federal and local officials that were there

to assist in the evacuation of the emergency medical personnel.

JOE KENNEDY: After the Sandy Springs bombing,

we had a good idea of the components that were used

in the bombs from Centennial Olympic Park and the two bombs

in Sandy Springs.

They were a number of components that were the same--

mechanical timer, nails, steel plates.

So these types of similarities, we like to use a term

called a �bomber signature.�

By that I mean, when you have a serial bomber making

multiple bombs, subsequent bombs that he makes

will generally incorporate similar design concepts.

And they do this because it's what's comfortable to them.

WOODY JOHNSON: That's pretty solid evidence.

You're dealing with the same person or same group that

is doing this because bombers will traditionally build them

the same way every time, because they know what works

and they know how dangerous it is putting the thing together.

Everyone wanted to know.

Are we dealing with someone that's

putting the public at risk and how worried should we be?

[suspenseful music playing]

JACK DAULTON: I got a phone call at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning,

and it was Tom Bush.

And he said, hey, we had another bombing.

We're all at the other side lounge.

It was a tremendous boom.

It's like-- it's like a cannon or something in a circus,

that kind of boom sound.

So really, actually, nobody even moved.

They were too afraid to even move, you know?

And then I think after maybe a minute or so,

everybody realized something had happened.

TOM BUSH: It was determined upon arriving at the scene

that that bomb was placed behind the club.

Shrapnel nails came into the back of the club.

And people were injured as a result of that.

REPORTER: Five people were injured in the initial explosion

at the Other Side Dance Club, a business,

which caters to a gay and alternative lifestyle.

HENRY SCHUSTER: The first bomb goes off.

They move people back.

They spot a secondary device nearby a retaining wall.

REPORTER: The first explosion was set off on the club's

back porch, and when police arrived,

they found a second more powerful bomb.

It was safely detonated about 2 AM.

[explosion]

JOE KENNEDY: The bomb technicians

collaborated with each other and worked on a series of techniques

to render that device safe.

Fortunately, no one was hurt.

REPORTER: Multiple explosive devices have been rare in the US

until recently, but Atlanta now has three unsolved bombings

within the past year.

Last July, the Olympic Park bombing injured hundreds.

[explosion]

[screaming]

REPORTER: In January, two bombs were set off

at a suburban business plaza.

Investigators theorize a second bomb is intended for officials

who arrive at the scene.

They looked at militia groups.

They looked at terrorist groups.

We assumed that it was somebody who lived close by because they

were all local bombs.

We all recognize that there are similarities here.

We will be searching out the possibility

that we have a serial bomber.

[suspenseful music playing]

TOM BUSH: Letters are sent to multiple media

outlets purporting to be from the Army of God.

JIM RUSSELL: There were some letters received claiming

that the work of the Olympic bombing and the clinic

and Other Side Lounge bombing was

perpetrated by an organization called Army of God.

And the mindset behind those letters indicated that somebody

had a warped view of Christianity,

had a warped view of humanity.

There was anti-semitic, anti-gay rhetoric.

He's now saying who he is.

They're in this block letter and it

says the bombings in Sandy Springs and Midtown

were carried out by units of the Army of God.

So units, army, at least this person saying it's more than one

person, then the attack in Midtown

was aimed at the sodomite bar (The Other Side).

We will target sodomites, their organizations and all

those who push their agenda.

TOM BUSH: Basically the individual saying we,

the Army of God, are against the liberal agenda

of the government, homosexuality, and abortion,

and basically saying we're declaring

war on those particular aspects of American society.

REPORTER: Even law enforcement says it can't pin down

any group called the Army of God,

but is looking at the possibility

of a lone serial bomber.

Are they a group?

Are they an organization?

No, I don't think they ever have been.

But there are people who believe in the rhetoric and the

philosophy of the Army of God.

REPORTER: A philosophy of hatred against Washington, abortion,

gays, and any event like the Olympics

that might force the United States to join

a so-called new world order.

JACK DAULTON: So the Army of God letters,

they basically took credit for the bombings

and the assumption was that it was somebody

involved in that organization.

But as we looked into it, it's not really an organization.

It's just a bunch of individuals.

So that further led us to just one person we're dealing with.

HENRY SCHUSTER: It's kind of apparent to the FBI

that there's no army.

And that, of course, is the hardest

thing to crack because that means

you've still got a lone wolf.

And then he goes quiet.

The FBI says there is probably a link between last year's

Centennial Olympic Park bombing and two others around Atlanta.

They hope a blurry picture from that might hold a clue.

We are now displaying an enhanced video frame taken

at approximately 12:20 AM that shows the outline

of an individual sitting on the bench

where the bomb later exploded.

As you can see, this video is extremely blurry.

VERNON KEENAN: So the FBI arranged for the picture

to be sent to NASA to see if they could enhance it with all

of their specialized equipment.

DAVID HATHAWAY: It was many months of working.

We came up with a process that would

stabilize and register the images,

brighten them up, reduce the noise.

so it was a much cleaner image and you

could see important details.

The main thing is we got a description of what he looked

like the night of the bombing.

TOM BUSH: And it took a considerable amount of time,

but we ultimately got down to an individual

that you could identify some physical characteristics.

DAVID HATHAWAY: We knew how tall the bench was.

We knew how tall the wall and back of them was.

So we could use that to estimate his height

and from build his weight.

And we figured he was about 6' 0", maybe 180.

TOM BUSH: And what he was wearing.

DAVID HATHAWAY: Khaki shirt and shorts.

TOM BUSH: Even shoe size, size 9.

So it was fascinating to see what we started with.

What we ended up with was pretty amazing.

DAVID HATHAWAY: The picture we presented of the bomber

could help identify the bomber, or at least if you had

a suspect, see whether that suspect

was right size and shape to be consistent with what we had.

[suspenseful music playing]

HENRY SCHUSTER: It's January 1998.

Emily Lyons is opening up the clinic.

EMILY LYONS: At the clinic, we did perform

abortions up to 15 weeks.

We did adoptions.

We did pregnancy tests and ultrasounds.

Before I started working there, I had no major concept

of abortion as an issue.

HENRY SCHUSTER: This was a place that had more

than its share of protesters.

So that's why they've got an off duty

police officer there for security,

Officer Sandy Sanderson.

And he sees something.

He starts looking at it.

EMILY LYONS: It was a green toolbox.

Sandy was standing beside it.

I was up closer to the door.

He pulls out a baton, and as Officer

Sanderson gets closer to figuring out what it is,

it detonates.

[explosion]

That force just--

[vocalizing]

Pushed him back.

And then the nails and stuff went to the building,

and then I hit the window.

Sandy was literally torn to pieces.

KITTY PILGRIM: When we got there,

the scene was very disturbing.

There was glass all over.

You could smell burnt things.

And it was extraordinarily chaotic.

KITTY PILGRIM (VOICEOVER): The Birmingham fire and rescue

service arrived to find an off duty police officer

had been killed by the blast.

A nurse at the clinic had severe injuries

and was taken to the hospital.

KITTY PILGRIM: It got worse and worse and worse.

Also very upsetting because it's an abortion clinic.

It's an environment that's a vulnerable, environment.

KITTY PILGRIM (VOICEOVER): Investigators describe it

as an act of cowardice, the first fatal bombing

of a women's health clinic in the US history.

JEFFREY LYONS: I went on over to the hospital.

Emily was on her way into surgery,

and they said she might lose both legs.

She might die.

The bomb had a lot of nails, over

7 pounds of nails and shrapnel.

One nail or a piece of copper went into this eye,

acted like an egg beater.

And so there was no hope for that,

so they had to take that out.

My face was covered in shrapnel holes, tears.

My eyelids were torn back.

JEFFREY LYONS: I didn't see her until that night,

and I honestly thought I'd walked into the wrong room.

It was kind of in shock.

I still didn't know if she was going to live or not.

EMILY LYONS: The fireball is over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

So I had first, second and third degree burns.

It tore the skin off, both my shins.

Pretty much destroyed the muscle there, too.

And it took weeks for that to even

get to where it wouldn't bleed.

JEFFREY LYONS: I knew that if she did live,

it was not going to be the life she had before.

EMILY LYONS: There have been 54 surgeries and four of those

were this year.

She had a lot of surgeries from the skin

grafts and the broken bones.

But most of Emily's surgeries were foreign body removals,

and most of the foreign bodies were nails.

Many of them, they left because going in after them

would have caused more damage.

EMILY LYONS: I am a survivor.

Fighting is pretty much what you had to do

every day in the hospital.

Jeffrey's what got me through it.

Always said he was my lifeline.

She's amazing.

She's the superhero.

I'm the sidekick.

You know?

So she survived a bomb.

I'm fortunate to be married to such an amazing woman.

REPORTER: The federal bombing task force set up

after the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996,

is now operating in Birmingham, trying

to learn if there are any links between the family planning

clinic bombing and the Atlanta bombings

over the past year and a half.

JOE KENNEDY: We arrived the day of the bombing

that afternoon to see the bomb scene.

I remember Lloyd Erwin commenting

that he had suspicion that there might be parts

of an improvised detonator.

Well, I saw somebody that had seen that day

that told me remote control.

TOM BUSH: There had been time devices left

at the other locations at the Olympics,

at Sandy Springs, Other Side lounge.

The difference and the deadly difference in this one

was that this particular device was remote-control detonated.

They used a remote control device to detonate the bomb,

but everything else was pretty much the same -- the metal plate

the nails, dynamite.

It was basically identical to the other bombs,

except for remote control to detonate it.

When somebody setting the remote control device,

he has to be able to see the device.

So he had to be in line of sight in order to set it off

when you want it to go off.

RICK SCHWEIN: He watched the officer lean over the device

and executed the officer.

Killed him.

It's cowardly, but it's also--

it's just evil.

He had control over that device.

It was remotely detonated by his finger.

EMILY LYONS: Sandy was doing his job that day.

I'm thankful for that.

It's not the way to die, though.

Sandy didn't believe in abortions.

He was not pro-choice, but he knew what his job was.

He came to work.

That was to protect women coming in and out of that clinic.

And that day he protected me too.

Welcome back to How It Really Happened.

Three bombings and investigators have little more than a blurry

image of the deadly bomber.

Then, as first responders and investigators

rushed to the site of another explosion,

they get a possible break.

A witness noticed a man walking away from the scene.

RICK SCHWEIN: An alert University of Alabama Birmingham

student saw this individual walking away from the explosion

site while everybody else is running to it

and responding to it and thought, that's suspicious.

The witness was doing his laundry on the balcony of one

of the dorms and he saw somebody walking

away after the bomb had exploded,

walking calmly with a blonde wig.

And he followed him.

TOM BUSH: He follows this individual

on foot and in a vehicle, sees this individual change clothes,

take a wig off, put a hat on, put

sunglasses on, changes an overcoat,

and now is dressed differently.

JIM RUSSELL: It was quite an involved route that he followed

to finally get the individual placed inside a vehicle, which

was a Nissan pickup truck.

And the witness was able to jot down

the North Carolina tag number.

Once the witness had provided the license plate number to law

enforcement, they would run the tag through our National Crime

Information Center, and they were

able to get the registration to that vehicle, which would

include a name, an address.

RICK SCHWEIN: And the license plate

is registered to Eric Rudolph and at an address

in Asheville, North Carolina.

JIM RUSSELL: When I received the information

from my headquarters, the instructions

were there was an individual that was acting suspiciously

at the scene of the bombing, go out to Asheville,

and identify if, in fact, this person

was in Birmingham that day.

And if he was, what was he doing in Birmingham?

That was the actual beginning of the manhunt

because they knew who they were looking for.

Investigators in Birmingham, Alabama

are looking for a man who may have

witnessed yesterday's deadly bombing of a women's clinic.

One person was killed, another severely wounded in the blast.

TOM BUSH: Those initial description

fits a lot of what we were looking

for from the description from the Centennial Park bombing.

He was about 6' 0", 175 pounds, size 9 shoes.

That's the kind of detail we were able to get off

of that blob man photograph.

Once we had reasonable belief that Eric Robert Rudolph

could be a person of interest.

You look everything you can possibly

find about him, his personal stuff, his credit cards.

He had no credit cards.

He hadn't paid taxes.

He had no income.

He didn't have a job at that time.

We start doing interviews, surveillance,

bank records, things like that.

Anybody that knew him were interviewed,

looked at every aspect of his life

that you can find through your investigation.

But then you're also looking at his background.

He had a short military career.

He was trained in bombing techniques.

He was trained in what they called L-shaped ambush

techniques, which is again, setting up an ambush

using secondary devices.

[explosion]

As we did more in his background,

he's known to be anti-government,

anti-abortion, anti-homosexual.

Once we do interviews with different family and friends,

and it became clear that a lot of aspects of his life to date

fit the type of individual that could be our bomber.

[suspenseful music playing]

JIM RUSSELL: Randy Cochran opened the door to us.

And before we could do anything more than identifying ourselves,

Randy said, well, I guess you must be here about Eric.

And we were kind of dumbfounded.

And asked Randy, why do you think

we're here for Eric Rudolph?

And he said, well, because he's all over the news.

We have issued a warrant for a Mr. Eric Robert Rudolph,

a white male, age 31.

RICK SCHWEIN: There was a media leak.

Information was going to be transmitted about Rudolph

and the US attorney in Birmingham, Doug Jones,

decided to hold a press conference.

Last known address was in a small North Carolina community

in western North Carolina called Marble, North Carolina.

JIM RUSSELL: We were just pretty much upset

that that information was now being broadcast

to the general public.

Shortly after the name became available and was announced,

they assumed that he was going to flee at that point.

Again, this is a material witness warrant

and no one should jump to any conclusions about the fact

that we are looking to question Mr. Rudolph.

We talked to Randy and said we need to get

in touch with Eric Rudolph.

Do you have any idea where he's at?

He said my thought is he's somewhere

in western Cherokee County, out near the city

of Murphy, North Carolina.

As soon as he said that, got on the phone

with the Sheriff of Cherokee County and asked him to run

a public records check on Eric Rudolph,

if he's ever been arrested out there.

Sheriff said, yes, I've got an Eric Rudolph.

He's never been in any of our arrest records,

but he's getting power on a trailer that's

located off a Caney Creek road, which is located

west of Murphy, North Carolina.

There is some optimism this evening

that the bomber of a Birmingham, Alabama women's clinic

will be found soon.

REPORTER: A North Carolina man is being sought

for questioning as a material witness in the Birmingham

clinic bombing.

At a late afternoon press conference,

law enforcement officials put out this description.

Eric Robert Rudolph, a 31-year-old white male.

JIM RUSSELL: We drove to Murphy and it was determined

at that location that myself and an ATF agent

was going to make at least an initial reconnaissance of

the residence of Eric Rudolph.

It's dark out.

It's in the middle of winter, and we're getting more and more

certain that this individual that

has already committed a bombing in Birmingham

has killed a police officer.

We had to be careful for any kind of booby traps or IEDs

as we were making the approach to the trailer.

The front door was wide open, and this was January

and it was cold.

And I thought, geez, you know, with that door

being wide open like that, no truck,

it looks like, in my opinion, that he must have just

exited that trailer in a hurry.

It looked like he took at least a rifle and he left other

firearms back there and left $1,600 in cash, in $100

bills hidden behind a picture.

It just reinforced in my opinion,

that he left that trailer in a hurry.

And I had just got there a little too late.

RICK SCHWEIN: He missed Rudolph by, I believe,

less than an hour.

But at that point, it was very apparent that

Eric Rudolph was on the run.

REPORTER: Who is Eric Rudolph?

And where is he?

Federal agents continue to search for the elusive material

witness in the January 29 bombing

of an Alabama abortion clinic.

JIM RUSSELL: We dug into the background to Eric Rudolph.

It became apparent that this was a loner, never

had any real close friends, never

had any real close girlfriends, was never married,

never had a legitimate job.

He was raised in Florida and his mother moved the family

to North Carolina to be ready for any terrible event that

could happen, any cataclysm, the apocalypse,

to be bunkered and hunkered down.

In this case, they lived in this little community

called Topton, North Carolina.

There are a lot of people that have moved into the area that

were anti-government and felt that they would be more

accepting in that area because of the community itself

and the community's beliefs.

ART HARRIS: He didn't have a father

figure after his father died.

DEBORAH RUDOLPH: Mr. Rudolph had passed away.

He had melanoma.

They had wanted to administer Laetrile,

which is not approved by the FDA, and he ended up passing.

It sort of fell into that...

�Well, the government is keeping these sort of cures

away from us.�

So, you know, they're just become layers of conspiracy.

ART HARRIS: Suddenly, here's Eric with grief in his mind.

But no one to--

to single out except the feds, the bureaucracy

that denied his father the one elixir of hope he wanted,

who he thought would cure his cancer.

And looking back, I think, OK, they already

had these sentiments, but I think it

progressed after Robert died.

His mom seemed to be somebody who was a spiritual searcher.

ART HARRIS: Eric Rudolph grew up in somewhat

of a preached-at childhood where his mother would visit

different churches that were very fundamentalist

or had a new Christian identity movement.

Eric is exposed to a really toxic mix of ideas--

white nationalism, white separatism,

white supremacy, all mixed in.

DEBORAH RUDOLPH: How it was explained

to me is if you want to further your race,

you need to be true to your race.

You need to breed within your race.

You need to stay in your lane.

TOM BUSH: He'd had some education.

He'd been in the military, and he'd had

bomb training in the military.

DEBORAH RUDOLPH: It was such a shock when

Eric went into the military.

When he went in the military, OK,

you're this anti-government dude.

Why would you do that?

I know that lifestyle.

If you're anti-government and you're narcissistic

and you're very self-centered, that's

not going to work because you have to be part of a team.

TOM BUSH: He was dishonorably discharged from the military

for use of marijuana.

DEBORAH RUDOLPH: He became a little more aggressive

about his sentiments about the government, about the FDA,

about the races, and about abortion.

He used to say the Olympics is all the races coming together,

but he turned it into something ugly.

Now we have a picture of an individual,

so we know where his hatreds and motivations and problems are.

JOE KENNEDY: By then, Eric Rudolph's name

had been circulated through the news media,

and the owner of a mini storage unit called

said, hey, I rented a unit to this Eric Rudolph.

So we proceeded to get into that storage unit

and that's when a bag of nails was collected.

Those were cut nails.

LLOYD ERWIN: It was later identified as the same type

of nail, the same manufacturer as the ones

in Sandy Springs device.

A mobile home is one focus of the investigation

into last week's bombing of a women's

health clinic in Alabama.

Federal agents searched the Marble, North Carolina home,

which is the last known address of a material

witness to the attack.

Eric Rudolph is still at large.

Authorities say that even though he's simply wanted as a witness,

Rudolph should only be approached by the police.

RICK SCHWEIN: Now, the manhunt is on,

and we're looking for him.

We have a start point.

We have this trailer.

JOE KENNEDY: There were items that contained the presence

of trace explosives, EGD in particularly, which

is only found in dynamite.

There was the Walmart receipt and on the receipt

was a number of items that could be used to manufacture

improvised explosives.

Now, you're not going to find improvised explosives per se

at Walmart, but the measuring cup, gloves, other things

that you would think a person in a makeshift chemical lab

might want to use to formulate a high explosive.

[suspenseful music playing]

REPORTER: Federal authorities have descended

on the community of Murphy, North Carolina, in the

woods nearby.

They have found what could be a link to last month's bombing

of a women's health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

JOE KENNEDY: On February the 7th,

Eric Rudolph's truck was located by some

hunters in Nantahala Forest.

It was within five miles of his trailer,

but it was off the road, hidden deep into the woods.

REPORTER: Federal agents pulled Eric

Robert Rudolph's vehicle from a deeply wooded area

Monday afternoon.

The truck, wrapped in plastic, was

being taken by flatbed for extensive analysis

in a forensic lab.

I swabbed the door handles, swabbed the steering wheel,

the gearshift lever.

We got dynamite residue off the steering wheel.

JOE KENNEDY: This was just another indication

that this is the bomber of the Birmingham attack.

So this combination of parts were indications

of a serial bomber, and most of us on the task force

felt confident that the bomber was the same guy that

was responsible for Sandy Springs and for Centennial Park

as well.

We found a receipt for groceries--

canned tuna, oatmeal, raisins, stuff that he

could take to the woods.

And the belief was that he could probably live for about five

or six months with what he had.

JIM RUSSELL: He was on the run.

He knew he was being hunted.

REPORTER: From the air and on the ground.

The hunt intensifies for an elusive

witness to that fatal bombing at an Alabama women's clinic.

With the abandonment of the truck and no report

of any other vehicles stolen in the area.

We were confident that we had our fugitive on foot.

RICK SCHWEIN: He's in the Nantahala National Forest area,

so it's very rural, it's rugged.

It's a five-county area in the far western part of the state.

REPORTER: Searching for a needle in a haystack.

Scouring the southern Appalachians for Eric Rudolph.

The 31-year-old North Carolina carpenter and laborer has been

sought for questioning about the clinic bombing

for a week and a half now.

RICK SCHWEIN: It was an area that we knew he had grown up in.

He knew how to navigate.

He knew how to move.

He knew the best routes.

He knew all the game trails, and he knew how to stay hidden.

There are areas where you can't see more than a couple of feet

in front of you, particularly if you get off the path.

So there's the physical danger of having an armed confrontation

with a wanted fugitive that has no compunction about killing.

REPORTER: You know, here, he's been living out

here in the woods and all this.

I mean, you think some folks might be helping him?

I'd say he's had some help somewhere or another,

but I won't say for sure.

But I would have helped him if I'd had seen him.

REPORTER: And why is that?

Because I figure he didn't do what they got him charged with.

I don't believe he done it.

RICK SCHWEIN: You would see the signs.

Eric Rudolph, hide and seek champion,

fill in the blank number of days.

There were certainly small pockets

of people who were sympathetic and may have assisted Eric.

REPORTER: But the FBI says he is armed and dangerous, still

hiding in these mountains.

JIM RUSSELL: The manhunt would ebb and flow

and then there would be a potential sighting of Rudolph

by members of the public.

So that would kind of send us out back into the woods.

And we spend weeks and months and ultimately

years searching the mountains for our bomber,

for Eric Rudolph.

JIM RUSSELL: '99, 2000, 2001, 2002.

Four years.

No sightings of him in four years.

I became firmly convinced that Eric Rudolph had

died out there in the woods.

[suspenseful music playing]

ART HARRIS: Small town cop just doing his drive bys at night,

3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, sees a guy wandering around

behind a shopping center and stops him and gets

him out of the dumpster where he's been

dumpster diving for food.

RICK SCHWEIN: They took him to the sheriff's department.

And they started talking to him.

And his story wasn't matching up.

He said he was an indigent living under the bridge,

couldn't produce any ID, and finally pulled out

a wanted poster and held it up to his face

and said, who are you really?

And he admitted his identity, said, I'm Eric Robert Rudolph,

and you got me.

We have some breaking news to report to you this morning

regarding a long FBI and multi-agency

investigation that has been going

on early since the late 90s.

RICK SCHWEIN: Jeff Postell, a young 21-year-old rookie police

officer, ran across America's most notorious top 10 fugitive

and domestic terrorist, diving in a dumpster at 3:00

in the morning in a Save-a-Lot grocery store in Murphy,

North Carolina.

I'm just glad I was out there doing my job

and was glad I was in the right place at the right time.

RICK SCHWEIN: Ending one of the longest

manhunts in American history.

As we speak, Eric Rudolph is in the jail

building, which is right behind this courthouse

over my shoulder.

It's expected that sometime tomorrow,

he'll be transported to Asheville, North Carolina,

where he'll make a first appearance

in a federal courtroom Monday morning, 10:00 AM Eastern time.

It's then expected he will quickly be transferred

to either Alabama or Georgia, the states

where the bombs went off.

By then, there's enough evidence

for the federal government to levy charges against Eric

Rudolph for the bombings.

And so he's charged and held in federal custody.

JIM RUSSELL: The US Attorney's office

was going to seek the death penalty against Rudolph.

But if he didn't want the death penalty

he had to offer some cooperation.

JIM RUSSELL: Rudolph had offered, through his attorneys,

to provide us with the locations of some IED components

and an actual intact IED and over 200 pounds of dynamite.

RICK SCHWEIN: He had buried his explosive devices

in the dynamite cache.

That was important because we didn't

want somebody to run across that and have somebody

else get hurt or killed.

It was decided to accept his offer and in return,

not seek the death penalty.

The dynamite was so unstable we had to blow it in place.

[explosion]

And I do remember it.

It rattled windows in that five-county area.

It was quite the hole that that explosion made.

REPORTER: Today, Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty to those bombings

in several court appearances.

His pleas will spare him the death penalty, which

some of his victims believe is a worse

deal than they got from him.

EMILY LYONS: I am angry he didn't get the death penalty.

He should have.

It was premeditated.

He planned it.

He made those bombs.

He killed those three people.

How much more do you need?

[suspenseful music playing]

WATSON BRYANT: Richard Jewell was there

when Eric Rudolph pled guilty.

It was sort of like a big weight came off.

But people still think of him with some shame associated

with his name because of the park bombing

instead of being a guy that saved a lot of lives.

MARK WINNE: You can stand there in Centennial Olympic Park

today and see where Eric Rudolph perpetrated

this huge act of terror.

Then you can look to the south, and you

can see the towering federal courthouse

where Eric Rudolph pled guilty.

You can see the beginning and the end

of the Eric Rudolph saga.

It took a long time, but justice got there.

Richard Jewell, married in 1998

and eventually became a deputy sheriff.

Tragically, he died from heart disease in 2007

at the age of 44.

Captured after more than five years

on the run in the North Carolina wilderness,

Eric Rudolph is now serving multiple life sentences.

He's in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado

living in a tiny cell where he gets only

one hour of daylight a day.

I'm Jesse L. Martin Thank you for watching.

Good night.

[music playing]

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