Domestic Terror: The Hunt for Eric Rudolph | One Final Bomb | 5

It's just after 10 a.m. on May 31, 2009. In Wichita, Kansas, Sunday services at the Reformation Lutheran Church have just begun when a sharp sound echoes through the building. To those in the congregation who notice it, the noise sounds like a balloon popping.
A kid must have brought one in with them, let the string slip through their fingers and watched it pop on a ceiling fan. But as the hymn ends and the pastor steps forward, there are more noises from the entrance hall. Moments later, one of the ushers walks towards the front of the sanctuary, making a beeline from where the choir is seated.

He approaches Jean Tiller, a woman in her 60s, and beckons for her to come with him. As the usher leads Jean up the nave towards the main entrance of the sanctuary, the service continues until it's interrupted once again, this time by a sound that everyone can hear. Jean has just let out a stomach-churning scream from the entrance hall.

While the pastor continues speaking as if nothing has happened, many in the congregation turn to see what's going on. But the main sanctuary door snaps shut, blocking the commotion from view. The congregation will be kept in the dark for a few more minutes until the usher will return and make an announcement.

Dr. George Tiller has been shot and killed. The news will ripple through the assembly, as details are whispered from person to person. Just a few minutes ago, 67-year-old George was performing usher duties in the lobby, welcoming people to the service and handing out church newsletters.

Then a balding man with a scruffy neckbeard walked in from the parking lot, raised a handgun and shot George in the head. When two other men tried to stop him, he threatened to shoot them too. Later, as the congregation at Reformation Lutheran give their accounts of the morning to police and media, investigators will pick up the shooter's trail.

Scott Roeder is 51 years old and has a history of anti-government activism and a strong opposition to abortion. See, Dr. Tiller was one of only three physicians in the country who provided late-term abortions for patients, and he's been the target of prolonged protests in the past.

In 1993, he survived an assassination attempt by Shelly Shannon.
Now, he's become the eighth person to be killed by an anti-abortion activist since 1993. And it's a war with no end in sight. 

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal

In early 1998, Eric Rudolph fled to the Nantahala National Forest. Over the previous two years, his bombs in Atlanta and Birmingham had killed two people and injured over a hundred more. But even with a veritable army of federal agents out looking for him, Eric was able to stay one step ahead of his hunters.

He'd spent much of his life traversing the woods of North Carolina, studying survivalist textbooks, and stockpiling supplies he could live off. After a rough couple of years, Eric eventually settled into his new life. He watched as the search for him lost its urgency, as the number of agents dwindled, and he started to make new plans.

He wasn't done making bombs yet. And though it might have been harder to pull off while living in the wilderness, he was sure he could still send a deadly message to abortion providers and to the US government. This is the last episode in our five-part series on Eric Rudolph.

One final bomb.

It's around 9.30 on Halloween night 1999. It's been over 18 months since Eric Rudolph's latest bomb killed an off-duty police officer and seriously wounded a nurse outside a Birmingham abortion clinic. Now, on the outskirts of Murphy, North Carolina, Eric just ran out of gas.

All month, he's been stealing dried corn and soybeans from a group of silos near Marble, a tiny community that sits between the larger towns of Murphy and Andrews. Every night for weeks, 33-year-old Eric has been working to fill four-wheeled trash cans with the grains. Tonight is the night he's planning to move them back to one of his campsites in the woods.

Problem is, the truck he stole from a car lot barely had any gas in it. So now Eric's sitting by the side of the road about a mile from the nearest gas station. He'd always planned on filling the tank before the night was over, but this will just slow him down.

Still, there's nothing else for it. He grabs a gallon jug from the back of the truck and starts off along the highway towards Murphy. But he barely makes it a dozen steps when a car's headlights hit him.

It's a Cherokee County Sheriff's Cruiser that pulls up beside him. There are two deputies in the front seat, and the driver leans out the window to ask if Eric needs a ride to the gas station. Eric doesn't know what to do.

Running is not an option, but these are cops. He can't just get into the back of their car. But with less than a couple of seconds to make a decision, he realizes he just doesn't have a choice.
Turning down the ride would look too suspicious. So he gets in the back of the cruiser. At the station, the cops wait while Eric fills up his gallon jug with gas.

He tries to say good night, but they shake their heads. They're happy to give him a ride back to his truck, too. So once again, Eric is forced to climb in the back seat of a cop car, something he's been avoiding for the last year and a half.

The whole episode is over in about 15 minutes. Once Eric pours the gas into the truck's tank, the deputies wish him luck and disappear into the darkness. Eric breathes a sigh of relief.
He's had some close calls over the last year, but that was nuts. The rest of the night passes under a haze of anxiety. But Eric manages to move all the stolen grain into the woods.

Once he backs the truck up to the treeline, he uses a backpack to make about 70 trips to lug the food to his camp at Fires Creek. The next day, he uses the truck to make a trip into another town nearby, Franklin, to pick up some more essentials with the last of the cash he grabbed when he went on the run. Then he dumps the truck near the Nantahala River.

It's not far from where law enforcement have been searching for him, but plenty far from Fires Creek. All in all, it's a successful weekend for Eric. And with plenty of food to keep him going, he can turn his attention and energy to more violent matters.
After making it through his first year in the wilderness, Eric Rudolph is getting more comfortable with his life on the run. At first, he stayed far away from civilization, but the longer he's in the woods, the more bold he gets. He sets up camps that are closer to towns in the area.

The proximity makes it easier to scavenge for food and clothes when he needs them. If he wants something he can't easily find in people's trash, he dons a hasty disguise and walks into Walmart to buy it himself. Being so close to town also means he can keep a close eye on the task force command post.

The size of the force looking for him has dwindled since those early months, but Eric still likes to keep tabs on their schedule and how the search parties are organized. As time passes, Eric starts contemplating another attack. There's a presidential election approaching and after two terms of a pro-choice White House, he wants to send a message to America that he still thinks abortion is wrong.

So Eric makes sure he has plenty of food stockpiled by the summer of 2000. That leaves him the time to hike out to one of his many caches, this one near the Tennessee border. There, he grabs the parts he needs to make another bomb and heads back towards his usual campsites.
Once Eric's done building his device, his plan is to steal a truck that he can use to drive the bomb to an abortion clinic in the city of Asheville, about 90 miles away. On Halloween weekend, a year since the last time he boosted a truck, he cuts through the chain link fence out front of a tire shop in Murphy. There's a red Chevy pickup for sale just inside the fence, and Eric drives it out the hole, then replaces the cut portion of the fence, so no one will notice right away.

But he barely makes it a few miles before the truck gives out on him. Later, Eric will insist that the problem was the truck, but the owner of the tire shop will claim that Eric, the great planner, probably put diesel into the truck's gas tank. Because of the truck troubles, he never gets the bomb to Ashville.

But he's not all that worried. He's got a backup plan. By this stage, the national interest in Eric Rudolph has dropped off a cliff, as has the volume of resources the government is funneling into the search for him.

The task force has shrunk, the helicopters are gone, the bloodhounds are at home with their owners, and what was once around 200 agents is now just a handful. The local command center has moved from a disused building factory in Andrews to a makeshift space inside the National Guard armory in Murphy. And Eric wants to bomb it.
From a vantage point on the ridge overlooking the armory, he watches. The building is low slung with thick brick walls. It looks more like a high school than a weapon store for the National Guard.

Everything about it, the location, its lack of security, the small number of personnel feels like a sign from God meant for Eric. These agents have been delivered here for him. And who is he to ignore a gift from God?

Surveying the building, he takes note of the agent's schedules and movements, making sure he hasn't missed some crucial piece of the puzzle. Eventually, he feels confident enough to move in close and hide the bomb between some boxwood bushes right by the front door. Like his bomb in Birmingham, this one's got a remote detonator, so Eric needs to stay relatively close to his victims.

That means he needs an escape plan, too. He builds and buries two booby traps along the path he plans to take through the woods once he sets off the bomb, just in case anyone decides to follow him. On the day he's chosen for the attack, Eric hovers near the armory.

There's good cover in a patch of wood, so Eric has a clear view of the main entrance. Looking through binoculars, he sees two agents pull up and get out of their sedan. He's already watched them both walk into the building many times.

Only now, confronted with the thought of killing them, his thumb freezes over the detonator. He feels an unexpected stab of guilt. He dislikes that these men have dedicated their lives to serving what he sees as a morally bankrupt government, but he can see himself in them all the same.
After all, he too wore a uniform once. And so, for the first time, Eric realizes the killing people isn't the answer. At least not in this very specific instance.

The next day, he returns to the armory when he knows it's empty. He digs up the bomb and takes it across the interstate to bury it near his ridge lookout. The booby traps are too dangerous for him to approach and remove in person.

Those, he detonates at a safe distance and then removes the debris from the area. After all that work, he's got nothing to show for it. It's like he was never even there.
At this point, it's been close to three years since Eric went on the run. And the longer the search forum drags on, the more he starts to resemble some kind of folk hero. I mean, this is how at least one North Carolina news broadcast talks about him.
There are men in American history who have been immortalized for their fearlessness in the face against insurmountable odds. Davy Crockett at the Alamo, George Custer at Little Big Horn. These were the ultimate underdogs.
And so too is Eric Rudolph, one man against an army of federal agents.
But while some journalists compare him to American icons, Eric himself continues a solitary existence in the wilderness. There is still speculation that someone, or multiple someones, are helping him survive. But if they are, ain't nobody bragging about it.

For the most part, though, everyone's moved on. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the national conversation is focused on international terrorists, not domestic ones. Some people look at how long the search for Eric Rudolph has taken, with nothing to show for it, and they ask, well, if the government can't find him, how are they going to find Osama Bin Laden?

All the while, Eric's getting more comfortable with this situation. It's not like he's living the high life or anything, but he's worked out how far he can push his luck. Every now and again, he dons what he thinks of as his rummaging clothes, dark pants, a black t-shirt, and old black sneakers.

Then he heads into Murphy to see what he can scavenge. This behavior doesn't go unnoticed. People in a neighborhood near Murphy High School talk to each other about veggies missing from their gardens, fish cut from a line in a trout pond, and dogs dragging animal pelts out from the nearby woods.

Some folks even stumble on quilts in a sleeping bag tucked far back from the treeline. But they all just assume that an unhoused person is behind the missing food. And technically, they're right.
It's just that none of them ever suspect that Eric Rudolph is that unhoused person. But they'll put it together soon enough. Because Eric's getting complacent, sloppy, and his luck is about to run out.

It's 3:30 a.m. on May 31, 2003, Memorial Day weekend. Officer Jeff Postel is performing his routine business checks around town. He's been in the Murphy PD for less than a year now, but he's an eager, ambitious sort of guy.

As a teenager, he was in the local police explorer's program. He'd even called the task force looking for Eric Rudolph to organize a ride-along for him and some of his Boy Scout buddies. Now, his dreams come true.

He's a cop, badge, gun, and patrol car. But Murphy's a quiet little town and crime in the area is basically non-existent. So for a rookie like Jeff, that can make things kind of boring.
Still, he's sure he can catch a criminal red-handed if he tries hard enough, even if he's stuck working the night shift. So while the rest of the town's sleeping, Jeff does a sweep of the alley behind a grocery store in the Sears, then passes alongside a row of smaller shops. Nothing.

But he's not done. Any burglar worth his salt will know to expect regular patrols. So Jeff's gonna try something different.
After his first sweep, he steers his car through the deserted parking lot, turns off his headlights, and heads back to the alley, driving slow to stay quiet. Even in the dark, he has no trouble spotting the figure of a man crouched low and moving quickly towards the grocery store's loading dock. And he's carrying something long and thin.
Maybe a shotgun, Jeff thinks. Suddenly the man turns. He's heard Jeff's car, but he's cornered.
He dashes out of sight, taking shelter behind some milk crates stacked against the wall. Jeff turns his brights on, then radios for backup. With help on the way, he gets out of the car and calls out for the man to come into the light with his hands up.
Moments later, the figure emerges and allows Jeff to cuff him. He's calm and docile, dressed in dark clothing and a camo jacket. He lies patiently on his stomach while they wait for Jeff's colleagues to arrive.

The object Jeff thought might be a gun turns out to be a long flashlight. When three other officers show up, they start asking him his name, where he's from, what he was doing when Jeff spotted him. The man says his name is Jerry Wilson.
He gives a birthdate and says he's a drifter, just passing through. No, he says, he doesn't have his social security number. And no, he doesn't have any ID.

He explains he's been staying under a bridge and was just looking for food in the trash. As the man's talking, one of the cops can't keep from staring at him. When dispatch radios to say that they've got no match for a Jerry Wilson with that birthday, the cop instructs Jerry to roll over so he can get a better look at his face.

In the glow from the patrol car headlights, it's easy to see the guy's bright blue eyes, his defined jaw and thick brows. The cop turns to his colleagues and tells them, I think that's Eric Rudolph. And you know what Eric does?

He just smiles. Soon after they get him back to the station, the cops print on a copy of Eric's wanted poster to compare it to the face of the man they've just arrested. At this point, he starts laughing and admits that they got him.
It's been over five years since the hunt for Eric Rudolph began. The federal government poured tens of millions of dollars into the search. And now it's all over thanks to a rookie cop who wanted to go the extra mile on a boring patrol shift.

After that, news of the arrest spreads fast. The Cherokee County Sheriff calls the regional FBI office in Asheville, kicking off a phone tree that stretches all the way to Washington, DC. Somewhere along the way, someone takes the time to place a call to CNN, who have the story on the air before any FBI agents can even make it to Murphy.
As for the people standing guard over Eric, they're kind of confused. He seems like a pretty polite, soft-spoken sort of guy. It's hard to imagine him doing what the government says he did.

But Eric's got a different side to him that emerges depending on the topic of conversation. Over his first few days in the county jail, whenever someone brings up what he did, his eyes darken. Anyone who kills innocent babies deserves what they get, he says.
End of story. No arguments. But even as he seems to take ownership of what he did, or at least offer some kind of justification for it, he complains that the media will paint him as a terrorist.

He insists, with a straight face, that it's not fair. It's not fair to him. It's quickly decided that 36-year-old Eric Rudolph will first face the charges against him over the bombing of the new women all-woman clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.
That explosion killed Officer Robert Sanderson and left nurse Emily Lyons seriously injured. After that case is tried, he'll face charges over the attacks in Atlanta. But it doesn't matter where he's tried first, because prosecutors at both the state and federal levels are seeking the death penalty.

On June 2nd, some 48 hours after his capture, he's brought to the federal court in Nashville. The courtroom is packed full of reporters, federal agents, law enforcement and guards, with every eye fixed on Eric. His shackled ankles, his red prison uniform, his blank stare.
The appearance lasts only a few minutes, just long enough for Eric to hear the charges against him and plead not guilty. For plenty of people, the plea seems genuine. Eric's family, for one, are convinced that he's being railroaded by a corrupt government.
And he went on the run to escape their attempt to frame him for crimes he didn't commit. But the government has spent five years preparing for this moment. There are hundreds of thousands of documents, exhibits and photographs lined up to be included in the discovery for the trials.

So long as the prosecution could get them all included, that is. See, a while back, when Eric was first named a material witness and went on the run, the FBI was granted several different search warrants to enter his trailer, his truck, and his storage unit. And the way search warrants work is that you have to be specific about who or what it is you're looking for.
The Fourth Amendment states that a warrant needs to particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. But three of the earliest warrants issued against Eric lacked that specificity. They basically just said that they were looking for evidence of crimes against the United States.
Not only that, the warrant to search Eric's storage locker was predicated on finding illegally stored explosives. The agents found no such explosives, but took a few other things with them, then based another search warrant for Eric's trailer on things they seized or saw inside the storage unit. And if that first warrant is thrown out, then so much of the physical evidence showing that Eric had the supplies and knowledge to build bombs might be inadmissible at trial.

Without all of that, the case against Eric Rudolph starts to look a lot less certain. Eric's legal team recognizes this, and so despite the fact that the media has basically declared their client guilty already, they're confident they can win. To them, the government's case is weak and relies on a lot of circumstantial evidence.

As for Eric, he turns out to be a helpful strategic mind when his lawyers are preparing their defense. One of the most in-depth documents he prepares is a 23-page guide to the kind of jurors they should angle for. He believes that a single white woman in her 30s is their best bet.
Someone who reads is lonely, is religious, conservative, and may be on the heavy side. He thinks that women like that will feel maternal towards him. College-educated women are non-starters, though.

Happily married women and pro-choicers will forget about that. As for men, he thinks that the older, the better. Rural types who have flag stickers on their bumpers would be best.

And if they come across any libertarians, they should grab onto them with both hands. Based on Eric's analysis, it seems like his strategy is to assemble a panel of jurors who will agree with his position on abortion. He might be telling people that the government doesn't have anything on him, but he seems desperate for a jury that will ignore the evidence against him and declare him not guilty.

As both sides gear up for the trial, it's looking more likely that that's going to be the best shot, because in early 2005, nearly two years after his arrest, Eric loses the battle over the search warrants. His defense puts up a good fight, but the prosecutors argued that Eric effectively abandoned his property when he fled into the woods way back in February of 98. The defense tries to convince the court that Eric's trailer door being left open with clothes, spilling out of drawers, half-cooked food in the kitchen, lights left on, were just signs of being terrible at cleaning up after himself.

But the judge disagrees. He rules that although the search warrants were technically unconstitutional, the evidence won't be suppressed because Eric never intended to return for his possessions. And with that decision, the stage is set for Eric Rudolph's day in court.

It's late on September 2nd, 2003, in Bradford County, Florida. Less than 50 miles from Jacksonville, Bradford is home to Florida's state prison. The sprawling building with faded lime green walls is where death row inmates count down their days. 

It's where Paul Jennings Hill has languished for the last nine years. In June 1994, 49-year-old Hill shot and killed Dr. John Britton and his security escort, James Barrett, outside the Ladies Clinic in Pensacola. He abandoned his appeals years ago and has been awaiting his death ever since.
Now, his day has come. When he meets his maker, so to speak, Hill expects to be rewarded for his actions. A devout Christian, he believes he'll be favored in heaven.

He feels no remorse over what he did and has made calls for others to follow in his footsteps. Over the last few days, abortion activists on both sides have worried that Hill's execution will lead to exactly that. More violence at clinics around the country.
Because despite what the law says, the fight over abortion in America isn't over. Not by a long shot. Around the start of 2004, the government realizes they have a problem, a big one. 

They've got Eric Rudolph in custody after a five-year manhunt, but it's looking less and less likely they'll be able to win a case against him. With the trial over the bomb that killed Officer Robert Sanderson drawing closer, the prosecution have held a couple of mock trials to prepare. And although this isn't widely known, scuttlebutt is that the practice runs don't go well for the state.
And after all the time and money that's been spent hunting and prosecuting Eric, no one wants to see him walk away unpunished. Not only would that be humiliating for the government, it would send a dangerous message to people who admire Eric's actions. So during the protracted pretrial process, the government's lawyers initiate conversations with Eric's defense team about making a deal.

And it's not a simple process because there are two different sets of prosecutors to coordinate here. One looking after the case in Alabama, and another for the attacks in Georgia. Plus, various higher-ups within the federal administration have to give their blessing for everything to go ahead.

As for Eric, he remains confident in the strength of his case. He truly believes that the government doesn't have much on him, and has publicly maintained his innocence this whole time. But he's facing the death penalty.
About a year ago, Paul Hill became the first American anti-abortion activist executed for killing a doctor. If Eric takes his cases to trial and loses, he could very quickly become the second. After thinking it over, he decides that he'd rather live.

He feels he can accomplish more alive than he can dead. So he's ready to plead guilty if it means execution is taken off the table. He even consents to reveal the location of his remaining dynamite stash as part of the agreement.
With Eric willing to play ball, there's one hurdle left to clear. The government reaches out to the families of Eric's victims as well as the survivors of his attacks. They want their blessing to make a deal.
There's just one holdout. Emily Lyons was injured in the Birmingham blast. She lost an eye and most of the flesh from her legs.

Her body was badly burned, and she had nails and other shrapnel permanently imbedded in her body. A hole in her abdomen led to the removal of part of her intestine, and one of her hands was mangled. She spent eight weeks in the hospital and endured 20 plus surgeries.
The idea of making a deal with the man who did that to her makes Emily sick. But when the government explains that the only way they can recover Eric's hidden dynamite and any remaining bombs is to offer him life in prison, Emily relents. She doesn't want anyone else getting their hands on the hundreds of pounds of explosives that Eric has hidden away.
In early 2005, Eric writes down the locations of his buried dynamite, as well as the bomb he planned to use at the armory in Murphy. Federal technicians are sent to recover and safely detonate the lot. With that taken care of, there's just one thing left to make the deal official.

It's April 8th, 2005, when news of Eric Rudolph's deal becomes public. Less than a week later, he appears in a Birmingham courtroom to make his plea in person. In front of a packed gallery, Eric is cocky and remorseless.

When the judge asks if he agrees that the state has enough evidence to convict him, he answers, just barely. After the proceedings are over, Eric's attorneys hand out copies of an 11-page statement, which details how and why he carried out the attacks. Even as he admits his guilt in writing, though, Eric refuses to acknowledge that he truly would have been convicted.
He writes that the government only has circumstantial evidence, but was determined to put him to death all the same. He took the deal purely to thwart them. He also insists that this is a practical decision he made, and that it, quote, in no way legitimizes the moral authority of Washington's government to judge this matter or impute guilt.

He once again rails against abortion, calling it a Holocaust, and writes that the use of force and violence is justified against the legitimization of homosexuality. It's like he's issuing a rallying cry to people who want to follow in his footsteps, urging people to carry out more murders. Following his guilty plea and his written statement admitting his guilt, his family members cut Eric off.

They'd supported him for years, insisting on his innocence even after he was captured. Now, they distance themselves from someone they can't recognize. Not that they would have had much chance to interact with him moving forward anyway.

Eric's sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison and is sent to a supermax federal prison in Colorado. There, he spends 23 hours a day in a concrete cell that's just 80 square feet. He no longer has to hunt and scavenge for food, but neither can he launch plots to kill people while claiming the moral high ground.

But while he's forfeited his freedom, Eric remains an American citizen and has continued to exercise his constitutional right to free speech. Over the years, he's published essays on the Army of God website, and in 2013, he self-published his bloviating autobiography. In the two decades since Eric was sentenced, same-sex marriage has been legalized in America, and the constitutional right to abortion has been struck down.

Still, the fight over both the rights of queer people and women's bodies continues. Since 1993, there have been at least 15 murders committed by anti-abortion activists. At the time of this recording, the most recent occurred in 2025.

From Airship, this is episode 5 in our series on Eric Rudolph. On the next series, with the great American experiment still in its infancy, the son of a chair maker rises through the ranks to rule New York City's most powerful political machine.

We use many different sources while preparing this episode. One we can particularly recommend is Lone Wolf by Marianne Vollers. We also read Eric Rudolph's autobiography, but we wouldn't go so far as to recommend anyone else do the same.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details. And while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research. American Criminal is a co-production of Airship and Evergreen podcasts.

It's hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing and sound design by Sean Ruhl Hoffman. Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan. Managing producer, Emily Burke. Executive producers are Joel Callan and Lindsey Graham.