Domestic Terror: The Hunt for Eric Rudolph | Run Rudolph Run | 4

It's around 10 p.m. on October 23, 1998. In Amherst, a suburb of upstate New York, 44-year-old James Cop lies flat on the ground in a wooded area near a residential neighborhood. He's got a pair of binoculars around his neck.

He peers through them, scanning the nearby line of homes, looking for one in particular. He finds it easily enough. A two-story brick house with large windows in the back.
James has studied the home at length over the past several days, tracking his target schedule.

The home is owned by Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician and gynecologist who performs abortions for his patients. It's Barnett's belief that a woman is entitled to proper medical care, no matter her circumstance, and that it's up to her to choose what happens to her body.

James Cop doesn't agree, and like many other militant anti-abortion crusaders, he's tired of arguing about what's right and what's wrong. He knows that the only acceptable answer came from God, and he's here to enact God's will upon the world by taking another doctor out of commission. James smiles as he looks through Slepian's window.

He can see 52-year-old Barnett standing in the family's large kitchen, talking to his wife and one of their four children. They've just returned from a local synagogue where they attended a memorial service for Barnett's father. Not that James cares where the doctor's been tonight.
He's just glad he's finally home and has decided to stand in the brightly lit kitchen. It's as clear a shot as he could have asked for. Moving quickly, James sets the binoculars aside and picks up an automatic rifle from the leafy ground.

He takes careful aim using the scope, putting Barnett right in his crosshairs. Once his shot is lined up, he curls his fingers around the trigger and squeezes, firing a single bullet through the kitchen window. Barnett's slepion goes down, the bullet entering through his back and shattering his spine.

James watches just long enough to see his target fall. Then James scrambles to his feet and tosses his rifle into a holy dug earlier this evening. He covers the gun with leaves and dirt, then starts running.

It doesn't take him long to make it back to his car. As soon as the engine's going, James guns it, speeding out of the neighborhood as fast as he can. He's done what he set out to do, and now it's time for him to run from the consequences of his actions.

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

In late January 1998, a bomb exploded outside the new woman all-women health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. The blast killed an off-duty cop and left a nurse horrifically injured. The attack was the work of Eric Rudolph, who was waging a one-man war against the federal government, the so-called homosexual political agenda, and the existence of abortion.
But like with his previous bombs, things hadn't gone to Eric's plan. He'd hoped to kill a doctor, not a cop, and his decision to use a remote detonator instead of a timer led him to being spotted fleeing the scene of the crime. So, for the first time in several years, Eric was on the back foot, running, scared.

Like any terrorist, he believed in the righteousness of his actions, but he didn't want to be punished for them. Luckily for him, he'd spent time planning for exactly this scenario. He felt like he'd been preparing for it his whole life.

And so, with federal agents hot on his tail, Eric fled into the Nantahalla National Forest, setting the stage for a long, long manhunt. This is episode four in our five-part series on Eric Rudolph. Run, Run, Rudolph.
It's just before 7 p.m. on January 30, 1998. It's been about 36 hours since Eric Rudolph's last bomb killed Robert Sanderson and left a nurse with life-changing injuries. In Murphy, North Carolina, 31-year-old Eric pulls his pickup into the Bilo parking lot.

He steers into an empty space and switches off the ignition, scanning the area around him. The grocery store sits in a low stretch of the landscape. A couple hundred feet away, on either side, thick woods reach up into the mountains.
Those woods are Eric's best hope for freedom, but he has to make sure he's prepared. So he reaches over and grabs the bag of food he just picked up on the Burger King across the lot. One of their biggest burgers and a large fries.

He's got a lot to do tonight, and he needs plenty of energy to stay active. He practically inhales the meal, then rushes into bylaw grabbing a shopping cart as he enters. Inside, the fluorescent lights of the store feel especially bright to Eric.

As of about 20 minutes ago, he's a man on the run, and he's very aware of how dangerous it is for him to be out in the open like this. But he has to pick up some extra supplies. So he walks up and down the aisles quickly, sweeping cans of tuna, bags of peanuts, raisins, batteries, soap, and a bunch of oatmeal into his cart.

Then he heads for the checkout, pays just over $100 for his haul, and brings it out to his truck. He loads his supplies into the back, tossing it all in beside the assortment of warm clothes he grabbed as he left his trailer. He closes the pickups' camper shell, leaves the cart in the middle of the parking lot, and speeds out of there.
On the highway, he heads towards the Fires Creek Wilderness area. That's where he'll stash his latest batch of supplies. And then he'll disappear.

At 6 p.m. on January 30, federal investigators in Birmingham, Alabama held a press conference. Live on the air, they announced that they were looking for Eric Rudolph, whose car was seen driving away from the latest deadly bomb blast. By that stage, Eric had already figured out that the feds were on to him, and had fled his trailer.

A little after 7 p.m., he leaves a grocery store parking lot heading for Fires Creek, about 12 miles north of Murphy. When he was planning for this day, Eric chose Fires Creek because it's not somewhere he's really been before. Not that anyone who knows him is aware of, that is.
His thinking is that when the cops come around asking questions of the few people Eric spends time with, no one will be able to point to Fires Creek as one of his regular haunts. Determined to cover his tracks as best he can, Eric takes his new batch of supplies to his existing cache hidden at Fires Creek, but doesn't stay there. He returns to his truck and drives it about 15 miles away to a different wooded area off Martins Creek Road.

He drives across a field and backs the truck up into the trees, then gets out and pushes it as far into the woods as possible. With that giant red herring left for investigators to stumble across later, Eric sets out on foot for Fires Creek. He sticks to paved roads as much as possible, knowing that his scent won't linger as much that way.

Anyone who's on his tail will have a hard time following him. That doesn't mean they're not going to try. When they found Eric's trailer, one of the investigators, Agent Tom Fry of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, camped out in the nearby woods all night, just in case Eric decided to double back.

Starting the following morning, other agents are assigned to watch the trailer around the clock for the next three days. Of course, Eric never shows he's been stumbling across the countryside, taking his way back to his hidden cache of supplies at Fires Creek, then settling in for the long haul. Meanwhile, his pursuers are coming through every aspect of his life to find clues about where he might have gone.

They follow the thin trail he's left over the past few years, tracking down several people in the area who've rented him properties. All of them report the same thing, Eric Rudolph kept to himself, always paid on time and always paid cash. One woman tells investigators that Eric hung bedsheets over all the windows and boarded up the basement.

They also hear from the owner of a storage facility in the nearby town of Marble. After hearing that Eric's a person of interest, he calls to report that Eric's been renting a locker at his business. The ATF sends Garrett, an explosives detection dog to the facility, and he alerts right in front of Eric's locker.

That's enough for investigators to get a search warrant to check for illegally stored explosives. Before they execute the warrant, the locker is checked for booby traps. When they're sure the coast is clear, Garrett and his handler head back in to take a look.

Garrett alerts on a wooden toolbox, and samples are taken from it for testing. But even though there's more potential evidence in the locker, taking that samples about all they can really do, since the warrant's scope is limited to explosives. They're forced to apply for a second warrant, and eventually return to sift through the contents of the locker.

There's plenty of stuff you'd expect to find, like old tools and sports equipment, as well as records of Eric's life, birth certificate, military papers, old textbooks. And then there's the really revealing stuff, grow lights, potting soil, and fertilizer from Eric's years growing cannabis. Plus boxes and boxes of books and magazines showcasing his various fascinations throughout his life.

There are some run-of-the-mill books about World War II and Nazism, but others get deep into the dark and conspiracy-minded topics Eric likes. These cover a bunch of subjects that, when you put them all together, create a clear picture of the way he sees the world. These are books that call The Diary of Anne Frank a hoax, that have titles like The South Was Right, and that explain key survivalist skills.

There are also shooting targets, manuals on tuning into federal radio signals, and guidebooks on both surveillance and disguise. Taking all of this in, it's clear that Eric Rudolph has been developing his twisted worldview for quite some time. It also suggests that he's got plenty of knowledge on how to get by in the wilderness.
He's been preparing for this very moment. And even after just a couple of days with no sight of him, it's already a worrying thought for investigators. Though that's not all they have to worry about.

On February 2nd, less than 48 hours after Eric Rudolph goes on the run, letters show up at the Atlanta Journal Constitution and at the Reuters News Bureau. These resemble the ones that arrived at Atlanta outlets following the Sandy Springs and other side lounge bombs. Same block letters, same misspellings.

And once again, they claim that the recent attack was the work of the Army of God. The letters rail against the existence of Mifepristone, a drug that can be used to induce an abortion. They also refer to abortion clinics as nothing but murder mills.
No one who works at one of these places is safe, they warn. The government cannot protect you. For investigators, these new letters help tie this latest attack to the earlier ones.

Though there's still some uncertainty about whether the Olympic Park bombing is definitely connected to those following it. But aside from that, the documents don't really give anything away. There's no forensic evidence they can link to Eric, and they were sent before he vanished into the woods, so no one is sure whether he'll still try to carry out more attacks.

Still, the letters don't do anything to make the authorities doubt that Eric's their guy. So on February 4th, they execute another search warrant, this time at his trailer. Once again, they're looking for traces of explosives.

So Garrett the Labrador is brought on to sniff them out. Specifically, investigators want to find ethylene-glycaldinitrate, or EGDN, which turned up in the crater left by the bomb in Birmingham. Inside the dilapidated trailer, Garrett alerts on a couple dozen items.

These are packaged up to be examined at a lab, where they will all soon test positive for EGDN. Of course, trace amounts of explosive residue aren't the only things of note that investigators find in Eric's abandoned home. There's a jacket matching the one Germaine Hughes saw Eric wearing as he fled the bomb site.

There's also a cheap brown wig, an empty rifle case, and several firearms, including a shotgun, a pair of hunting rifles, and three handguns hidden around the bedroom. One of the more important clues is a receipt for a set of hose clamps. It seems like such a tiny thing to be concerned with, but Officer Robert Sanderson, who was killed in the Birmingham bomb, had a hose clamp embedded in his body by the blast.

And this receipt is proof that Eric Rudolph bought a set of the exact same clamps. Finally, a Bible on Eric's dresser is tested for explosive residue just in case. They don't find any, but the book offers some invaluable samples of Eric's handwriting, as well as an insight into his psyche.
He's underlined passages throughout and made extensive notes on things like man's dominance over women, temptation, retribution, the hatred of one's enemies, and the moral imperative to punish people who turn away from God. To be clear, there's nothing in the trailer that definitively links Eric to any of the bombings, but there's plenty that makes investigators confident they're on the right track. If only they could find him.

There's a moment a couple of days later when they think they might be getting closer. It's been about a week since the last bomb and a couple of guys are out hunting in the fields just outside Murphy. They notice something out of place at the edge of the woods and find a gray Nissan truck wedged between a couple of trees.

By this stage, everyone in the area knows what kind of car Eric drives, so the hunters call it in to the local police who alert the federal and state authorities involved. Agents hide out in the woods nearby, hoping Eric will show up, but like I told you earlier, he left that truck there as a red herring. He's got no intention of coming back for it.

So after a particularly cold night out in the rain, the investigators call it and just get a search warrant to see what they can find inside. But there's nothing all that incriminating anywhere in the vehicle. It's another lead that's fizzled out almost before it got going, which is frustrating, but the search isn't slowing down.
In fact, it's about to go into overdrive.

It's Monday, February 9th, 1998. A diner on the main street of Murphy is full of the usual breakfast crowd. A few kids grabbing food before school, workers stopping in for coffee on their commute.
For the last week, all anyone's been talking about is the hunt for Eric Rudolph. Over the weekend, it felt like maybe things were calming down though. There's been no sign of the guy, and people have started wondering if he's even still in the area.
But this morning, things are getting started back up again. As servers pour coffee and drop off checks, people inside the diner turn towards the long wall of windows looking out onto the main drag. Every minute or so, another news van drives past.
Local stations and national outlets are showing up to do stories on the latest development. Eric's truck was found abandoned on the edge of the woods. So the spotlights back on Murphy, a town with only about 2,500 residents.

Some of the diner's regulars roll their eyes when a federal agent walks in to place an order. These guys are crazy if they think they're going to find anyone in those woods who doesn't want to be found. In the days after Eric's truck is discovered and searched, dozens of agents from the FBI and ATF are summoned to the area.
They go door to door asking locals if anyone's seen Eric lately. They truck through fields armed with assault rifles and dressed in tactical gear. Bloodhounds are brought in from Texas, but all they lead their handlers to is a convenience store, lured by the smell of warm food under heat lamps.
All of this is captured on camera by the news crews who set up base in town. For people watching all this unfold from their living rooms, the images of Feds descending on a sleepy Appalachian town are darkly familiar. Not so long ago, similar shots were broadcast right before disasters unfolded at both Waco and Ruby Ridge, two instances when Americans looked on as government agents bungled standoffs, with deadly consequences.

Now all people can wonder is if it's about to happen again right here in North Carolina. Eager to be the first to report on every fresh update, journalists tail investigators from place to place as they scour the countryside and speak to anyone they know had contact with Eric. But of course, not all of those people are close by.
A couple of years ago, Eric's mom Patricia moved back to Florida. She's living in a trailer park down there when federal agents show up to interview her. Only for some reason, they knock on her door long after dark when Pat's getting ready to go to bed.
Unsurprisingly, she's not really in a chatty mood that late at night, so she sends them away. The agents come back the next day and find a truck with a camping shell parked beside the trailer. This is before Eric's truck shows up in Murphy.

So these guys figure maybe Eric's inside Pat's home right now and decide to call in a SWAT team. They burst into the trailer, only to find Pat catching up with an old friend, the owner of the truck. Well, after that, she's got no interest in cooperating with anyone from the government.
For one thing, they were really rude to her. For another, they're after her son, who she's confident is totally innocent. Slowly, Eric's siblings stop talking to the investigators too.
None of them really seem to believe that their brother could be involved in the bombings. And as the media spotlight widens to focus on the entire Rudolph family, they stop answering their doors. After her experience in Florida, Pat moves in with her son, Dan, and his wife near Charleston, South Carolina.

With so many Rudolphs under one roof, the bombing task force establishes discrete surveillance of Dan's home, and gets a warrant for what's called a trap and trace on the phone. That means they can monitor activity on the phone line, like who's calling who. But they need a separate warrant to listen in on any actual conversations.

They have these traces on about a dozen different numbers they think might be linked to Eric or his loved ones. Only it's clear pretty quickly that Eric's not calling any of his relatives, which seems kind of suspicious to some members of the investigative team. I mean, surely a man on the run would reach out to his family for help, so agents step up the frequency of their visits to Dan's house, asking him more and more questions.
One time, they even show up unannounced at his work. Then things get worse. In February, the US.

Attorney's Office announces that Eric is being formally charged over the clinic bombing in Birmingham, and a federal warrant is issued for his arrest. They also reveal that there's a $100,000 reward being offered for information leading to his capture and conviction. This is all a big step up, since until now, investigators have insisted that Eric is simply a material witness in the case.

I can't say anyone was buying that line, but now that the charade is over, the journalists camped outside Dan's house are even more determined to get something from him. More vans arrive, and some crews bring out bullhorns to shout interview requests. Finally, on March 7th, after weeks of unexpected, unrelenting attention, Dan decides to give them something to write about.

He takes a video camera into his basement garage. He stands in front of the lens to record a message he says is for the FBI and the media. Then, he goes to a work table and uses a circular saw to cut off his left hand.

So, exactly what he hopes to accomplish by cutting off his hand? I couldn't tell you, but Dan stays conscious and lucid all through the horrific video. Then, leaving his severed hand behind, he rushes to his truck and drives himself to a nearby medical center.

It's just his luck that there's a doctor in Charleston, who's an expert microsurgeon. A paramedic and a cop are sent to Dan's house to pick up the hand, which is quickly reattached without complication. But while people are trying to understand the baffling decisions of Dan Rudolph, professionals are brought in to analyze those of his younger brother.

Agents who work with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU, spend time looking over everything investigators have gathered on Eric to date. And they make some conclusions. First, they guess that he chose the new woman all women health clinic as his most recent target because of how exposed it was.

Unlike his earlier devices, it was detonated with a remote, which suggests to them that he wanted to watch this time. And according to Eric's own account, that's partly true. He did want to watch the clinic, so he could best time the explosion to do the most damage.

They also paint Eric as a cold, calculating killer. He's not some spontaneous zealot who kills on a whim. He's dedicated to his self-righteous cause and doesn't get overwhelmed by anger.

If he did, he wouldn't be able to make such careful preparations. And again, based on Eric's own writing, this seems fairly accurate. But then, the analysts swerve.
They suggest that Eric stated opposition to abortion, the so-called homosexual agenda, and hatred of the federal government are just excuses to kill. Sure, he might really despise those things, but deep down, he's just a violent person. Though they caution that this might be something that even Eric himself isn't aware of.

Of course, all of this is still just guesswork. Because despite gathering a lot of circumstantial evidence against Eric, the authorities want to make their case against him stronger. They want to tie him to every single one of the bombings, so that when he's brought to trial, the case against him is undeniable.

I mean, if they catch him. One of the more unusual leads comes from the postmaster in Topton, the town a few miles down the road from Murphy. He tells investigators that Eric has bought a lot of postal money orders in his day.

But no one knows what he uses them for, and there's really only one way to find out. Track them all down and read who they're made out to. So the FBI sends a team of agents to a massive USPS warehouse in St. Louis, where the receipts for all of the country's money orders are kept.

The agents are tasked with going through paper receipts, looking for any that bear Eric's name and address, or even anything close to his name or known aliases. This is not a quick job. There are hundreds of thousands of these flimsy receipts to go through, and the team only gets access to the warehouse during the evening, when it's not full of postal staff.

But after a literal month of nights, they find what they're looking for. The receipt is signed by Aziz Randolph of Topton, North Carolina, and it's made out to a publisher of weapons manuals and subversive handbooks. The publisher matches the receipt to an order form for a book called Kitchen Improvised Fertilizer Explosives.

They also have a record for the same customer, Zee Randolph, ordering Ragnar's Homemade Detonators. What's important about this particular book is that a picture on the front cover shows the same homemade detonator used in the Birmingham bomb. And the handwriting on all of these orders and receipts matches Eric's exactly.

But while the Task Force accumulates evidence pointing to his guilt, actually finding Eric himself is proving a much harder task. Dozens of agents have been brought in to perform a methodical search of the woods around Murphy. But as the months drag on, there's still no sign of their quarry.

In town, people in the diner argue about how long he could possibly last in the mountains by himself. Some insist that if a local doesn't want to be found in those woods, he won't be. Other people take issue with that.

Eric Rudolph's not really from around here, they say. He's only lived here 15 years. That doesn't make him a true local.

Well, local or not, Eric's showing that he's got the skills to survive on his own, and to do so while keeping a very low profile. Ever since he first ran, he shifted his sleep schedule to become nocturnal. And when he moves around at night, he's always careful to stay out of the light of the full moon, just in case.

Mostly though, he sticks close to his campsite in the Fires Creek area. He has a small radio that he listens to, checking updates on the search for him. There's never any news that really worries him.

What's concerning though, is his food supply. Sure, he has several caches to see him through, but he has to be strategic. He's always planned on supplementing his oats, dried fruit, and canned goods with local game.

Only it was the dead of winter when he went on the run, so he hasn't been able to fish. And with the woods crawling with federal agents, it's made foraging for anything even more difficult. He shoots the occasional wild turkey or deer, but he's also forced to catch and eat salamanders when he gets desperate.

Not the most dignified existence, even compared with the Spartan conditions Eric was living in before, but he refuses to give in. He won't recognize the authority of the federal government, and he won't allow them to punish him for what he's done. Down in Murphy and the surrounding towns, agents from the task force continue to look for information about Eric.

There's an ever-present question that some of the locals might be secretly helping him, though no one's going to come out and say that. So, the agents do what they can to blend in, ditching their uniforms and raid jackets when they're speaking with residents. They don't want to provoke any anti-government sentiment.

Thankfully, not everyone is suspicious of the feds. In the midst of the manhunt, a request comes in for a briefing from one of the task force agents. It comes from a chief postel.
Assuming that this is a local police chief they just haven't met, the team sends an agent to fill the guy in and find out what he can do to help. Except it turns out that this chief is teenager Jeff Postel, a kid in the local police explorers program. He mostly wants to know if he can arrange some kind of ride along for the guys in his boy scout troop.

It's not an especially productive use of anyone's time, but I want you to remember Jeff Postel's name because you're going to hear it again later. Anyway, the search is dragging on for months and it's really becoming clear that unless something changes, they're not going to find Eric anytime soon. The weather is warming up and that means it's going to be easier for Eric to find food, and there'll be more leaf cover for him to hide amongst.

So in early May, a full three months since he went on the run, the feds up the reward they're offering from a hundred grand to a cool million. They also add Eric to the FBI's 10 most wanted list. But none of that's going to do them any good, because the search for Eric Rudolph is still far from over.

It's early summer 1998 in Tampa, Florida. It's been months since Eric Rudolph fled his trailer and disappeared into the woods near Murphy, North Carolina. Now, Agent Charles Stone is in a restaurant sitting across the table from Eric's mother, Patricia, and his brother, Daniel.
Back when Eric first went on the run, federal agents came to Pat's trailer to ask for her help finding him. It did not go well, and she's refused to speak to the feds since. And the government and media hounded Dan so much that he cut off his own hand.

But Charles is with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. So Pat and Dan have agreed to meet with him and a homicide cop from Birmingham. Dan's mostly there to act as his mother's protector.
He still has a brace over his reattached hand, and no one at the table mentions the incident with the circular saw. Charles senses it won't get them anywhere. Not that they get much out of the meeting anyway.

The hope is that Pat will issue a direct plea to Eric to turn himself in. The government's latest messaging is that it will be better for everyone, Eric included, if he ends the search on his terms. But Pat's not interested in influencing her son.
She raised her kids to be independent thinkers, and if Eric wants to hide in the woods, she's not going to try and change his mind. With a final shrug, Pat folds her arms and sits back. Charles tries not to show his disappointment.

He knew that the Rudolphs think that Eric's innocent, but he hoped that appealing to Pat's protective instincts would make her see sense. Well, it turns out he was wrong. And if this stubbornness is a family trait, then he and his colleagues are in for a long search in the woods.
By the beginning of summer 1998, 31-year-old Eric's getting hungry. Despite his careful planning and rationing, and despite his survivalist skills, he's running dangerously low on food. But he knows where he can get some.

When he feels like he's on the brink of starvation, he hikes the 20 or so miles to the woods to the house of his old friend George Nordman. Years ago, George was who Eric turned to when he needed advice about whether to accept the vaccinations he needed to enlist in the army. Now Eric watches the house until he sees George leaf, then sneaks in to take what he needs.
Tuna, honey, corned beef, protein supplements, some eggs from the chicken coop, and potatoes from the garden. At first, he takes the food back to a secluded spot in the woods to cook. But over the next few days, he gets bold.

George lives alone and spends most of his waking hours managing his health store in town. Before long, Eric is cooking and eating entire meals in George's kitchen. He's also putting his feet up and watching survivalist videos on the TV.

On one of his visits, he leaves behind a $100 bill as payment for the things he's stolen, which include a pan from the top of the stove. But he wants more. And he figures that if George isn't an idiot, he knows what's going on.

In Eric's head, that means he's happy for it to continue. And, of course, George has definitely noticed that something's up. So in early July, he's hardly surprised when he comes home from work to find Eric standing in the trees just up the hill from his house.
After six months in the woods, Eric's got a full beard and long hair that he's wearing in a ponytail beneath a baseball cap. He's also a lot skinnier than he used to be. Still, George would recognize him anywhere.

At first, George tells Eric to get lost. He doesn't want to get in any trouble with the cops. But when Eric won't leave, they start talking.
Eric claims that he's innocent, that he's being framed by the feds, and that he needs help to make it through another year. But he's not asking for a handout. He's got money he can give to George to get him what he wants.
Then George can just drop the supplies by the side of the road. Alternatively, they can stage it like a robbery. But George doesn't like either of those options.

Nor does he want to lend him his truck, which Eric will need to get the stuff close to his hiding spots. Eventually, George tells Eric that he'll pray on it and let him know. A couple of days later, George leaves some trash bags holding some of the stuff that Eric asked for in his kitchen.
He writes a note saying that this is all the help he can give, and that God told him that lending the truck was a non-starter. Eric takes the truck anyway, along with some other stuff from George's house. But he leaves George a letter saying that he's only borrowing the truck and that he'll return it soon enough.

On July 13th, a forest ranger finds George's stolen truck deep in the forest. There's a note from Eric inside explaining that the engine gave out. Following George's encounter with Eric, investigators work with him to come up with a new sketch of his appearance.

When they release the image to the media, there's a new surge of interest in the case. But people in the area have never really lost interest. As the search is dragged on, enterprising locals start printing shirts and bumper stickers with slogans like Run Rudolph, Run, and Eric Rudolph, hide and seek champion 1998.

So you look at this with the cynic's eyes and you might start thinking that people don't want Eric to be found at all. They like that he's making all these federal agents look like idiots. But if you start thinking like that, then you gotta remember that Eric's already killed two people and seriously injured many others.

This is not someone who should be cheered on. As the summer days stretch out, the authorities keep up their search, spending thousands on accommodation, food, and wages every single day. They send a helicopter flying low over the treeline, thinking maybe the sound will startle Eric into emerging from his hiding place.

Recreational hikers and hunting parties who head up into the mountains are warned to be on the lookout for Eric, to be wary of approaching him. But there are no more sightings. And by the fall, the presence of so much law enforcement muscle in the town is starting to get to some of the locals.

On November 11th, eight rounds from a high-powered rifle are shot through the walls of the old textiles factory where the feds have set up their search headquarters. Luckily, there weren't many people in the building at the time, so no one was injured. Though one agent did bend over at just the right time because one of those bullets singed his hair, but he was otherwise fine.
If he'd been sitting upright, he'd have taken a bullet to the head. After briefly wondering whether Eric's behind the shooting, investigators eventually pick up a pair of local drug dealers. Turns out they were annoyed that all the extra cops have been hanging around the spots they usually do their business.

Each of them eventually gets over a decade of prison time for the attack. Those aren't the convictions the task force really wants though, and the rest of the fall and then winter pass with no more sightings of Eric Rudolph. Some vacation homeowners in neighborhoods closest to the woods do report some break-ins that seem to match Eric's MO.

He takes small useful items to help him survive the colder seasons, boots, blankets, ammunition, maps, and antifreeze to poison the bears who've been eating his food. But even these reports start to drop off. As the temperatures plummet, the task force downsizes the search team to just 100 agents, and daily searches of the woods become a thing of the past.
Now, they only happen a couple of times a week. There's a creeping suspicion that maybe Eric has died. He could have stumbled off a cliff, or starved, or just straight up frozen to death.

But Eric Rudolph is still very much alive, and even as he fights to survive, he's growing restless. He worries that the world has forgotten his message, that he hasn't stopped the abortions yet. Soon enough, he starts thinking about the hundreds of pounds of dynamite he's still got buried in the woods.

And he starts to make plans for what he's gonna do with it.

From Airship, this is episode 4 in our series on Eric Rudolph.

On the next episode, Eric plants one final bomb, and the years-long hunt to find him comes to a close.

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.