By a fluke, Postell had put an end to one of the longest manhunts in FBI history. For seven years, local and federal investigators had searched the North Carolina mountains for Rudolph, who is charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta, which killed one person and wounded more than 100 others. He is also believed to have set off bombs at a gay nightclub and at two abortion clinics, killing a police officer. At one point, the FBI dispatched more than 200 agents to scour the woods. Periodically, someone would come forward claiming to have seen Rudolph, but he managed to stay one step ahead of the Feds until last Saturday’s lucky break by the locals.
It wasn’t a surprise that Rudolph turned up in Murphy, a small town in western North Carolina. Nestled near the Great Smoky Mountains, Murphy was the last place Rudolph was spotted in early 1998, just before he disappeared into the Nantahala National Forest. Rudolph had learned outdoor survival skills as a teenager, and knew the local mountains well. An itinerant carpenter who was reportedly thrown out of the Army for smoking marijuana, Rudolph came to identify with extremist Roman Catholic separatists who dream of one day replacing the government with a theocracy.
Rudolph, now 36, was steeped in fringe ideologies from a very young age. As a boy, he moved with his mother, Patricia, from Florida to North Carolina after his father died. She was friendly with members of the North Point Team, a right-wing militia group. As a teenager, Rudolph fervently read militant racist and anti-Semitic tracts.
Rudolph made money selling marijuana, growing his crop in a secret room inside his house. Along the way, he became a skilled bombmaker, authorities believe. The devices were packed with nails, intended to maim and kill as many people as possible. He set off a bomb at a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic by remote control, officials say, watching from a distance for a victim to walk within range. Other times, they believe, he set off one bomb, then another an hour or so later, apparently hoping to injure rescue workers who’d rushed to the scene. “All his bombs worked,” says Jack Killorin, a former Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms chief who had tracked Rudolph for years. “Even Ted Kaczynski can’t claim that.”
It’s not yet clear where Rudolph will go next after he is formally charged this week. Prosecutors in Alabama and Georgia, where the crimes took place, will both want a chance to get him before a local jury. Meanwhile, investigators are trying to determine if Rudolph had help, possibly from militia groups, during his years on the lam–or if he really had been living alone in the woods all this time, making the occasional late-night trip to the grocery store.
