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Rudolph Sentenced To Life In Prison

August 24, 2005

Victims of Eric Rudolph's bombs confronted him in court Monday, describing him as a small man who cowardly fled amid his carnage, before a judge sentenced him to life in prison.

Just before his sentence was handed down, Rudolph apologized to the victims of the 1996 Olympics blast in Atlanta, saying "I would do anything to take that night back."

He said he had wanted to anger and embarrass the federal government because it does not prohibit abortions, and that he wanted to harm only government workers.

"I can't begin to truly understand the pain that I have inflicted on these innocent people," Rudolph said, reading a statement. "To those victims, I apologize."

Rudolph addressed the court after 14 victims and relatives told of the horror he caused and their wishes that he suffer for the rest of his days. A 10-minute video tribute to Alice Hawthorne, the woman killed in the Olympics blast, also was shown.

Monday would have been the 18th wedding anniversary for John and Alice Hawthorne.

"Every anniversary has been filled with anger, weeping and sorrow, but this anniversary brings to an end a very painful and emotional chapter in this family," Hawthorne told Rudolph in a packed courtroom. "This is the day Alice can rest, for justice is finally being served."

Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison without parole - four consecutive life sentences plus 120 years - and $2.3 million in restitution for a series of bombings across the South, including the Olympics blast and two other bombings in the Atlanta area. Last month, he was sentenced to life in prison for a deadly explosion in Birmingham, Ala.

"I do take some professional satisfaction of being part of a process that prevents you from killing or hurting anybody else," U.S. District Judge Charles A. Pannell told Rudolph as he announced the sentence.

The Olympics bombing killed Alice Hawthorne, 44, of Albany, Ga., and injured 111. A 1998 bombing at a women's clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killed a police officer and maimed a nurse. The other Atlanta bombs, detonated in 1997 at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, injured 11.

Rudolph was identified after the Birmingham blast and spent the next five years hiding out in the mountains of western North Carolina. He was captured in 2003 while scavenging for food behind a grocery store in Murphy, N.C.

Prosecutors and the former soldier struck a deal: They wouldn't seek the death penalty and he would tell them where to find more than 250 pounds of stolen dynamite he had buried.

Rudolph smirked and rolled his eyes during Monday's testimony by some of the victims, especially those refuting his anti-abortion, anti-homosexual beliefs. He laughed under his breath when one of the victims said it was appropriate that when authorities finally found Rudolph he was scavenging for food from a trash container.

In response to Rudolph's previous claims that he was motivated by his hatred of abortion and the federal government's tolerance for the practice, Hawthorne called him a coward for trying to kill others in the name of the anti-abortion movement.

"You are a very small man, and like other men (of small stature), you have a Napoleonic complex and a need to compensate for what you lack," Hawthorne said Monday in court. "Small man, big bomb."

Rudolph will serve his sentence at the maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colo. The prison about 90 miles southeast of Denver also is home to Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Richard Reid, who tried to ignite a shoe bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight; and Terry Nichols, who helped carry out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Many of those injured at Olympic Park had said they decided not to attend the sentencing, partly because Rudolph turned the earlier sentencing in Alabama into a forum for his anti-abortion, anti-gay views, and partly because they believe it's time to move on.

"I don't need to be there. I can hear about it," said Calvin Thorbourne of Austell, whose legs were hit by shrapnel. "It's always going to be part of my life, but I've always felt justice would be served."

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American terrorist responsible for a series of bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured at least 150 others. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers him a terrorist.

As a teenager Rudolph was taken by his mother to a Church of Israel compound in 1984; it is connected to the Christian Identity movement. Rudolph has denied that his crimes were religiously or racially motivated, Rudolph has also called himself a Roman Catholic in "the war to end this holocaust" (in reference to abortion).

He spent years on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives until he was caught in 2003. In 2005, as part of a plea bargain, Rudolph pled guilty to numerous federal and state homicide charges and accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and a potential death sentence.

Early life

Rudolph was born on September 19, 1966, in Merritt Island, Florida. His father Robert died in 1981, and Rudolph (then 15 years old) moved with his mother and siblings to Nantahala, Macon County, in southwestern North Carolina.

He attended ninth grade at the Nantahala School but dropped out after that year and worked as a carpenter with his older brother Daniel. His mother believed in survivalism and instilled this ideology in Rudolph.

After Rudolph received his GED, he attended Western Carolina University in Cullowhee for two semesters in 1985 and 1986. In August 1987, Rudolph enlisted in the U.S. Army, undergoing basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia.

He was discharged in January 1989 while serving with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, reportedly for smoking marijuana. In 1988, the year before his discharge, Rudolph had attended the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell. He never rose above the rank of Private E-1.

Bombings

Of the bombings committed by Rudolph, the most notorious was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. The blast killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others.

Hawthorne had attended the Olympics with her daughter because she wanted to watch the American basketball team. Melih Uzunyol, a Turkish cameraman who ran to the scene following the blast, died of a heart attack. Rudolph's motive for the bombings, according to his April 13, 2005 statement, was political:

In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best of all games. Even though the conception and purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism, as perfectly expressed in the song "Imagine" by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1996 Games even though the purpose of the Olympics is to promote these despicable ideals, the purpose of the attack on July 27 was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.

The plan was to force the cancellation of the Games, or at least create a state of insecurity to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested.

His plan was unsuccessful. The Olympic organizers did not even cancel the day's events.

Rudolph has also confessed to the bombings of an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on January 16, 1997, a gay and lesbian nightclub, the Otherside Lounge, in Atlanta on February 21, 1997, injuring five, and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998, killing officer Robert Sanderson and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. Rudolph's bombs were made of dynamite surrounded by nails which acted as shrapnel.

He is said to have targeted the health clinic and office building because abortions were performed there, and targeted the Otherside Lounge because it was a predominantly lesbian nightclub.

It has been alleged that Rudolph is an adherent of the extremist group Christian Identity, a white supremacist sect that holds that white Christians are God's chosen people, and that others will be condemned to Hell.

However, in a statement released after he entered a guilty plea, Rudolph denied being a supporter of that movement, claiming that his involvement amounted to a brief association with the daughter of a Christian Identity adherent. He also clearly named himself as a Catholic and said he hoped to stay one.

Yet in one of the over 200 undated letters provided to USA Today by Rudolph's mother, Rudolph states that, "I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible."

Fugitive

Rudolph was first identified as a suspect in the Alabama bombing by the Department of Justice on February 14, 1998. He was named as a suspect in the three Atlanta incidents on October 14, 1998.

On May 5, 1998, he became the 454th Fugitive listed by the FBI on the Ten Most Wanted list. The FBI considered him to be armed and extremely dangerous, and offered a $1,000,000 reward for information leading directly to his arrest. He spent more than five years in the Appalachian wilderness as a fugitive, during which federal and amateur search teams scoured the area without success.

It is thought that Rudolph had the assistance of sympathizers while evading capture. Some in the area were vocal in support of him. Two country music songs were written about him and a locally top-selling T-shirt read: "Run Rudolph Run." Many Christian Identity adherents are outspoken in their support of Rudolph; the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, notes that "extremist chatter on the Internet has praised Rudolph as 'a hero' and some followers of hate groups are calling for further acts of violence to be modeled after the bombings he is accused of committing."

The identification and pursuit of Rudolph was characterized by several bizarre incidents. The Justice Department was forced to apologize to Richard Jewell, whom they first hailed as a hero in the Olympic bombing, and later falsely identified as a suspect.

On March 7, 1998, Daniel Rudolph, Eric's older brother, videotaped himself cutting off one of his own hands with an electric saw in order to "send a message to the FBI and the media." The hand was successfully reattached.

Arrest and guilty plea

Rudolph was finally arrested in Murphy, North Carolina, on May 31, 2003, by chance by a rookie police officer as he scavenged for food in a garbage can behind a Sav-A-Lot store. To the surprise of many in law enforcement, he was unarmed and did not resist arrest.

When arrested, he was clean shaven, with a trimmed mustache, and wearing new sneakers, indicating to some that he possibly spent some of his time on the run being harbored by supporters. Federal authorities charged him on October 14, 2003. Despite his reputed anti-Semitism, Rudolph was defended by a Jewish attorney, Richard S. Jaffe, who said he knew about his client's supposed beliefs but that Rudolph didn't have a problem with his Jewish faith.

On April 8, 2005, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Rudolph had agreed to plead guilty in all the attacks he was accused of executing, thus avoiding the death penalty. The deal was confirmed after the FBI found 250 pounds (113 kg) of dynamite he had hidden in the forests of North Carolina. His revelation of the dynamite was a condition of his plea agreement. He made his pleas in person in courts in Birmingham and Atlanta on April 13. He also released a statement in which he explained his actions and rationalized them as serving the cause of anti-abortion and anti-gay activism.

In his statement, he claimed that he had "deprived the government of its goal of sentencing me to death," and that "the fact that I have entered an agreement with the government is purely a tactical choice on my part and in no way legitimates the moral authority of the government to judge this matter or impute my guilt."

The terms of the plea agreement were that Rudolph would be sentenced to four consecutive life terms. He was officially sentenced July 18, 2005, to two consecutive life terms without parole for the 1998 murder of a police officer. He was sentenced for his various bombings in Atlanta on August 22, 2005, receiving three consecutive life terms.

On August 22, 2005, Rudolph was sent to the ADX Florence supermax federal prison, the home of other notable criminals. Rudolph is Inmate # 18282-058 within the US federal prison system. Like other Supermax inmates, he spends 22½ hours per day in his 80 ft² (7.4 m²) concrete cell.

Alleged motivations

After Rudolph's arrest for the bombings, the Washington Post reported that the FBI considered Rudolph to have "had a long association with the radical Christian Identity movement, which asserts that North European whites are the direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, God's chosen people."

Christian Identity is a white supremacist sect that holds that those who are not white Christians will be condemned to Hell. In the same article, the Post reported that some FBI investigators believed Rudolph "may have written letters that claimed responsibility for the nightclub and abortion clinic bombings on behalf of the Army of God, a violent offshoot of Christian Identity."

In a statement released after he entered a guilty plea, Rudolph denied being a supporter of the Christian Identity movement, claiming that his involvement amounted to a brief association with the daughter of a Christian Identity adherent, later identified as Pastor Daniel Gayman. When asked about his religion he said, "I was born a Catholic, and with forgiveness I hope to die one." In other written statements, Rudolph has cited Biblical passages and offered religious motives for his militant opposition to abortion.

Some mainstream books and media outlets have portrayed Rudolph as a a "Christian Identity extremist" or a "Christian terrorist". Harpers Magazine, for instance, referred to him as a "Christian terrorist." The NPR radio program "On Point" referred to him as a "Christian Identity extremist." The Voice of America reported that Rudolph could be seen as part of an "attempt to try to use a Christian faith to try to forge a kind of racial and social purity."

Writing in 2004, authors Michael Shermer and Dennis McFarland saw Rudolph's story as an example of "religious extremism in America," warning that the phenomenon he represented was "particularly potent when gathered together under the umbrella of militia groups," whom they believe to have protected Rudolph while he was a fugitive.

However, Rudolph's actions are not now considered to be religiously motivated, as he wrote "Many good people continue to send me money and books. Most of them have, of course, an agenda; mostly born-again Christians looking to save my soul. I suppose the assumption is made that because I'm in here I must be a 'sinner' in need of salvation, and they would be glad to sell me a ticket to heaven, hawking this salvation like peanuts at a ballgame. I do appreciate their charity, but I could really do without the condescension. They have been so nice I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible."

Writings from Prison

Although Bureau of Prisons regulations give wardens the right to restrict or reject correspondence by an inmate for "the protection of the public, or if it might facilitate criminal activity," including material "which may lead to the use of physical violence," essays which condone violence and militant action written by Rudolph, who is incarcerated in the most secure part of ADX Florence in Colorado, are being published by an Army of God anti-abortion activist who posts Rudolph's essays on an internet homepage dedicated to the terrorist and his social/political/religious philosophies and opinions.

While victims maintain that Rudolph's messages are harassment and could incite violence, according to Alice Martin, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama at the time of Rudolph's prosecution for the Alabama bombing, there is little the prison can do to restrict the publication of his letters. "An inmate does not lose his freedom of speech," she said.

However, the Justice Department in 2006 criticized the same prison for not properly screening the mail of three inmates convicted in the World Trade Center bombings after determining the men sent letters from the prison to suspected terrorists overseas.

References

Henry Schuster with Charles Stone, Hunting Eric Rudolph (Berkley Books, 2005), ISBN 0425199363

Wikipedia.org

Eric Rudolph

Christian terrorist

After the Army, Rudolph began living "off the grid," dealing in cash and refusing to put his name on utility bills, bank accounts and the like.

In the rural U.S., survivalism and crazy go together like toast and jam. Rudolph allegedly took up the beliefs of Christian Identity, an extremist sect whose primary belief is that white people are God's chosen people, and everyone else is doomed to an eternity in Hell. Christian Identity also preaches the evils of homosexuality, prostitution, abortion and general sexual unseemliness of all sorts.

Rudolph moved comfortably within white extremist circles, but it's not clear if he had formal ties to any specific group or network. He didn't take part in organized white power activities. He seems to have found only one outlet for his views -- violence.

Rudolph is accused of bombing a park adjacent to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, using an massive and elaborate pipe bomb loaded with nails and screws for extra killing power, an M.O. that was repeated in most of the cases now connected to Rudolph.

The bomb was hidden in a knapsack, which was found by security guard Richard Jewell before it detonated. The device went off while security teams were trying to evacuate the area, killing one woman and injuring more than 100. Presumably, the Olympics were targeted for a combination of multiracial and "New World Order" overtones.

Lacking any substantial leads, the police and media zeroed in on Jewell as a convenient scapegoat. Jewell was crucified in the press but eventually vindicated. In the meantime, Rudolph escaped scrutiny entirely, and he allegedly continued his bombing campaign before the dust of the Olympic bomb had settled.

Rudolph has yet to be convicted of a crime, but the list of charges against him is pretty impressive. After the Olympic bombing, incidents possibly connected to Rudolph include:

• An October 1996 attempted pipe bombing at outside the Birmingham, Ala., police headquarters. The device was disabled by the bomb squad. (Rudolph hasn't been charged for this one and may not be connected.)

• A January 1997 bombing attack at a women's clinic in Atlanta that provided abortion services, among other things, in which six people were injured in the course of two bombs detonating.

• The February 1997 bombing of a gay nightclub in Atlanta, resulting in several injuries but no deaths.

• A January 1998 bombing of a women's clinic that provided abortions in Birmingham.

We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly communist regime in New York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackey's in Washington. It is you who are responsible and preside over the murder of children and issue the policy of ungodly preversion thats destroying our people.

The man gave Rudolph a head start before contacting authorities, which allowed him to disappear into the North Carolina hills. In the interim, white supremacists and anti-government extremists began lionizing the fugitive, making him into a poster boy for the radical right.

Timeline

Rotten.com

  

Eric Rudolph charged in Centennial Olympic Park Bombing

Also Charged with Bombings at North Atlanta Clinic and Atlanta Nightclub