MONTHS, MILLIONS LATER, AND STILL NO RUDOLPH
by Anna Griffin, Staff Writer, Charlotte Observer
December 12, 1998
     ANDREWS -- For the past 10 months, a shy, soft-spoken, good-looking 
young man named Eric Robert Rudolph has eluded one of the largest and 
costliest manhunts in U.S. history. After almost a year of work by federal 
and state investigators, their portrait of Rudolph still seems as hazy as the 
thick gray fog that rolls off the mountains every morning.
     And though he's been charged with bombings that killed two people and 
injured more than 150, his suspected motives remain sketchy, a strange
amalgam of anti-government, anti-abortion and anti-gay sentiment.
     "Eric Rudolph has become like some fictional character,'' says Emily
Lyons, a nurse who lost her left eye and nearly her life in the Birmingham,
Ala., clinic bombing. She still has pebbles in her head and nails deep in
her legs.
     "I don't know enough about him to fear him. I just know enough to see 
him as this amorphous image of evil.''
     Some in Andrews, a small town about 90 miles southwest of Asheville, 
think Rudolph is dead, a victim of cold weather, disgruntled associates or 
his own paranoia. Federal investigators think otherwise.
     So far, they've spent into the hundreds of millions of dollars on the 
search, several investigators estimate. Much of that sum includes pay-
checks the government would already be paying. Some is additional 
money for training, machinery, travel, hotel rooms and overtime.
     The effort, concentrated in the state's most rugged corner, now 
involves 150 agents and an army of trucks, helicopters and automatic 
weapons.
     The feds hope they won't need the firepower, that winter weather and 
low rations will force Rudolph out of hiding, peacefully.  They want Eric 
Rudolph alive. Otherwise they'll have a lot of questions left unanswered.
     "The main thing I want to know is why? Why would somebody do this? 
I was there, I experienced it. But even today, I can't really comprehend that
level of violence.''
     The suspect In the pictures, it's the eyes you notice first. Sparkling
blue. Even in the wanted poster. Around Andrews, Eric Robert Rudolph is
remembered in generalizations. Quiet. Shy. Polite. An underachiever at
school. A fine, thorough carpenter. A loner.
     "A lot of people knew Eric,'' says Kenny Copeland, a Macon County
sheriff's deputy who met Rudolph when they were boys. "But I don't know
that anybody could actually tell you much about him.''
     One of six children, Rudolph was born Sept. 19, 1966, in Merritt Island,
Fla. After his father died in 1981, his mother, Patricia, moved the family
to a squat gray house on a winding road in the tiny community of Nantahala.
They lived next to Thomas Wayne Branham, a family friend known for his
anti-government views.
     When Branham was arrested on firearms possession charges in 1986, 
Patricia Rudolph bailed him out.
     When she enrolled them in school, Patricia Rudolph refused to give
her children's Social Security numbers, saying it was a way for the federal
government to track people. In the ninth grade, Rudolph composed a well- 
written essay about the Holocaust. His thesis: It never happened.
     On another day, he stomped out of a civics class, telling his teacher 
he didn't want to learn about the government.
     "He was a little strange,'' says former classmate Theresa Morgan.
"Strange but nice. Strange but harmless.''
     In the early to mid-1980s, Rudolph seemed more interested in the 
woods than school or politics. Classmates remember him leaving class 
early Friday afternoons, hiking into the hills and reappearing, without 
showering or changing clothes, just in time for school on Monday.
     His siblings seemed to have a bit more direction: Younger brother 
Jamie is a techno dance musician in Greenwich Village. Sister Maura is 
a real-estate agent. One of Rudolph's older brothers, Daniel, was a 
carpenter outside Charleston when he videotaped himself cutting off his 
left hand earlier this year. He apparently was protesting treatment of 
Rudolph and media coverage of the search.
     Rudolph dropped out of school after the ninth grade. In 1985, he 
enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 101st Airborne as a 
rifleman. Federal investigators say he may have learned explosives at 
Fort Benning, Ga.
     Rudolph received a less-than-honorable discharge in 1989 -- agents 
say marijuana use was involved -- and returned home. He stayed in the 
family house, given to him when his mother moved to Florida in the late 
1980s, until May 1996. Two months before the Olympics bombing in 
Atlanta, Rudolph sold the home for $65,000.
     "I don't think this bombing was about homophobia -- at least it wasn't
just about homophobia. All these issues are becoming more closely linked.
Abortion, hatred of gays and lesbians, mistrust of the government -- I
think we're reaching the point where they're all under the same umbrella.''
     But politically, the issues of abortion, gay rights and government
involvement are growing closer by the day. Groups that traditionally had
separate interests -- groups such as Operation Rescue, the U.S. 
Taxpayers Party and the Michigan Militia -- are forging new alliances.
Their perceived mission: To stop a moral decay that threatens individual
freedom.   Rudolph was exposed to similar talk as a young man.
     In the early '80s, Rudolph's mother took him to several churches that
follow Christian Identity, a religious philosophy that believes Jews are
the biological descendants of a union between Satan and Eve.  He roamed 
Clay, Cherokee and Macon counties, home to five of the 12 known N.C. 
militias.
     Branham, the Rudolph family neighbor in Nantahala, was a 
follower of Nord Davis, a militant evangelist whose gated compound 
is less than three miles from the Rudolph home.  Before his recent 
death, Davis offered weapons training and taught students that abortion 
and homosexuality are part of a government plot.
     "Rudolph only feeds into a growing national trend among extremist
groups,'' says Chris Freeman, a researcher who tracks terrorist 
activity for the Center for Democratic Renewal in Atlanta. "Rudolph may 
have bought into this argument that our personal freedoms are at risk. 
Maybe he thought of himself as some kind of martyr to the cause.''
     Over the Internet, where the search for Rudolph fuels discussions of
government conspiracies, believers report the arrival of black helicopters,
camouflaged Humvees and tanks in the N.C. mountains. One popular 
theory suggests that President Clinton is using the Andrews buildup to 
spark civil war.
     "Eric Rudolph is a nutcase,'' Freeman says. "And this is prime time 
for nutcases in the United States.'' "Why are the entire resources of 
the U.S. government being dedicated to the capture of this lone 
individual? Because his example cannot be tolerated.''

The search:  He's been spotted buying a slice of pepperoni pizza in West 
Virginia. Making a collect call outside a Houston Wal-Mart. Seeking shelter 
from a rainstorm under a wooden lean-to on the Appalachian Trail. But the 
only sighting that matters -- the only one the feds believe -- came 
immediately after the Birmingham bombing.
     In the seconds after the explosion, a witness noticed a man in a blond 
wig running away from the sound of chaos. When he reached a gray Nissan 
pickup, the man removed the wig, threw it inside and drove off.  The witness 
ran after the truck, scribbling down the tag number: North Carolina 
KND-1117.  A day later, federal officials issued an arrest warrant for 
Rudolph. Nine days later, raccoon hunters found his truck, left by a lonely
country road.  Inside, agents found receipts for six months' worth of food 
and few clues. 
     Over the past 10 months, investigators say they have linked Rudolph 
to all four bombings. Among the ties: Investigators have found traces of
nitroglycerin and blond wig fibers in Rudolph's truck. They've matched
flooring nails found in his rented storage shed to nails used in Atlanta
and Birmingham. They've determined that small steel plates built into 
the Olympic and Atlanta clinic bombs came from a machine shop in 
Macon County.
     They've interviewed a Nashville, Tenn., ammo dealer who says he 
sold bullets and smokeless powder to a man who looked like Rudolph 
and used his alias, Bob Randolph. And they've analyzed thousands of 
snapshots and videos from Centennial Park and believe at least one 
puts Rudolph in the park before the explosion.  Now it's just a matter 
of finding him.
     Since summer, when Andrews store owner George Nordmann 
reported that a shaggier, skinnier Rudolph had shown up at his home 
demanding food and vitamin supplements, there's been no sign of the 
fugitive.  At least no definitive sign.
     Someone using his name has sent taunting postings to various
militia-focused Internet news groups. Media outlets across the South,
including The Observer, recently received a letter signed by someone
claiming to be Eric Rudolph. The author offered to surrender if, among
several demands, the $1 million promised for his capture is used to 
hire Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shaprio and F. Lee Bailey as his 
defense team.
     "Eric Rudolph, meet Elvis Presley,'' one Southeast Bomb Task 
Force spokesman says. "This is only going to get weirder the longer it 
goes on.''
     ATF and FBI agents investigate every purported sighting, but they 
firmly believe Rudolph is within a 10-mile radius of his former Nantahala 
home.  "All his senses are focused on survival; he's relying more and 
more on his animal instinct every day,'' said Duke Blackwell, who 
commands trackers and bloodhounds for the Georgia Department of 
Corrections. "Why would he leave the place he feels the most 
comfortable?''
     When the search for Rudolph began last February, headquarters was 
a large RV parked behind the Murphy EconoLodge. Now agents have a 
full-scale compound, a former warehouse they've converted into a 
makeshift military base, complete with a PX, a post office and a parking 
lot filled with, yes, black helicopters.
     Actually, they're a deep brown, but that fact hasn't seemed to settle 
the minds of locals. Task force leaders say the media have overstated the 
level of frustration among residents.   Stories, however, abound. An FBI 
search dog new to the country followed a scent off the side of a mountain. 
The shots fired at the task force compound last month? If you believe 
the talk, those came from an angry husband whose wife had been seen 
in the company of a G-man.
     "Regardless of whether it's true, that story alone tells you something
about how folks here feel,'' one Andrews business owner says. "We're 
ready for this to be over.''   So are the agents.
     Among themselves, searchers say it's only a matter of time before 
federal leaders are forced to regroup. Combing the landscape near Rudolph's 
home, leaving tiny orange ribbons to mark places they've been, doesn't 
seem to be working.   On a recent fall Saturday, a team of FBI agents 
from Philadelphia stands by the side of the road, leaning against a 
Chevy Suburban as they chew sunflower seeds or Red Man and load their 
automatic rifles.  They're wearing green-and-brown fatigues, a long way 
from the somber black suits most wear on regular duty, awaiting 
permission to investigate a mysterious campfire reported 16 hours ago.
     After a frantic drive from Andrews, the agents have been waiting 45
minutes. A helicopter is coming, they've been told, to fly over the spot
where the fire was seen.
     This, the agents say, is the way the search for Eric Rudolph is going, 
the way it has gone for the past 10 months. "Eric Rudolph is sitting in
somebody's basement watching cartoons, and I'm out here in the middle 
of nowhere,'' one says. "Each of us has our own cases to work back 
home, you know.''
     The helicopter they've been expecting appears over the crest of the 
hill. It completes a few low circles, parting the foliage and sending a 
dull "wocka-wocka-wocka'' rolling over the countryside. A voice over the
Suburban's radio squawks that it's time for the team to move.
     Agents creep into the trees, disappearing after about 15 steps. An
hour later, they're back. "Nothing,'' one says. "Somebody is going to have 
a lot of questions to ask that Eric Rudolph. But it ain't going to be us.''