Eric Rudolph

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American domestic terrorist convicted for a series of bombings across the Southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured over 100 others, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

His stated motive was an opposition to "the ideals of global socialism" and to "abortion on demand", both of which he claimed were condoned by the United States government.

Rudolph was born in Merritt Island, Florida, in 1966.

After his father Robert died in 1981, he moved with his mother and siblings to Nantahala, Macon County, in western North Carolina.

Rudolph attended ninth grade at the Nantahala School but dropped out after that year and worked as a carpenter with his older brother Daniel.

When Rudolph was 18, he spent time with his mother at a Christian Identity compound in Missouri known as the Church of Israel.

After Rudolph received his GED, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, undergoing basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia.

In 1988, the year before his discharge, Rudolph had attended the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell.

He attained the rank of Specialist/E-4.

Rudolph joined several white supremacist groups in the years before he perpetrated the bombings.

He was discharged in January 1989, due to marijuana use, while serving with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

At age 29, Rudolph perpetrated the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which occurred on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

He made two anonymous 911 calls, warning about the bomb before it detonated.

The blast killed one spectator and wounded 111 others.

A 40-year-old Turkish news cameraman suffered a fatal heart attack while running to the scene.

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 the 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 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 in order to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money that had been invested in them.

Rudolph's statement cleared Richard Jewell, a Centennial Olympic Park security guard, of any involvement in the bombing.

Despite having been initially hailed as a hero for being the first one to spot Rudolph's explosive device and helping to clear the area, Jewell came under FBI scrutiny in the days following the attack, ultimately becoming the prime suspect and the subject of international media attention.

Rudolph confessed to three other bombings: of an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on January 16, 1997; of the Otherside Lounge of Atlanta, a lesbian bar, on February 21, 1997, injuring five; and of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998, killing Birmingham police officer Robert Sanderson, who was off-duty but working as security in uniform, and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons.

Rudolph's bombs contained nails, which acted as shrapnel.

Rudolph was first identified as a suspect in the Alabama bombing by the Department of Justice on February 14, 1998, following tips from two witnesses, Jeffrey Tickal and Jermaine Hughes.

Tickal and Hughes observed Rudolph departing the scene and noted his appearance and truck license plate.

He was named as a suspect in the other Atlanta and Alabama 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 million reward for information leading directly to his arrest.

He spent more than five years in the Appalachian wilderness as a fugitive, during which time federal and amateur search teams scoured the area without success.

Rudolph's family supported him and believed he was innocent of all charges.

They were questioned and placed under surveillance.

On March 7, 1998, Rudolph's older brother, Daniel, videotaped himself cutting off his left hand with a radial arm saw in order to, in his words, "send a message to the FBI and the media."

The hand was successfully reattached later by surgeons.

According to Rudolph's own writings, he survived during his years as a fugitive by camping in the Nantahala National Forest near Cherokee and Graham Counties, in North Carolina, by gathering acorns and salamanders, pilfering vegetables from gardens, stealing grain from a grain silo, and raiding dumpsters in Murphy, North Carolina.

For five years, Rudolph was listed as one of the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives until he was caught in 2003.

Rudolph was arrested in Murphy, North Carolina, on May 31, 2003, by rookie police officer Jeffrey Scott Postell of the Murphy Police Department while Rudolph was looking through a dumpster behind a Save-A-Lot store at about 4:00a.m. Postell, on routine patrol, had initially suspected a burglary in progress.

In 2005, as part of a plea bargain, Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous state and federal homicide charges and accepted four consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and a potential death sentence.

He remains incarcerated at the ADX Florence supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.

Rudolph's motive for the bombing, according to his April 13, 2005 statement, was political: