Deseret News (Salt Lake City): Rudolph will plead guilty to bombings

ATLANTA -- Eric Robert Rudolph, the former fugitive who evaded capture in the North Carolina mountains for more than five years, will plead guilty to killing two people and injuring more than 100 others in bombings at abortion clinics and at the 1996 Olympics here, the Department of Justice said Friday.

As part of his plea agreement, Rudolph revealed the whereabouts of more than 250 pounds of dynamite and a buried bomb more than twice as powerful as the one that went off here in Centennial Olympic Park, the authorities said. The explosives were recovered and disposed of this week. In exchange for the information, Rudolph, 38, will serve life in prison instead of facing possible execution. His lawyers did not return calls seeking comment.

The surprise announcement came two days after preliminary jury selection began in what was to be Rudolph's first trial, for a 1998 bombing at a Birmingham abortion clinic that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse. Prosecutors believed the Birmingham bombing was their strongest case.

Rudolph was also charged in bombings outside a family planning clinic and a gay club in Atlanta in 1997. After the Birmingham bombing, authorities identified him as a material witness, but he fled, evading bloodhounds, heat sensors and even volunteer paramilitary brigades for five years before he was caught scavenging food behind a grocery store in Murphy, N.C., in 2003. For a time, his success as a fugitive reframed the conflict, from criminal vs. the law to local boy vs. federal intruders, and made Rudolph a celebrated underdog, with T-shirts reading "Run Rudolph Run" or "Hide and Seek Champion."

Meanwhile, victims struggled to recover from the trauma of shrapnel wounds, cracked bones and blinded eyes from bombs spiked with nails and screws. Emily Lyons, the nurse left half blind and hobbled by the Birmingham explosion, and Jeffrey, her husband, initially resisted the plea agreement but softened their stance because of the hidden dynamite.

"I watched what my wife went through," Lyons said. "I did not want to have somebody come to me and say, 'My mother looks like your wife because you held out for the sentence you wanted.' I don't know if you can imagine the stress, but for whatever tiny part we had we were playing Russian roulette with a town."

Had it not been for the dynamite, Lyons said, she would never have been able to accept the plea. "The crime deserves the punishment of death," she said. "He killed two people directly, killed one indirectly, killed all the lives that we had at that time. So death to me is the appropriate punishment."

Authorities concluded that it was worth forgoing a potential death sentence to find the explosives, which they believed were a serious threat to public safety, a government official who had been briefed on the plea negotiations said.

With Rudolph's cooperation, according to the Justice Department announcement, the dynamite was found in several places in western North Carolina, where Rudolph camped while on the run. Agents also unearthed a fully constructed bomb containing 20 to 25 pounds of dynamite and a detached detonator that had been hidden "in close proximity to a road, homes and businesses," the announcement said.

"The deal was contingent on them finding it," Lyons said.

Authorities said that the hidden explosives were quite dangerous even without a detonating device because dynamite destabilizes as it ages. Dr. Van Romero, an explosives expert at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said there have been numerous cases where children have come across old dynamite sticks and set them off merely by moving them. "The nitroglycerine in the dynamite actually starts to crystallize, and when that happens it's very, very unstable," Romero said.

Law enforcement officials involved in the frustrating hunt for Rudolph praised the plea deal.

"It shocked me," said Kent B. Alexander, who was the U.S. attorney in Atlanta during the bombings here and now serves as general counsel at Emory University. "From everything I know about Rudolph it seemed like he was the type who hated the federal government so bad he would never do anything to admit his guilt. So whatever the authorities did to get him to plea was masterful."

But Woody Enderson, a retired FBI inspector who led the Rudolph investigation, said he had predicted that Rudolph would plead to avoid possible execution. "There are some people that probably would find a lifetime in prison very, very difficult. But I just believe that Mr. Rudolph was such a loner, and was so comfortable just with himself -- and in reality for five years he was in his own prison -- that it would not be the hardship for him that it would be for other people not to have friends and family around." Rudolph has agreed to plead guilty in federal court in Birmingham on Wednesday on April 13, and later the same day in federal court in Atlanta, the Justice Department announcement said. He will serve multiple life sentences with no possibility of parole.

The Birmingham bombing in 1998 was one of the last gasps of a decade of extreme anti-abortion activity. In the 1990s, hit lists of abortion providers were posted on the Internet, and a manual circulated that included instructions on amputating doctors' thumbs. A rash of assassinations of abortion providers ended with the death of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, N.Y., in 1998.

Rudolph, who moved with his family from Florida to North Carolina after his father died when he was a teenager, became emblematic of a link between white supremacists, anti-government sentiment and the anti-abortion movement. In ninth grade, he wrote an essay arguing that the Holocaust never happened. For a time in his teenage years, his mother took him to Missouri to live with a religious sect called Christian Identity, which opposes abortion, homosexuality and interracial marriage.

With his two brothers, Rudolph worked in North Carolina as a carpenter, and also sold and smoked marijuana, family members have said. In pretrial motions in Brimingham, his lawyers asked to present expert testimony about western Carolina culture. "Rudolph's retreat to the wilderness in the face of being sought by federal law enforcement is consistent with the cultural values, principles and lifestyles of some of those in the region," they said, which include "strong community ties coupled with an independent spirit; living off the land; preservation of individual privacy and freedom; and a persistent mistrust and suspicion of government."

The bombings were accompanied by letters claiming they were the work of the "Army of God," which people who track hate groups say is not a real organization but a name that has been claimed from time to time by people acting independently.

Rudolph was not connected with any of the bombings until Birmingham, when a truck seen leaving the scene by a witness was traced to him. But by the time the authorities reached his mobile home in North Carolina, he had disappeared, leaving the door open and oatmeal on the table.

Investigators have described the Birmingham bombing as the cruelest because the bomb was not on a timer. Instead, Rudolph chose the exact moment to set it off, watching as Robert Sanderson, the clinic security guard and an off-duty policeman, leaned close to the bomb.

In the Olympic bombing, Alice Hawthorne was killed and 111 people were wounded. A security guard, Richard A. Jewell, had been identified as the suspect in that attack, and was eventually cleared.

Many victims are now parties to lawsuits seeking damages for their injuries, emotional scars, or financial devastation. Yet several said they were glad the case was being resolved swiftly.

Memrie Creswell, whose right shoulder was pierced by a 4-inch nail from a bomb planted by Rudolph in 1997 at the Otherside Lounge, an Atlanta club frequented by gays and lesbians, said she was pleased Rudolph would not be eligible for parole under the agreement.

"I don't want him ever walking the streets again," said Creswell, 36. "I don't think we have a place for people like that in this world."

Creswell also lost her job when she was effectively outed by the publicity following the bombing. Dana Ford, a part owner of the club, said business plummeted after the bombing, forcing her and her partner, Beverly McMahon, to close it in 2001. But she said she was glad Rudolph would receive a life sentence, saying the death penalty would have turned him into a martyr among his supporters.

Linda Bourgeois, administrator of the New Woman All Women abortion clinic where the Birmingham bombing took place, said that when the clinic staff learned of the plea, "We were very happy. A couple of staff members jumped up and down and shouted and clapped their hands."

She added, "I think it says to other people that if you bomb us we're going to get you in the end."