American terrorist, born in 1966 in
Merritt Island, Florida. He is charged with being responsible for the
Olympic Park bombing in 1996. He's also charged with the
bombings at
Atlanta's Sandy Springs Professional Building and a
lesbian bar called the Otherside Lounge and with a bombing at an
abortion clinic in
Birmingham, Alabama. The bombings killed, collectively, a
police officer and a
tourist; more than 150 people were injured by his
bombs. In three of his attacks, Rudolph left a second bomb at the site with a delayed timer -- apparently, he was hoping to kill
police and
emergency medical personnel who arrived to help.
By the time Rudolph fell under
suspicion for the bombings, he had already made his
getaway into the
forests and
wild areas of the
southeastern United States. The
FBI tried to locate him for five years, but the woods were dense, and Rudolph was an experienced
outdoorsman, having spent his youth in the forests of
Tennessee,
Georgia, and
North Carolina. It also appears likely that Rudolph was aided by local residents, who were sympathetic to his ties to the
Christian Identity movement.
Rudolph was finally captured on
May 31, 2003. He was seen lurking behind a
grocery store by a police officer in
Murphy, North Carolina. After a short chase, he was arrested, though his identity was not discovered until after his
fingerprints were taken. He accepted a
plea agreement in April of 2005 during the
jury selection of his trial, providing authorities with the locations of over 250 pounds of
explosives he'd hidden in North Carolina, in exchange for not getting sentenced to death. After admitting his
guilt in all the bombings (basically, he took the opportunity to
gloat about his crimes and rant about the evils of
abortion,
homosexuals,
government employees,
police, the
New World Order, and
non-psychotic Christians), Rudolph was sentenced to four consecutive
life sentences without parole, plus 120 years, plus $2.3 million in damages. He ain't getting out any time soon, and that's a damn good thing.
Research from the FBI and the Washington Post websites.