WEBVTT - From a McDonald's Payphone 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.320 Flashpoint is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free, 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:09.080 but for ad free listening, early access and exclusive bonuses, 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:13.480 subscribe to tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com or on 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:14.720 Apple Podcasts. 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.759 You're listening to Flashpoint, a production of tenderfoot TV and 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.200 association with iHeartMedia. The views and opinions expressed in this 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:29.360 podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.199 This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:36.519 suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:47.080 Oh this is really important. Another explosion downtown. Yeah, I 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.400 see a guy walking from that direction and he had 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.000 a wig and it was like, what was that explosion? 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:56.080 And you know, I walked outside him. 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:57.080 What kind of thing? 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:02.880 And this guy he was short with here a long week? 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:05.399 What color the wig was like? 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:06.120 Brown color? 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:10.160 This is from a transcript of the nine one one 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:14.399 call made by Jermaine Hughes, a UAB law student, just 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:17.520 moments after a huge explosion in a Birmingham abortion clinic 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:22.280 shook the entire downtown area on January twenty ninth, nineteen 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.440 ninety eight. The same explosion that killed a police officer, 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:31.120 Robert Sanderson, and critically injured a nurse Emily Lyons. Hughes 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.200 made the call from a phone and a McDonald's near 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:33.679 the clinic. 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:35.720 Was he what or black? 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.080 He's he's what guy? 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:40.280 What did he have all? 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:41.280 Sagan? 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:43.080 What did he have all? 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.000 I was following him in a burst. He had on 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:50.240 flannel or something. I'm not exactly sure. 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:53.600 This call went on for a while, with the nine 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.760 one one operator and Hughes talking past each other. At 0:01:56.760 --> 0:01:59.800 one point, the operator even scolded him, you can't even 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.520 what he had all met Mabe, you. 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.840 Cannot remember a clothing description. 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:09.960 No, I don't remember, Coles kind of exasperated right now. 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:12.320 Hughes's frustration was building. 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.240 At one point, he lost the connection and called back, 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.640 still trying to convince someone to believe him, when suddenly 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.560 he saw a man walking down twentieth Street who looked familiar. 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:23.280 I got him. 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:24.079 Where is he? 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:25.560 I got him? I think this is him. 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:26.760 Is he on foot? 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.919 Yes, he's on foot, Yes, blood glasses on. He's walking 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:32.640 into the woods toward Vulcan. 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:35.480 It's safe to say most of the customers that this 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.280 McDonald's were listening intently to Hughes's side of this phone call. 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.639 One of them, a lawyer, named Jeff Tickle put aside 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:45.000 his breakfast to help. Tickle started calling out a description 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:46.800 for Hughes to give the nine to one one operator. 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.079 The man they had seen had changed his appearance, now 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:54.400 in a green and black plaid shirt, jeans, and brown boots. Together, 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.440 they stood inside the McDonald's, watching through the giant picture 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.400 window as the mysterious figure wandered off the road and 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:01.519 into a wooded area. 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.440 I can't see him now. I can't believe I'm standing here. 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:06.919 There's not a cop here by now. 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.919 Darrell sail be there in just a minute. 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:12.360 Tickle got in his car and drove a long valley 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:16.000 avenue looking for the individual. He eventually pulled to a 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.720 side street to discover the same man loading gear into 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:23.000 a gray niece on pickup. He trailed it and when 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.080 he got a clear view, he wrote down its tag 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.799 k n D one one one seven. He didn't know 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.320 it at the time, but he just stumbled upon the 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.119 key to unveiling the mysterious figure behind the Cereal bombings. 0:03:54.720 --> 0:04:05.600 Episode four From a McDonald's payphone. 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:10.640 I had arranged to meet a Birmingham news reporter. 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:12.640 She covered the federal courts. 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.760 She just wanted to catch up on my first like 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.960 five months in office and how things were going. And 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.600 as I got in the car, the radio said that 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:26.600 there was a traffic problem initially on south side and 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.279 to steer clear of tenth Avenue South. But then shortly 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.800 thereafter they came back and said that there were a 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:36.480 report that there had been a bomb explode. 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:39.599 Doug Jones is a figure of note in Alabama politics. 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.599 His tenure as a US Senator spanned from twenty eighteen 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.680 to twenty twenty one, a period in which he was 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.599 thrust into the limelight as the first Democratic senator in 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.920 the state of Alabama in twenty five years. But Doug 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.719 Jones led a reputable career long before making the Senate. 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:56.680 His roots were in law. 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:00.559 In nineteen ninety eight, when the Birmingham abortion clinic bombing 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.679 took place, he was a US attorney working high profile 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:04.640 litigation cases. 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:12.240 I parked my car because they had all of tenth 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:17.400 Street South cardened off with Tate, and the police officer 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.160 that was standing there obviously recognized me, and I said, 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:23.880 I know what's going on. What's happened? He said, well, 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.600 we've had the bomb explode at the clinic. We got 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.679 a police officer down. He's dead. There's a nurse who's 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:32.919 been severely injured. I don't know if she'll make it 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.160 or not, but we just got her in the ambulance 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.440 and they took off and I'm looking and I just 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.880 looked literally to my immediate left, and there was the 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:44.200 clinic building and you could see the awning had been destroyed, 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.520 windows had been broken out. It was a mess, you know. 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.279 I like to say sometimes it looked like images that 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.800 you would have seen through some bombing on another part 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:54.360 of the world. 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:55.520 And the body of. 0:05:55.440 --> 0:06:00.200 The police officer was there, and I started moving that 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:04.200 way because there was no one around that police officer's body, 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.000 and I instinctively started moving that way, and I said, well, 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.359 we've got to do something. And then I had a 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.560 hand grab my shoulder and stop me. He said, Doug, 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:16.080 you can't go up there. I said, why not. He's 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:18.880 you know, we seem like we've got to do something, 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.640 and he said, look, we're concerned that there could be 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.120 a secondary device and we can't go up there. 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.400 For a while, the FBI atf. 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.719 Birmingham Police were all coming in with their mobile units 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.480 and agents, keeping the area cleared, staying away from the scene, 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.599 all coming, setting up radio, setting up things in the 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:41.360 command post. 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.120 The most significant. 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:49.839 Part of that day for me was establishing the joint 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.919 Task Force to investigate this case. I talked to the 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:58.800 Attorney General. She had a preference for having the FBI 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:01.760 take complete charge, and I said, you know, with all 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:06.480 due respect, we've got a Birmingham police officer down. I 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.479 want a ATF to take charge of doing all the 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.240 forensics on the bomb. Do your thing and tell me 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:18.400 what exploded. Get all that forensics to me for the FBI. 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.560 You do what the FBI does best. You track down suspects, 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.120 you track down witnesses, you do fingerprints, you do whatever DNA, 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.840 if there is anything, whatever analysis that you need to do. 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:30.360 You help get the search warrants. 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.120 And I said, the third thing is I know that 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.320 there's often some friction between state and federal, but I 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.360 want the Birmingham police to be a full partner here. 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:45.200 They lost one of their own. We established that task force. 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:49.000 It became known in the FBI files as Sandbomb, named 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.720 after Sandy Sanderson, the police officer who died, and that 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:57.560 task force, I think together did a pretty remarkable job. 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:03.480 And this time with bomb something was different. The bomber 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:05.520 didn't just up and vanish before the explosion. 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:10.440 Jermaine Hughes was the freshman African American student from you know, 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.760 kind of a small town in Alabama, and he was 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:16.440 doing his laundry, if I recall correctly, he was doing 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:20.160 the laundry in the basement of the dorm and he 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:25.000 heard the bomb explode, and when he looked out of 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.840 his window, you could see some smoke and some those 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.280 things coming from over the hill where the clinic was, 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.920 and some people moving that way. But yet there was 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:40.800 one individual that appeared to have some kind of disguise. 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:44.840 On, according to Germaine, and was not running but walking 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:47.240 very hurriedly away. 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:51.200 From the scene. And he just thought to himself, there's 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:55.920 something wrong with this picture. There's just something wrong with 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.520 that person, and left his laundry then decided to go 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.760 look and see for himself, not at the scene, but 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:09.120 that individual he saw, and he followed him some. At 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:13.360 one point he walked near him and Jermaine kind of 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:16.840 pretended he had a problem with his car, But then 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.680 he loses him and he gets in his car and 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:23.040 he drives around to try to see what he could find. 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.120 And he goes over Red Mountain and there's a McDonald 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.040 sitting on the other side. Now, he calls nine to 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.520 one to one, starts trying to describe what he saw. 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.480 And there he is there, he is right outside here, 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:41.040 and Jeff Tickle, who's a lawyer in Birmingham, is sitting 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:46.679 right there having breakfast and hears him and he helps 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.520 him describe what this man is wearing at the time. 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:54.360 Before he gets to the intersection, he cuts through the 0:09:54.400 --> 0:10:00.640 woods and vanishes. So Jermaine finishes his call and he 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.079 and Jeff Tickle get in their separate vehicles. 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:05.800 They went in different places looking. 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:11.120 Jeff saw him get in a truck, a gray Nissan 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:15.839 pickup truck, and took a McDonald's coffee cup and wrote 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.480 the tag number of the pickup truck down. 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.240 Now law enforcement had to lead. They had a prime suspect. 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.720 And what's more, forensics had determined that this bomb was 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:33.439 detonated remotely, which meant the bomber was watching and deciding 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:37.160 when to detonate. This time, the bomber wanted to choose 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:41.040 his victims, wanted to see his victims suffer, wanted to 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:42.280 see the damage he inflicted. 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:49.840 The tag number we ran and was registered to Eric Rudolph, 0:10:50.800 --> 0:11:04.960 Eric Robert Rudolph. They initially put out what the color 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:08.679 bolo be on the lookout for the gray Nissan pickup truck. 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.480 We knew it was North Carolina plate, so they started looking. 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:15.800 Doug Jones and his team had no clue who Eric 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:16.480 Rudolph was. 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:18.200 No one did. 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:22.400 He wasn't a suspect on anyone's list, and the truth 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:24.400 is there was no list. 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:27.920 This was the first real lead in the investigation. 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.319 So at some point in that day they tracked his 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:37.520 driver's license down. We had no id that the driver 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:40.160 of that vehicle was in fact Eric Rudolph. 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:42.679 The only thing that we knew is that. 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.959 Eric Rudolph's truck we believe was involved in this bombing. 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.600 And and candidly, we were very sensitive about what had 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:57.640 happened in Atlanta. In Atlanta, Richard Jewell became a suspect. 0:11:58.080 --> 0:11:59.000 It was leaked. 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:05.200 There was an incredible intense focus on Richard Jewell, and 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.440 as it turns out, there was nothing to that. We 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:13.560 didn't want to repeat that, and we took extra cautions 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:14.960 to try to not to do that. 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.760 Jermaine Hughes and Jeff Tickle may have seen Rudolph fleeing 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:24.600 the scene, but as far as law enforcement was learning, 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.920 Eric Robert Rudolph was a ghost. Aside from his current 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.280 driver's license, his vehicle registration in an eight year old 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:36.600 military record, Rudolph had no paper trail. He owned no property, 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.960 he paid no taxes, he never voted, he had no 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.600 bank accounts, and he had never used a credit card. 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.120 He had no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.520 And now, following the Birmingham clinic bombing, there were more 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:56.120 than five agencies involved, including the FBI. That's a lot 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.840 of cooks in the kitchen, which makes it that much 0:12:58.840 --> 0:12:59.920 harder to keep the lid on tight. 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:05.080 There was a lot of stress on everybody in the FBI. 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:09.600 They were already under tremendous pressure to solve the Atlanta 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.439 Park cases and the women's clinic and the gay nightclub 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:12.920 in Atlanta. 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:13.520 They were under. 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:17.320 Tremendous pressure there, and that is another reason why I 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.760 wanted to make sure that this case stayed here. 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:22.800 I didn't have those pressures. 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.920 But yeah, we butted heads a few times. 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.760 This is not an uncommon problem, and in this case, 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.520 it did work itself out, but not before a few 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:33.240 bumps in the road. 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:36.200 We spent a day or two trying to find him. 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:37.320 We couldn't find. 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:41.080 Him, so we decided that we did not have enough 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:44.479 because we did not have a good idea on the individual, 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:48.480 only the truck. So the only other available option to 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.040 us to make sure we brought him in for questioning 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:56.160 was a material witness warrant and we were able to 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:00.600 package that together to say, this person we believe has 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.479 material information about this crime that was committed in Birmingham, Alabama. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.120 We have been unable to locate him. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:09.120 We don't have any reason to think that he would 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.960 cooperate with us, and so we want the ability to 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:17.040 arrest him and hold him should we be able to 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:21.040 find him. 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:23.840 At this point, based on the directional plates found in 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.200 each of the bombs, law enforcement was fairly certain that 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:31.160 these different bombings were connected. But how does that information 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:34.960 help you find a suspect. Here's former US Attorney Ken 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:35.880 Alexander again. 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.320 Well, there's been a change in law enforcement since the Olympics, 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:40.840 and I think part of it has results of the 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:44.200 Olympic bombing. There was talk at the time though that 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:50.080 the recording by the bomber that there's a bomb Cinceennial Park, 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:51.440 there is. 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:56.960 A bomb in any old farm, you have a thirty minute. 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.240 There's talk of playing that, as you can imagine, and 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.680 if you had played that message right after the bombing, 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:08.600 that voice, that recording would have essentially gone virally. Everybody 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.360 in the world would have heard it. I've got to 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:13.720 think that at the time, had that been played right 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.760 off the bat, that there's a pretty good chance erk 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.720 Rudoff would have been ideed much earlier. But that just 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:23.320 wasn't the way that law enforcement generally operated at the time. 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:29.800 By contrast, if you fast forward to the Boston marathon bombing, there, 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.480 when you had pictures of the two brothers, those went 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:37.680 out immediately and people started identifying who the brothers were. 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:40.560 That allowed the case to be solved a lot faster. 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.320 So there's been a morphing in law enforcement of bringing 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.360 the public in to help with an investigation as supposed 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.840 to push in the public aside. If that morphing had 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.840 taken place already, there's a chance we would have found 0:15:55.920 --> 0:16:00.480 Eric Rudoff far earlier than we did. 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.080 Vic Ocorn called me up and said, hey, we've got 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:09.240 a solid lead on this Birmingham bombing that had occurred 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.320 earlier that day. He said a witness had got a 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:17.920 personal description, a vehicle description, and they'd got a tag number, 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.280 a license plate number. And I figured, since he's called me, 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.680 the tag probably came back to somewhere in western North Carolina. 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.640 FBI agent Jim Russell was one of just a few 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.720 agents responsible for the western side of North Carolina back 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:35.600 in nineteen ninety eight. He mostly investigated violent crimes in 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:39.480 the area's expanse of National Forests and Cherokee Indian reservations. 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.920 And he said they had already run the tag and 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.440 got an address as a registration, and it came back 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:52.520 to an apartment complex in Asheville, North Carolina. This is 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:56.080 close to Quentin time, close to five. So my other 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.000 new agent partner, Rex Roden Rex and I went out 0:16:59.000 --> 0:16:59.720 to that location. 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.520 Western North Carolina is hill country Russia's forests, with steep 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:09.879 terrain and rushing rivers running through the valleys. The forest 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:14.159 is overwhelming, it kind of swallows you. Everything is isolated, 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:19.639 even neighbors, and there's a libertarian sort of independence that 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.679 doesn't quite mesh with the idea of a society. The 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:27.359 people here are straightforward resistant to nuance, but sometimes nuance 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:28.200 is really important. 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:30.320 The devil is in the details. 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:34.000 The apartment that Jim Russell and his partner Rex went 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.440 to investigate was a sixty four unit apartment complex called 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:38.840 Skyland Heights in Nashville. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:41.919 The truck was not in the parking lot, so we 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.000 went to the manager's office and she was just getting 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:48.040 ready to leave, and we asked her if she had 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:52.040 a tenant by the name of Eric Rudolph staying there 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.760 at the complex. And she says, that name doesn't ring 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:58.119 a bell. I don't know everybody, but I'll be happy 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.080 to check. And she went through all the old tenancies 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.480 of the apartment complex. He says, the only person I 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.840 found here is a Patricia Rudolph. I asked her if 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.280 can we look at the application, and I noticed on 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.639 there that there was an emergency contact name a number 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:20.919 for Moura Roads in Hendersonville, North Carolina, which is about 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:24.600 fifteen to twenty miles south of Asheville, and there was 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:29.240 an emergency contact number. And when I called that number, 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.880 her husband, Keith picked up the phone. I started talking 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:38.040 to Keith and I asked him what he knew about 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:43.360 and was he somehow related to Eric Rudolph and he said, yes, 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:49.160 that's my brother in law. It's Moura's brother. He said, 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.919 I'm not too shocked that the FBI has called me. 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:56.400 What did he do now? And I said, well, there's 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:58.399 some indication that he might have had something to do 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:03.199 with the bombing that happened in Burma. And he said, well, 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:04.680 I don't want to talk in front of Moura. 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.840 Mara is Rudolf's older sister. Little was known about her then, 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:13.120 little is known about her now. 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:17.040 She was cooperative to an extent, but she didn't want 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.080 to believe that he could have done something like that, 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:22.760 and so she was more reticent. I believe we got 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.920 much more information out of Keith because Keith didn't like him. 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.840 Keith didn't like Eric Keith. They just didn't get along. 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:31.119 So we arranged to meet him at a shop that 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:32.520 was like a bicycle shop. 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:37.320 Jim Russell, his partner, and Keith huddled into a car 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:39.320 in that bicycle shop parking lot. 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:41.879 The first thing we asked is do you know where 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.120 Eric is at now? Where is he currently living? And 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:49.320 he said he had no specific location for him. Eric 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.480 was very secretive about his whereabouts, always had been. If 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.560 I had to guess. I think he's probably living in 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:01.560 Western North Carolina, in Topton, North Carolina, which is his 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:02.520 boy hit home. 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.480 Topton's located about two and a half hours from Atlanta, 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.040 going up I seventy five to five seventy five to 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:13.440 get there. Like all of western North Carolina, it's beautiful 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:19.520 but remote. Billboard screaming of Jesus, guns and pharmaceuticals are rampant, 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:24.000 and they're not always advertised on the separate billboards. The 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:26.679 area gets a lot of vacationers with folks coming to 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.200 visit the Nanahala National Forest. But not to be disturbed 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.640 are the residents of Topton. People in this region don't 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:37.360 go in for a lot of bullshit and outsiders they 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:39.080 bring a lot of bullshit. 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:41.200 And I said, does he you know, is he married? 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.119 Does he have girlfriends? Does he have friends? He says no, 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.720 He's a loner. He's always been a loner. He tends 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:51.960 to irritate people. He's very racist, he's very sexist. He 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:57.480 is anti government. And as he's clicking off these terms 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:01.120 to describe Eric Rudolph Rex and I were just kind 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.280 of look at each other. Nothing he's saying is eliminating 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.800 Eric as being a possible suspect. All those indications are 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.080 taking off the right boxes that we are on the 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:12.520 trail of the right person. 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:15.040 Keith said. 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:17.199 The last time he and Mars saw her brother was 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.080 the week prior when he came to their son's basketball game. 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.520 Rudolph is late to the game and left immediately after 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.359 in a gray Nissan pickup truck with a white camper top. 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.119 And he said, and that's typical. He never tells us 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.720 he's coming. He just will show up, you know. We said, 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.240 is there a telephone number for him? He said, if 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:37.960 he has his phone, he doesn't give us any information. 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:40.720 Everything is a one way street with Eric. 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:44.960 He's a ghost, not only to law enforcement, but to 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:45.920 his family as well. 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.800 I developed a good working relationship and a friendship with 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:55.480 the SBI special agent that worked in the Topton Andrews, 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.680 North Carolina area, by the name of Tom Fry. Tom 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:02.320 Fry had been a State Bureau of Investigation agent out there 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:06.760 for maybe at least fifteen years. So every bad guy, 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:12.640 every drug dealer, Tom pretty much knew. And Tom had 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:16.199 never heard of Eric Rudolph. So he says, I'm going 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:18.240 to do some record checks and I'll meet you in 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:42.000 the morning. It's very rural, very isolated. It's in some beautiful, 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:45.160 beautiful mountains. I don't even think there's a traffic light, 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:50.679 you know, very two lane, windy roads. People as a 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:54.040 general rule that can be cooperative to the FBI, but 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.760 there's a lot of anti federal government sediment out there. 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:08.040 Tom and I had gotten up there early. We were 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:11.280 going to his last known address where he had grown up. 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:15.080 You know, it was a good investigative technique that we 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:17.439 have used in the past. Out there is you know, 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:20.840 it seems like the guy who delivers the mail knows 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:23.520 a lot about a lot of people. Tom and I 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:26.280 we were just trying to catch up with this rural 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.479 delivery mail truck for a while, and we finally got 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:32.679 up with him, and then he said, nah, I know 0:23:32.880 --> 0:23:35.520 Eric Rudolph. I haven't seen him in a long time. 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.080 But if anybody was a friend of Eric Rudolf, it's 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:42.679 Randy Cochran, the every buddy's in high school. You know, 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:44.640 it might be a good idea for you to get 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:47.320 touched with Randy. He said, that'd be my best guess 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:49.800 of trying to find out where Eric is living right now. 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:55.480 By the time we got up to his house. I'm 0:23:55.480 --> 0:23:58.639 thinking it's around six o'clock in the evening, and I 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:02.800 didn't know who he was at the time, but he 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:05.200