WEBVTT - Death to the New World Order 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.320 Flashpoint is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free, 0:00:04.760 --> 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 --> 0:00:14.480 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 --> 0:00:33.159 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. 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.000 You know, as a young police officer starting my career 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.000 in Murphy, Rudolph was not something that was talked about, 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:46.520 you know, every day. 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:49.960 In two thousand and three, Jeff Postell was a twenty 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.920 one year old rookie police officer in Murphy, North Carolina. 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:54.760 Growing up in the area. 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.720 He saw the Manhunter Eric Rudolph Ebb and flow over 0:00:57.760 --> 0:00:58.640 the years. 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.400 Was there a notion, was there knowledge? Was there information 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:05.720 that he was still wanted? Yes, but his name did 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:09.199 not come up as often. The manhunt had really died out. 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.080 Postel was just sixteen years old when the Man Hunter 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.800 Rudolph began. By this point, five years under the search, 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:18.960 there were just a few federal agents. 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:19.440 Left in the area. 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.360 No sightings, no leads, nothing. 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:26.080 There was a lot of speculation that he was dead, 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.319 lot of speculation that he was, you know, sitting on 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.360 some beach in the Caribbean. There was no proof, there 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.480 was no solid information or intelligence that was coming forth 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:54.080 that he was still actively in that area. 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.640 Episode six, Death to the New World Order. 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:05.560 Then it was a pain in the butt of a shift, 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:07.920 and I will tell you I hated it, and frankly 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:09.440 be honest with it, didn't nothing ever happened. 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.280 On May thirty first, two thousand and three, Jeff Postell 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.520 was working the overnight shift ten at night to six 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:18.399 in the morning. 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.880 And some nights I would go through areas with no headlights, 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.000 and this night I went into the Valley Village shopping 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.119 center and immediately turned off my head lights and cut 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:30.239 through the parking lot, and as I came around the 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.880 left side of the building, I activated my right alley 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.679 spotlight and I observed a silhouette of somebody kind of 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.960 crouched down in the road, almost like they were kind 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:43.440 of sneaking over to the rear of the building. And 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:45.880 when I drove up on this person, I startled them 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.119 as they startled me and I exited my patrol car, 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:53.080 took cover behind my door with my weapon drawn, and 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.440 began giving commands to who this individual was to come 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.359 out show me their hands, and after a few moments, 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.360 the individual emerged from the loading dock, came down onto 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.480 the pavement, and I made him get down on their stomach. 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.200 To me, it was somebody that was potentially breaking into 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.960 a business, potentially had a weapon, and so I handcuffed 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:15.000 the individual as he was lying on the ground before 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.640 the first backup unit arrived, and we began kind of 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.000 doing a field investigation of what was going on. Who 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.440 he was, checked him for id You know, he had 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.600 told me initially that he had no idea on him. 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:29.760 He had hitchhiked from Murphy from Ohio. So I asked 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:31.359 him for his name and day of birth. He gave 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:32.919 me a name, He give me a day of birth. 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:35.920 I had our dispatch center run him through the National 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.600 Crime Information Center and there was no return for any 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.600 of the information, so there was no match found. The 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.400 sheriff's deputy who had arrived on scene, he pulled me 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:48.880 off to the side and said, you know, this guy 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:54.720 has a very uncanny resemblance to Eric Rudolph. When nothing 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:56.320 came back from the name of day of birth that 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:58.320 he give us, we then asked, well, do you have 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.760 a social Security number, you have any other identification that 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:06.400 would help us prove who you are, And at first 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.360 he says, you know, I don't have a sobial Security number. Well, 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:10.840 when he was pushed on that a little bit more, 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:13.240 he changed his comments and he said, well, I've not 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.680 really had a need for him for the last several years. 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.160 I took him into custody for safekeeping, and that was 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:22.440 to kind of give him a place to get out 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:24.320 of the element, to put his head down on a 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.440 pillow at night, to get a hot meal in him, 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:28.159 and also give us a little bit of time to 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:32.760 kind of further investigate this. So I loaded him up 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:34.520 into my police car and I took him down to 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:36.360 the Sheriff's office to the detention center. 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.520 FBI agent Rick Swine, who is now the supervisor to 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.800 the search, got the call from the sheriff around three am. 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.920 The rest of us are high tailing it out eighty 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.080 miles an hour on the road to Murphy. I'm working 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.680 the phones. I'm talking to Sieges, the Criminal Justice information 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.440 system up in West Virginia that processes all the fingerprints, 0:04:57.480 --> 0:04:59.520 and I'm trying to get him to expedite this set 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.360 of finger prints because ruff had been printed in the military, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.400 so we had known prints. So we're trying to get 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.400 verification that it's him. And I call up there and 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:10.440 the guy goes, yeah, we'll have him for you Monday morning. 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:12.360 And said, now, let me give you the identification order, 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:15.839 which is the number on the wanted poster, and he goes, oh, 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:17.760 I'll have him for you in twenty minutes. 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:23.520 Back at the Sheriff's office, the man who identified himself 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.479 as Jerry Wilson was being held in a booking room. 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.560 So I immediately went across the hallway to the office 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:32.920 and pulled up the FBI's website and began looking for 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:36.400 the FBI wanted poster for Eric Rudolph. So it's got 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:38.760 his pictures and it's got his you know, all these 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.719 descriptions on who he was or what he looked like, 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.960 and so I kind of went hight, okay, check wait. 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:48.640 Wait was a little debatable, right, but when we get 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.039 into the hair color, the eye color, I kind of 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.880 started going check check, receding hairline check and then you 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.440 get down to noticeable mark, scars and tattoos, and it 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.159 says that Eric Rudolph had a very noticeable scar to 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.839 his chin. And to this day, I'll never forget looking 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:10.000 over my shoulder across the hallway and seeing Eric Rudolph 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.159 with his hands behind his back in a holding chair, 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.520 looking up at the ceiling and staring at me. Was 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:21.120 the scar on his chin. And so we printed off 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.120 the FBI wanted poster and the four of us, the 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.240 four officers, went into the holding area with the wanted 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.600 poster stuck in behind his head so he couldn't see it. 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:31.840 So we're kind of looking at the picture, looking back 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.160 at the picture, looking at the picture, looking back at him, 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.120 back and forth for a few moments, at which time 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.680 one of the officers said, tell us who you are, 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:46.920 and he replied, well, what does the paper say, And 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:49.279 we said, well, that's not the question. It was asked, 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:51.960 tell us who you really are, And there was a 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:56.760 brief pause, and he says, I'm Eric Robert Rudolph, and 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:57.359 you've got me. 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.440 He disappeared into the mountains almost five years ago. But 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:07.880 no one in this area, and no law enforcement agent 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.440 ever gave up on finding him. This morning, at four 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:15.960 point thirty in the morning, an alert Murphy police officer 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.800 noticed something unusual going on behind the Valley Village shopping 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.239 center here in Murphy and ultimately arrested Eric Robert Rudolph 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:26.040 at about four thirty am this morning. 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.720 It's poetic in a way the way the search came 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:35.200 to an end, because it's so mundane. I mean, he 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.120 was hunted by hundreds of federal agents for five years, 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.160 and in the end he was caught by a local 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:45.480 police officer who wasn't even looking for him, caught dumpster diving. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:51.440 It's all very sloppy. Agent Rick Schwin remembers Rudolph's behavior 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:52.880 just after his arrest. 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:56.360 I mean, he had a great poker face. He just 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.840 seemed unfazed by everything that was going. 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:00.240 On around me. 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:05.760 The only time I think that he showed any emotion. 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.000 We obtained through the North Carolina National Guards some uh 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.680 sixty Blackhawks to fly him from Murphy to Asheville for 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.720 his initial appearance. You know, it's a long road out there, 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.840 to a forty minute drive, and so we flew him 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:23.240 and the agents at escort of Humes said that he 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.040 didn't quite break down, But it was clear that he 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:28.240 understood that this was the last view he was going 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.040 to have with the mountains of western North Carolina. But 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:35.240 I think that's the only time in my awareness that 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.400 he showed any kind of emotion at all. 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:44.120 Maybe he was tired, tired of running. Has this settled 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:45.079 in what. 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:46.160 Has just happened today? 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:47.559 And you have her all this time? 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:50.400 If he thought all the speculation whether. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.960 He's alive, did he's gone out of the area, Has. 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.680 It settled in what happens for you have probably not? 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:00.280 I mean, I know with the officers you see as 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:02.520 you see up here, every one of them invested a 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.840 substantial amount of their life and their time up here looking. 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:07.719 But you know, five years a long time, and a 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.679 lot of people thought that, you know, that we had 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.199 given up, and in fact, everybody here had spent a 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:19.040 lot of times behind the scene still looking for him. 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.839 But I have a different theory. I think he wanted 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:26.200 to be caught. At this point in the search, he 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.040 was no longer a story. He was no longer the 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:34.600 story Eric Rudolph was becoming folklore. Everything I've learned about 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.560 Eric Rudolf tells me that he has this need to 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.079 be the focus of the conversation, to be the center 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.640 of things. And when the search slowed down, when it 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.400 all just turned into a routine, I think he also 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.560 found himself missing that game of cat and mouse. Well, 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.199 the game may have ended, but Rudolf was certainly back 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.959 in the center of attention. Except this time people were 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:03.760 asking new questions. Instead of where is Eric Rudolf, it 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:08.360 was who is Eric Rudolf? And what motivated him to 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:28.640 become a murderer and a terrorist? I'm packing up gear 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.199 from the car with my partner on this podcast. Doug, 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.920 you met him in the last episode. I met him 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:36.559 on a film he was producing back when I was 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.920 getting my journalism degree. A couple of years later, when 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.760 we sat down to talk about potentially working on podcasts together, 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.319 he was reading a piece in Outside magazine about Eric Rudolf, 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:50.200 how he carried out these bombings, how he evaded authorities, 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.199 how he disappeared, and how he survived. 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:57.840 Okay, let's rock it. 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.720 Doug went on about Rudolph's matching up with the rise 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.920 of the religious right, the moral majority, and the growing 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:08.719 domestic militia movement, and then I said, well, then I've 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.720 got a story for you. I told him about my mom, 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.160 about her pregnancy and the clinic bombing. 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:19.160 That was that Maymi, You're not cheating any younger. 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:20.560 They call you mimi. 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.079 Yeah, that's that's what my son calls Really. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.160 Yeah, I'm a Mimi. 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:27.079 Yeah cool. 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:32.040 We're just outside Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. We connected with 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.520 Eric Rudolf's sister in law, Deborah Rudolph, and arranged to 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:37.719 sit down with her in her home. I wanted to 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:41.880 ask you before getting into Eric, why did you keep 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:42.680 the Rudolph name? 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.880 You know, I have thought about changing it now I 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:48.760 don't even know. I just wanted divorced. 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:53.000 Deborah was married to Eric Rudolf's older brother, Joel for 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:55.360 six years before they divorced in nineteen ninety one. 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.719 I have thought about it since very recently, actually thought 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.320 about going back to my maiden name. But you know, 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.320 that's a big paint in the ass. Name is nothing. 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:06.920 A name is nothing, It's a name. 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:10.439 Deborah tells me about how she first met Joel Rudolph. 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.080 She was at a restaurant. He winked at her, and 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:15.920 she had the waitress send him a note that said 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.800 call me. She later met the entire family at a 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.800 Thanksgiving dinner where ak forty sevens were brought out to 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:27.040 shoot and religion was talked about passionately. Much of it 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.760 she felt was brought on by Eric Rudolph's mother, Pat. 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:37.160 Tell me about Pat. Pat. 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.720 She was a novice, what was going to be a 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:45.000 nun and she left the convent before she took her vowels. 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:50.920 One word to describe Pat pioneer woman hiking walking. She 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.880 was very crafty, very crafty. She got into a lot 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.240 of different things. She had tried roma therapy for a while, 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.360 and she was really into tofu for a while. So 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:05.840 Eric used to make a joke. He goes, oh my god, 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:10.400 Mom's making tofu again. So I mean there were some 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.920 good times. I mean we laughed and wasn't also serious 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.839 and bad and preaching. But Pat, she had a search 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.520 for the church. Eric would say that that was a 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.560 phrase coined by Eric mom's search for the church. 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.720 Pat Rudolph was a religious seeker and remains one to 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:32.280 this day. 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.040 Along with Deborah, I also sought out the insights of 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.199 Mark Podock, previously editor in chief at Southern Poverty Law 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.240 Center for twenty years. His research focused on hate groups, 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:48.800 domestic terrorism, and extremist ideology and how these things crept 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:53.360 into the political mainstream. With that, he had also heavily 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.839 studied Eric Rudoff's actions, his family, and his background. 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:03.040 Early on as a Roman Catholic non novitiate. But she 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:06.880 kind of jumped from this set of faith ideas to 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.000 that set to another set. Throughout her life, as she 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.800 said herself, she's always searching for sort of spiritual meaning. 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.000 And this really was the kind of animating idea inside 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:21.280 this family to kind of pursue some of these ideas 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:23.360 of who and where was God really and that kind 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:23.720 of thing. 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.360 There's a family member that's clearly missing from these conversations, 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:32.160 the father, Bob, and that's because he died when Eric 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.600 Rudolf is just fourteen. Not much as known about Bob, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.680 but his death ignited a paranoid spark in the family, 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:40.880 one that had long been lying dormant. 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:46.000 When Eric's father was sick with melanoma, he was very 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:51.200 interested in sort of alternative medicine cures, and in particular leatrill, 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.720 something made from poisonous pits of apricots. 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.920 To this day, the drug leatrill is still not approved 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.520 by the FDA, and it has never proven to be 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:04.760 an effective treatment for cancer, but the family believed it 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:08.400 would cure their dad, so naturally, there are folks who 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.160 speculate that this is one of the root causes for 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.960 the anti government sentiment within the Rudolph family. 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:17.800 Certainly, I don't think that the latural episode, you know, 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.560 was the one factor that sort of drove an otherwise 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.960 perfectly normal, middle of the road family into the sort 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.280 of arms of the radical right. I think this was 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:30.440 a much longer standard development, and it particularly seemed to 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.160 originate with Pat Rudolph, the mother, you know, who was 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.720 very interested in all kinds of unorthodox ideas. You know, 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:42.320 vaccines are evil, the government is hiding successful medical cures. 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:44.560 You know, they could cure cancer, but they won't tell 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:46.640 us how to do it. And ultimately some of those 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:49.840 ideas were transmitted, at least in some form to several 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:50.480 of her children. 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:55.400 This was long before the digital age and social media. 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.200 Pat Rudolph found this world through a few neighbors and 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:03.680 church friends. One of these folks was Lord Davis, a 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.640 white supremacist who headed a very radical group in western 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:11.080 North Carolina called the North Point Tactical Teams. Another was 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.480 Tom Brandham, the Rudolph's next door neighbor in Topton, who 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:18.080 you heard from last episode. Brandham and the family were 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:18.800 very close. 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.400 He had a big influence on Pat. He's the one 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.800 that found that land up there in the mountains. Hey, 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:26.720 you know, there's only a half acres up here, and 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:31.720 you know you're gonna love it. So, being anti government 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.600 thinker that he is, he wasn't memorable in a crazy 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:37.440 whack away because the dude was like. 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:39.400 Out there. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.680 You know, he's one of these apocalyptic kind of guys. 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:44.640 You know what I'm saying, Well, there's ever an apocolose, 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.640 there's ever you know, Uh, they're going to come in 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.040 and take over our country. You know, I'm armed to 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:51.720 the hilt and I got all these damn cam goods 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:53.520 in my house that I got gasoline stored in the back, 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:55.920 and I live in a brick o block house. I 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.880 think he had some major influence over those boys too, 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.360 and it was not good, not good. 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.639 This part of western North Carolina had been home to 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.760 all kinds of radical rightists, white supremacists, jew haters of 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:14.239 all kinds. They lived an extremely rural life. So you know, 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.439 Eric is growing up in a home in which things 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.119 like Holocaust denial pamphlets are floating around all the time. 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:24.480 And in fact we know that because Eric, in ninth 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:28.399 grade at Nantahala High School, submitted an essay to his 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:31.640 teacher in which he denied the existence of the Holocaust. 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:35.760 He told his teacher that it was based on a 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:37.440 pamphlet that he'd found in his home. 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.160 Eric Rudolph only made his way through the ninth grade 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.880 before his mother decided to homeschool on The decision went 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.840 hand in hand with Pat's search for the church. It 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.800 was convenient for moving the family around, always looking for 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.600 the next thing. The first move, as we've heard, was 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.320 to top to North Carolina, where they lived off the grid, 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.359 growing their own food and using a water pump system 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:06.040 they built themselves. Then, in nineteen eighty three, Pat moved 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:08.680 eighteen year old Eric Rudolf and his younger brother Jamie 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.840 from Topton to Chelseaity, Missouri, to a Christian identity compound 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.640 called the Church of Israel, and that's when things got 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:18.080 a hell of a lot stranger. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.600 The Church of Israel is essentially a religious kind of 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.960 compound or set of buildings run by a guy for 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.800 many many years named Dan Gamon. The theology practiced by 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.159 Dan Gaman and the Church of Israel was a version 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.760 of a theology known as Christian Identity, and Christian Identity 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:43.000 in its more radical version, is really quite something. This 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:47.639 theology posits the idea that what really happened in the 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.120 Garden of Eden was not Eve taking a bite from 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.520 an apple from the tree of knowledge. No, no, that 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:56.680 was you know, that's how the Old Testament has been 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.840 mistranslated for the ears of children. You only knew what 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.480 the original writings really said, you would know that what 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.480 really happened was Eve had sex with the serpent in 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:12.320 the garden and gave birth to Cain. And you know, 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.440 the story goes on from there. But basically, Christian Identity 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:20.680 says that the people who call themselves Jews today are 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.840 not the Hebrews of the Old Testament, but in fact 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:30.440 are the direct biological descendants of Satan himself. They are 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:36.000 Satanic literally, and are working every day to prepare the 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:40.040 earth for the return of their father Satan and his rulership. 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.720 Dan Dayman was at the heart of a very very 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:49.680 radical movement, and in fact, in one remarkable episode, Gaiman 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:55.280 was given and accepted ten thousand dollars from a very 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.680 scary terrorist group called the Order. This is a group 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.600 that believed Jews and rice mixers need to be killed 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:04.840 to make the world a better place, and so Dan 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:09.440 Gaman treated Eric Rudolf like a very special kind of disciple. 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.080 In the few interviews Pat has done since the bombings, 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.320 she admits regret when speaking about the family's time at 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:24.400 Church of Israel. Quote everybody makes mistakes, Pat says about 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:29.320 the experience. So Pat Rudolph left with her son Jamie, 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.960 but Eric Rudolph stayed at the compound. He had designs 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.040 of his own, and the head of the church, Dan Gamon, 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:40.480 took a particular interest in Rudolph, seeing him as a 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:46.720 surrogate son and a potential successor. Eric Rudolph went to 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:51.520 Missouri at age eighteen, and so did I. He went 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.240 to a Christian identity compound. I went to journalism school. 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.119 He took cues from six or seven people in his 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.960 immediate vicinity growing up and took a severe, hard right turn. 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.120 I took cues from six or seven people, including him, 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:13.280 that steered me in a different direction. And that's really 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:14.520 all it takes. 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.640 You know, so much of what we believe is perspective 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:23.639 and how we see things. So there was a time 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:28.320 when I fiercely defended Eric and just you know, could 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:29.760 not believe that he did that. 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:32.800 I'm speaking to a former member of the Church of 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:36.119 Israel who wished to remain anonymous. She lived on the 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.600 compound at the same time as Eric Rudolf and was 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:40.280 very close with him during his time there. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:45.040 It's very difficult for people to understand how, even as 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.879 a teenager, someone could willingly get involved with a group 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.040 like that. You know, I guess when I came on 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.840 the scene, they were very much pushing sort of an 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:01.200 evangelical Christian image, which is kind of what my family 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:05.320 was more about. Dan was trying to pull in fresh blood, 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:09.080 new people, young people, and he had had a lot 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:13.320 of psychology and he's just naturally extremely manipulative. I mean, 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:17.920 he is a true cult leader, but more of the 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:24.640 Bible based cult genre, and he's really dangerous in that way. 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:30.879 They just demonize whoever disagrees with them. He is in 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:33.520 his eighties now, so I don't think he's as effective 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.719 as he was, but he was pretty much in his prime. 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:40.399 I'd say when I met him. When Eric got involved 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:45.240 in Eric's mom and brothers, and I think these predators 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.119 they really prey upon people who have something missing in 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:54.200 their lives, you know, father, hunger, PTSD, some kind of need, 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:56.600 and then they just move in and fill that need 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:00.720 with all this mistake love. And all you had to 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:03.159 do was throw Eric's ego a little bit and you 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.639 had him. 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.040 While working on this project, I've found myself asking the 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:14.400 same question over and over, when do ideas turn into action? 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:16.880 For Rudolph and for. 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:20.960 So many narcissistic types appealing to the egos, the activation code, 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:26.320 the trigger word. Once they hear it, the mission is greenlit. 0:23:27.160 --> 0:23:30.200