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Speaker 3: You know, as a young police officer starting my career
Speaker 3: in Murphy, Rudolph was not something that was talked about,
Speaker 3: you know, every day.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, Jeff Postell was a twenty
Speaker 1: one year old rookie police officer in Murphy, North Carolina.
Speaker 4: Growing up in the area.
Speaker 1: He saw the Manhunter Eric Rudolph Ebb and flow over
Speaker 1: the years.
Speaker 3: Was there a notion, was there knowledge? Was there information
Speaker 3: that he was still wanted? Yes, but his name did
Speaker 3: not come up as often. The manhunt had really died out.
Speaker 1: Postel was just sixteen years old when the Man Hunter
Speaker 1: Rudolph began. By this point, five years under the search,
Speaker 1: there were just a few federal agents.
Speaker 4: Left in the area.
Speaker 1: No sightings, no leads, nothing.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of speculation that he was dead,
Speaker 3: lot of speculation that he was, you know, sitting on
Speaker 3: some beach in the Caribbean. There was no proof, there
Speaker 3: was no solid information or intelligence that was coming forth
Speaker 3: that he was still actively in that area.
Speaker 4: Episode six, Death to the New World Order.
Speaker 3: Then it was a pain in the butt of a shift,
Speaker 3: and I will tell you I hated it, and frankly
Speaker 3: be honest with it, didn't nothing ever happened.
Speaker 1: On May thirty first, two thousand and three, Jeff Postell
Speaker 1: was working the overnight shift ten at night to six
Speaker 1: in the morning.
Speaker 3: And some nights I would go through areas with no headlights,
Speaker 3: and this night I went into the Valley Village shopping
Speaker 3: center and immediately turned off my head lights and cut
Speaker 3: through the parking lot, and as I came around the
Speaker 3: left side of the building, I activated my right alley
Speaker 3: spotlight and I observed a silhouette of somebody kind of
Speaker 3: crouched down in the road, almost like they were kind
Speaker 3: of sneaking over to the rear of the building. And
Speaker 3: when I drove up on this person, I startled them
Speaker 3: as they startled me and I exited my patrol car,
Speaker 3: took cover behind my door with my weapon drawn, and
Speaker 3: began giving commands to who this individual was to come
Speaker 3: out show me their hands, and after a few moments,
Speaker 3: the individual emerged from the loading dock, came down onto
Speaker 3: the pavement, and I made him get down on their stomach.
Speaker 3: To me, it was somebody that was potentially breaking into
Speaker 3: a business, potentially had a weapon, and so I handcuffed
Speaker 3: the individual as he was lying on the ground before
Speaker 3: the first backup unit arrived, and we began kind of
Speaker 3: doing a field investigation of what was going on. Who
Speaker 3: he was, checked him for id You know, he had
Speaker 3: told me initially that he had no idea on him.
Speaker 3: He had hitchhiked from Murphy from Ohio. So I asked
Speaker 3: him for his name and day of birth. He gave
Speaker 3: me a name, He give me a day of birth.
Speaker 3: I had our dispatch center run him through the National
Speaker 3: Crime Information Center and there was no return for any
Speaker 3: of the information, so there was no match found. The
Speaker 3: sheriff's deputy who had arrived on scene, he pulled me
Speaker 3: off to the side and said, you know, this guy
Speaker 3: has a very uncanny resemblance to Eric Rudolph. When nothing
Speaker 3: came back from the name of day of birth that
Speaker 3: he give us, we then asked, well, do you have
Speaker 3: a social Security number, you have any other identification that
Speaker 3: would help us prove who you are, And at first
Speaker 3: he says, you know, I don't have a sobial Security number. Well,
Speaker 3: when he was pushed on that a little bit more,
Speaker 3: he changed his comments and he said, well, I've not
Speaker 3: really had a need for him for the last several years.
Speaker 3: I took him into custody for safekeeping, and that was
Speaker 3: to kind of give him a place to get out
Speaker 3: of the element, to put his head down on a
Speaker 3: pillow at night, to get a hot meal in him,
Speaker 3: and also give us a little bit of time to
Speaker 3: kind of further investigate this. So I loaded him up
Speaker 3: into my police car and I took him down to
Speaker 3: the Sheriff's office to the detention center.
Speaker 1: FBI agent Rick Swine, who is now the supervisor to
Speaker 1: the search, got the call from the sheriff around three am.
Speaker 5: The rest of us are high tailing it out eighty
Speaker 5: miles an hour on the road to Murphy. I'm working
Speaker 5: the phones. I'm talking to Sieges, the Criminal Justice information
Speaker 5: system up in West Virginia that processes all the fingerprints,
Speaker 5: and I'm trying to get him to expedite this set
Speaker 5: of finger prints because ruff had been printed in the military,
Speaker 5: so we had known prints. So we're trying to get
Speaker 5: verification that it's him. And I call up there and
Speaker 5: the guy goes, yeah, we'll have him for you Monday morning.
Speaker 5: And said, now, let me give you the identification order,
Speaker 5: which is the number on the wanted poster, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 5: I'll have him for you in twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Back at the Sheriff's office, the man who identified himself
Speaker 1: as Jerry Wilson was being held in a booking room.
Speaker 3: So I immediately went across the hallway to the office
Speaker 3: and pulled up the FBI's website and began looking for
Speaker 3: the FBI wanted poster for Eric Rudolph. So it's got
Speaker 3: his pictures and it's got his you know, all these
Speaker 3: descriptions on who he was or what he looked like,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of went hight, okay, check wait.
Speaker 3: Wait was a little debatable, right, but when we get
Speaker 3: into the hair color, the eye color, I kind of
Speaker 3: started going check check, receding hairline check and then you
Speaker 3: get down to noticeable mark, scars and tattoos, and it
Speaker 3: says that Eric Rudolph had a very noticeable scar to
Speaker 3: his chin. And to this day, I'll never forget looking
Speaker 3: over my shoulder across the hallway and seeing Eric Rudolph
Speaker 3: with his hands behind his back in a holding chair,
Speaker 3: looking up at the ceiling and staring at me. Was
Speaker 3: the scar on his chin. And so we printed off
Speaker 3: the FBI wanted poster and the four of us, the
Speaker 3: four officers, went into the holding area with the wanted
Speaker 3: poster stuck in behind his head so he couldn't see it.
Speaker 3: So we're kind of looking at the picture, looking back
Speaker 3: at the picture, looking at the picture, looking back at him,
Speaker 3: back and forth for a few moments, at which time
Speaker 3: one of the officers said, tell us who you are,
Speaker 3: and he replied, well, what does the paper say, And
Speaker 3: we said, well, that's not the question. It was asked,
Speaker 3: tell us who you really are, And there was a
Speaker 3: brief pause, and he says, I'm Eric Robert Rudolph, and
Speaker 3: you've got me.
Speaker 6: He disappeared into the mountains almost five years ago. But
Speaker 6: no one in this area, and no law enforcement agent
Speaker 6: ever gave up on finding him. This morning, at four
Speaker 6: point thirty in the morning, an alert Murphy police officer
Speaker 6: noticed something unusual going on behind the Valley Village shopping
Speaker 6: center here in Murphy and ultimately arrested Eric Robert Rudolph
Speaker 6: at about four thirty am this morning.
Speaker 1: It's poetic in a way the way the search came
Speaker 1: to an end, because it's so mundane. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was hunted by hundreds of federal agents for five years,
Speaker 1: and in the end he was caught by a local
Speaker 1: police officer who wasn't even looking for him, caught dumpster diving.
Speaker 1: It's all very sloppy. Agent Rick Schwin remembers Rudolph's behavior
Speaker 1: just after his arrest.
Speaker 5: I mean, he had a great poker face. He just
Speaker 5: seemed unfazed by everything that was going.
Speaker 7: On around me.
Speaker 5: The only time I think that he showed any emotion.
Speaker 5: We obtained through the North Carolina National Guards some uh
Speaker 5: sixty Blackhawks to fly him from Murphy to Asheville for
Speaker 5: his initial appearance. You know, it's a long road out there,
Speaker 5: to a forty minute drive, and so we flew him
Speaker 5: and the agents at escort of Humes said that he
Speaker 5: didn't quite break down, But it was clear that he
Speaker 5: understood that this was the last view he was going
Speaker 5: to have with the mountains of western North Carolina. But
Speaker 5: I think that's the only time in my awareness that
Speaker 5: he showed any kind of emotion at all.
Speaker 4: Maybe he was tired, tired of running. Has this settled
Speaker 4: in what.
Speaker 3: Has just happened today?
Speaker 2: And you have her all this time?
Speaker 3: If he thought all the speculation whether.
Speaker 4: He's alive, did he's gone out of the area, Has.
Speaker 1: It settled in what happens for you have probably not?
Speaker 6: I mean, I know with the officers you see as
Speaker 6: you see up here, every one of them invested a
Speaker 6: substantial amount of their life and their time up here looking.
Speaker 6: But you know, five years a long time, and a
Speaker 6: lot of people thought that, you know, that we had
Speaker 6: given up, and in fact, everybody here had spent a
Speaker 6: lot of times behind the scene still looking for him.
Speaker 1: But I have a different theory. I think he wanted
Speaker 1: to be caught. At this point in the search, he
Speaker 1: was no longer a story. He was no longer the
Speaker 1: story Eric Rudolph was becoming folklore. Everything I've learned about
Speaker 1: Eric Rudolf tells me that he has this need to
Speaker 1: be the focus of the conversation, to be the center
Speaker 1: of things. And when the search slowed down, when it
Speaker 1: all just turned into a routine, I think he also
Speaker 1: found himself missing that game of cat and mouse. Well,
Speaker 1: the game may have ended, but Rudolf was certainly back
Speaker 1: in the center of attention. Except this time people were
Speaker 1: asking new questions. Instead of where is Eric Rudolf, it
Speaker 1: was who is Eric Rudolf? And what motivated him to
Speaker 1: become a murderer and a terrorist? I'm packing up gear
Speaker 1: from the car with my partner on this podcast. Doug,
Speaker 1: you met him in the last episode. I met him
Speaker 1: on a film he was producing back when I was
Speaker 1: getting my journalism degree. A couple of years later, when
Speaker 1: we sat down to talk about potentially working on podcasts together,
Speaker 1: he was reading a piece in Outside magazine about Eric Rudolf,
Speaker 1: how he carried out these bombings, how he evaded authorities,
Speaker 1: how he disappeared, and how he survived.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's rock it.
Speaker 1: Doug went on about Rudolph's matching up with the rise
Speaker 1: of the religious right, the moral majority, and the growing
Speaker 1: domestic militia movement, and then I said, well, then I've
Speaker 1: got a story for you. I told him about my mom,
Speaker 1: about her pregnancy and the clinic bombing.
Speaker 7: That was that Maymi, You're not cheating any younger.
Speaker 8: They call you mimi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's what my son calls Really.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm a Mimi.
Speaker 4: Yeah cool.
Speaker 1: We're just outside Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. We connected with
Speaker 1: Eric Rudolf's sister in law, Deborah Rudolph, and arranged to
Speaker 1: sit down with her in her home. I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you before getting into Eric, why did you keep
Speaker 1: the Rudolph name?
Speaker 9: You know, I have thought about changing it now I
Speaker 9: don't even know. I just wanted divorced.
Speaker 1: Deborah was married to Eric Rudolf's older brother, Joel for
Speaker 1: six years before they divorced in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 9: I have thought about it since very recently, actually thought
Speaker 9: about going back to my maiden name. But you know,
Speaker 9: that's a big paint in the ass. Name is nothing.
Speaker 9: A name is nothing, It's a name.
Speaker 1: Deborah tells me about how she first met Joel Rudolph.
Speaker 1: She was at a restaurant. He winked at her, and
Speaker 1: she had the waitress send him a note that said
Speaker 1: call me. She later met the entire family at a
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving dinner where ak forty sevens were brought out to
Speaker 1: shoot and religion was talked about passionately. Much of it
Speaker 1: she felt was brought on by Eric Rudolph's mother, Pat.
Speaker 4: Tell me about Pat. Pat.
Speaker 9: She was a novice, what was going to be a
Speaker 9: nun and she left the convent before she took her vowels.
Speaker 9: One word to describe Pat pioneer woman hiking walking. She
Speaker 9: was very crafty, very crafty. She got into a lot
Speaker 9: of different things. She had tried roma therapy for a while,
Speaker 9: and she was really into tofu for a while. So
Speaker 9: Eric used to make a joke. He goes, oh my god,
Speaker 9: Mom's making tofu again. So I mean there were some
Speaker 9: good times. I mean we laughed and wasn't also serious
Speaker 9: and bad and preaching. But Pat, she had a search
Speaker 9: for the church. Eric would say that that was a
Speaker 9: phrase coined by Eric mom's search for the church.
Speaker 7: Pat Rudolph was a religious seeker and remains one to
Speaker 7: this day.
Speaker 1: Along with Deborah, I also sought out the insights of
Speaker 1: Mark Podock, previously editor in chief at Southern Poverty Law
Speaker 1: Center for twenty years. His research focused on hate groups,
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism, and extremist ideology and how these things crept
Speaker 1: into the political mainstream. With that, he had also heavily
Speaker 1: studied Eric Rudoff's actions, his family, and his background.
Speaker 7: Early on as a Roman Catholic non novitiate. But she
Speaker 7: kind of jumped from this set of faith ideas to
Speaker 7: that set to another set. Throughout her life, as she
Speaker 7: said herself, she's always searching for sort of spiritual meaning.
Speaker 7: And this really was the kind of animating idea inside
Speaker 7: this family to kind of pursue some of these ideas
Speaker 7: of who and where was God really and that kind
Speaker 7: of thing.
Speaker 1: There's a family member that's clearly missing from these conversations,
Speaker 1: the father, Bob, and that's because he died when Eric
Speaker 1: Rudolf is just fourteen. Not much as known about Bob,
Speaker 1: but his death ignited a paranoid spark in the family,
Speaker 1: one that had long been lying dormant.
Speaker 7: When Eric's father was sick with melanoma, he was very
Speaker 7: interested in sort of alternative medicine cures, and in particular leatrill,
Speaker 7: something made from poisonous pits of apricots.
Speaker 1: To this day, the drug leatrill is still not approved
Speaker 1: by the FDA, and it has never proven to be
Speaker 1: an effective treatment for cancer, but the family believed it
Speaker 1: would cure their dad, so naturally, there are folks who
Speaker 1: speculate that this is one of the root causes for
Speaker 1: the anti government sentiment within the Rudolph family.
Speaker 7: Certainly, I don't think that the latural episode, you know,
Speaker 7: was the one factor that sort of drove an otherwise
Speaker 7: perfectly normal, middle of the road family into the sort
Speaker 7: of arms of the radical right. I think this was
Speaker 7: a much longer standard development, and it particularly seemed to
Speaker 7: originate with Pat Rudolph, the mother, you know, who was
Speaker 7: very interested in all kinds of unorthodox ideas. You know,
Speaker 7: vaccines are evil, the government is hiding successful medical cures.
Speaker 7: You know, they could cure cancer, but they won't tell
Speaker 7: us how to do it. And ultimately some of those
Speaker 7: ideas were transmitted, at least in some form to several
Speaker 7: of her children.
Speaker 1: This was long before the digital age and social media.
Speaker 1: Pat Rudolph found this world through a few neighbors and
Speaker 1: church friends. One of these folks was Lord Davis, a
Speaker 1: white supremacist who headed a very radical group in western
Speaker 1: North Carolina called the North Point Tactical Teams. Another was
Speaker 1: Tom Brandham, the Rudolph's next door neighbor in Topton, who
Speaker 1: you heard from last episode. Brandham and the family were
Speaker 1: very close.
Speaker 9: He had a big influence on Pat. He's the one
Speaker 9: that found that land up there in the mountains. Hey,
Speaker 9: you know, there's only a half acres up here, and
Speaker 9: you know you're gonna love it. So, being anti government
Speaker 9: thinker that he is, he wasn't memorable in a crazy
Speaker 9: whack away because the dude was like.
Speaker 4: Out there.
Speaker 9: You know, he's one of these apocalyptic kind of guys.
Speaker 9: You know what I'm saying, Well, there's ever an apocolose,
Speaker 9: there's ever you know, Uh, they're going to come in
Speaker 9: and take over our country. You know, I'm armed to
Speaker 9: the hilt and I got all these damn cam goods
Speaker 9: in my house that I got gasoline stored in the back,
Speaker 9: and I live in a brick o block house. I
Speaker 9: think he had some major influence over those boys too,
Speaker 9: and it was not good, not good.
Speaker 7: This part of western North Carolina had been home to
Speaker 7: all kinds of radical rightists, white supremacists, jew haters of
Speaker 7: all kinds. They lived an extremely rural life. So you know,
Speaker 7: Eric is growing up in a home in which things
Speaker 7: like Holocaust denial pamphlets are floating around all the time.
Speaker 7: And in fact we know that because Eric, in ninth
Speaker 7: grade at Nantahala High School, submitted an essay to his
Speaker 7: teacher in which he denied the existence of the Holocaust.
Speaker 7: He told his teacher that it was based on a
Speaker 7: pamphlet that he'd found in his home.
Speaker 1: Eric Rudolph only made his way through the ninth grade
Speaker 1: before his mother decided to homeschool on The decision went
Speaker 1: hand in hand with Pat's search for the church. It
Speaker 1: was convenient for moving the family around, always looking for
Speaker 1: the next thing. The first move, as we've heard, was
Speaker 1: to top to North Carolina, where they lived off the grid,
Speaker 1: growing their own food and using a water pump system
Speaker 1: they built themselves. Then, in nineteen eighty three, Pat moved
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Eric Rudolf and his younger brother Jamie
Speaker 1: from Topton to Chelseaity, Missouri, to a Christian identity compound
Speaker 1: called the Church of Israel, and that's when things got
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot stranger.
Speaker 7: The Church of Israel is essentially a religious kind of
Speaker 7: compound or set of buildings run by a guy for
Speaker 7: many many years named Dan Gamon. The theology practiced by
Speaker 7: Dan Gaman and the Church of Israel was a version
Speaker 7: of a theology known as Christian Identity, and Christian Identity
Speaker 7: in its more radical version, is really quite something. This
Speaker 7: theology posits the idea that what really happened in the
Speaker 7: Garden of Eden was not Eve taking a bite from
Speaker 7: an apple from the tree of knowledge. No, no, that
Speaker 7: was you know, that's how the Old Testament has been
Speaker 7: mistranslated for the ears of children. You only knew what
Speaker 7: the original writings really said, you would know that what
Speaker 7: really happened was Eve had sex with the serpent in
Speaker 7: the garden and gave birth to Cain. And you know,
Speaker 7: the story goes on from there. But basically, Christian Identity
Speaker 7: says that the people who call themselves Jews today are
Speaker 7: not the Hebrews of the Old Testament, but in fact
Speaker 7: are the direct biological descendants of Satan himself. They are
Speaker 7: Satanic literally, and are working every day to prepare the
Speaker 7: earth for the return of their father Satan and his rulership.
Speaker 7: Dan Dayman was at the heart of a very very
Speaker 7: radical movement, and in fact, in one remarkable episode, Gaiman
Speaker 7: was given and accepted ten thousand dollars from a very
Speaker 7: scary terrorist group called the Order. This is a group
Speaker 7: that believed Jews and rice mixers need to be killed
Speaker 7: to make the world a better place, and so Dan
Speaker 7: Gaman treated Eric Rudolf like a very special kind of disciple.
Speaker 1: In the few interviews Pat has done since the bombings,
Speaker 1: she admits regret when speaking about the family's time at
Speaker 1: Church of Israel. Quote everybody makes mistakes, Pat says about
Speaker 1: the experience. So Pat Rudolph left with her son Jamie,
Speaker 1: but Eric Rudolph stayed at the compound. He had designs
Speaker 1: of his own, and the head of the church, Dan Gamon,
Speaker 1: took a particular interest in Rudolph, seeing him as a
Speaker 1: surrogate son and a potential successor. Eric Rudolph went to
Speaker 1: Missouri at age eighteen, and so did I. He went
Speaker 1: to a Christian identity compound. I went to journalism school.
Speaker 1: He took cues from six or seven people in his
Speaker 1: immediate vicinity growing up and took a severe, hard right turn.
Speaker 1: I took cues from six or seven people, including him,
Speaker 1: that steered me in a different direction. And that's really
Speaker 1: all it takes.
Speaker 8: You know, so much of what we believe is perspective
Speaker 8: and how we see things. So there was a time
Speaker 8: when I fiercely defended Eric and just you know, could
Speaker 8: not believe that he did that.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to a former member of the Church of
Speaker 1: Israel who wished to remain anonymous. She lived on the
Speaker 1: compound at the same time as Eric Rudolf and was
Speaker 1: very close with him during his time there.
Speaker 8: It's very difficult for people to understand how, even as
Speaker 8: a teenager, someone could willingly get involved with a group
Speaker 8: like that. You know, I guess when I came on
Speaker 8: the scene, they were very much pushing sort of an
Speaker 8: evangelical Christian image, which is kind of what my family
Speaker 8: was more about. Dan was trying to pull in fresh blood,
Speaker 8: new people, young people, and he had had a lot
Speaker 8: of psychology and he's just naturally extremely manipulative. I mean,
Speaker 8: he is a true cult leader, but more of the
Speaker 8: Bible based cult genre, and he's really dangerous in that way.
Speaker 8: They just demonize whoever disagrees with them. He is in
Speaker 8: his eighties now, so I don't think he's as effective
Speaker 8: as he was, but he was pretty much in his prime.
Speaker 8: I'd say when I met him. When Eric got involved
Speaker 8: in Eric's mom and brothers, and I think these predators
Speaker 8: they really prey upon people who have something missing in
Speaker 8: their lives, you know, father, hunger, PTSD, some kind of need,
Speaker 8: and then they just move in and fill that need
Speaker 8: with all this mistake love. And all you had to
Speaker 8: do was throw Eric's ego a little bit and you
Speaker 8: had him.
Speaker 1: While working on this project, I've found myself asking the
Speaker 1: same question over and over, when do ideas turn into action?
Speaker 4: For Rudolph and for.
Speaker 1: So many narcissistic types appealing to the egos, the activation code,
Speaker 1: the trigger word. Once they hear it, the mission is greenlit.
Speaker 8: I feel like it's kind of like Donald Trump, who
Speaker 8: needs to answer for what he did with what happened
Speaker 8: on January sixth. It's the same type of thing with
Speaker 8: Dan Gaymon. You know, I feel like he's behind a
Speaker 8: lot of these acts of violence.
Speaker 9: Eric Hayde my guts from the get He likes submissive women,
Speaker 9: and I'm not submissive. I think when he really opened
Speaker 9: up with Sober Thanksgiving, because they were like soldier of
Speaker 9: Fortune magazines laying around, he would talk about being a mercenary,
Speaker 9: and you know, and of course I was. You know,
Speaker 9: this was something new to me. This is like you know,
Speaker 9: he would talk about you know, philosophy and you know,
Speaker 9: being a mercenary and his opinion of the Bible, and
Speaker 9: you listen and then all of a sudden you're like, oh,
Speaker 9: anti government, what is that? I've never heard of that?
Speaker 9: And then you think, well, have I gotten this wrong
Speaker 9: all my life? You know, he'd get real animated, and
Speaker 9: just watching them react to things on TV, you pick
Speaker 9: up what their life is about and what their lifestyle
Speaker 9: is about. They thought it was the electric TV was
Speaker 9: the electric juice. And he'd jump up and he'd be
Speaker 9: marching up down in front of the TV and be
Speaker 9: very animated about something on TV, some kind of news
Speaker 9: story or some kind of show or something.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: The credits would roll and he'd get on his thing
Speaker 9: about the Jews and how they run the media. And
Speaker 9: look at that name. You know that's Jewish and you
Speaker 9: know they run the media, they run the banks, they
Speaker 9: run the stalk Mark, they run everything. This country they've
Speaker 9: been they've broke every country they've ever been in. They've
Speaker 9: been run out of every country. You know, no wonder
Speaker 9: there a people without a home or some crap like that.
Speaker 9: I mean, he would just get justcum nuts.
Speaker 1: As Rudolph's racism and hatred grew during this time, he
Speaker 1: was being fed a steady diet of anti government, white
Speaker 1: Christian nationalist ideas by the people around him, ideas straight
Speaker 1: out of the Christian identity theology. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: this militant theology was beginning to find common cause with
Speaker 1: the more mainstream religious right, the moral majority, and political
Speaker 1: conservatism in general. In other words, just as Eric Rudolph
Speaker 1: was beginning to make a plan to take his ideas
Speaker 1: and grow them into a blueprint for action, all these
Speaker 1: extremeists ideas were simultaneously beginning, slowly but surely to seep
Speaker 1: into the mainstream.
Speaker 7: You know, the ideas we hear about today from the
Speaker 7: radical right from January sixth, insurrections and the rest of
Speaker 7: them are direct descendants, you know, of the same ideas
Speaker 7: that the Rudolph family was talking about over their kitchen table.
Speaker 7: It's worth remembering that when Eric Rudolph sent letters to
Speaker 7: the media, he signed them typically death to the New
Speaker 7: World Order.
Speaker 4: In the eighties and nineties, for many Christians, the end
Speaker 4: times described in the Book of Revelation was finally upon us.
Speaker 4: Revelation prophesied the emergence of a charismatic figure known as
Speaker 4: the Antichrist, who is destined to be the leader of
Speaker 4: a singular global government, the New World Order. This end
Speaker 4: time scenario was a fundamental piece of their theology, and
Speaker 4: for millions of Evangelical Christians it still is. But back
Speaker 4: in the nineties, fear of this new world Order was
Speaker 4: spawning a renewed interest in survivalism and paramilitarism, as people
Speaker 4: on the far right stockpiled their home arsenals and actively
Speaker 4: prepared for apocalyptic scenarios. At the time, political scientists warned
Speaker 4: that hysteria about the New World Order could have devastating
Speaker 4: effects on American life, everything from escalating lone wolf terrorism
Speaker 4: to the rise of authoritarian ultra nationalist demagogues.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, the New World Order is the boogeyman,
Speaker 7: the imaginary plot conjured up by radical right militias in
Speaker 7: this country as the enemy. The global elites were going
Speaker 7: to come into our country and basically destroy all that's
Speaker 7: good and right about being American.
Speaker 1: New World Order quickly became a shorthand for a sprawling
Speaker 1: set of fears about the state, the deep state, and
Speaker 1: it went full conspiracy theory very quick balluting into a
Speaker 1: wild eyed fear of Christians being rounded up and put
Speaker 1: into concentration camps run by Communists and Jews. This fear
Speaker 1: legitimate or not, united people across a wide variety of
Speaker 1: different substrains on the right, and for Eric Rudolph back
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, the Olympic Games perfectly represent the
Speaker 1: global singularity that would give rise to a new world order.
Speaker 1: This he simply could not abide.
Speaker 9: And he would watch that and it would just piss
Speaker 9: Eric off. He would be like, Oh, look at all
Speaker 9: the countries coming together, and all the colors coming together,
Speaker 9: and all the races coming together. This is going to
Speaker 9: bring everybody together under a one world government. Blah blah blah,
Speaker 9: blah blah. He hated the Olympics, the fact that all
Speaker 9: these people came together in peace to compete with each
Speaker 9: other in a friendly way, in a good way. And
Speaker 9: that's why I think he blew up the Olympics. He
Speaker 9: hated it. He believed about mud people, about gay people,
Speaker 9: about the different races. Eric would say he wasn't a racist,
Speaker 9: he was a separatist, meaning you should stay true to
Speaker 9: your race, because eventually all these racists are going to
Speaker 9: merge together and we're going to be all one color.
Speaker 9: We're going to be all one people under one world government.
Speaker 9: You know, he's big on that one world government thing.
Speaker 9: This ties him in with the Olympics.
Speaker 1: See did it ever occur to you that he was
Speaker 1: capable of being a domestic terrorist?
Speaker 9: Well, this is what I told Joel. Eric is either
Speaker 9: going to be famous or he's going to be infamous.
Speaker 9: You know, you want to believe that somebody still got
Speaker 9: some good, you know what I mean? You know, I
Speaker 9: never hated Eric. I never disliked Eric. A product of
Speaker 9: his upbring and he took it way beyond.
Speaker 1: For a long time now, the Church of Israel and
Speaker 1: Dan Gamon have been this kind of boogeyman for me. Historically.
Speaker 1: They're militant and hateful. I mean a church that puts
Speaker 1: its members through paramilitary training. That's batshit crazy. From where
Speaker 1: I stand, I was intimidated, but that didn't change the
Speaker 1: facts that I needed to talk to Dan Gamon directly.
Speaker 10: Hello, you have reached to Israel and the Watchmen outreach ministries.
Speaker 10: If you would like to speak to after gaming and
Speaker 10: plead press three all of them by the pound sign.
Speaker 5: Could that Forno Me I Helped You.
Speaker 1: Flashpoint is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: I'm Your Host. Cole La Caassio, Donald Albright and Payne
Speaker 1: Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV. Flashpoint
Speaker 1: was created, written, and executive produced by Doug Mattica and
Speaker 1: myself on behalf of seven nine nine seven. Lead producer
Speaker 1: is Alex Espastad, along with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman.
Speaker 4: Our associate producer is Witt Lakassio.
Speaker 1: Editing by Alex Espostad with additional editing by Liam Luxon
Speaker 1: and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 4: Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station sixteen.
Speaker 1: Original music by Jay Ragsdale mixed by Dayton Cole. Thank
Speaker 1: you to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at Uta Beck
Speaker 1: Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Angela q, Tylie Revive, Mattica and Tim Livingston. For more
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Flashpoint. This series
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