Bombing suspect Rudolph captured

MURPHY, NORTH CAROLINA - Eric Rudolph, the longtime fugitive charged in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and in attacks at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, was arrested early Saturday in the mountains of North Carolina.

The FBI confirmed Rudolph's identity through a fingerprint match, authorities said.

"Eric Robert Rudolph, the most notorious American fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list, has been captured and will face American justice," Attorney General John Ashcroft said Saturday. "This sends a clear message that we will never cease in our efforts to hunt down all terrorists, foreign or domestic, and stop them from harming the innocent."

Rudolph was captured when Police Officer Jeffrey Postdale spotted a man rooting through a trash bin behind a grocery and, worried that he might try to break into a business, arrested him, Chief Mark Thigpen said. Rudolph had a large flashlight and a backpack but wasn't armed.

Postdale and other officers didn't initially recognize the man. But when he was taken to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, a deputy thought he looked familiar and the man eventually identified himself as Eric Robert Rudolph, Sheriff Keith Lovin said.

"He was very cooperative, not a bit disrespectful," Postdale said.

Rudolph had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and had eluded a massive manhunt for five years, much of it in the western North Carolina mountains near where he was arrested about 4:30 a.m. in the small town of Murphy. The FBI had offered a $1 million reward for his capture.

The 36-year-old Army veteran and experienced outdoorsman hadn't been seen since July 1998 after he took supplies from a health store owner in North Carolina.

Authorities believed he had fled into the mountains, and as more time passed with no reported sightings of him, some believed he must be dead.

"We always thought he was in the mountains of North Carolina somewhere," said Chris Swecker, the lead FBI agent in the state. "No law enforcement agent ever gave up on finding him."

They spent years searching the hills and caves around Murphy for any trace of Rudolph. Early in the search, they ran across some camping sites believed to be his and found cartons of oatmeal and raisins, jars of peanuts and vitamins, and cans of tuna they said were the same brands Rudolph ate.

Lovin said Rudolph appeared to have lost quite a bit of weight but still looked very much like his picture on wanted posters. He was wearing blue work pants and shirt, jogging shoes, a camouflage jacket and backpack when he was caught.

He didn't resist when he was arrested, Lovin said.

He told police his name was Jerry Wilson, giving his real name only after he was recognized, Thigpen said.

The 1996 bombing at the crowded Olympic park during the summer Olympics in Atlanta followed closely on the heels of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and stunned the world.

The bomb was left hidden in a knapsack in the crowded Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996. When it exploded, it killed one woman and injured 111 other people.

Two years later, Rudolph was charged with that attack and in three others - at a gay nightclub in Atlanta and at an office building north of Atlanta in 1997, and at an abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998. One police officer was killed.

In all, the bombings killed two people and wounded more than 100 people, according to the FBI.

Jeff Lyons, whose wife, Emily, was critically injured in the women's clinic attack in Birmingham, said they had never given up hope that Rudolph would be caught. Saturday morning, a friend called after hearing the news.

"I turned to Emily, and I said 'What news would be worth being woken up for?'" he said. "This is indeed one of the best days we've had in quite some time."

Robert Stadler, whose wife worked at an attorney's office in the Atlanta building that was bombed in 1997, had been inside the building with the couple's baby twins when the bomb exploded. They had made it outside when a second bomb exploded that injured several police officers.

"We had moved on from what happened in 1997," Stadler said Saturday, "but always there was a feeling that Eric Rudolph was somewhere."

Rudolph, a Florida native who moved to western North Carolina in 1981, was believed to adhere to Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that is anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. Some of the four bombs he is charged with planting included messages from the shadowy "Army of God."

The search for Rudolph began a day after the Birmingham blast. He was initially sought as a witness: A gray 1989 Nissan pickup truck registered in his name was seen near the clinic following the explosion.

He was tied to the bombings when authorities who searched a storage locker he had rented in Murphy found nails like those used in the clinic attacks.

At its height, the search for Rudolph in the mountainous region in western North Carolina, just over the Tennessee border, included more than 200 federal agents. In 2000, it was scaled back to less than a handful of agents working out of a National Guard Armory just outside Murphy.

Pockets of western North Carolina have had a reputation as a haven for right-wing extremists. Some there mocked the government's inability to find Rudolph with bloodhounds, infrared-equipped helicopters and space-age motion detectors - and some said they would hide him if asked.

The FBI had said it believed Rudolph was somewhere in the Nantahala National Forest, living on his own, breaking into vacant vacation cabins, stealing from local gardens.