<p>Serial bomber Eric Rudolph on Wednesday pleaded guilty to the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and two other Atlanta explosions after confessing to bombing an Alabama abortion clinic earlier in the day.</p><p>The pleas will spare Rudolph, 38, from the death penalty. Instead, he is expected to be sentenced to four consecutive life terms. The four blasts killed two people, including a police officer, and wounded more than 120 others.</p><p>When asked if he was guilty of all the bombings, a polite but curt Rudolph responded "I am."</p><p>The downtown Atlanta courthouse where Rudolph entered his pleas is only two blocks from Centennial Olympic Park, where a bomb hidden in a knapsack exploded and sent nails and screws ripping through a crowd at the height of the 1996 Atlanta Games. A woman was killed and 111 others were injured.</p><p>In Birmingham, Ala., earlier Wednesday, Rudolph pleaded guilty to an abortion clinic bombing there that killed a police officer. During that hearing, Rudolph said the government could "just barely" prove its case in the first of a string of bombings that will send him to prison for life.</p><p>Rudolph responded "I certainly did, your honor," when the judge asked him if he detonated the bomb in Birmingham.</p><p>As part of the plea agreement, he told authorities where he buried more than 250 pounds of dynamite buried in the mountains of western North Carolina. The government said some of the unstable explosives were found near populated areas.</p><p>The judge in Birmingham said Rudolph will receive two consecutive life sentences for the Alabama abortion clinic bombing, no fines, $200 in special assessments and an undetermined amount of restitution to the victims to be decided when he is officially sentenced.</p><p>Rudolph, believed to be a follower of a white supremacist religion that is anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-Semitic, eluded a manhunt for more than five years in the Appalachian wilderness. He was captured in Murphy, N.C., in 2003, scavenging for food behind a Save-A-Lot food store.</p><p>Authorities plan to hold Rudolph at the county jail in Birmingham while he awaits sentencing, which will likely be held within three months, court officials said.</p><p>Outside the Birmingham, Ala., courthouse, Emily Lyons, who was critically injured in the Birmingham bombing, said she was "nauseated" that Rudolph's plea will allow him to dodge the death penalty.</p><p>"We've always felt the death penalty is what he deserved. The punishment should fit the crime," Lyons said. "It's just a sickening feeling."</p><p>She said it seems Rudolph is being punished only for the bombs themselves and not the deaths and injuries that the bombs caused.</p><p>"We were a freebie for him," she said.</p><p>___</p><p>Associated Press writers Jay Reeves and Eliott C. McLaughlin in Birmingham, Ala., and Doug Gross in Atlanta contributed to this report.</p>
