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Crime Story Episode 41: Henry Schuster

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: In the late '90s, a serial bomber was terrorizing the United States. His most famous target was the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, but that was only the beginning. Over the course of two years and four bombings, hundreds of people were injured and two were killed. The bomber managed to elude capture at every turn. He even spent five years living in the woods, where he shot bears, ate salamanders, and racked up the bill for one of the most expensive manhunts in U.S. history, costing the government over $30 million.

SOUNDCLIP

HENRY SCHUSTER: We have this idea, because we've all watched all the shows, that you get the lead and bam, you know, the guy's in handcuffs. But let's put it this way. Even after he hears on the radio that they've got a lead and they've got a name, he still goes to Burger King. And then he goes into a grocery store and he spends $800 on provisions. So by the time they make it to his trailer, he's gone.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Investigative journalist Henry Schuster has written a book about the wild goose chase to find the bomber. He was there when the first bomb went off in Atlanta, and I began our conversation by asking him about a phone call he received the night of July 27th, 1996.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Let me set the scene. It had been a Friday night in Atlanta. I had been at a reception earlier that night with my wife, for the families of the Israeli athletes who were massacred in Munich in 1972. I had met with them earlier, as I had prepared a documentary about security at the Games. So we got home, we're asleep, and I get a phone call that says, you know, something's happened across the street at Centennial Park. It wasn't much of a park at that point, but it had become the gathering point for celebrations, parties, et cetera, in downtown Atlanta. And that's late evening past midnight. There had been a band playing, there had been thousands of people milling around. And in the middle of a performance, a bomb went off. Now, not everybody in the crowd even heard the bomb, but there started being some panicking and pushing and moving. And, indeed, a bomb had gone off. We later found out that it killed one person. Another person who was a cameraman died of a heart attack. Dozens were injured.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And obviously it was huge news at the time that it happened. Can you tell us about the lead up to that a little bit? Because there was somewhat of a warning, right? But it got quite complicated and didn't actually get to the right people at the right time.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, there had been a bomb planted in Centennial Park, but the suspicion fell upon the security guard who noticed a backpack. And the security guard had noticed this pack because a group of rowdy teenagers was sitting there. They got up, they left. The pack was still there. In the process of them looking in it because they thought there might be alcohol in there, the pack got knocked over, which it turned out to be a very fortunate thing. Because inside that pack was a very powerful pipe bomb. And if it had not been knocked over, it would have blown into the crowd. Now, the man who planted that bomb says he tried to call 9-1-1 not once, but twice. He says the first time he tried to call, he was hung up upon. The second time, he delivered a warning that said there's a bomb in Centennial Park, you have 30 minutes. Well, it turns out the warning from 9-1-1 never made it to the people on the ground. And in fact, part of that was because Centennial Park was a new creation. The 9-1-1 operator, remarkably, couldn't find an address for Centennial Park.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the things that I certainly remember about this whole thing, was the fact that the security guard, Richard Jewell, got caught up in it in a way that was quite, in hindsight, very troubling. And I sort of have this memory of, like, seeing him on TV, surrounded by, like, the media scrum that was after him, and him sort of looking just quite terrified. Can you tell me what happened to him?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Yes, I can unfortunately tell you everything that happened to Richard Jewell because, I have to say that we played a role in it. I worked in downtown Atlanta at CNN Center.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Within hours of the bombing there's a news conference. I believe it was the director of the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and he's giving the timeline. He mentions one of his agents, but he also mentions a security guard. And so, of course, we are trying to piece together what is happening ourselves. We're right across the street. A lot of the people from the park flooded CNN Center. We were grabbing them -- we had people downstairs grabbing them, bringing them up, putting them on the air. And the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, they show up, and they start grabbing the people after we're interviewing them. Uh, there had been a couple, Robert and Nancy Gee, and they had a videotape during the bombing. We don't see the bomb go off directly, but you hear the explosion and you see the people moving out. They tried to call the authorities, they couldn't get through. So, they called us and they came to CNN Center. We got the videotape, we put it on the air, and of course, then the FBI wanted a copy. But it was, it was like that. So, we're moving as fast as we can. One of the things that I'm doing is I'm in the newsroom, making all sorts of calls, watching this feed. I hear the mention of the security guard. I remember turning to somebody in our bookings unit -- you know, these are the people who can find anybody and get them on the air -- and said, we need to find that security guard. And they found him. They found him through the security company. And, you know, these people realize, hey, we got a hero on our hands. And so, it's about 14 hours later. It feels like ten days later, but it's about 14 hours later. Richard Jewell and his mom come to CNN Center to go on camera for an interview. And I remember us meeting Richard. He's taken into makeup, he's brought into the newsroom. He's overawed by what's around him. He can't believe that he's part of the centre of attention. Senator Sam Nunn, who was the senior senator from Georgia at the time, was in the newsroom. He shook his hand. I think I remember that Newt Gingrich was also there, and... [Kathleen chuckles] he said something to him. And then Richard gets put on our set. Now, this is where things really seriously go off the rails. Because a couple of things happen. One of the things that happens is that one of the people who's watching this interview is the president of a small college in North Georgia, where Richard Jewell used to work as a security guard and where Richard Jewell got fired from. Because -- he was zealous. You know, he was that little-town cop who wanted to bring everybody to justice. And he got on the wrong side of the president of Piedmont College. And so this guy calls the FBI and says, you know, I have some real problems with this [indistinct]. Well, in the meantime, you know who else is watching? The FBI profilers. And it's important to realize that... You know, profilers, like everybody else, kind of fight the last war. And the last war in this case happened to be the L.A. Olympics, where there was an incident where the guy who planted the bomb was the guy who discovered the bomb, and he did it for attention. So now if you're a profiler, this is where you start adding up one and one and you got three. You got what happened last time in Los Angeles, then you got the guy calling in and saying, you know, there's something funny about this guy. I never liked him and he got into trouble. And boom -- all of a sudden Richard Jewell becomes the main suspect. To the point that the next night they ask a GBI agent who's going over to Richard's house, to go undercover, basically, and wear a wire and try to see if they can draw him out. You know, eventually he gets called to the FBI for an interview, where they basically tried to entrap him and they don't read him his rights. They claim that they're doing a videotape for public safety officers. And finally, somebody he knew was-- who was a lawyer had heard about him on the radio, and got through to FBI headquarters and demanded that Richard get out of there and they leave his client alone. And he walks out, and there's just a storm of media. And what he would later describe as 88 days of hell began for him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Tell me more about that. How so?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Richard couldn't leave without being tailed. He was surveilled by the FBI. They had eyes on him from the sky, they had ground surveillance. It was such a scrum outside of the apartment that the media formed a pool, because [Kathleen scoffs] everybody wanted a stakeout there. So, it was just massively a screw- up. In the meantime, of course, they're trying to build a timeline of what happens in the park. And this is 1996. This is not 2024. Almost nobody has a phone. And if you do have a phone, it doesn't have a camera. And if you have a camera or a video camera, you're not posting it to any sort of form of social media. So, one of the things that the FBI is trying to do is trying to build up a visual timeline. But it's really hard. You know, now, if you remember, like what happened after the Boston Marathon, for example, sometimes now we have too much information. There, they didn't have enough.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Did the second bomb go off before Richard Jewell was no longer a suspect? Like, what's the timeline of that. When did they go-- When did they realize that it wasn't going to be Richard and it had to be somebody else?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, for 88 days since the Olympic Park bombing, Richard is in just the most intense spotlight. After he became named a suspect maybe two or three days later, my colleague and I call up one of his attorneys and we say, you know, come with us. And what we did was we tried to walk from the phone where the second 9-1-1 call had been made, back to the park. And there was no way that Richard Jewell could have gotten to there, to that phone, to make that call. It was just impossible. And in fact, his attorneys would use that within the next day as part of a legal filing. But it didn't stop the media spotlight until finally the U.S. attorney -- somebody I've known since we were kids growing up in Atlanta -- said, you know, enough. This is-- He's not the guy. It's not him. [cross talk]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's not him. Yeah.

HENRY SCHUSTER: That didn't stop people from believing that Richard Jewell had something to do with it. A couple of years ago I was talking to somebody -- a senior person in the FBI who had been there -- and said, yeah, you know, there's still something, he was just still acting weird. Even after all this time, they couldn't let go of the idea that he might have had something to do with it. It was just crazy.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, and for me, what was interesting was that I remember Richard Jewell, I remember him not being the right guy. But what I didn't know until I read your book -- because I guess the story kind of left the national international scene -- was that the same person was now bombing other things. I don't want to get into who he was yet, but I want to know what the next bomb was and then how the FBI or those investigating realized it was connected to the Olympic bombing.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, two bombs happened in fairly close order months after the Olympics. The first one is in January of 1997 -- a suburb of Atlanta called Sandy Springs. There's an abortion clinic. Two bombs are planted. One bomb is planted right outside the window of the clinic; goes off in the morning. And then, as investigators rushed to the scene and they begin to tape off an area, a second bomb goes off. And two things became apparent. It was the same bomber. Forensically, it was the same bomber. And this time, the bomber -- and it was most likely he was going after an abortion clinic, but he was also going after law enforcement.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Because what would happen is the one bomb would go off, the police would get called. They would show up and then the other bomb would go off, and the hope was that that second bomb would kill the cops.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Right. The first bomb was clearly aimed at trying to blow into the abortion clinic and into the room where the abortions were taking place. As luck would have it, the people were not in that room at that time. But clearly, you've got somebody who is now a serial bomber. He's escalating. [KATHLEEN: Mm-hmm.] The intent is pretty clearly to kill people. And, you know, twice.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And when do the-- does the media start to get letters and that whole 'New World Order' issue started [sic] to come up?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, you know, then you get the third incident, which was a gay and lesbian nightclub. This is less than five weeks after the bombings in Sandy Springs. And, again, two bombs. Fortunately, again, this time, when law enforcement comes on the scene for the second bomb, they put in a robot, and...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Nobody's killed.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Nobody's kills, but they, you know, they destroy some clues because [KATHLEEN: Right.] they have to disrupt the bomb. First, they try to use what's called a disruptor. It doesn't work. Second time it works too well, and they blow up a lot of their clues. But they still have a lot of forensics. And again, what they're finding out is that the bomber is evolving. He's using different explosives now: he's gotten his hands on dynamite. So the bombs in some ways are getting a lot more dangerous, and yet nobody has been killed. And if the bomber is trying to send a message, um, well, what the hell? [KATHLEEN: Mm-hmm.] So, finally the bomber mails out four copies of a letter, and then they start-- those letters start by saying, the bombings at Sandy Springs in midtown were carried out by units of the Army of God. Now, the Army of God was sort of a, a loose term for a lot of anti-abortion activists. And he ends by saying death to the New World Order. So now you begin to have a lot of clues. This person invokes the Army of God. This person claims they're part of a movement. But there's something about that, that to investigators does not ring true. They're pretty sure it's one person.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The thing that I found interesting about it is his last bomb -- and we can talk about that -- was much more violent, does kill a man and a police officer in a horrific way. Completely... [cross talk]

HENRY SCHUSTER: Disfigures a nurse.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: ...disfigure a nurse. But he ends up getting caught, it feels like at least, because of a very smart witness.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, it's a couple of witnesses. And so, the bomber has laid low in between bombings. We had gone almost a year without a bomb. Now we're in January 29th, 1998. It's the early morning hours, and we're at the New Women [sic], All Women Health Care Clinic, and it's in Birmingham, Southside. And the bomber, as it turns out this time, wants to see his handiwork. And he escapes, but he's spotted twice as he's leaving. One by a college student who follows him. And student runs into a McDonald's and tries to tell somebody what's going on, and a lawyer overhears him. And suddenly they're like, look across the street. And the lawyer sees a grey pickup truck, and the grey pickup truck has got a license plate that says KND1117. And he writes that down.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He recognizes the guy in the pickup truck.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, with the help of the first witness. [KATHLEEN: Right.] Yes, he recognizes the guy in the pickup truck and he even tries to follow him, but loses him. But he's got an important piece of evidence. He's got a license plate. It takes a while for law enforcement to get its act together, but by that night, they have a name. And it takes them until the next evening, basically, to make it to where they think Eric Robert Rudolph, because that's his name -- suddenly, for the first time, we have a name -- is. But it's not easy finding Eric Robert Rudolph.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, after the two witnesses who went after him that day. Like, what happened? How did he get away?

HENRY SCHUSTER: They were slow. We have this idea that -- because we've all watched all the shows -- that, you know, you get the lead and bam, you know, the guy's in handcuffs. But it takes them more than 24 hours to get to the trailer where Eric Rudolph is living, but he's not living there under his name. And let's put it this way. The next morning he's got time to, you know, return a video to the video store. Even after he hears on the radio that they've got a lead and they've got a name, he still goes to Burger King. And then he goes into a grocery store and he spends $800 on provisions. So, by the time they make it to his trailer, he's gone. He's had his Whopper and fries and he's had his $800-shopping trip at the grocery store.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And they've got five years and the-- a very expensive manhunt on their hands.

HENRY SCHUSTER: And they spend millions of dollars a manhunt.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And we'll get to that. But I just want to know what you can tell us about who he was. What did you learn about his belief system, what he was trying to do?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, Eric Rudolph came from a big family, and his family were, in most ways, driven by his mom, who was a spiritual searcher. She goes from being somebody who wants to become a Catholic nun, to exploring Pentecostalism. And then to moving, like, way out on the fringes, exposing Eric to Christian Identity, which is a white supremacist version of Christianity -- if it can even be called Christianity -- that mixes in some paganism, has these beliefs that the lost tribes of Israel were Anglo-Saxons. It's mixed up in all this sort of mumbo jumbo about the Holy Grail.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And they believe the Bible was written for white people and...

HENRY SCHUSTER: White people. Everybody else are known as mud people.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. It's...

HENRY SCHUSTER: This was--

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: ...a horrible term.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He also had a gay brother, which is always an interesting thing with this.

HENRY SCHUSTER: He still does. I mean, [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] the Rudolph family is fascinating, you know, because you've got the mom, who's the spiritual searcher. You've got Eric, who's a serial bomber. Claims that his first bombs are not about killing, and yet he makes--

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And he did kill somebody.

HENRY SCHUSTER: And he did kill somebody. I mean, come on. And he says he laid low after that, and that's why he didn't carry out the rest of the bombings. Well, I mean, ask yourself, what the hell? I mean, what did you think was going to happen? He says he chose the Olympics because it represented everything. He disliked global socialism, corporate capitalism. His former sister-in-law paints a picture of a guy who referred to the television as the 'electric Jew.' That he wasn't against abortion for everyone, he was just against abortion for white people. And these are things that he later will disavow.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then adding to his contradiction. So there's this guy who believes in no government, you know, all the stuff that he believes in. He joins the Army. Which to me feels like another crazy contradiction to him. Because if you don't believe in the federal government and you don't believe in the country as it is, why would you join the army?

HENRY SCHUSTER: And he wants to not just join the army, but he wants to become an army ranger.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

HENRY SCHUSTER: He will later say that, you know, part of this is to help train him. And yet, you know, again, here come the contradictions. You know, he says he would have been a ranger, except they would-- wanted him for another four years, that he didn't want to sign up again. There's a term that the army has for some of its people called REMFs -- Rear Echelon Mother... you can fill in the rest. And he says that too many of his officers were like that. So, yeah. Why does he join the army? What does he aspire? Later he'll say it's because he wants to be a warrior for the cause.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And it does do him some good because, hopping back into the story, he isn't caught, and he does end up living on the lam for five years.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Yeah. I mean, look, he definitely learned survival skills. He learned enough in the army to, uh, get him a good head start on how to blow things up. He had always been somebody who had gone out into the woods even before he joined the army. You know, especially when he was up in North Carolina. And, you know, he grew pot up there. So when he takes to the woods, you know, he's got the skills to do this. It turns out he says he's been planning since the first bombings that he might have to go into the woods. He's stored some things out in the woods already. He's pre-positioned just in case he has to go on the lam. And a couple of times after each of the bombings, he goes into the woods until he thinks that he's got the all-clear. So, him disappearing after the Birmingham bombing isn't unusual in the sense that, in his mind, he's had to run each time and then he's come back. But never for five years. I don't think he ever imagined that he would be gone for five years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I want to ask you about that time. He insists that he was in the woods, outside, for five years. But from what I read in your book, it doesn't sound like too many people believe that's the case. So do you think that he was being helped during those five years?

HENRY SCHUSTER: So at least once, by everybody's telling, he had help. Just a few months into his time in the woods, uh, where he does break into a guy's house. A guy named George Norman -- he knew George and he knew George's daughter. Because he felt that George shared some of his beliefs and some of his family's beliefs. And he talked about getting pretty comfortable. George would go down into town and Eric would go into George's basement and start pilfering things. And Eric talks about even going upstairs and using his kitchen a couple of times. And one time, Norman's daughter drives up and he has to run out of there, and he keeps hoping that they won't give him up. He leaves Norman a note about can he take his truck, and Norman leaves him a note that says no. But Norman doesn't turn him in.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And Norman, I mean, didn't like the killings, but I think on a political sort of radical level, there were things about... [HENRY: Yeah.] them that they agreed with each other. I mean, [HENRY: Absolutely.] Norman was seriously anti-abortion. Like, there was a lot of stuff that I think he thought [HENRY: Yes.] was right about what he had to say.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Right. They saw eye to eye on a lot of things. But, you know, Eric continually realizes it has to be himself. You know, he talks about the phonies and the patriot movement. He believes that Republicans especially are traitors to the cause. He abhors them. After the fact, he'll write what he claims is his memoir. And, you know, one of the people he has the least time for is George W. Bush. But he didn't like anybody.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He was anti-social long before all of this happened, obviously.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Yeah. I mean, he's got a deep contempt for almost everybody, except for people who murder doctors who perform abortions.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

HENRY SCHUSTER: And Eric spends a lot of time talking about how he survives in the woods. He's very proud of how he survives the cold, how he survives the heat, how he survives drought, how he survives the rain, how he survives the FBI searching for him. He didn't always feel that he had the upper hand. A lot of times people got dangerously close to him. But he felt like he survived. You know, he would come down and he would learn during harvest time to, like, raid silos for wheat and corn. He leaves an awful lot out in-- even in his own telling of this. So there's things that we'll never know.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So how did you hear that Eric had been caught?

HENRY SCHUSTER: I get a call early hours on a Saturday morning. And I pick up the phone, I hear: Henry, we got him. And I'm running through my checklist. You know, first person I'm thinking of, wait a minute, we got Osama? And then I suddenly realize, you know, as I'm waking up and realizing the accent, I say, Rudolph? And he goes, hell yeah, we got him. I mean, at that point, my job at CNN at the time had been covering terrorism. And one of the questions was, if you can't find Eric Rudolph, how are you going to find Osama bin Laden? You know, it was embarrassing on both sides, these guys who got away. So, I like to say that the two quickest times I got from my house outside of Atlanta to the office, were the night of the bombing and the morning that I got that call that Eric Rudolph had been caught.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How did he get caught? Can we talk about that?

HENRY SCHUSTER: He became increasingly daring about coming into town. He became a regular dumpster diver. He did it at the Taco Bell, he did it at the Pizza Hut. When he was finally caught, he was caught behind a grocery store by a rookie cop. He's watched these cops come and go. He's watched the manhunt. And by this time, he's emaciated. But once he's caught, he admits who he is. And Jeff Postell, who's this rookie -- I mean, he can hardly believe it. You know, he's on weekend late night patrol, and he catches the guy who's been missing for five years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, that's a great story.

HENRY SCHUSTER: It's so improbable. But, but Eric has been doing this for a while. He's been doing the dumpster-diving for a couple of years now. He's mixing it up, and I think... You know, dumpster-diving sometimes was just easier.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. And you talked about how they found his-- one of his camps quite close to town.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Yes. Now, one of the things that he will claim afterwards, is that at a certain point he began to surveil the FBI. What had been a big presence up in North Carolina -- in Murphy, North Carolina -- had dwindled down to almost no presence at all. And that one of the things that he was considering before the 2000 elections -- he had constructed more bombs, and he was going to bomb... He wanted to do something to affect the 2000 election. But he says that ultimately he decided that the killing wouldn't be worth it. Why, why kill these federal agents? But after he's caught, you know, I think this becomes a question of, what are the stories we tell ourselves.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Can I ask you specifically about that? Because his mother obviously was a very big influence, both in terms of how she raised him, you know, the information that he got from her. But also even when he was on the run, she was pretty supportive of him. I don't, I don't think she believed in her heart that he was killing people. Afterwards, she has no choice but to accept it. Do you have any information or any sense of like, how that, how it affected her in any way?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, I mean, I think she was proud of him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Hm.

HENRY SCHUSTER: But then you have this incident -- you know, as if this story can't be more bizarre. And remember, we're talking about the Rudolph family. So, his oldest brother and his sister, they're not really in his life very much at all. They're much older. They're living what we would sort of consider somewhat normal lives. Then you've got his brother, Joel, who's married to Deborah, and believes some of the same things that Eric believes. But he's very-- he's a very peaceful guy. And then you've got his brother, Jamie, who's gay. And then you've got a brother who's living with his mom. They're being visited by the FBI and by the marshals because that's what you do when there's a fugitive situation. And he takes a saw and he cuts off his hand. He says he's doing this protest of the FBI. And they get him to a hospital -- this is in Florida -- and they're able to sew the hand back on. But, I mean, again, W-T-F.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He does that because he regrets sort of saying anything about his brother.

HENRY SCHUSTER: He regrets saying anything at all about his brother. You know, that they've even talked to the FBI.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And there's no doubt he does it on purpose, right, because he videotaped it.

HENRY SCHUSTER: No, I mean, of course he does it on purpose. And he says he does it on purpose as he's videotaping. I mean, I defy a screenwriter to come up [Kathleen laughs] with a family like this.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: They are really fascinating. And scary.

HENRY SCHUSTER: They're fascinating, they're scary, and surprising. What was Thanksgiving like at that family's? You know, I mean, [Kathleen laughs] this is from whence Eric Rudolph comes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So he's caught, and there obviously is a lot of evidence. He eventually cuts a plea deal. Can you tell us about what that plea deal was?

HENRY SCHUSTER: That plea deal is that he will plead guilty, i return for life imprisonment. He admits that he cops the plea so that-- to avoid the death penalty. Look, there's... there's no way he's walking free from this.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: No.

HENRY SCHUSTER: The only thing he can hope to walk away with is his life. And the only chance that he's got, with either the juries in Alabama or in North Georgia, is can he find one person or maybe more who won't vote for the death penalty because maybe there's just a little part of them that thinks that what he did was in some way justified. And if you're going to play to the jury -- there's a lot of ways you can play the jury. But playing to the jury about abortion is going to be your most powerful way. And there's no doubt that abortion was central to this. Two of the four places he bombed were abortion clinics. But it was larger than that. And in his own writings, he talks about how it's larger than that.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Do we still hear from him?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Every so often we will hear from Eric Rudolph. He's in Supermax in Colorado. And supermax is the modern-day Alcatraz. Pretty much everybody there are in cells where they're in their cells at least 23 hours a day. And then Eric... Let's talk about chutzpah. Eric decides at one point he's be-- going to become a human rights activist.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: [laughs] Oh. For who?

HENRY SCHUSTER: And so... And look, I mean, there is an argument to be made -- and it has been made in federal court -- that the solitary regime at Supermax, it violates all sorts of rights.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

HENRY SCHUSTER: So he complained. He writes to a local newspaper. He also writes to a human rights group and raises concerns. So it becomes a human rights thing. You know, now he's, he's sort of telling his story. In his telling of his story, some of it sounds like an attack on wokeness. He considers himself a conservative. He doesn't consider himself a murderer. He considers himself, in some ways, a soldier. You know, it's clear by every-- the way he has contempt for everybody else, that he is a lone wolf.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Do we get all this from him because he writes? Like, how do you know this is what he's saying?

HENRY SCHUSTER: I've gotten some of this from some of his writings, and also because... You know, I later did a story about Supermax. And so, you know, I know some of the people who work there, and they hear things.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But he's still trying to get his message out.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Well, the world has changed since Eric Rudolph went to prison, and in some ways, the world is a lot closer to the world he imagined. I mean, in his memoir, so to speak, he talks about people like George W. Bush saying they'll appoint justices who say they'll overturn Roe, and they don't. But we're in 2024, and in some ways, the arc of history is, you know, bent in very chilling ways towards Eric Rudolph's vision of it. You know, if one presidential candidate thinks that the January 6th perpetrators are hostages, then what would he make of Eric Rudolph?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What do the people-- Like, we were speaking to somebody earlier about Timothy McVeigh, and then I asked if everybody at the January 6th insurrection knew the name Timothy McVeigh. They did. Do you think they know the name Eric Rudolph?

HENRY SCHUSTER: Probably less so. I think Eric hoped that he would be a folk hero. That, you know, his five years on the run... That sort of outlaw thing appeals across the spectrum. But he says the same things inspired him. You know, Ruby Ridge, Waco. These are the things that inspired him. These are the things that layered on his mistrust of the government, layered on his mistrust of everything. And yet, here he is. You know, he's been in Supermax for a long time and he will be there for the rest of his life, unless... unless he gets some sort of commutation or pardon. Stranger things have happened. And the sad truth of it is that we're a lot closer now to Eric Rudolph's world than we ever imagined we would be.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, on that pessimistic [laughter] comment, I think we'll leave it there.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Okay.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Thank you.

HENRY SCHUSTER: Thank you.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We drop a new episode every Monday. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcasts' YouTube channel, or by subscribing to the CBC Podcast True Crime channel on Apple Podcasts. In addition to early access, subscribers to our True Crime channel also listen ad-free. Crime Story is written and hosted by me. Our producers are Alexis Green and Sarah Clayton. Sound design by Graham MacDonald. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Executive producers are Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is CBC Podcasts' senior manager and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 41

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