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CNN Live Saturday

Eric Rudolph Captured

Aired May 31, 2003 - 18:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: The young North Carolina police officer who arrested Eric Rudolph today says he didn't know who he was when he first intercepted the man. In fact, he originally worried the man might be a burglar.
We're going to take a look now at how Rudolph's capture went down.

At 3:27 a.m. a police spotted a man behind a Murphy, North Carolina supermarket. Routine patrol, the police officer said.

At first the man ran, then abruptly stopped when the officer got out of his car, drew his weapon. The man gave the officer a false name, saying he was Jerry Wilson. The offer took him to the Cherokee County Jail in Murphy.

Once in custody, a fingerprint check proved to law enforcement that the man they had was indeed Eric Rudolph, one of America's most wanted fugitives.

He's accused of four terrorist attacks that killed two people and wounded about 150 others.

Rudolph is charged with the 1996 bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, charged with other attacks in Atlanta as well, including bombings at a women's clinic and a gay nightclub in 1997.

Rudolph is also wanted in connection with the bombing of a health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

Well, the search for and capture of Eric Rudolph puts the small town of Murphy, North Carolina, as well as the surrounding Nantahala National Forest into the national spotlight.

Here are some facts about both for you. Murphy, the town was incorporated 1851. The population, 1,650 -- small place. It's residents have a median age of about 44. Now Murphy is located in Cherokee County, North Carolina.

It's also home to more than 92,000 acres of the Nantahala National Forest. In all, the forest covers more than .5 million acres in North Carolina. Hard to imagine unless you've seen it for yourself.

Police say Eric Rudolph has been in the western North Carolina mountains this entire time. CNN's Gary Tuchman is in Murphy, North Carolina -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, hello to you.

The feeling we have here tonight is similar to the feeling we had on April 3, 1996. That's when Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was arrested and apprehended. Here was a man who was accused of sending out bombs, killing people, being on the run for years.

Now we have a situation where a man is accused of planting bombs, killing people and being on the run for years.

We want to give you a look now at Eric Rudolph when he was asked to pose for the cameras this morning at the police station behind me in Murphy, what he looked like. Short hair, a mustache.

Arrested behind a grocery store, apparently about to dig through the garbage for food, coming down from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, where it is believed he was for the last five years.

Accused of four bombings over a year-and-a-half period. The one most of us know most about, Centennial Olympic Park, July of 1996, during the Olympics. A woman was killed when the bomb went off. Another man, a journalist, died of a heart attack later. More than 100 people were hurt.

When Rudolph was arrested, he was brought into custody in the building behind me. He claimed his name was Jerry Wilson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They went back and advised him that the information he had given initially was inaccurate. And they asked him for his name, and he told the officers there that his name was Eric Robert Rudolph.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: That and then fingerprints made people here sure they had their man.

Now the man who did the arrest, you've heard about him. Twenty- one years old, been with the police force here in Murphy for less than a year.

It was so long ago that this bombing happened in Centennial Olympic Park, that this police officer was only 14 years old back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFC. JEFFREY POSTELL, MURPHY POLICE: I was on a patrol in the east part of town doing business checks at one of the shopping centers. Came around the corner, turned my headlights off. That's how you usually proceed around the building. Observed a male subject squatted down in the middle of the road. As I approached, he observed me, and he took off running. And got him behind some milk crates which were stacked up there.

Not knowing what -- who it was or what he had, I took safety into concern and advised him to come out. And he complied with everything I asked him to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: Many of you may not remember how tense of a time it was back then during the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Ten days before that bombing, we had the crash of TWA Flight 800. Many people thought that was international terrorism. They also thought the bombing in Olympic Park was international terrorism.

As we've found out since, the TWA 800 was ruled to be an accident, a center fuel tank explosion. And Centennial Olympic Park, it's believed, was domestic terrorism.

But it was a very tense time back in July of 1996.

We do want to tell you Rudolph is inside the building behind me. That's the courthouse behind. That's the jail. That's where he is right now. It is believed he will leave here today or tomorrow for Asheville, North Carolina.

We'll have his first appearance in court on Monday. It's then expected that he will be transferred either to Birmingham, Alabama or Atlanta to begin his proceedings that will ultimately, likely lead to a trail on federal charges.

One more thing we want to tell you before we leave, just minutes ago we talked to the owner-operator of the grocery store where Rudolph was found.

He says that a week-and-a-half ago he saw a man who he thought looked like Eric Rudolph digging through the dumpster behind the grocery store. He said, "Well, it's the middle of the day. I can't believe that would be him." And he just let him go about his business.

But he says now, this owner-operator that he wishes he did something because there was a reward for $1 million for the person who turned him in. And he thinks that perhaps he could have been $1 million richer.

Anderson, back to you.

COOPER: You, now, Gary, this most recent photograph we have, taken early this morning, of Mr. Rudolph in police custody. I mean, as you look at it, and I know some of these questions were brought up at the press conference to the police who sort of poo-pooed it, because it's an active investigation. But you know, you look at this photograph, this does not look like a man who's been living in forest for five years unaided. You know, his hair his short, his mustache seems trimmed. We were told he was wearing blue jeans and a pair of running shoes.

Has that been raising a lot of questions this morning in Murphy?

TUCHMAN: Well, police say they are actively looking into the possibility that he was aided and abetted. And that's a federal charge, harboring a criminal. So they will be looking into that.

That's something to keep in mind, Anderson, that while we keep hearing that this man has been hiding in the mountains for five years and that's why they haven't been able to find him because there are so many caves and trees and cliffs and crevices, the odds are that this wasn't the first time that he came into town to get some good in a dumpster.

So the fact was it was very likely he's been town several times. They believe he cut own hair, but they don't know who else has helped him do other things.

COOPER: I was talking to CNN's Art Harris, who has been investigating this case really since the beginning back since 1996. One of the things that he was saying that there are a lot of country homes in this region, sort of mountain homes that for large parts of the year lie empty.

Investigators have long thought it's possible that he was using some of those homes from time to time to sort of sleep in. And as you mentioned, there's of course the other option that he was in some way aided by some local person or persons. And obviously that will be of great interest to investigators.

Gary, what kind of reception are you and the other representatives from the media getting in the town. I've heard some other accounts -- we were talking to John Walsh of you know, "America's Most Wanted," saying that when he was up there shooting one of the many stories that they did on Mr. Rudolph, they had some people standing around on the porches, saying, you know, sort of "outsiders go home."

TUCHMAN: Right. That's something you see in any case like this. We've seen this before. And we've covered side-bar stories to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. We even saw it with the Unabomber, how there was romanticism attached to it among a very small number of people.

We know that's the case with this situation too. But today, as we've been in Murphy, North Carolina, we haven't seen anybody who is unhappy with the arrest that's taken place today.

COOPER: All right, good to know. Gary Tuchman, appreciate you joining us. We'll check in with you a little bit later on.

Still a lot to talk to -- a lot to talk about right now.

Crime experts who have studied Eric Rudolph said the fugitive loved solitude, hated the government. At one point in his life he allegedly grew hydroponic pot in his basement. Apparently loved to watch to Cheech and Chong movies.

There's a lot we do know, a lot we don't know. Let's find out what we do know.

CNN's Kathleen Koch has been searching for some answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The most notorious American fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list spent most of his life in the dense Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.

Eric Robert Rudolph was a loner, as a teenager, spending weeks alone in the woods, hunting, fishing and exploring caves. Relatives say the one-time carpenter and roofer hated gays, Jews and developed an interest in the anti-abortion movement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He felt like if women continued to abort their white babies, that eventually the white race would become a minority.

KOCH: Rudolph came to law enforcement's attention in January 1998, when his gray pickup was spotted near the scene of a bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic. The blast killed an off-duty police officer and disfigured the clinic's head nurse.

A day later, police in North Carolina searched Rudolph's storage shed. He had already left his home. They seized grow lights, pot seeds and a bomb making pamphlet.

Authorities quickly began to connect the dots.

Police believe Rudolph's first attack was the 1996 pipe bombing during the summer Olympics...

(AUDIO GAP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS SWECKER, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: Nobody ever thought he was the greatest of outdoorsman. he was a good outdoorsman. But the psychological profile on him was that there were certainly other people in this area that are much more accomplished in that area.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, as I was talking to Gary Tuchman just a little while ago, investigators are now going to try to determine if Rudolph had any help while he was on the run, help from sympathizers, maybe help from family members.

And we want to take a moment and talk about Rudolph's family for a little bit. And for that, we turn to CNN's Art Harris. Art, a lot of strange stories coming out of this family.

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This was a close-knit family in many ways, but a strange family, Anderson. Not strange in the fact that the mother was once a nun, but that she took the family along with her, and Eric as a boy, on sort of this spiritual journey, a spiritual journey that led her and the family to the Christian identity movement and a number of people who exposed Eric to very right-wing and hate-filled beliefs.

He idolized Adolph Hitler. He did a lot of reading. I'm told he could quote the philosopher, the German philosopher Nietzsche. And he believed in survival of the fittest.

But this was a man who had a brother, who in solidarity actually set up a camera in his garage and with his power saw, cut off his hand and was going to send it to authorities in support of Eric. And they were able to, I believe, reattach the hand.

But this shows you the kind of anti-government feeling that some of the family shared with Eric.

He also, ironically, he had a gay brother, but grew up with him, and apparently got along very well with him, even eating off of the same plate.

He was very, very right-wing in his believes politically, but ironically embraced, you know, the left-wing magazine you could say, "High Times." And one of his favorite pastimes was smoking pot, ordering Domino's Pizza, and watching Cheech and Chong movies.

So he, you know, was somewhat of a conundrum, sort of a difficult to understand onion to peel.

He had a girlfriend, Anderson, and we can talk about that, if you have time.

COOPER: Yes, sure. What do we know?

HARRIS: They were together four years. Apparently met her in Nashville. Walked into this bar, club, and asked a friend of his brothers, "Who is that?" And the girl said the same thing, "Who is that?"

As you've seen from his mug shoot, Eric Rudolph is a pretty good looking guy and many women were attracted to him. But he said, "He did not like a woman who quote, "talked back."

He wanted someone who quote -- and this is a quote, "sort of a dumb blonde." And this woman was blonde, idolized him. He bought her a schitzu (ph) puppy, took her to the mall, would buy her anything that she wanted, outfits, just loved taking care of her. In the words of one of her friends, "he babied her."

And you know, he had a lot of spare cash, Anderson. Law enforcement tells me they estimate he made $62,000 a year selling his hydroponically home grown pot with seeds which he brought back from Amsterdam.

So this was some... COOPER: You know, that's what's so fascinating, you know, talking about this man, on the one hand you know, he claims to be this man of rigid moral beliefs, obviously has deep hatred against the various minority groups, you know, has very strong feelings obviously about the -- women's reproductive rights. And yet on the other hand, he's growing hydroponic pot, you know, ordering up Domino's Pizza, watching Cheech and Chong movies.

I don't get it.

HARRIS: Well, he also wanted to have children with this woman who has since had an operation, can't have children, but who just apparently loved Eric. And he wanted her to move to the mountains and have babies. And she was a city girl and wanted to stay in Nashville.

And this was something that was a real bitterness to him. The FBI has tried to talk to her and I believe the had in the early days. And her feeling was that she wanted Eric to know that she was still thinking about him.

She has since moved on and I believe is going with someone else. But Eric Rudolph was someone who, as you said, had right-wing beliefs and perhaps liberal or left-wing fantasies and pastimes.

COOPER: Such a strange dichotomy. Art Harris, thanks. We'll talk to you again briefly in a little bit.

Now of all the bombings Eric Rudolph is accused of, the Olympic Park bombing right here in Atlanta is most notorious probably.

We're going to go live to that park, coming up next. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey, welcome back.

For the first time in five years, investigators in the Eric Rudolph case have the chance -- we'll say just a chance at this point -- to get answers to their questions, and boy, are there a lot of questions.

Where was he hiding? Did he have any help? The biggest question of all of course, what motivated this man?

Martin Savidge is at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, where even after all of this time, signs of one of the bombings still exists -- Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good evening to you Anderson. Take a look at Olympic Centennial Park now. It is actually a lot different visually than it was on that fateful night in 1996. For instance, if you want to have an idea of where the bomb was placed, if you take a look at the shrubbery and then the family that is sort of at the top of the waterfall here, that's roughly the area where that light tower was.

And it was just beneath the light tower, underneath the bench where a backpack containing that pipe bomb, now as authorities now know it, was placed.

When the explosion went off, of course, the shrapnel went off in all different directions. But it did come down this way. And when it came to about this particular spot right here, this is where 44-year- old Alice Hawthorne of Albany, Georgia was standing. And she of course received the major impact of that shrapnel.

And not only was hit and killed, but then of course this art work which was in place, this was put up in June of 1996 to commemorate the Olympics -- it was struck as well. And there is some tell-tale marks. As you take a look, you can see quite clearly the embedded outline of a nail.

There are other nicks, scraps that authorities say are on this artwork, will remain on this artwork for all time or for as long as it is here. An indication of the power of the explosive force, another indication, just where they found evidence from the bomb after it went off, the Emporium (ph) Building right here. It's what, 15 stories tall? They say that on the roof of this building, they found pieces of shrapnel and nails, on the roof of other buildings in the immediate downtown area.

An indication of not only the force of the blast, but that much of it actually went directly up into the air. And the reason they say that happened, just a fortuitous piece of luck.

That some of the people that were attending the event that night, kicked over the backpack, and that redirected the blast, redirected it perhaps in the direction of Alice Hawthorne, but may have directed it away from hundreds of other people.

In fact, investigators say it is remarkable that more people were not killed that night -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, it such a scary thought when you think about that. And apparently these kids had had a couple of beers -- I was talking to Henry Schuster, a CNN senior producer, who was saying, some of these kids they had a couple of beers and they were actually even considering stealing the bag. And that's what sort of drew their attention to it in the first place.

SAVIDGE: Right. And keep in mind people like Richard Jewell, who was one of the security guards. And it was his task to sort of guard that specific area around the light tower. And then another member of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, they had spotted the backpack. And they had actually begun moving some of the people away. And it was intensely crowded, you know. It was estimated maybe tens of thousands of people were here for what was a free venue, one of the few surrounding the Olympics at that time. They had begun to start to move the crowd away. Unfortunately, the bomb went off in that process -- Anderson.

COOPER: It is just unbelievable. Martin Savidge, appreciate you joining from Centennial Park.

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Aired May 31, 2003 - 18:01   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: The young North Carolina police officer who arrested Eric Rudolph today says he didn't know who he was when he first intercepted the man. In fact, he originally worried the man might be a burglar.
We're going to take a look now at how Rudolph's capture went down.

At 3:27 a.m. a police spotted a man behind a Murphy, North Carolina supermarket. Routine patrol, the police officer said.

At first the man ran, then abruptly stopped when the officer got out of his car, drew his weapon. The man gave the officer a false name, saying he was Jerry Wilson. The offer took him to the Cherokee County Jail in Murphy.

Once in custody, a fingerprint check proved to law enforcement that the man they had was indeed Eric Rudolph, one of America's most wanted fugitives.

He's accused of four terrorist attacks that killed two people and wounded about 150 others.

Rudolph is charged with the 1996 bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, charged with other attacks in Atlanta as well, including bombings at a women's clinic and a gay nightclub in 1997.

Rudolph is also wanted in connection with the bombing of a health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

Well, the search for and capture of Eric Rudolph puts the small town of Murphy, North Carolina, as well as the surrounding Nantahala National Forest into the national spotlight.

Here are some facts about both for you. Murphy, the town was incorporated 1851. The population, 1,650 -- small place. It's residents have a median age of about 44. Now Murphy is located in Cherokee County, North Carolina.

It's also home to more than 92,000 acres of the Nantahala National Forest. In all, the forest covers more than .5 million acres in North Carolina. Hard to imagine unless you've seen it for yourself.

Police say Eric Rudolph has been in the western North Carolina mountains this entire time. CNN's Gary Tuchman is in Murphy, North Carolina -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, hello to you.

The feeling we have here tonight is similar to the feeling we had on April 3, 1996. That's when Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was arrested and apprehended. Here was a man who was accused of sending out bombs, killing people, being on the run for years.

Now we have a situation where a man is accused of planting bombs, killing people and being on the run for years.

We want to give you a look now at Eric Rudolph when he was asked to pose for the cameras this morning at the police station behind me in Murphy, what he looked like. Short hair, a mustache.

Arrested behind a grocery store, apparently about to dig through the garbage for food, coming down from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, where it is believed he was for the last five years.

Accused of four bombings over a year-and-a-half period. The one most of us know most about, Centennial Olympic Park, July of 1996, during the Olympics. A woman was killed when the bomb went off. Another man, a journalist, died of a heart attack later. More than 100 people were hurt.

When Rudolph was arrested, he was brought into custody in the building behind me. He claimed his name was Jerry Wilson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They went back and advised him that the information he had given initially was inaccurate. And they asked him for his name, and he told the officers there that his name was Eric Robert Rudolph.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: That and then fingerprints made people here sure they had their man.

Now the man who did the arrest, you've heard about him. Twenty- one years old, been with the police force here in Murphy for less than a year.

It was so long ago that this bombing happened in Centennial Olympic Park, that this police officer was only 14 years old back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFC. JEFFREY POSTELL, MURPHY POLICE: I was on a patrol in the east part of town doing business checks at one of the shopping centers. Came around the corner, turned my headlights off. That's how you usually proceed around the building. Observed a male subject squatted down in the middle of the road. As I approached, he observed me, and he took off running. And got him behind some milk crates which were stacked up there.

Not knowing what -- who it was or what he had, I took safety into concern and advised him to come out. And he complied with everything I asked him to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: Many of you may not remember how tense of a time it was back then during the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Ten days before that bombing, we had the crash of TWA Flight 800. Many people thought that was international terrorism. They also thought the bombing in Olympic Park was international terrorism.

As we've found out since, the TWA 800 was ruled to be an accident, a center fuel tank explosion. And Centennial Olympic Park, it's believed, was domestic terrorism.

But it was a very tense time back in July of 1996.

We do want to tell you Rudolph is inside the building behind me. That's the courthouse behind. That's the jail. That's where he is right now. It is believed he will leave here today or tomorrow for Asheville, North Carolina.

We'll have his first appearance in court on Monday. It's then expected that he will be transferred either to Birmingham, Alabama or Atlanta to begin his proceedings that will ultimately, likely lead to a trail on federal charges.

One more thing we want to tell you before we leave, just minutes ago we talked to the owner-operator of the grocery store where Rudolph was found.

He says that a week-and-a-half ago he saw a man who he thought looked like Eric Rudolph digging through the dumpster behind the grocery store. He said, "Well, it's the middle of the day. I can't believe that would be him." And he just let him go about his business.

But he says now, this owner-operator that he wishes he did something because there was a reward for $1 million for the person who turned him in. And he thinks that perhaps he could have been $1 million richer.

Anderson, back to you.

COOPER: You, now, Gary, this most recent photograph we have, taken early this morning, of Mr. Rudolph in police custody. I mean, as you look at it, and I know some of these questions were brought up at the press conference to the police who sort of poo-pooed it, because it's an active investigation. But you know, you look at this photograph, this does not look like a man who's been living in forest for five years unaided. You know, his hair his short, his mustache seems trimmed. We were told he was wearing blue jeans and a pair of running shoes.

Has that been raising a lot of questions this morning in Murphy?

TUCHMAN: Well, police say they are actively looking into the possibility that he was aided and abetted. And that's a federal charge, harboring a criminal. So they will be looking into that.

That's something to keep in mind, Anderson, that while we keep hearing that this man has been hiding in the mountains for five years and that's why they haven't been able to find him because there are so many caves and trees and cliffs and crevices, the odds are that this wasn't the first time that he came into town to get some good in a dumpster.

So the fact was it was very likely he's been town several times. They believe he cut own hair, but they don't know who else has helped him do other things.

COOPER: I was talking to CNN's Art Harris, who has been investigating this case really since the beginning back since 1996. One of the things that he was saying that there are a lot of country homes in this region, sort of mountain homes that for large parts of the year lie empty.

Investigators have long thought it's possible that he was using some of those homes from time to time to sort of sleep in. And as you mentioned, there's of course the other option that he was in some way aided by some local person or persons. And obviously that will be of great interest to investigators.

Gary, what kind of reception are you and the other representatives from the media getting in the town. I've heard some other accounts -- we were talking to John Walsh of you know, "America's Most Wanted," saying that when he was up there shooting one of the many stories that they did on Mr. Rudolph, they had some people standing around on the porches, saying, you know, sort of "outsiders go home."

TUCHMAN: Right. That's something you see in any case like this. We've seen this before. And we've covered side-bar stories to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. We even saw it with the Unabomber, how there was romanticism attached to it among a very small number of people.

We know that's the case with this situation too. But today, as we've been in Murphy, North Carolina, we haven't seen anybody who is unhappy with the arrest that's taken place today.

COOPER: All right, good to know. Gary Tuchman, appreciate you joining us. We'll check in with you a little bit later on.

Still a lot to talk to -- a lot to talk about right now.

Crime experts who have studied Eric Rudolph said the fugitive loved solitude, hated the government. At one point in his life he allegedly grew hydroponic pot in his basement. Apparently loved to watch to Cheech and Chong movies.

There's a lot we do know, a lot we don't know. Let's find out what we do know.

CNN's Kathleen Koch has been searching for some answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The most notorious American fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list spent most of his life in the dense Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.

Eric Robert Rudolph was a loner, as a teenager, spending weeks alone in the woods, hunting, fishing and exploring caves. Relatives say the one-time carpenter and roofer hated gays, Jews and developed an interest in the anti-abortion movement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He felt like if women continued to abort their white babies, that eventually the white race would become a minority.

KOCH: Rudolph came to law enforcement's attention in January 1998, when his gray pickup was spotted near the scene of a bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic. The blast killed an off-duty police officer and disfigured the clinic's head nurse.

A day later, police in North Carolina searched Rudolph's storage shed. He had already left his home. They seized grow lights, pot seeds and a bomb making pamphlet.

Authorities quickly began to connect the dots.

Police believe Rudolph's first attack was the 1996 pipe bombing during the summer Olympics...

(AUDIO GAP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS SWECKER, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: Nobody ever thought he was the greatest of outdoorsman. he was a good outdoorsman. But the psychological profile on him was that there were certainly other people in this area that are much more accomplished in that area.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, as I was talking to Gary Tuchman just a little while ago, investigators are now going to try to determine if Rudolph had any help while he was on the run, help from sympathizers, maybe help from family members.

And we want to take a moment and talk about Rudolph's family for a little bit. And for that, we turn to CNN's Art Harris. Art, a lot of strange stories coming out of this family.

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This was a close-knit family in many ways, but a strange family, Anderson. Not strange in the fact that the mother was once a nun, but that she took the family along with her, and Eric as a boy, on sort of this spiritual journey, a spiritual journey that led her and the family to the Christian identity movement and a number of people who exposed Eric to very right-wing and hate-filled beliefs.

He idolized Adolph Hitler. He did a lot of reading. I'm told he could quote the philosopher, the German philosopher Nietzsche. And he believed in survival of the fittest.

But this was a man who had a brother, who in solidarity actually set up a camera in his garage and with his power saw, cut off his hand and was going to send it to authorities in support of Eric. And they were able to, I believe, reattach the hand.

But this shows you the kind of anti-government feeling that some of the family shared with Eric.

He also, ironically, he had a gay brother, but grew up with him, and apparently got along very well with him, even eating off of the same plate.

He was very, very right-wing in his believes politically, but ironically embraced, you know, the left-wing magazine you could say, "High Times." And one of his favorite pastimes was smoking pot, ordering Domino's Pizza, and watching Cheech and Chong movies.

So he, you know, was somewhat of a conundrum, sort of a difficult to understand onion to peel.

He had a girlfriend, Anderson, and we can talk about that, if you have time.

COOPER: Yes, sure. What do we know?

HARRIS: They were together four years. Apparently met her in Nashville. Walked into this bar, club, and asked a friend of his brothers, "Who is that?" And the girl said the same thing, "Who is that?"

As you've seen from his mug shoot, Eric Rudolph is a pretty good looking guy and many women were attracted to him. But he said, "He did not like a woman who quote, "talked back."

He wanted someone who quote -- and this is a quote, "sort of a dumb blonde." And this woman was blonde, idolized him. He bought her a schitzu (ph) puppy, took her to the mall, would buy her anything that she wanted, outfits, just loved taking care of her. In the words of one of her friends, "he babied her."

And you know, he had a lot of spare cash, Anderson. Law enforcement tells me they estimate he made $62,000 a year selling his hydroponically home grown pot with seeds which he brought back from Amsterdam.

So this was some... COOPER: You know, that's what's so fascinating, you know, talking about this man, on the one hand you know, he claims to be this man of rigid moral beliefs, obviously has deep hatred against the various minority groups, you know, has very strong feelings obviously about the -- women's reproductive rights. And yet on the other hand, he's growing hydroponic pot, you know, ordering up Domino's Pizza, watching Cheech and Chong movies.

I don't get it.

HARRIS: Well, he also wanted to have children with this woman who has since had an operation, can't have children, but who just apparently loved Eric. And he wanted her to move to the mountains and have babies. And she was a city girl and wanted to stay in Nashville.

And this was something that was a real bitterness to him. The FBI has tried to talk to her and I believe the had in the early days. And her feeling was that she wanted Eric to know that she was still thinking about him.

She has since moved on and I believe is going with someone else. But Eric Rudolph was someone who, as you said, had right-wing beliefs and perhaps liberal or left-wing fantasies and pastimes.

COOPER: Such a strange dichotomy. Art Harris, thanks. We'll talk to you again briefly in a little bit.

Now of all the bombings Eric Rudolph is accused of, the Olympic Park bombing right here in Atlanta is most notorious probably.

We're going to go live to that park, coming up next. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey, welcome back.

For the first time in five years, investigators in the Eric Rudolph case have the chance -- we'll say just a chance at this point -- to get answers to their questions, and boy, are there a lot of questions.

Where was he hiding? Did he have any help? The biggest question of all of course, what motivated this man?

Martin Savidge is at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, where even after all of this time, signs of one of the bombings still exists -- Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good evening to you Anderson. Take a look at Olympic Centennial Park now. It is actually a lot different visually than it was on that fateful night in 1996. For instance, if you want to have an idea of where the bomb was placed, if you take a look at the shrubbery and then the family that is sort of at the top of the waterfall here, that's roughly the area where that light tower was.

And it was just beneath the light tower, underneath the bench where a backpack containing that pipe bomb, now as authorities now know it, was placed.

When the explosion went off, of course, the shrapnel went off in all different directions. But it did come down this way. And when it came to about this particular spot right here, this is where 44-year- old Alice Hawthorne of Albany, Georgia was standing. And she of course received the major impact of that shrapnel.

And not only was hit and killed, but then of course this art work which was in place, this was put up in June of 1996 to commemorate the Olympics -- it was struck as well. And there is some tell-tale marks. As you take a look, you can see quite clearly the embedded outline of a nail.

There are other nicks, scraps that authorities say are on this artwork, will remain on this artwork for all time or for as long as it is here. An indication of the power of the explosive force, another indication, just where they found evidence from the bomb after it went off, the Emporium (ph) Building right here. It's what, 15 stories tall? They say that on the roof of this building, they found pieces of shrapnel and nails, on the roof of other buildings in the immediate downtown area.

An indication of not only the force of the blast, but that much of it actually went directly up into the air. And the reason they say that happened, just a fortuitous piece of luck.

That some of the people that were attending the event that night, kicked over the backpack, and that redirected the blast, redirected it perhaps in the direction of Alice Hawthorne, but may have directed it away from hundreds of other people.

In fact, investigators say it is remarkable that more people were not killed that night -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, it such a scary thought when you think about that. And apparently these kids had had a couple of beers -- I was talking to Henry Schuster, a CNN senior producer, who was saying, some of these kids they had a couple of beers and they were actually even considering stealing the bag. And that's what sort of drew their attention to it in the first place.

SAVIDGE: Right. And keep in mind people like Richard Jewell, who was one of the security guards. And it was his task to sort of guard that specific area around the light tower. And then another member of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, they had spotted the backpack. And they had actually begun moving some of the people away. And it was intensely crowded, you know. It was estimated maybe tens of thousands of people were here for what was a free venue, one of the few surrounding the Olympics at that time. They had begun to start to move the crowd away. Unfortunately, the bomb went off in that process -- Anderson.

COOPER: It is just unbelievable. Martin Savidge, appreciate you joining from Centennial Park.

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