Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
Searching for Alleged Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph
Aired July 23, 2001 - 07:54 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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: It's been five years since the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. Police think they know who did it, but they can't find him.
Today, CNN's Art Harris begins a five-part series on the search for Eric Rudolph.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The man in the red T-shirt is alleged serial bomber Eric Rudolph. In this exclusive home video, Rudolph is showing his house to potential buyer Frank Sour (ph). They spent three days together that Rudolph's North Carolina mountain home.
FRANK SOUR: He mentioned that the holocaust never happened. He wasn't too fond of black people.
HARRIS: Rudolph shows off his root cellar. Investigators call it his secret room where Rudolph grew high-grade marijuana.
Charlie Stone worked the case with the FBI.
CHARLIE STONE: He was involved in growing marijuana and that...
HARRIS: Selling it, too?
STONE: Yes, of course, yes.
HARRIS: CNN also learned that federal agents seized grow lights, pot seeds and a bomb making pamphlet from Rudolph's storage unit. He smuggled some seeds in from Amsterdam to plant in the mountain, says former sister-in-law Deborah (ph) Rudolph.
DEBORAH RUDOLPH, ERIC RUDOLPH'S FORMER SISTER-IN-LAW: He would carry jugs of water on his back two miles into the woods to water these plants.
HARRIS: Deborah recalls visiting the Rudolph's at the family's remote mountain home.
RUDOLPH: They would often talk about if anything ever happened, it would be a haven - you know a safe haven - a place for -- you know for them to come if anything should happen. HARRIS: World War III or...
RUDOLPH: World War III, in a revolution invasion of the country, marshal law.
HARRIS: Deborah also recalls Eric's mother claiming his father died after doctors refused to treat his cancer with Laetrile, an experimental drug the government considered worthless.
RUDOLPH: And they would not let her give him Laetrile.
HARRIS: Eric was 14. Charlie Stone believes Eric blames the government for killing his father.
(on camera): Why do you think he's done what he's accused of?
STONE: Out of a perverse sense of getting back at the government for hurting his family.
HARRIS (voice-over): Friends tell agents, as a teenager, Rudolph spends weeks in the woods, learns to hunt, fish, explores caves. He's home schooled. College doesn't work out. He studies herbal medicine, reads the Bible, "High Times" and "Soldier of Fortune" magazine. He adopts extremist beliefs, says Deborah, hates homosexuality but accepts a gay brother. He doesn't trust banks, only deals in cash. Abortion...
RUDOLPH: He felt like if women continued to abort their white babies that eventually the white race would become a minority.
HARRIS: Just watching TV makes him mad.
(on camera): What did he call the television?
RUDOLPH: The electric Jew.
HARRIS: The electric Jew. What did he mean by that?
RUDOLPH: Well, they control - you know he felt like they controlled everything.
HARRIS (voice-over): Then, in 1987, Rudolph joins the Army, the 101st Airborne.
RUDOLPH: That blew everybody's minds.
HARRIS: He says he wants to be an elite Army Ranger.
(on camera): Why would someone who hated the government join the Army?
STONE: To acquire skills he acquired in the military be it fire arms, survival skills and explosives training.
HARRIS (voice-over): After Rudolph fails to make Ranger, he is tossed for smoking pot. By the mid-'90s, Deborah Rudolph says he's making as much as $60,000 a year tax-free off pot. He pockets thousands more after selling the house to the Sour's just months before the 1996 park bombing in Atlanta, the first of several he's been indicted for setting off.
On the home video, that's his truck, the one allegedly spotted leaving Birmingham, Alabama, minutes after a bomb kills an off duty police officer and maims a nurse.
(on camera): His family says he's innocent, but the FBI says he is armed and dangerous, still hiding in these mountains, a fugitive who apparently financed his violence as a down-home drug dealer and turned hatred into bombs and murder.
Art Harris, CNN, in the Nantahala National Forest, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
