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CNN Live At Daybreak

Searching for Eric Rudolph

Aired July 25, 2001 - 07:52   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: For five years now, authorities have been hunting for Eric Rudolph. He is wanted for the bombings that have killed two people. But why is Rudolph the prime suspect?

Here's CNN's Art Harris.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): July 1996, Atlanta's Olympic Centennial Park, the first bomb goes off. One dead, more than 100 injured. Then, two more bombs in Atlanta, both with delayed backup bombs -- the FBI says a design to kill cops.

Some forensics matched: like rare steel plating used to deflect shrapnel in one direction.

Charles Stone worked with the FBI's bomb task force.

CHARLES STONE, RETIRED GBI AGENT: It's like working a serial homicide, you hate for another homicide to happen but the more bombs you have, the greater chances the bomber will make a mistake.

HARRIS: A year and a half after the Olympic Park explosion, a bomb kills an off duty police officer at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic that performs abortions. Two witnesses see a man driving away in a pickup truck, a tag number. And finally, a name.

DOUG JONES, U.S. ATTORNEY: We have issued the warrant for a Mr. Eric Robert Rudolph, white male, age 31.

HARRIS: The next day, the FBI learns Rudolph lives here in Murphy, North Carolina. Former sheriff Jack Thompson tells CNN he finds the trailer but the FBI tells him to wait for their agents. About three hours later, agents shine the lights on, the door open, but Rudolph is gone.

(on camera): You missed him by how much?

STONE: A matter of hours, if not minutes.

HARRIS (voice-over): Now he's wanted in connection with all the bombings.

From lab testing, the task force learns a mill nearby in Franklin, North Carolina, is the only place in the southeast that makes rare steel plating used in two bombs. And smokeless powder was used in the first Atlanta bomb, dynamite in the others. According to investigators, Eric bought the powder and apparently stole the dynamite.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a bomb in Centennial Park.

HARRIS: The FBI tells CNN it played the 911 tape for several people close to Rudolph who said it sounded like the suspect. But experts say the tape may be too short to use in any trial.

Six months after vanishing, he is back, then takes off in a friend's truck with food and supplies. Later, he's blamed for cabin break-ins.

STONE: Why would somebody take men's underwear, shoes and soap and things like that - somebody's that surviving in the woods.

HARRIS: The FBI has no takers for its million-dollar reward. He is still on its most wanted list.

(on camera): But for any trial to happen, either here in Atlanta or in Birmingham, Eric Rudolph has to be caught first. Despite tens of millions of dollars spent hunting him, he's still out there, dead or alive.

Art Harris, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: Tomorrow, Art has Alice Hawthorne's story. She was the only person killed in Centennial Park when the bomb went off.

And then on Sunday night, "CNN PRESENTS" an hour-long documentary: "The Hunt For Eric Rudolph." That is at 10:00 Eastern, 7:00 Pacific on Sunday.

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