Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Sunday Morning

Home Videotape of Accused Bomber Eric Rudolph Surfaces

Aired July 29, 2001 - 08:24   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: For five full years, accused Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph has eluded a national manhunt. Now CNN has obtained exclusive amateur video of Rudolph in the months leading up to the bombing. Art Harris has that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By the mid-90's, Eric is back living at the Topton (ph) House with two of his brothers. Mrs. Rudolph has moved out. Eric builds a trout pond, Deborah says, declaring his independence from the outside world.

DEBORAH RUDOLPH, MOTHER OF ERIC RUDOLPH: They had, you know, their vegetables. They had canned goods that they wanted to stock up on their canned goods. And they ate trout, trout and more trout.

HARRIS: In late 1995, the house goes up for sale. Frank Sauer (ph) makes an offer, spends the next three days living in the house with Eric. They talk extensively.

FRANK SAUER, KNOWS ERIC RUDOLPH: He wasn't too fond of black people. I mean, he wasn't too fond of Atlanta.

HARRIS: Sauer (ph) says Eric hated urban life.

SAUER: He said he used to go out at times and stay in the woods for two or three weeks at a time. He said he loved it in the woods.

HARRIS (on camera): By himself?

SAUER: By himself.

HARRIS (voice-over): They talked politics. But Eric becomes most animated talking history.

SAUER: He mentioned that the Holocaust never happened.

HARRIS (on camera): That it was a hoax?

SAUER: That it was a hoax.

HARRIS (voice-over): Eric takes the Sauers (ph) on a tour, videotaped by their son.

SAUER: There is Eric right there. He's walking away from the back wall.

HARRIS: In this exclusive tape, obtained by CNN, Rudolph shows off that secret room he's dug out in the basement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC RUDOLPH, OLYMPIC PARK BOMBER: The fan vents that upstairs and gets the humidity out of here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: He calls it a root cellar.

SAUER: And he says, you'll be surprised when you see this crawl space.

HARRIS: On the tape, you can hear Eric explain the sump pump in the secret room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's the bobcat.

HARRIS: That's the bobcat Eric killed and skinned.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here's the outlook from the garage.

HARRIS: And his truck, the one allegedly spotted leaving Birmingham the morning of the clinic bomb.

It's now just a few months before the Olympics. With his home gone, Deborah Rudolph sees Eric as rootless, cut off from the place where he came of age, where his father's ashes are buried.

She wonders, if Eric did what he's accused of, is that what triggered it.

D. RUDOLPH: It was maybe the loss of a safe haven, a place that he felt safe. You know, he knew those woods. He knew everything around him. That was his realm.

(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