He didn't act much like a man on the run. Not at first. Ten hours after last month's fatal bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., Eric Robert Rudolph strolled into a video store near his mobile home in the mountains of North Carolina, his hair still damp from a shower, and rented an action-adventure movie. He returned it the next morning and rented another tape. "He's always been very prompt," says clerk Dedra McGrady, "in returning his rentals."
But Rudolph still hasn't returned the second tape--perhaps because that same afternoon, on Jan. 30, FBI investigators named him as a "material witness" to the bombing. Rudolph, 31, is registered as the owner of a putty-colored Nissan pickup whose license number a witness recorded as the truck drove away from the New Woman All Women's Health Center moments after a pipe bomb filled with nails had exploded, killing an off-duty police officer and maiming a nurse.
Last week a pair of raccoon hunters led federal agents to that truck, mired to its axles in soggy woods near Rudolph's trailer in Murphy, a hamlet tucked into the southwestern corner of North Carolina. By the weekend, the FBI had enough evidence to charge Rudolph with the bombing and offer a $100,000 reward. That evidence, investigators say, includes explosives residue in the truck and in a storage shed Rudolph had rented, fibers from a blond wig like the one a witness had seen a man remove as he ran from the bombing scene, and a folding shovel with dirt believed to match the soil where the bomb had been buried beneath a flowerpot.
By the time lawmen arrived in Murphy, however, Rudolph had stopped at the local grocery to stock up on raisins, trail mix and eight packs of flashlight batteries. Then, apparently on foot, he vanished, leading more than 100 federal agents and local officers on a manhunt across rugged terrain right out of the best-selling novel Cold Mountain. Agents of the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms armed themselves with semiautomatic rifles and bulletproof vests as they searched Rudolph's trailer and poked cautiously under neighbors' porches and in their barns. Helicopters clattered overhead, using infrared scanners that can detect body heat amid brush and darkness. And two bloodhounds named after TV detectives, Colombo and Quincy, were flown in from Texas.
Leaders of the search believe that Rudolph, a former Army paratrooper trained in wilderness survival, remains on foot, holed up in nearby mountains. "The area is vast," says FBI special agent Craig Dahle, "and locals say, 'Lotsa luck.'" Other investigators are asking acquaintances and associates, Who, really, is Eric Rudolph?
A sometime carpenter with a good reputation among those who've hired him, Rudolph is one of five children reared by a strict and deeply religious mother. Their father, an airline pilot, died when Rudolph was in his early teens. Teresa Morgan, 28, who attended school with the Rudolph kids, described them as "very well mannered. Everything was 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, sir.'" Rudolph, she recalls, was so bright and attentive in class that he could pass exams "without ever reading a textbook." He harbored "very extreme views" but was quiet and something of a loner. When other kids would go to a local lake to picnic and swim with family or friends, they would see him there by himself.