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Rudolph's history teacher, Angelia Bateman, recalls that when she had the class write a report on World War II, Rudolph "challenged the prevalent view of Hitler and wrote that the Holocaust never occurred." Asked the source of his information, he cited a right-wing pamphlet.
Ever since his father died, Rudolph has been strongly influenced by a family friend named Thomas Wayne Branham. Owner of a sawmill and an avid survivalist, Branham was once arrested on federal weapons charges after machine guns and explosives were found on his property. (The charges were dismissed on appeal.) He and Rudolph's mother taught Rudolph to distrust federal authority, and it took hold. Rudolph told friends he wouldn't get a Social Security number lest it be used to track his movements. Branham declined to be interviewed, but his brother James, who also knows Rudolph, says, "I can't imagine that Eric would be involved in this bombing. My brother feels the same way."
Rudolph dropped out of school after the ninth grade, later earning a general-equivalency diploma. He attended Western Carolina University for two semesters and served 18 months in the Army's elite 101st Airborne Division.
Rudolph and his mother, investigators say, are longtime followers of the late Nord William Davis Jr., a leader of the Christian Identity movement, which holds that the U.S. should be governed according to the Bible rather than federal law. The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, which tracks extremist groups, reports that after Davis died last September, one eulogy invoked an image of "the Army of God being led by Christ on a horse." The Army of God is the name used by those who claimed responsibility for the Birmingham clinic bombing and two similar bombings in Atlanta.
--Reported by Greg Fulton/Birmingham and Timothy Roche/Murphy