Catching Killers (2021) s03e03 Episode Script

911 Emergency.
There is a bomb
in Centennial Park.
You have 30 minutes.
Are you havin' a good time?
Oh yeah!
This is where the party's at!
Party of the century, baby!
Whoa.
It's horrific. It's a very chaotic scene.
Let's go.
But you have to stay in the moment.
You have to do what you have to do.
Get out!
Get out of the area.
Evacuate the area, please.
Evacuate now!
We knew we had a job to do.
The whole world was watching.
A couple of people behind us
got hit in the head.
A girl got hit real bad
with a piece of metal.
There were
over 100 people injured.
Grievously injured.
I'm scared,
and I wanna come home.
You had this domestic terrorist,
who was conducting bombings,
that has no qualms about killing you.
I was hunting a cop killer.
That personalizes it.
That's just a different level of evil.
A next-level bad guy.
This was going to be one
of the longest manhunts
in American history.
Let's try that. Thank you.
Ah, you gotta get it right.
Yeah, we're gonna be here
for a while. All right.
Tom, take five. Marker.
Thanks, man.
My name is Tom Bush, and in 1996,
I was an assistant special agent
in charge of the Atlanta field office
of the FBI.
The special agent
in charge of the Atlanta division
was Woody Johnson.
My knees are a little creaky
when I'm sitting.
Anyway, enough of that.
In 1996, I had been
in the FBI for 27 years.
After four years in the Marine Corps,
with a 13-month service in Vietnam.
Serving my country
really meant something to me.
Woody was a man of few words.
I call him the Quiet Man.
He stayed cool and calm.
On the outside,
it appears that way.
On the inside, not necessarily.
The Olympic operation was like
17 Super Bowls in consecutive days.
- Hi!
- Hi. How are you?
The security buildup
for the Olympics was tremendous.
We had SWAT team, hostage rescue teams.
It was a massive operation.
I'd never seen anything
where there had been more planning.
It was the largest peacetime event
in US history.
And then to have that thing go off
was just awful.
Just awful.
The blast
turned the streets of Atlanta
from a party into a disaster zone.
As soon
as I got into the command post
and met the police chief,
and they say,
"It looks like terrorism to us."
Then I'm getting information that the bomb
was placed at the bottom of the tower
that controlled lights and camera
for the events that were on the stage.
Just before the explosion,
at approximately 12:45,
the security detail
found an army backpack left unattended,
took a look inside the bag,
and see the clock, wires,
pipe-bomb material inside the backpack.
You need to exit the park.
There might be a secondary device here.
When an explosive device
like that goes off, it injures many.
And in this case, it was over 100.
And it killed one,
a lady named Alice Hawthorne,
who was there
at the Olympic Park with her daughter.
A Turkish cameraman was running toward
the scene of the explosion
and had a heart attack
and passed away as well.
Get on the sidewalk now!
Thank God
for the law enforcement officers
that moved people away.
I think the injuries and death
would have been much larger.
We, uh, determined
through the police department liaison
that they had received a 911 call
at 12:58.
There is a bomb
in Centennial Park.
You have 30 minutes.
But in fact, the bomb went off
20 minutes later, at approximately 1:20.
But what if it was false information
to lure law enforcement
closer to that device?
There is a bomb
in Centennial Park.
When listening to the 911 call,
it sounds like an American.
You have 30 minutes.
Is this a homegrown terrorist act,
as opposed to
an international terrorist act?
The games will go on.
I repeat, the games will go on.
The Olympics, and the games, carried on.
There was really no slowdown.
Let's go.
But there was clearly
a heightened sense of awareness
in Atlanta.
Explosion in the park!
If they've had success with one bomb,
they can build another one.
I recall several incidents
where there were abandoned packages.
The bomb squad
was called out numerous times.
So there's a real sense of urgency.
The command post
is now fully operational.
This is what the FBI does.
This is what we were trained to do.
And you feel
if anybody's gonna resolve this,
it's gonna be us.
Where did the bomber come from?
We're looking in Georgia.
Is he from Georgia?
We don't have any idea.
When I would go into the command post,
I would go into the briefings,
and a name
that was identified as a suspect
was a security guard, Richard Jewell.
He's the one
that finds the device and brings help.
His actions led
to many people bein' saved.
And that's how the media's looking at him.
Uh, as a uh, the hero.
The only thing, uh,
I wish we could have done was,
uh, got everybody outta the area.
Um, I feel for the victims
and and their families,
and I just hope
that we catch the people that did it.
I think what went through
a lot of people's mind,
including my own
and lot of the investigators,
is that they immediately made a connection
to an incident
that happened in the '84 Olympics,
where a police officer
actually planted a bomb
so he could report it
and make himself out to be the hero.
If Richard Jewell is a wannabe cop,
is this gonna enhance his standing
in the law enforcement community
if he can be a hero
by finding this device?
Almost simultaneously,
within the first 24 hours,
we start getting calls
from former employers.
And they're sayin' you ought
to take a look at this individual
because I'm not sure
that he's as stable as it would appear.
I'm told
that he'd been a security guard
and overstepped his bounds,
where the situation didn't warrant
how aggressive he was.
Today FBI agents
went looking for him
at his mother's house.
Jewell strongly denied
So Richard Jewell
becomes the focus of the investigation.
Can you categorically say
that you did not do this?
- I did not do it.
- Why are they questioning you?
Um, it's just part of the
it's part of the, uh, process.
When we bring him in
for an interview,
as well as doin' searches for evidence,
we're trying to talk to his friends,
and we had a surveillance on him
for a while.
But, uh, it took us
about three months of work
to be satisfied
that he wasn't involved in it.
We ultimately focused
on the wrong subject.
And we took a lot of heat
lot of heat from the media.
Jewell recounted a tale
of being hounded by law enforcement,
who searched his property and tapped
his phone without sufficient reason.
And of having to wait
far too long for his name to be cleared.
It was very painful.
It's easy now to say you should've
done this, that, and the other thing,
but you're not in the heat of battle.
At that point,
we don't have a good suspect.
People are still workin' hard.
There's no question about that.
Because you're lookin' for that break.
We're gonna work this,
and we're gonna ultimately find
this person or people
that are responsible for this.
I'm driving into work,
and I get a call on the radio saying
there's been a bombing in Sandy Springs
at the abortion clinic.
I arrived on the scene
and was told that damage had been done
to the rear of the building,
that windows were broken out.
There was considerable damage
inside the clinic, but no one was injured.
When I walk into that parking lot,
it's just unbelievable to me
that we have another bombing
in the city of Atlanta.
You're gonna have to move down!
We have to be able to get large trucks
Since there was
just property damage,
it's a pretty calm scene.
All the media's gonna have to be
back down here.
We're thinking about,
could this be related in any way,
shape, or form to the Olympic bomber?
So, I'm standing approximately
in this area,
talking to other investigators.
The front of the building is taped off.
We're blocked from the video cameras.
The, uh, media are all
back behind the tape.
Oh my God!
Back up! Back up!
What was that?
What the hell was that?
I'm immediately engulfed
in smoke and dust,
and there's debris falling.
Clear out! Back up!
Back out! Hey, move out!
I literally said, "What was that?"
And the agent standing with me said,
"That was a bomb."
It was a very,
very, very terrifying, uh, moment
when that when that happened.
Go! Go! Go!
Back out!
We know we have people down.
The agent that I was talking to is down.
Um, he's hurt.
We've got, uh,
people out here that are hurt.
Seeing a special agent
obviously injured, uh, was very upsetting.
I literally keep pullin' my coat aside.
I keep looking in my coat.
And I just keep checking to see,
"Do I Do I have some injuries
that I'm just not aware of?"
Once we started looking
at the immediate scene,
we could see
that two vehicles took the brunt.
Had there not been these vehicles
in between us and the device,
uh, clearly, uh,
we would have been seriously injured,
if not killed, that morning.
Hey, patrol. We just had
another explosion down here at the center.
This is another explosion
at the scene.
It certainly made it
more personal at this point.
Even though it didn't have my name on it,
I immediately realize that somebody
has deliberately set another device
with a delay timer for the purpose
of killing first responders.
You're not looking your victims
in the eye.
I think bombers are cowards.
I was on an adrenaline high,
and when that adrenaline wears off,
you crash pretty good.
I don't know how you prepare
for something like that.
That was pretty terrifying.
I can tell you, when I got home,
it wasn't like, "Hi, honey. I'm home."
There was quite a reception.
A lot of tears shed and a lot of hugging.
And just happy
Happy to just be alive,
and happy to be back with my family.
Relatively quickly, it's determined
that the Sandy Springs device
was dynamite.
And the Olympic bombing
were pipe bombs and black powder.
I can't say that these bombs were related.
We just don't have enough information
to make that leap.
So we're gonna work 'em
as two separate bombings.
But we want real leads,
and it's absolutely frustrating
not to have them.
You're constantly trying to think of ways
to further the investigation.
There's no question.
You want to see this guy caught.
The city of Atlanta
might have a big problem on its hands.
Again today, there had been a bomb
planted somewhere. An explosion.
Five weeks later, there's another bomb.
What in the world is goin' on?
It happened outside
a lesbian club called the Otherside.
The bomb injured five people.
One seriously.
I arrive at the scene,
and one of the detectives was there,
looking at the area
where the device went off,
notices a backpack up on this ledge.
Obviously very concerned
that we have a secondary device.
We know we're dealing with
the same type of situation here
and immediately start clearing the area
and getting bomb squad people
to start looking into this bag.
I'd already been blown up once.
There's just no way that this guy's
gonna get me with this one.
Bomb techs, they're movin' in on it
with a robot.
They've got video camera,
and the bomb is all wrapped with wire.
The bomb techs on scene
attempted to separate the wires
and render the device safe.
What we really wanted to have
was this device intact.
If we get this device intact,
we may have fingerprints.
We may have all kind of evidence.
There's this very sharp bang.
Even though we're across the street,
we get rocked pretty good.
I was still jumpy
from that bomb in Sandy Springs.
That takes a long time to get over.
I could not not jump.
I couldn't stop myself from
from, uh, you know, that that reaction.
I'm thinkin'
I got a real beef with this guy
'cause he's tried to kill me twice.
I start making calls to the office.
Called Jack Daulton,
who was the inspector in charge.
- Good morning.
- Good morning.
- How are you?
- I'm just delightful. Thank you.
January of 1997,
I took over the case from Woody Johnson.
It was tough leaving at that point
because we hadn't solved that case.
You know.
Yeah, I carried that after I left.
I'd gotten a call
from the deputy director,
and he'd asked me if I would go to Atlanta
as the inspector of the bombing case.
It's the kind of case
that most agents want to work in
or participate in their career.
And I was not gonna turn it down.
We had the Olympic Park bombing
and the Sandy Springs abortion bombing
and the Otherside lounge bombing.
These are kinds of cases that
you come across throughout your career.
There are people who are anti-government.
They are antiabortion.
They are anti uh, gay, lesbian.
And here, we have three bombings
that basically fall into that criteria.
My gut's telling me
it's the same person or the same group,
but we really don't know.
We have
all the Olympic Park evidence.
The largest pipe bomb
that the FBI had ever encountered.
We had two bombs
from the abortion clinic at Sandy Springs.
We had two bomb remnants.
The evidence
from the Otherside gay lounge.
All these devices were dynamite-based.
They had a clock and shrapnel.
And, ultimately,
they were able to look at those,
and one of the similarities
they found was a steel plate.
So even though we had pipe bombs here
and dynamite here,
those steel plates were the same makeup.
And they were able
to make the determination then,
that they were all
made by the same bomber.
We still weren't sure
whether it was an individual or group.
Now, at that time,
we were starting to use a psychologist
that the bureau had used
for analyzing cases before.
And he was of the opinion that it
more than likely, it was one individual.
One person.
He's in control of everything, basically.
He knows where he is.
He knows what he's doing.
Unfortunately, at that time,
we had no idea who that person was,
and we weren't really sure where to look.
That's what you're there for.
It's your job to solve this investigation,
and when you're not doin' it,
it gets very frustrating.
I had many sleepless nights
because of this
for a very long period of time.
Tryin' to figure out, what can we do?
What can we do next?
What you keep thinking is,
the longer we wait,
this is going to result
in the death of more people.
And that's what we really want to stop.
We want to make sure
that nobody else gets killed.
It made history
in the most brutal way
as the first fatal abortion clinic bombing
in US history.
An off-duty cop working security
at the clinic died.
A nurse was critically injured.
I turned on the news,
and they were broadcasting
from Birmingham.
Our worst fear had been realized.
They have killed another person.
They have had to bomb a clinic
in order to shut it down.
Bomb techs,
they were able to determine
that this bomb was very similar
to the other bombs,
but there was one major difference.
This was detonated by remote control.
This individual was standing
in a position to see the officer
when he bent over that device
and then detonate it.
So, yeah, I mean,
you can't get more deliberate than that.
At that point,
I'm runnin' the Birmingham bombing,
which is now called "Sand Bomb"
for officer Sanderson who died.
Just awful. Cold-blooded.
It was brutal.
I was briefed about
what happened following the bomb.
One of the most amazing stories
of public intervention, uh, occurred.
A young University of Alabama
at Birmingham premed student
notices someone walking away
from the bombing from his dorm,
and he thought that was odd.
Everybody else is running
toward the explosion.
And ultimately, he follows him
till he sees him at a truck.
A gray Nissan pickup truck
with a license plate, North Carolina.
K-N-D, triple one, seven.
We run it through all our systems,
and it comes back to Eric Robert Rudolph,
of Asheville, North Carolina.
It was the break that we were looking for.
Now we have a location
and an individual that we can focus on.
I was ecstatic at this point
because, at last, we had a name.
Now we knew where to go.
All right, Jim. How do you
feel about being interviewed today?
Um, you know,
once you, uh, disarm bombs in Iraq,
this is not gonna be keepin' me up
at night, givin' me the night sweats.
My name is Jim Russell.
Uh, in 1998, I was a special agent
in the Asheville, North Carolina, office
of the FBI.
So, I got a a call
from my supervisor,
who advised that they had a address
in South Asheville for Eric Rudolph.
I hopped in my car
and headed out toward that location.
This case was very personal to me
because I was on the, uh, FBI SWAT team
in Atlanta for the Summer Olympic Games.
Whoa!
When the bomb went off,
it hit me hard.
There was a feeling of anger.
Is there something that we had failed
to do to prevent this this bombing?
I was hoping
that I could bring that killer to justice.
So we go
to Eric Rudolph's last known address,
and it's an apartment complex.
We spoke with the apartment manager
and asked her if she had a tenant
named Eric Rudolph living there.
She indicated she did not.
Uh, though she did say
that she had a Patricia Rudolph
who used to be a resident there.
And she had an emergency contact number
for Patricia Rudolph.
I called that number, and a man answered.
And he said, "I am Keith Rhodes.
Eric Rudolph is my brother-in-law."
And he agreed to meet
in a parking lot in Asheville.
Keith said that his brother-in-law
is very secretive.
He is a loner.
He had anti-government issues.
The longer I'm talking to Keith,
it's ticking off the boxes
an investigator has.
We are on the right track.
The family has no way
to get in contact with Rudolph.
He would just show up out of the blue.
And I asked him when was
the last time he saw Eric Rudolph.
He said just, uh, the week before.
And I asked him what he was
what he was driving,
and he said
it was a gray Nissan pickup truck
with a white camper top.
You get this feeling.
It's an investigator's feeling.
A detective's feeling.
It's kinda like the hair on the back
of your neck kinda stands up.
"This is the right guy."
So I asked Keith,
"Where can we find Eric?"
He said he believed Eric was
actually living in Topton, North Carolina.
So, the following day,
I get a name of an individual
that was friends with Eric Rudolph,
and we head out to his house.
His name is, uh, Randy Cochran.
We identify ourselves,
and before we can say anything else,
he says, "I guess you're here about Eric."
I thought Eric Rudolph's name
was not supposed to be public.
WTF. That's what it is.
How did he pick that name out of
out of thin air
when, you know, two special agents
show up on his doorstep?
And I asked him,
"What do you know about Eric?"
He said, "Well, he's all over the news."
"If you want to come in and watch,
you'd be more than welcome to."
Mr. Roger Brown, the Deputy DA
So, Randy invites me in.
I'm watchin' the news,
see that there's a press conference,
and it's all about Eric Rudolph.
We have issued a warrant
for a Mr. Eric Robert Rudolph.
White male, age 31.
This is a material witness warrant,
and no one should jump to any conclusions
about the fact that we are looking
to question Mr. Rudolph.
There was a news leak,
and media were going to publish
all the information on Rudolph anyway.
And the US Attorney's Office
decided to get ahead of that
and actually have a press conference.
I'm getting more and more angry
that all this information
is now made public.
Thank you all.
I'm thinking Rudolph could be
watching this press conference,
and the clock has now started ticking.
This will tip him off.
Friends, acquaintances,
accomplices might warn him.
I said, "Randy, where is Eric?"
And Randy said,
"I can't give you an address,
but I believe he's
in the Murphy, North Carolina, area."
I called the sheriff.
He ran a public records check,
and he found that Rudolph had electricity
listed to a trailer on Caney Creek Road.
So I drive to Murphy as quickly as I can.
When I get there,
I meet with an ATF agent
who's also SWAT trained.
We put on our tactical gear.
We decide to make an approach
on foot to his trailer
because we don't want
to have a convoy of dark-colored SUVs
that could potentially spook or alert him.
I've got a million things
going through my mind.
Any normal person was gonna be
concerned and worried and fearful.
I'm assuming that
he is armed and dangerous.
If this man did do the bombing
in Birmingham,
he's already killed a police officer.
There could be booby traps.
There could be IEDs.
I see that the lights are on
in the trailer, which was good news.
And I noticed
that the front door was open.
And only the screen door was closed.
I did a 360 walk around the trailer.
Looked in all the windows. He's not home.
I thought, "Ah ah shit."
"We've missed him."
I figured he heard the news and he fled.
There was a lot of firearms
in the trailer,
and there was an empty rifle case,
which led us to believe
that he had a rifle with him.
There was, like, $1,500 pasted
behind a picture in 100 dollar bills.
He left that house in a hurry.
Eric Rudolph is now on the run.
It's officially a manhunt.
We certainly
had somebody to look for,
but it was gonna be
very difficult finding him.
We learned that he had been born
in Florida.
He had moved
to North Carolina, uh, with his family.
His his father died
when he was very young.
He had been raised
very much a Christian influence,
to the point of some
of the Christian identity movements
that would've been
very much antigay and antiabortion.
But there were times
when he had disappeared
that he may have interacted
with certain radical groups.
He'd spent time
in the 101st Airborne Division
as an explosives specialist.
And he had learned a great deal
about making bombs.
So many things
start pointing to him.
So many things start comin' together.
The childhood, his beliefs,
maybe his anti-government feelings,
because he was thrown out of the military.
He got kicked out
for testing positive for marijuana use.
I'm an Irish Catholic.
I just I just never understood
how a Christian person
could use religion as a justification
for horrific bombings
that maimed and killed people.
He's almost evil incarnate in my mind.
To capture him,
to stop him from harming anybody else?
Yeah, that's doin' the Lord's work.
This is the location
where Eric Rudolph's truck was found
by a couple of hunters eight days
after he had fled from his trailer.
As Rudolph came through this meadow,
and he got closer to this brush line,
um, he increased his speed
and buried his pickup truck
inside this brushy area,
so it was not visible.
The truck was searched.
One of the items found
in the truck
was a receipt from Burger King in Murphy
for a Double Whopper
with fries and a Coke.
Time-stamped 6:56 p.m.
That would've been an hour or two
before I got to his trailer
that same night.
And I thought that was the last time
he thought he'd be able to get a hot meal
from a fast food restaurant
for quite some time.
There was another receipt
found in the truck.
It was from the local Bi-Lo
grocery store there in Murphy.
He bought over $100 worth of supplies.
Tuna, oatmeal, raisins, nuts.
It was estimated that he could spend
about five to six months in the woods.
All this food led me to believe
that he's gonna stay in the area,
and he's gonna hunker down,
and he's gonna try and evade capture.
Also found in the vehicle
was explosive residue
found on the steering wheel.
We had our bomber.
I was a member of the SWAT team
that went out in the woods,
actively searching for Eric Rudolph.
One of my buddies on the team
was a good friend, Rick Schwein.
Remember, ten pounds lighter.
My father was a special agent
with the FBI.
I had grown up around the bureau
and around a lot of people
that carried the badge and the gun.
I grew up around men
that were larger than life.
Who would tell these amazing stories
of good versus evil,
and the good guys always won.
And, you know, the more I was around that,
the more I think I realized,
I wanted to be that guy.
After Birmingham, there are hundreds
of agents descending on North Carolina.
It really is a small army.
I was looking
for a needle in a box full of needles
that was in a state full of haystacks
because the area was vast,
and, uh, the terrain was formidable.
This was personal because,
you know, I knew one of the agents
that had been wounded
in the ambush bombing in Sandy Springs,
and he had murdered
a fellow police officer.
So I was hunting a cop killer.
If you can't get motivated by that,
there aren't too many things
that are gonna motivate you.
Everything we did, you had to do
with an eye
towards your own self-preservation.
You're in terrain
where he has the advantage.
'Cause we were dealing with a guy
that had military training,
that could have surprised us at any time.
That had expertise with explosives.
That knew how to booby-trap things.
If you aren't afraid, you're a fool.
It's what you do with the fear
that matters.
There are pockets
of Christian identity groups
and anti-government groups.
And those pockets of people
weren't happy about the presence
that showed up hunting for Eric Rudolph.
And you could see it.
I mean, there would be signs
that would pop up, "Run, Rudolph, run."
"Eric Rudolph, hide-and-seek champion,"
fill in the blank "days in a row."
Some people saw him as a folk hero.
You have to understand
that there are gonna be people out there,
that not not only are going
to root for him,
but may try and assist him.
Federal, state,
and local agencies
have doubled the number of officers
searching for Eric Rudolph,
who is still thought to be hiding
in the mountains
of Western North Carolina.
Authorities have searched
in vain for Rudolph for nearly six months.
There was constantly people
getting hurt
and injured during the search.
If you did a whole day out in that woods,
everybody was exhausted.
And then you'd just get up
and do it again.
Day after day after day.
The search goes on for months and months.
I rarely get home.
My wife, God bless her, Kate,
we have four kids.
She's raising them almost all by herself,
while I'm out in the woods
lookin' for Rudolph.
She wants to know when I'm coming home.
The kids wanna know,
"When you coming home?"
And that's an answer I can't give them.
And it just it puts a strain
on on a marriage, on a family.
Eric Rudolph took me away from my family
at least seven different times,
uh, hunting him as a SWAT operator.
You know, service comes at a price,
and you miss a lot of things.
Well, I'm no longer married.
So, um, yeah, it's hard.
There was no sightings of him
after the summer of '98.
Nothing in '99, 2000, 2001, or 2002.
So in in 2002, I take over the manhunt.
Our strategy is keeping it
in the public eye.
Suspected abortion clinic
bomber Eric Rudolph
is added to the FBI's
Ten Most Wanted list.
The reward for Rudolph's capture
is now being increased
from $100,000 to one million dollars.
Hopefully we can generate some leads,
but also, um,
so that we can let the victims know
that we haven't forgotten
and we're gonna keep looking for him.
The hunt
for Rudolph was scaled back.
Rick asked if I wanted to be
the lead agent
on the fugitive investigation,
and I asked him
not to assign me this case.
I thought Rudolph had fallen
into a crevasse and broken an ankle,
or broken his leg, and had suffered
from hypothermia and exposure.
So I I I thought he was dead.
And if some bear hunters found his bones,
and it was later a match for Eric Rudolph,
um, there wouldn't have been
any crocodile tears from me.
Eight months after I take over
the investigation,
I get a call at 3:00 in the morning.
They've got a guy
in custody in Murphy, North Carolina,
that bears a resemblance to Rudolph.
And we're on the road,
and we're flyin', right?
'Cause, you know,
a good physical resemblance
in the search area,
this could be him.
And as we're headin' to Murphy,
I get a call.
He just admitted his identity.
And Rudolph says,
"I'm Eric Robert Rudolph. You got me."
You know, after we confirmed
his identity, I called Jim Russell.
And when I told him, "It's him," I
I think Jim was like, "No shit."
He teases me about that.
He teases me about
He thought When I'd tell him
I thought he was dead.
So, yeah.
It's not the first time Jim Russell's
been wrong and it won't be the last.
There are only a few moments in a career
that, uh, you're gonna take with you
the rest of your life,
and that was certainly one of them.
This is
a CBS News Special Report.
The FBI now confirms
that one of its ten most wanted,
fugitive bombing suspect
Eric Rudolph, is under arrest.
Sheriff's Deputies in Murphy,
North Carolina
say they took Rudolph into custody
this morning
And it couldn't have had
a better ending.
This highly trained survivalist
who spent five years
eluding an army of federal investigators
gets caught by a rookie police officer,
diving in a dumpster,
trying to find his next meal.
Ending one of the longest manhunts
in American history.
So, I get a look at Rudolph
shortly after the arrest.
And I gotta tell you,
he didn't look like somebody
that had spent the last five years
living off the land in the woods.
He's too clean.
His his hair is cut.
He's he's got a light beard,
so he's clearly shaved.
He doesn't have the grime that people
would have embedded in their skin.
So my impression is, he hasn't been
out there the whole time.
Could he have had help?
That's very plausible.
We'll never know.
The only person that knows the answer
to that question is Eric Rudolph.
So, in order
to save his own life,
in order to avoid the death penalty,
Rudolph pleads guilty and gives up
the locations of the bombs that he buried,
as well as this cache
of several hundred pounds of dynamite.
It was very satisfying
to get the componentry
that was a match
to all the previous bombings.
We found his tools that he used
to build and design the IEDs,
and that was a treasure trove of evidence.
I mean, that was
that was conclusive proof
that he was the Olympics bomber.
Rudolph's dynamite
that he buried was so unstable
we have no choice
but to blow it up in place.
And it rattled windows
in that entire five-county area
that we'd spent
all those years hunting him.
I'm sitting at my desk.
I get a call, and he said,
"Hey, what do you think
about Eric Rudolph being captured?"
I said, "Man, I'm glad they caught
that son of a bitch."
"I don't care who caught him.
I'm just glad he's off the street."
I'll never forget that day
at the Sandy Springs building.
I've never been
that close to death in my whole career.
This is a replica of one of the nails used
as shrapnel in the Sandy Springs bomb.
It's a 4D cut nail, and, as you could see,
uh, would do a lot of damage.
It's a memory of that investigation.
It's a memory of
how close I came to being a victim.
It's a memory of what the FBI's all about.
That we never stopped.
We kept going, and we got our man.