- [somber music playing] - [siren wailing in distance]
[crowd clamoring and cheering]
[line ringing]
[operator on recording] 911 Emergency.
[man 1] There is a bomb in Centennial Park.
You have 30 minutes.
- [crowd cheers] - Are you havin' a good time?
[man 2 on PA] Oh yeah!
This is where the party's at! Party of the century, baby!
[tense music playing]
[crowd murmuring]
[explosion blasts, echoes]
[man 3] Whoa.
[crowd clamoring]
It's horrific. It's a very chaotic scene.
[crowd clamoring]
[man 4] Let's go.
But you have to stay in the moment. You have to do what you have to do.
[sirens wailing]
[officer 1] Get out!
[officer 2] Get out of the area.
[officer 3] Evacuate the area, please.
[officer 4] Evacuate now!
[music fades]
We knew we had a job to do. The whole world was watching.
[tense music resumes]
A couple of people behind us got hit in the head.
A girl got hit real bad with a piece of metal.
[man 5] There were over 100 people injured.
Grievously injured.
[crying] I'm scared, and I wanna come home.
[whistles blowing]
You had this domestic terrorist, who was conducting bombings,
that has no qualms about killing you.
[explosion echoes]
- [suspenseful music playing] - [man 5] I was hunting a cop killer.
That personalizes it.
[explosion blasts]
That's just a different level of evil.
A next-level bad guy.
[rifle clicking]
This was going to be one of the longest manhunts
in American history.
[suspenseful music swells]
- [sounds fade] - [somber theme music playing]
[theme music fades]
Let's try that. Thank you.
[man chuckles]
Ah, you gotta get it right.
[assistant] 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.
[Bush] Woody was a man of few words.
I call him the Quiet Man. He stayed cool and calm.
[splutters] On the outside, it appears that way.
On the inside, not necessarily. [chuckles]
[indistinct chatter]
[Johnson] The Olympic operation was like 17 Super Bowls in consecutive days.
- Hi! - [patron] Hi. How are you?
[Bush] 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.
[reporter] The blast turned the streets of Atlanta
from a party into a disaster zone.
[Johnson] 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.
[crowd clamoring]
[Bush] 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!
[Bush] Thank God for the law enforcement officers
that moved people away.
I think the injuries and death would have been much larger.
[tense music playing]
We, uh, determined through the police department liaison
that they had received a 911 call at 12:58.
[man on recording] 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?
[man on recording] There is a bomb in Centennial Park.
When listening to the 911 call, it sounds like an American.
[man on recording] You have 30 minutes.
Is this a homegrown terrorist act,
as opposed to an international terrorist act?
[somber music playing]
[announcer] The games will go on.
- I repeat, the games will go on. - [camera shutters clicking]
The Olympics, and the games, carried on. There was really no slowdown.
[man] Let's go.
[Bush] 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.
[Bush] 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.
[phone ringing]
[Bush] 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.
[ominous music playing]
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.
[Bush] 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?
[tense music playing]
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.
[phone ringing]
[Johnson] I'm told that he'd been a security guard
and overstepped his bounds,
where the situation didn't warrant how aggressive he was.
[reporter] Today FBI agents went looking for him
at his mother's house.
Jewell strongly denied...
[Bush] 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.
[Johnson] 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.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Bush] We ultimately focused on the wrong subject.
And we took a lot of heat... lot of heat from the media.
[reporter] 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.
[Johnson] 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.
[phone rings]
[Johnson] 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.
[music fades]
[Bush] 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...
[Bush] Since there was just property damage,
it's a pretty calm scene.
All the media's gonna have to be back down here.
[Bush] We're thinking about,
could this be related in any way, shape, or form to the Olympic bomber?
- [crowd clamoring] - [blades whirring loudly overhead]
[Bush] 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.
[crowd murmuring]
- [blast echoes] - [onlookers screaming]
[cameraman] Oh my God!
[officer] Back up! Back up!
[pilot] What was that? What the hell was that?
[sirens approaching]
I'm immediately engulfed in smoke and dust,
and there's debris falling.
[man 1] Clear out! Back up! Back out! Hey, move out!
[Bush] 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.
[crowd clamoring]
[officer] Go! Go! Go!
[man 2] Back out!
[Bush] 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.
[sirens wailing]
[Bush] 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.
[pilot] Hey, patrol. We just had another explosion down here at the center.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[pilot] This is another explosion at the scene.
[Bush] 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.
[dramatic music playing]
I think bombers are cowards.
[somber music playing]
[Bush] 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.
[somber music fades slowly]
[tense music playing]
[Bush] 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.
[ominous music playing]
[crowd clamoring]
[reporter 1] 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?
[reporter 2] It happened outside a lesbian club called the Otherside.
The bomb injured five people.
One seriously.
[sirens wailing]
[Bush] 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.
[sirens approaching]
I'd already been blown up once.
There's just no way that this guy's gonna get me with this one.
[suspenseful music playing]
[robot whirring]
[Bush] 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.
[robot whirring]
[explosion blasts, echoes]
[crowd clamoring in distance]
There's this very sharp bang.
[car alarms blaring]
Even though we're across the street, we get rocked pretty good.
[somber music playing]
[Bush] I was still jumpy from that bomb in Sandy Springs.
That takes a long time to get over.
[sirens approaching]
[Bush] 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.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Bush] I start making calls to the office.
Called Jack Daulton, who was the inspector in charge.
[energetic music playing]
- [interviewer] Good morning. - Good morning.
- [interviewer] 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.
[Daulton] 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.
[tense music playing]
[Daulton] 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.
[tense music playing]
[Bush] 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.
[somber music playing]
[Daulton] 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.
[gentle music playing]
[Daulton] 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.
[energetic music playing]
[reporter] 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.
[Daulton] 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.
[Daulton] 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.
[Bush] 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.
[somber music playing]
[Bush] 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.
[tense music playing]
- [phone ringing] - [rapid typing]
[Bush] 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.
[suspenseful music playing]
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.
- [music fades] - [breeze blowing gently]
[interviewer] 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.
[tense music playing]
[Russell] 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.
[indistinct chatter]
[explosion echoes]
[man] Whoa!
[crowd clamoring]
[Russell] 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.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Russell] 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.
[energetic music playing]
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.
[tense music playing]
[Russell] 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...
[Russell] 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.
[Jones] Thank you all.
I'm thinking Rudolph could be watching this press conference,
and the clock has now started ticking.
[tense music playing]
[Russell] 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.
- [music fades] - [crickets chirping]
[Russell] When I get there,
I meet with an ATF agent who's also SWAT trained.
[tense music playing]
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.
[tense music building]
[Russell] 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.
[pensive music playing]
[phone ringing]
[Daulton] 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.
[Bush] 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.
[Daulton] He'd spent time in the 101st Airborne Division
as an explosives specialist.
And he had learned a great deal about making bombs.
[Bush] 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.
[Russell] 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.
[sirens wailing]
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.
[ominous music playing]
[crows cawing]
[Russell] 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.
[tense music playing]
- [Russell] The truck was searched. - [camera clicks]
[Russell] 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. [chuckles]
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.
[tense music playing]
[Schwein] It really is a small army.
[birds singing]
[Schwein] 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.
[indistinct chatter]
[Schwein] 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.
[somber music playing]
[Schwein] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[tense music playing]
[reporter] Authorities have searched in vain for Rudolph for nearly six months.
[Russell] 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.
[somber music playing]
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.
[ominous music playing]
[Russell] There was no sightings of him after the summer of '98.
Nothing in '99, 2000, 2001, or 2002.
[ominous music building]
So in... in 2002, I take over the manhunt.
Our strategy is keeping it in the public eye.
[reporter] 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.
[tense music playing]
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.
[tense music playing]
[Russell] 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.
[crickets chirping]
[ominous music playing]
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.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Schwein] 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."
[suspenseful music continues]
[Schwein] 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." [laughs]
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.
[reporter] This is a CBS News Special Report.
[news fanfare playing]
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...
[Schwein] 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.
[somber music playing]
[Schwein] 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.
[somber music building]
[Schwein] 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.
[Russell] 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.
[Schwein] Rudolph's dynamite that he buried was so unstable...
[laughing]...we have no choice but to blow it up in place.
- [explosion booms] - [crow cawing]
And it rattled windows in that entire five-county area
that we'd spent all those years hunting him.
[somber music playing]
[Bush] 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.
[explosion booms]
[crowd clamoring]
[Bush] 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.
[somber music playing]
[eerie closing theme music playing]