Eric Robert Rudolph, also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American terrorist convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay-motivated bombings. Rudolph was the perpetrator of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which occurred on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. Rudolph confessed to three other bombings: of an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on January 16, 1997; of the Otherside Lounge of Atlanta, a lesbian bar, on February 21, 1997, injuring five; and of anabortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998.
About Eric Rudolph in brief
Eric Robert Rudolph, also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American terrorist convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay-motivated bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998. In 2005, as part of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to numerous state and federal homicide charges and accepted four consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and a potential death sentence. He remains incarcerated at the ADX Florence Supermax prison near Florence, Colorado. Rudolph was born in Merritt Island, Florida, in 1966. After his father, Robert, died in 1981, he moved with his mother and siblings to Nantahala, Macon County, in western North Carolina. After Rudolph received his GED, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, undergoing basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia. He was discharged in January 1989, due to marijuana use, while serving with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. At age 29, Rudolph was the perpetrator of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which occurred on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. He made two anonymous 911 calls, warning about the bomb before it detonated. The blast killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. Rudolph confessed to three other bombings: of an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on January 16, 1997; of the Otherside Lounge of Atlanta, a lesbian bar, on February 21, 1997, injuring five; and of anabortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998.
On May 5, 1998, he became the 454th fugitive listed by the FBI on the Ten Most Wanted list. The FBI considered him to be extremely dangerous and offered a USD 1 million reward for information leading to his arrest. He spent more than five years in the Appalachian wilderness as a fugitive, during which time federal and amateur search teams scoured the area without success. Rudolph’s motive for the bombing, according to his April 13, 2005 statement, was political: In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. The purpose of the attack was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand. The plan was to force the cancellation of the games, or at least create a state of insecurity in order to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested in them.
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This page is based on the article Eric Rudolph published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 21, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
