Posted on 07/06/2005 5:53:54 AM PDT by Jackknife
During Eric Rudolph's five years on the lam, despite a nationwide manhunt and a million-dollar bounty, a transient appears to have come closer to catching the serial bomber than did any federal agent.
The search for Rudolph, sought in four bombings that killed two people and injured more than a hundred, always focused in this region - a densely wooded area in the western part of North Carolina. Rudolph had spent his teenage years here and had returned as an adult in the early 1990s, supporting himself doing carpentry.
In letters to his mother written from a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala., Rudolph describes how he repeatedly crept into this town of 1,600, even after scores of federal agents had set up their headquarters just blocks away. He tells of raiding Dumpsters and gardens, of stealing grain from silos and transporting it in a truck he stole from a used car lot. He also recounts how he feared he had been discovered during a chance encounter at a trash pile less than two years into hiding. ......
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
ping
if I recall correctly he spotted a local cop or possibly a state patrolman while dumpster diving & surrendered.
He could have gone out on a tuna boat, and no one would ever have suspected him.
If you read the entire article, he talks about that.
The late Steve McQueen would have been perfect for the part, LOL.
Leni
That too. So many things he could have done rather than remaining in the area. I suspect it may have been his ego that kept him in the area. He liked knowing he was right under the Fed's noses and they couldn't find him.
"An innovative criminal. Glad he was stupid and eventually got caught."
He would have been caught much sooner if the Feds hadn't treated the local people so bad when they were first searching for him.
good story!!! He was not eating just junk food.--->>>
In another letter - one Rudolph apparently also sent to a Web site run by a militant anti-abortion group called the Army of God - he writes about how he drew hundreds of pounds of corn, wheat and soybeans from silos even as authorities set up a speed trap a few feet away. A mix of the three grains - boiled, then pounded into pancakes and fried - proved to be "the staple that sustained me for many years," he writes in the letter, dated Sept. 11, 2004.
Having to traverse it in the dark without a flashlight was something that was done primarily from memory. Each step must be calculated and correlated with the surrounding shadows produced by the trees and the general landscape. Once you get used to the step count and how the trail looks at night, it becomes fairly easy.
You have a FBI Task Force set up in your town to capture one of the most wanted fugitives in the nation. With this presence and attention to this issue, here is how our police agency administrators train and program their officers to perform their duties.
More time is expended towards revenue enhancement than is criminal investigation.
"...One night I had to wait atop the silo for a few hours as a state trooper set up across the road at the church to lay in ambush for hapless speeders," he writes. "He would race off and catch one, and after writing his ticket he'd return to his spot next to the church..." -----------------------------------------------------------
"...A nice dark blue 1996 four wheel drive Chevrolet Silverado was the truck of choice," he writes.
He apparently stole it and transported the filled garbage cans on Halloween 1999. A police report filed in Andrews and subsequently with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department shows that a 1996 Chevrolet Silverado disappeared from the lot of Buy Rite Motors between Oct. 30, 1999, and Nov. 1, when it was reported stolen. Rudolph mentioned Buy Rite in his letter. The stolen truck wasn't dark blue, though. It was black.
"At this time there are no leads," a deputy handling the case writes..."
I kind of agree with you. It seems like, with his skills, he could have made himself real scarce if he had wanted to. Much like the uni-bomber.
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