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...