7 | When Ideas Become Actions

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Hello, You'll have reached to VI Israel and the Watchman Outreach Ministries. If you would like to speak to aafter game and please press three locome by the pounds. Fine, good afternoon.

Me I help you.

Hey, mister Gamon, my name is Cole. I was looking to get more information about your church.

Oh okay, yes, sir, I'd be happy to talk to you. Cole. How did you find out about us?

So my story is interesting and how I found out about your church. My mother when she was really young, when she was seventeen, she got pregnant with me. She was actually.

Second married at that time. She was not okay.

She was scheduled actually to have an abortion with me, and oh wow, the abortion clinic that she was scheduled to have the abortion in was bombed the day before by Eric Rudolph.

Oh my goodness.

Okay, well, Cole, I am, first of all, I praised the name of Jesus Christ that you are in this world. What a what a deliverance, I mean, what a sad thing that had to happen for you to get here.

But my goodness, Now, is your mother still living?

She is, she is, We're very close.

Oh that's as marvelous. I bet she is grateful that you're not. You're not the victim of an abortion.

Oh my goodness, you know, I really want to I want you to know cold that I'm I'm honored to be talking with you.

See.

Eric Rudolph was just a very young kid when he came through here. His mother was a widowed lady with another brother. They had absolutely nothing.

Some friend told him, you know, that they could stop here and probably get some help.

Eric was a very well mannered, he was very bright, gunk kid, and you know, we never heard one word again until we heard of this very very alarming story.

Out of you know, out of the South late in the nineteen nineties. That was pretty amazing. We were just, you know, we were aghast.

See, we've never, at any time in our history advocated any kind of violence. We would never endorse that. We would just simply find that to be rebolting. So we never you know, we never in any way ever advanced the ideas that Eric picked up. We don't know where he got those ideas.

Let me put it this way, Cole, I would not deny for one.

Moment that I'm very very much opposed to abortion, I'm opposed to race mixing, and I am opposed to homosexuality. Now what am I supposed to Knowing that he's alleged to a bomb, abortion plenty, a homosexual bar, and a place where they were racially mixed. I don't know where he picked up all those ideas, but those are all ideas that I personally, Cole, I can open the Bible and show you where abortion is wrong.

It's murder.

Race mixing is wrong, It's against God's law. We believe that God doesn't want any race to intermingle and change their nature and their original design that God gave them.

It's bizarre to me that Dan Gamon doesn't see his part in Eric Rudolf's development. In my opinion, he's probably in denial as far as Gamon's concerned. Sure they shared ideologies, but that's where the connection ends. Eric Rudolph was, after all a lone wolf, right.

And with regard to homosexuality, I need not mention to you that the Bible is very anti homosexuality. God even destroyed the whole city named Thodom and Gomorrah of homosexuals. So all three of those are terrible, horrible sins, and you know, they became the point of Eric's frustration to exercise this kind of violence. And that's where I disagree wholeheartedly with him, that he made a tragic mistake when

Well, Cole, I've got an appointment I have to keep, so I'm going to run. But you know, I want to thank you for calling me, and I want you to just if you don't mind.

Just remember this one little thought that I'm going to say when I end this call.

Cole. I'm not sure what caused you to want to call this number and talk to me, but I'm wondering if.

There was a higher power that was directing you, and will call that higher power the God who created of an an earth. You might want to think about coming to visit us and learn more about us before you. You know, weigh in heavily on judging. And don't you find it a little bit interesting that your life was spared from a bullish and clinic. Isn't that amazing that you came within one day.

Of not being here.

I have a really hard time believing that Dan Gamon had no direct connection to Eric Rudolf or what motivated him to become a terrorist. But here's the thing. I do know these so called lone wolves, somewhere down the line, they're always part of a pack, whether they know it or not. I can't say precisely when and where Eric Rudolf began to think of himself as an operative in

This morning, at four point thirty in the morning, an alert Murphy police officer noticed something unusual going on behind the Valley Village shopping center here in Murphy. He investigated, He called for backup, and ultimately arrested Eric Robert Rudolph at about four point thirty am this morning.

The trial of Eric Rudolph, set to determine the consequences for his acts of terror, was originally scheduled for August fourth, two thousand and four. Federal Judge Lynnwood Smith delayed the start by a year, stating the sheer volume of discovery that still must be organized and assimilated by Defense Council is staggering.

As you know, he's charged in connection with the bombings of the Centennial Park, the Sandy Ridge Professional Center office building, and the double bombings of the other Side Lounge in midtown Atlanta. The death of a police officer in Alabama resulted, also the death of a person in Atlanta, and about one hundred and fifty injuries resulted from these bombings.

Despite the strong evidence connecting him to these horrifying crimes, he still had a right to a full thread of defense.

Richard to this day is one of my best friends.

This again is former US Attorney Doug Jones. His term as US attorney had ended by the time of Rudolph's capture, but he still attended many of the proceedings.

I just know the way Richard Jeffy handles his clients. He doesn't make judgments own people at all, and his job, he understands, as a defense lawyer, is to get to know the client, get to know the cases put the government to their burden. He believes that every client, regardless of the circumstance, deserves the top notch defense. He can endure their trust regardless and I can assure you without having sat through any of their conversations or without Richard

It took me months to nail down a time to speak with Richard Jaffey, but I finally made the drive to Birmingham to sit down with him. With the ac blasting on a hot summer day, we settled into what would have been the dining room in a two story Tudor style home that had been converted into his law office.

My faith in the justice system today is certainly not what it was when I started practicing law, which was forty five years ago. I think that when the power of government manifests itself, if there aren't people, mainly lawyers, willing to stand up and protect the helpless and those individuals that don't have power, then the democracy as we know it will completely evaporate.

Richard's colleagues often refer to him as Atticus Finch, the protagonist from Taquilla Mockingbird. In the novel Atticust defends a black man falsely accused of rape in the small town of may coom, Alabama, during the Great Depression. As is the case for many lawyers in the South, the character of Atticus Finch served as an influence in Richard's decision to become a defense attorney to do the work of representing marginalized or seemingly guilty defendants.

In representing both the apparently innocent and the apparently guilty, our ethical responsibilities to provide the most zealous representation we're capable of are the same. The scariest thing is to represent someone that is apparently or obviously innocent and where there is a significant lack of proof, in knowing that if we have to go to trial and we lose, it's basically hard to forget.

I asked Jaffe how the opportunity to represent Rudolph even came to him.

Well, I was in the federal courtroom of Judge Lindwood Smith, an excellent judge, and I was representing, along with my team, a lawyer charged with witness tampering, and we were arguing over discovery when suddenly the assistant of Judge Smith came up to him and whispered in his ear. He recessed abruptly and came back, and then we learned that Eric Rudolph had been arrested.

Eric Rudolph was staring down a potential death penalty sentence. At this point, of the fifty people he had defended who were facing the death penalty, none had been executed.

To represent somebody for a federal death penalty crime, the court is obligated to a point what's called learned counsel, and that means someone who is skilled in death penalty, federal death penalty work and trained.

Jeffy recalls his friend and colleague, Bruce Gardner, nudging the judge as at that time Alabama had only one such qualified lawyer.

So we finished the hearing in the case was continued, and Bruce walked up to Judge Smith and said, you don't need to keep looking for another lawyer. The best person in the country you could appoint is sitting right over there, pointing to me. I'm unabashedly against the death penalty. The death penalty doesn't work, meaning it's provably not a

Take me through the first.

StAst well, the first day is when Judge Smith said he was appointing me as the lead lawyer, and he instructed me to go over and meet with Eric at the Jefferson County Jail. And his concern was whether Eric would accept me being Jewish, and he also wondered how I would interface with Eric and how I would feel about it.

Eric Rudolph is a loud and proud anti Semite, a Holocaust denier who called the television the electric Jew. Richard Jeffey is a Jewish man. I asked him how he was able to navigate that.

I went over and met with Eric at the Jefferson County Jail. He wasn't in the normal cell with others. He had his own block practically, and he was watching himself on TV. When I walked in and introduced myself and we had a very nice discussion. It wasn't that long, less than an hour, and he basically said that was a long time ago. I've evolved since then. That was what I said many years ago, is not how I

Doug Jones was also at the arraignment.

I called the US Marshall said I really want to get in that courtroom. So I was able to sit in the jury box, and you could just from my standpoint, it was a cold.

Look.

There was just something and I've told people since that time that you just don't see a soul behind those dark eyes of his, that he was proud of what he did. Do you just know he had a mission. He was proud of what he did, and he would do it over if he had to.

I asked Richard Jaffee what his first impressions were of Eric Rudolph.

Well, Eric had been in hiding for five and a half years, so he really hadn't had a meaningful conversation with anyone, and every single day he was in hiding was a day that he was solely focused on surviving. So suddenly he's instead of having the ability to watch the FBI because he had three different camps that he constructed, he was now confined in a jail cell, facing the death penalty. Imagine the culture shock he was experiencing. The interesting thing is that when he was arrested, he gave

Both Jaffie and Jones ultimately reached the same conclusion in their thinking and in their impressions of Rudolph. They believed he was on a mission, one that he felt strongly about, and he carried out that mission without remorse. But as the prosecutor, Doug Jones's singular job would have been to convict, to paint the portrait of a monster, while as a defense attorney, Jaffe's job, in addition to calling the evidence into question, was to find the beating heart inside this

My focus was to get to know him, not to challenge him and build up a rapport and a respect and clearly one hundred percent I did because when there was a conflict between the two factions of teams, Eric chose me and my team.

This was an extremely high profile case, but aside from that, it was only different from other cases by virtue of the fact that it was a death penalty case. And death penalty cases are notoriously hard to win in any prosecution, even if the defendant has essentially been found guilty in the court of public opinion. The burden of proof in this case required clear and convincing evidence, and it also required a unanimous verdict. The possibility of a hung jury was a very real scenario.

So there were different scenarios in play, and as a lawyer, you don't reach any conclusions. And I think that's one of the problems that sometimes law enforcement gets into, is what we call rush to judgment. The perfect example is Richard Jewel. So as lawyers, the last thing we wanted to do was exclude any hypothesis that was reasonable.

So I went down a federal courthouse along with the other victims of other bombings.

At a certain point in the process, victims from each of the bombings were brought in to provide personal statements about the crimes. They included Atlanta radio host Rob Stadler, who was at the Sandy Springs clinic bombing with his twin girls.

There was a gentleman who was a first responder, and he showed me the shrapnel that's still in his leg.

The victims were given the chance to read these statements to the courtroom and Eric Rudolph directly. Victim statements are a necessary part of the judicial process to allow the victims to describe the impacts of the crimes, which assists the judge and sentencing. Rob at first was hesitant to provide one. He was ready to be done with that

So it was my turn to talk, and I spent most of the time speaking on behalf of the others who were there, the first responders and the federal relations, etc. And spoke how they did such a great job after it happened. But I looked at Rudolph and I said, you know what I'm going to do, Eric, after this, I'm going to go home. I'm going to pick up my girls and we're going to do homework. I go,

I still remember being on the back row.

Former US Attorney Kent Alexander, the lead law enforcement officer for the Olympic Park bombing who was no longer on the case, was also there in the courtroom.

I didn't just sit on the back row, but I sat on top of the back of the bench because I wanted to eyeball Eric Rudolf. I really wanted to see who this guy was, and he was remarkably unimpressive at that point. He was pale as could be. He was overwakes kept feeding him in the jail in Birmingham. He just to me looked like this troll. I kept expecting to hear something or see something, though I knew it's rare that defendants say anything other than not guilty

Richard was there.

He said, I've been waiting a long time for this day, such a long time. He had to sit in a remote room with his wife to watch everything on video. His wife told me that she was happy because she really thinks he would have just jumped over the bench and attacked the guy, because for him'd say it was a life altering experience. This bombing would be unbelievable understatement. It ultimately took a lot of years off his life because he died at age forty four of a heart attack.

Emily Lyons, the nurse who bore the full force of the bombing at the Alabama abortion clinic, also attended some of the proceedings and had the chance to get a look at Rudolph beforehand outside the courtroom.

The closest I ever got to him. We were in Huntsville, and we were standing in a room with a door that had two pieces of glass up at the top, like a swing door. And they brought him back through the hallway. And when he passed in from those windows, he turned and looked at me. There was no expression, nothing, It was just blackness avoid in his eyes. He didn't care, He didn't I don't think he knew who I was, but sure he could just tell.

Emily lost one eye with the other severely damaged. Her hand was mangled, and a gaping wound in her abdomen required the removal of ten inches of her intestines. Most of the flesh was blown off her legs and hands. She suffered severe burns, a shattered leg, and shrapnel and nails remain embedded in her body. Confined to a wheelchair. Ever since the bomb, Emily has endured unimaginable pain and suffering. Yet when she heard that Eric Rudolf was captured, she

And I got to tell him in court what I thought. I let him know that he didn't win that day. He wanted people to die. But you didn't silence me. You thought you were going to do me in that day, but you were mistaken, and you're never going to see the light of day like I will. I'll be able to see. I'll be able to do things that you will never be able to do again. I can enjoy a good dinner somewhere.

I will.

You didn't kill me, and you didn't silence me. You did the complete opposite. You made my voice up hear. You made my brain be more active with the issue. Judge didn't like it. Lawyer didn't either, But I told him I had more guts of my little peaky than he did in his whole body. He didn't look at me, he didn't respond.

Rudolph was facing death. It's what the victims wanted. There was clear evidence linking him to each of these bombings. There was the phone call recording placed to nine one one, the bomb threat at the Olympics that multiple witnesses identified as Eric Rudolph is.

A Mom, the car harm.

There were the directional plates that were used at both the Olympics and the Sandy Springs Clinic. Prosecutors had the coffee cup with the license plate tag Jeff Tickle wrote down that matched Rudolph's truck, the same truck that had bomb residue left on the steering wheel, the same bomb residue that was found inside Rudolph's trailer, the same trailer he quickly fled from, emptying his drawers and leaving the

The fact that it was floated to me. That was the first of three different discussions I had with the government on pleat And the bottom line is I think they recognized that only at that time, sixteen percent of federal death penalty cases ended up in death. And while they had a pretty strong the strongest of any of the cases against Eric, they recognized that it was a circumstantial evidence case and it only took one juror to

In other words, Rudolph had very effectively covered his tracks. Even with all the evidence that surface after his capture in a court of law and with a jury of his peers, it still wasn't an open shutcase. Prosecutors needed a confession.

And I made it clear in the first discussion that I would get back to them after speaking to Eric, and I did, and I made it clear that if there was going to be a plea, it would have to be what we call a global resolution, meaning every single case, the potential state case is the Atlantic cases, in the Birmingham cases to a life sentence.

So Jeffy had to bring this news to Eric Rudolph and pose the offer, an offer that would spare his life, an offer from the very government he was hell bent on overthrown with his actions.

I had developed a really good relationship with Eric, but we never ever discussed plea. It never came up. It was never something that was in play. So my concern is that if I discussed it with him, which I was ethically bound to do, then he might lose confidence and get shocked and think that we thought that we couldn't successfully defend him here in Birmingham. So I was braced for a pretty vociferous reaction, but instead it was

As part of the plea agreement to avoid the death sentence, Rudolph gave up the location of a massive arsenal of dynamite he had stored deep in the woods, This dynamite was linked to a December nineteen ninety six robbery of more than three hundred and forty pounds of nitroglycer and

I mean, obviously, when the Centennial Park bombing happened during the Olympics, people were stunned. I mean, this was supposed to be an event that showcased Atlanta, and it clearly left a scar behind, and then you had years of uncertainty about who actually did People thought it was Eric Rudolf, but was unclear and until he was captured and then ultimately decide to plead guilty, and that'll happen today.

On April fourteenth, two thousand and five, Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty, confessing to his crimes, clarifying his motives and articulating his ideology of hatred in an eleven page confession.

When it was Rudolph's turn to speak, he ranted like a madman, claiming he was fighting for life by attacking an abortion mill.

Rudolph says he the Olympics went terribly rawing never intended to hurt anybody. If you've seen a mock up at the bomb, that's laughable. Of course, he intended to hurt people, but I think he didn't get the kind of positive reinforcement he expected from the Olympics.

His sentencing hearing was emotionally riching. Survivors of his clinic bombing finally got the opportunity to lash out at Rudolph.

I was not happy about it. I wanted a trial. I wanted all the evidence to come out. He probably would not have taken the stand, but I wanted to hear the preponderance of evidence against him. But I understand from where the prosecutors were coming from, although I was not happy with them, but they were just doing their job. But I wanted to see a trial and we were all denied that.

Andy Sanderson's widow understands why prosecutors agreed to the plea deal. The deal spared Rudolph's life, even though he took her husband's look.

I leave Eric Rudolph's final punishment in God's hands. And I looked him in the face in that court Remus the one time I did, and I said that to him. That's the only thing I said to him. That's the only thing I ever care to say to it.

Staring him dead in the eye. Emily Lyons blasted Eric Rudolf, calling him a failure and a coward who had spent his life in prison rather than risk death.

In my opinion, he got off easy. He killed people, he planned it. How much more premeditated murder do you need to get a death penalty? That's what I wanted. I wanted to be able to sit in the road before the window like you always see on TV, and be the face that he sees before he does. That's where I wanted to be be able to sit there and watch him die as he stood there and watched Sandyda says he stood there and tried to kill me.

They're very secretive about who's even brought to Colorado for that. Facility.

ADX Florence is a federal supermax in Florence, Colorado. It houses inmates that are deemed the most dangerous and capable of extreme violence, including El Chapo, the Unibomber, the OKC bomber, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and the Shoe bomber. It's where Eric Rudolph was sent.

It's the most secure prison in the United States, and it's full of the worst in the United States.

Everything is made of concrete, the walls, the floor, the desk, the sink, your bed, and inmates are fine to their cells for twenty three hours a day. You're truly shut off from the world.

No one's ever escaped, and I don't think mister Rudolph will have any ability to and I don't think he'll be communicating with anybody from there either.

January sixteenth, and I call it Family Survival Day because our entire family survived, and I do once in a while get on the Internet and look up details about supermacs, just to kind of get an idea of what he's going through. I mean, he gets one hour of outside. But it's interesting when they go into their courtyard. Apparently things are so covered up you don't see the sky. You basically walk around and whatever, and then you go back in and the only window you have in that

My parents were sitting behind me and my sister and my daughter, because I wanted them to see the person who did this to me.

Emily Lyons is describing the last time she saw Eric Rudolf in the courtroom.

My parents were close to ninety at that point. They were brought up in a small town. You know, nobody went around killing people. I wanted for them to know that there are people out there like that, to let them know that this isn't just an isolated event.

Emily's right. Eric Rudolf is not nicely an event. He's a relentless presence, part of a relentless movement, an echo in our minds and in our daily lives. His actions are inescapable permanent life altering and understanding him is not about empathy. It's about confronting and holding uncomfortable and contradictory truths. But regardless of the motivation, how does a person arrive at that conclusion? What activates them? How the fuck does someone go from I don't agree with you too, I'm

I think Herdoff did all this because of what he had been brought up in the religion, the skinhead part of his existence, radical ideas that he obtained early on. He just continued on that. It's like talking to about a closed mind. He was closed mind. All he had in his head was hatred, religious oddities, things that most normal people don't have. But he just had it drilled in for so long that there want anything else to think about. This is it. There's no other no other thought,

Someone who holds these convictions, who could commit such acts of extraordinary evil, That's not normally someone I'd ever want to talk to. But this isn't normal. This is where we're at and I have to try. The Supermax in Florence is the highest security prison in the United States, but they do allow for communication via letters to inmates, including Eric Rudolph. Dear mister Rudolph. My name is Cola Cassio.