Olympic park bombing suspect eluded cops — until he dug in trash 20 years ago, FBI says
The man accused of planting a deadly bomb during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta eluded cops for years — until he dug through the trash 20 years ago, the FBI said.
Jeffrey Postell, a 21-year-old rookie police officer in a North Carolina mountain town, was on patrol early May 31, 2003, when he spotted a man “rummaging through a trash bin behind a rural grocery store.” Postell, who thought the man had a gun, took him into custody before another sharp-eyed official realized he looked familiar, according to the federal government and the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
When the man was arrested in the town of Murphy, he reportedly didn’t provide his name. But through the help of a wanted poster, he was identified as Eric Rudolph, the man believed to be responsible for planting four bombs, including one that went off in July 1996 at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.
At the time, the Olympics drew thousands of people to the park. The explosion injured more than 100 people and killed a woman who was there to see the international sporting competition with her daughter, officials said.
Between 1996 and 1998, Rudolph also is accused of planting two other bombs in Georgia and one in Birmingham, Alabama, leading to blasts that injured several others and killed a police officer. By the time agents were ready to arrest Rudolph, the ATF said he fled to the Western North Carolina wilderness.
A suspect on the run in NC
Rudolph — described as a “survivalist” — grew up in the “rugged” terrain near the Nantahala National Forest. So he was familiar with hiding spots and “knew the mountains so well he could navigate them at night,” Chris Swecker, former head of the FBI’s Charlotte office, said in an interview published on the agency’s website.
Even after officials studied geography and conducted a “massive” manhunt, their suspect remained elusive. While some people believe the fugitive received help with staying in hiding, Swecker doesn’t believe so.
“Rudolph is such a loner that we strongly believed he simply wouldn’t have trusted anybody,” he said. “He had access to news; he had newspaper articles in his camp. He knew he was being pursued.”
The search for Rudolph ended two decades ago, when he was seen trying to get food from a dumpster near a Save-A-Lot supermarket. He tried to hide behind milk crates before Postell caught up with him, McClatchy News reported.
Postell, who was almost done with his shift when he made the arrest, described their drive to jail on an Our State podcast in 2019.
“I can still to this day remember him sitting in the back of my police car and me viewing him through my rearview mirror and him having just a death stare at me and just seeing his eyes,” he said. “He had the coldest eyes.”
Rudolph — dubbed the “Olympic Park Bomber” — also was accused of targeting an abortion clinic and an LGBT nightclub. “The bombings really sprang from his own unique biases and prejudices,” Swecker said.
In 2005, Rudolph pleaded guilty to federal charges tied to the four blasts. He is serving four life sentences and isn’t eligible for parole, officials said.
Nuclear bombs fell on North Carolina in 1961. The state was one step from disaster
