The callous lack of remorse that confessed Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph displayed Monday as he was sentenced in the fatal 1998 bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic betrays an indefensible hypocrisy and contempt for human life. How ironic he would taunt prosecutors for striking a deal that would allow Rudolph to escape the death penalty.
To win his right to a long, healthy life that he denied his victims, Rudolph pleaded guilty to the 1998 bombing of the New Woman All Women clinic. He was sentenced in Birmingham to two consecutive life terms without possibility of parole for the blast that killed off-duty officer Robert “Sande” Sanderson and maimed nurse Emily Lyons.
He also has pleaded guilty to the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100 people, and also to bombing an Atlanta abortion clinic and a lesbian bar. Rudolph, captured in May 2003, will be sentenced in August to two more life terms for those bombings.
He’ll be imprisoned in Colorado at the federal Supermax prison in Florence with a number of other notorious terrorists, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; Oklahoma City bombing plotter Terry Nichols; Ramzi Yousef, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid.
Rudolph copped a plea-bargain with the feds to avoid the death penalty for himself in exchange for revealing where he’d stashed 250 pounds of dynamite. At his sentencing on Monday, Rudolph lashed out at clinics that perform legal abortion procedures. “Abortion is murder and because it is murder, I believe deadly force is needed to stop it. … The state is no longer the protector of innocence,” he said.
We have to wonder by what warped mental processes did Rudolph reason that indiscriminate murder protects the innocent or fosters respect for human life? Lyons looked directly at Rudolph as she denounced him for the coward that he is. “When it was your turn to face death, you weren’t so brave again,” she said. “You want to see a monster, all you have to do is look in the mirror.”
Said Sanderson’s widow, Felicia, “I’ll never forget the look on my son’s face when I told him Sande was gone.”
Rudolph fashions himself as a pro-life hero, but Lyons and Sanderson expose his utter lack of character. This is a serial killer who deserves society’s condemnation and its just punishment.
