Eric Rudolph could be erudite and charming, no question. He could also be a stone killer who was passionate about his cause and dispassionate about his campaign against abortion clinics and the government that allowed them to flourish. He also had a thing against gays.
What Maryanne Vollers makes clear in “Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph, Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw” is that he was a loner, comfortable in his own skin. So comfortable, in fact, that he lived alone in the mountains of North Carolina for five years avoiding the largest manhunt on United States soil. He was there so long that his pursuers thought he’d either left the country or died and they called off the hunt. It was only through carelessness that Rudolph was caught rummaging through garbage cans for food by a rookie rural cop.
Rudolph has admitted to setting off bombs in Olympic Park in Atlanta, a gay bar and two abortion clinics. He is spending the rest of his days in Florence at the federal “supermax” prison in a small cell on the same floor as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
Vollers attempts to let the reader in on what makes Rudolph tick and succeeds to a large degree, using contacts inside the investigation and in Rudolph’s family – particularly Rudolph’s mother, as well as correspondence with Rudolph from his prison cell.
She points out that Rudolph has been something of a loner since childhood, not really fitting in anywhere. And, despite a general distrust of the government by people in the area, he received little if any help while on the lam. But he had always been self-reliant and, as Vollers says, “When it comes to hide and seek, the Mountains of North Carolina have always favored the hiders.”
Vollers, whose early book, “Ghosts of Mississippi,” centered on the killing of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and the trial of his killer was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1995, describes the internicine battles waged among the FBI and the local law enforcement.
She points out that the FBI was reeling from negative public relations over the fairly recent Ruby Ridge incident and Waco Branch Davidian siege, and therefore was anxious to find Rudolph quickly and efficiently. That they didn’t is more a testament to Rudolph’s survival skills than an indictment on the agency.
Some of the most interesting – and chilling – reading in the book are excerpts from the correspondence between author and subject.
When asked about what he sees as evidence of the decline of civilization, Rudolph sounds like a pamphleteer of the extreme right:
“The problems threatening Western Civilization are too numerous to list here, but here are a few. Generally that now parades under the leftist banner is pathological, especially where it touches upon domestic cultural social issues: The homosexual agenda, multiculturalism, diversity, the counter-culture, gun control, Feminism, anti-Christianity, affirmative action and racial quotas, socialism, liberalism, Marxism, Pacifism , the destruction of the family, dissolution of the small family farm.”
But it was really abortion that set him off. “Abortion is murder. And when the regime in Washington legalized, sanctioned and legitimized this practice, they forfeited their legitimacy and moral authority to govern.”
Vollers fills in a lot of blank space about Rudolph, who he was as well as how and why he did what he did. It would have been nice to learn more, though, about his time in the woods, how he passed his time. But that’s a minor quibble.
Books editor Tom Walker can be reached at 303-954-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
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Lone Wolf
Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw
By Maryanne Vollers
HarperCollins, 356 pages, $25.95
