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By Catharine Skipp
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For the first few years on the lam, alone in the North Carolina woods and fearful of being discovered, Eric Robert Rudolph claims he lived off the fat of the land. He moved around constantly, surviving on a diet of acorns and salamanders. "I just swallowed them whole, like sushi," he bragged to police officers who held him after his arrest last week. Sgt. Lester White, a detention officer with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, spent hours talking with Rudolph during his initial days in custody. White told NEWSWEEK that Rudolph, accused of setting off deadly bombs at abortion clinics, a gay club and the 1996 Olympics, was surprisingly forthcoming about his five years running from the law. He asked for a Bible and fresh fruit, and regaled his captors with stories of life as a fugitive. Though authorities are searching his former hiding spots to determine if he had help along the way, Rudolph gave the impression that he was always alone. At times, he claimed, the solitude got to him. He said he hadn't been with a woman in so many years, even "the bears started looking good."
His lawyers may soon wish he had kept quiet just a little longer. Rudolph is now in a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala., where he will stand trial for the 1998 bombing of a women's clinic that killed an off-duty police officer. (He'll then be shipped off to Atlanta for the Olympics bombing trial.) Richard Jaffe, one of his court-appointed attorneys, insists that Rudolph is innocent, and says that he has been unfairly portrayed as an anti- government militant and Christian extremist. "We intend to challenge that, right now and throughout," he told reporters. Rudolph's flight, he says, shouldn't be taken as a sign of guilt. "There are all kinds of reasons why people get scared and run and hide. I don't know what I would do if I was the subject of a nationwide manhunt."
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In his jailhouse ruminations, Rudolph--who did not admit to any crime--described in detail how he went to great lengths to avoid capture. According to Sergeant White, Rudolph said he eventually began hunting deer, bear and turkeys, using a .223-caliber rifle. He rarely fished in the abundant creeks, he said, because he feared that the roar of the rushing water would drown out the sounds of approaching footsteps. In the winters he wore boots, in the summers, running shoes. He made occasional trips to the nearby town of Andrews to steal corn and soybeans. He scrounged for books to pass the hours (found at one of his campsites: "Incident at Big Sky: The True Story of Sheriff Johnny France and the Capture of the Mountain Men"). "He had to look at it just like it was a long, long camping trip," says White, paraphrasing Rudolph.
There were close calls. Rudolph said one day he was perched atop a grain bin when a group of hunters with a dog passed nearby. The dog began trotting over toward him--only to be hit by a car. Another time, he said, he fell into an icy creek and had to build a fire to dry his clothes.
Those who spoke with Rudolph during his custody in North Carolina said he seemed as though he'd grown weary of life alone in the mountains, and had started taking risks. He made more frequent trips into town to pick through trash cans behind supermarkets and fast-food joints. "He said there was nothing better than a half-eaten taco," recalls one officer. Some have speculated that Rudolph eventually resigned himself to capture. White wondered the same thing himself, and asked Rudolph straight out: after all he'd been through, was he relieved it was finally over? The former fugitive, who may face the death penalty in two states, had a blunt, simple answer: no.
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