A Remorseless Rudolph Gets Life Sentence for Bombing at Clinic

By SHADI RAHIMI
Published: July 18, 2005

Eric Rudolph, who has confessed to the Atlanta Olympics bombing and three other explosions that killed two and injured 150, received two life sentences today for a fatal abortion clinic blast after angrily denouncing abortion and telling the federal court that "deadly force is needed to stop it."

Mr. Rudolph, a 38-year-old former Army explosives expert, pleaded guilty in April to setting off a bomb that injured a nurse, Emily Lyons, and killed a police officer, Robert Sanderson, outside the Woman All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., in 1998.

He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole today in a federal courtroom in Birmingham.

Judge C. Lynwood Smith of Federal District Court in Birmingham said Mr. Rudolph postured himself "as a superior human being" and compared him to the Nazis, who "sought to eradicate a segment of the population." He ordered him to pay $1,276,000 in damages to his victims.

Mr. Rudolph, who has not expressed any remorse, insisted in court that he would be "vindicated."

"What they did was participate in the murder and dismemberment of upward of 50 children a week," Mr. Rudolph said. "I will be vindicated - my actions in Birmingham that overcast day in January 1998 will be vindicated. As I go to a prison cell for a lifetime I know that I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith."

Under a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid the death penalty for the four bombings, Mr. Rudolph also confessed in April to the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that killed one woman and injured 111 people, and the bombing of a gay and lesbian nightclub and an abortion clinic in Atlanta in 1997.

He is scheduled to receive two life sentences without parole in August for the Atlanta blasts.
The Birmingham bombing was one of the last in a decade of extreme anti-abortion activity in the 1990's, which had included online hit lists of abortion doctors. Victims of the bombing had waived their right to speak at the plea hearing in April, saying that they would wait for the sentence hearing.

In the courtroom today, Ms. Lyons, the nurse at the Woman All Women abortion clinic, called Mr. Rudolph "a monster."

As a result of injuries from the bombing, Ms. Lyons lost her left eye and underwent more than 20 operations. According to her Web site, she is releasing her self-published book about the bombing, "Life's Been a Blast," today - which is also her 49th birthday.

In the courtroom today, she addressed the confessed bomber directly.

"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."

Ms. Lyons said in an 8-page statement posted on the Web site today that although she had not received "the justice our laws allow" - the death penalty for Mr. Rudolph - she was determined to show him that he had "failed."

"To spend my life in anger and resentment would be another victory for you, and one I chose not to give," she wrote in the statement. "I will hold my head up high and I will enjoy the time you were unable to take from me. The best revenge is to live well."

During the sentencing hearing, Felecia Sanderson, the wife of the slain police officer, said that the bombing destroyed her family by taking away a man who "touched many, many lives."

"My son Nick lost the only father that he ever knew," Ms. Sanderson said. "I never forget the look on my son's face when I told him Sande was gone."

After eluding capture for five years in the mountains of western North Carolina, Mr. Rudolph was arrested in May 2003, when he was found apparently scavenging for food behind a grocery store in Murphy, N.C.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty if he would admit guilt and reveal the location of about 250 pounds of dynamite that he had hidden in the mountains. Among the explosives found and disposed of was a 25-pound bomb, more than twice as powerful as the one set off at Centennial Olympic Park.

The explosive was buried across the road from the Army National Guard armory that federal agents had used during their search for Mr. Rudolph, whose success as a fugitive had for a time turned him into a cult celebrity, with T-shirts being sold with such phrases a "Run Rudolph Run."

Under the plea agreement, Mr. Rudolph is to serve four life sentences with no chance of parole for the Birmingham and Atlanta bombings.

In an 11-page statement released after his guilty pleas, Mr. Rudolph gloated about the deal, which he said "deprived the government of its goal of sentencing me to death."

Mr. Rudolph said in the statement that he was born a Catholic "and with forgiveness I hope to die one." The bomber, who had moved with his family from Florida to North Carolina as a teenager, lived for some time in Missouri with a religious sect called Christian Identity, which opposes homosexuality, interracial marriage, and abortion.

The bombings were part of a fight "in the defense of the unborn," Mr. Rudolph wrote in his statement, and the blast at the Atlanta Olympics were meant to "confound, anger and embarrass" the federal government for legalizing abortion.

Mr. Rudolph had not been connected with any of the bombings until the one at the Birmingham clinic, when a truck seen leaving the scene was traced back to him. But he disappeared before the authorities could reach his mobile home in North Carolina.

About the bombing of the New Woman All Women clinic, a location that he chose "purely for tactical reasons," Mr. Rudolph wrote in the statement that every employee there was "a knowing participant in this gruesome trade."

He wrote that he meant to detonate the bomb when the doctor who performed abortions arrived, but was forced to change his plan when Mr. Sanderson, who was moonlighting as a security guard, discovered the device.

In a series of letters his mother, Pat Rudolph, 77, of Sarasota, Fla., shared with USA Today on July 5, Mr. Rudolph asked for her forgiveness, but expressed no remorse for his actions.

"Despite my many flaws, I still hope that you can find it in your loving selfless heart to forgive me," Mr. Rudolph said in one letter, adding, "even though I cannot apologize for being who I am and expressing myself in the way that I did, it troubles me greatly that you had to experience any hardships because of my deeds."

Victims of the Atlanta bombings will be given the chance to speak at Mr. Rudolph's sentencing there, which is scheduled for Aug. 22.

Shaila Dewan contributed reporting for this article from Birmingham, Ala.

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