Bomber writes life story from prison
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Eric Rudolph, serving a life sentence for bombings that killed two people in Alabama and Georgia in the 1990s, has published his autobiography from prison with the help of his brother.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Eric Rudolph, serving a life sentence for bombings that killed two people in Alabama and Georgia in the 1990s, has published his autobiography from prison with the help of his brother.
The book - Between the Lines of Drift: The Memoirs of a Militant - is hardly a best-seller: It ranked No. 24,040 in sales Friday at a website that allows authors to publish their own works. But the government said it still would seize any profits from sales, no matter the amount.
"He can't derive any benefit at all from his crimes," said Michael Whisonant, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Rudolph in the deadly bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham.
The 394-page book begins with Rudolph's account of his capture in 2003 after more than five years on the run. Rudolph's brother Daniel K. Rudolph is listed as the publisher, and is also credited with the simple line drawings that illustrate the book.
While his brother was the subject of a manhunt in 1998, Daniel Rudolph videotaped himself cutting off his hand in what he called a message to the media and the FBI. Doctors successfully reattached the hand.
A police artist's sketch of Eric Rudolph - obtained from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation through a records request - decorates the cover of the book.
Eric Rudolph, 46, pleaded guilty to detonating a bomb at a downtown park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The blast killed a woman, and a man suffered a fatal heart attack after the explosion.
Rudolph also pleaded guilty to using a remote-control device to set off a bomb outside a now-defunct abortion clinic in downtown Birmingham in 1998. That bombing killed a police officer and critically injured a clinic nurse.
Two witnesses saw Rudolph leaving the scene of the Birmingham bombing, but he disappeared into the Appalachian forest before authorities reached his rural home near Murphy, N.C. He was finally captured by a police officer who spotted him searching for food in a trash container behind a grocery store in Murphy.