se to draw people in. i mean, what he had done was the perfect way to go after law enforcement. now, we're looking at an individual who is targeting first responders, targeting abortion clinics. officer (on radio): hey, control, we just had another explosion down here at the center. nearly six months after the centennial park bombing, atlanta is rocked by another explosion, this time at a women's health clinic. is this connected to the centennial park attack? and if so, who is planting these bombs and why? the hunt for the person or people responsible continues in part two of atlanta bombing. i'm jesse l. martin. thank you for watching. [audio logo] emily lyons: it was premeditated.

oh, my god. emily lyons: he planned it. [explosion] run! emily lyons: he made those bombs. woman (on phone): a bomb explosion. man (on phone): a bomb explosion. emily lyons: he killed those people. there's not a day go by that i don't think about him. he is always in my head. people told me i should have died. out! back up. back up, people! [screaming] [theme music] hello and welcome to how it really happened. i'm jesse l. martin. there is a specter hovering over the 1996 summer olympic games in atlanta. someone planted a bomb designed to kill or maim spectators at centennial park.

and when a second device explodes at another location just 15 miles away, investigators suspect there is a serial bomber stalking atlanta. this is part two of atlanta bombing. [suspenseful music playing] rick schwein (voiceover): there is entertainment at centennial park, the beating heart at night of the olympics. oh, yeah. you having a good time? [cheers, applause] [explosion] we have had word now of an explosion at the centennial olympic park. rick schwein (voiceover): security guards were saying, get out, get out, get out, get out. [whistling] hey! hey!

rick schwein (voiceover): i looked around and people were screaming. many injured laying around. reporter: at this point, we understand that we have 110 injured and two people who have died. rick schwein (voiceover): so now, you've got a bombing at an olympiad. what's the motivation behind the bombing? at this point, we don't know because we don't have the bomber identified. [police sirens] man (on phone): this was a loud explosion about 9:30 this morning in a professional building, mostly housing medical offices, including an abortion clinic. tom bush: the first bomb device had gone off in the rear of the building into the windows of the abortion clinic. there's still a very initial response is underway. reporter: some windows broken. eyewitnesses said that the explosion shook nearby office

buildings as well. as we say, no injuries reported so far and no cause of the explosion. we're standing there talking about next steps. [explosion] tom bush: and that second device goes off and the level of noise and first reaction is literally, what was that? alan duke (on phone): the second explosion was outside the building near the entrance to this professional services clinic. it happened about 25 yards from where i was. i certainly felt the force of this blast. and immediately in front of me, the people standing right in front of me were hit, and they're bleeding from the head and elsewhere. and it's quite a chaotic scene here. henry schuster: this idea of having a secondary device at the abortion clinic is something that other bombers had used in other places. it's something that al-qaeda and its operatives

would use to great effect. the bomb goes off. people come out. law enforcement comes out. the media comes out. the secondary device goes off. [explosion] this was meant to kill. go! go! go! bill campbell: it was directed at the abortion clinic. we have been the scene of a number of abortion protests here, operation rescue, and a number of others that took place over the last several years, but never the type of violence that occurred here today. joe kennedy: we started to put together a picture of what for both devices were made of. and in both cases, we had evidence of mechanical timers. there were nails in secondary device. mike rising: there were 26 sticks of dynamite in it, 5 pounds of masonry cut nails. joe kennedy: dynamite is a high explosive that can only be initiated with a detonator.

dynamite went off. it blew it all into one direction. [explosion] mike rising: with all the cut nails. man: oh, my god. rick schwein: so you set a device off. first responders arrive at the scene, and then you set another device that you either detonate remotely or is timed to go off sometime after the first device, you're doing that to kill the people that are responding. that's a different level of evil. bill campbell: the first act is a political statement. the second one is a particularly heinous act that seemed designed to injure those federal and local officials that were there to assist in the evacuation of the emergency medical personnel. joe kennedy: after the sandy springs bombing, we had a good idea of the components that were used in the bombs from centennial olympic park and the two bombs in sandy springs. they were a number of components that were the same-- mechanical timer, nails, steel plates.

so these types of similarities, we like to use a term called a “bomber signature.” by that i mean, when you have a serial bomber making multiple bombs, subsequent bombs that he makes will generally incorporate similar design concepts. and they do this because it's what's comfortable to them. woody johnson: that's pretty solid evidence. you're dealing with the same person or same group that is doing this because bombers will traditionally build them the same way every time, because they know what works and they know how dangerous it is putting the thing together. everyone wanted to know. are we dealing with someone that's putting the public at risk and how worried should we be? [suspenseful music playing]

jack daulton: i got a phone call at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, and it was tom bush. and he said, hey, we had another bombing. we're all at the other side lounge. it was a tremendous boom. it's like-- it's like a cannon or something in a circus, that kind of boom sound. so really, actually, nobody even moved. they were too afraid to even move, you know? and then i think after maybe a minute or so, everybody realized something had happened.

tom bush: it was determined upon arriving at the scene that that bomb was placed behind the club. shrapnel nails came into the back of the club. and people were injured as a result of that. reporter: five people were injured in the initial explosion at the other side dance club, a business, which caters to a gay and alternative lifestyle. henry schuster: the first bomb goes off. they move people back. they spot a secondary device nearby a retaining wall. reporter: the first explosion was set off on the club's back porch, and when police arrived, they found a second more powerful bomb. it was safely detonated about 2 am. [explosion] joe kennedy: the bomb technicians collaborated with each other and worked on a series of techniques to render that device safe. fortunately, no one was hurt. reporter: multiple explosive devices have been rare in the us until recently, but atlanta now has three unsolved bombings within the past year.

last july, the olympic park bombing injured hundreds. [explosion] [screaming] reporter: in january, two bombs were set off at a suburban business plaza. investigators theorize a second bomb is intended for officials who arrive at the scene. they looked at militia groups. they looked at terrorist groups. we assumed that it was somebody who lived close by because they were all local bombs. we all recognize that there are similarities here. we will be searching out the possibility that we have a serial bomber. [suspenseful music playing] tom bush: letters are sent to multiple media outlets purporting to be from the army of god. jim russell: there were some letters received claiming that the work of the olympic bombing and the clinic and other side lounge bombing was

perpetrated by an organization called army of god. and the mindset behind those letters indicated that somebody had a warped view of christianity, had a warped view of humanity. there was anti-semitic, anti-gay rhetoric. he's now saying who he is. they're in this block letter and it says the bombings in sandy springs and midtown were carried out by units of the army of god. so units, army, at least this person saying it's more than one person, then the attack in midtown was aimed at the sodomite bar (the other side). we will target sodomites, their organizations and all those who push their agenda. tom bush: basically the individual saying we, the army of god, are against the liberal agenda of the government, homosexuality, and abortion,

and basically saying we're declaring war on those particular aspects of american society. reporter: even law enforcement says it can't pin down any group called the army of god, but is looking at the possibility of a lone serial bomber. are they a group? are they an organization? no, i don't think they ever have been. but there are people who believe in the rhetoric and the philosophy of the army of god. reporter: a philosophy of hatred against washington, abortion, gays, and any event like the olympics that might force the united states to join a so-called new world order. jack daulton: so the army of god letters, they basically took credit for the bombings and the assumption was that it was somebody involved in that organization. but as we looked into it, it's not really an organization. it's just a bunch of individuals. so that further led us to just one person we're dealing with. henry schuster: it's kind of apparent to the fbi that there's no army.

and that, of course, is the hardest thing to crack because that means you've still got a lone wolf. and then he goes quiet.

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centennial olympic park bombing and two others around atlanta. they hope a blurry picture from that might hold a clue. we are now displaying an enhanced video frame taken

at approximately 12:20 am that shows the outline of an individual sitting on the bench where the bomb later exploded. as you can see, this video is extremely blurry. vernon keenan: so the fbi arranged for the picture to be sent to nasa to see if they could enhance it with all of their specialized equipment. david hathaway: it was many months of working. we came up with a process that would stabilize and register the images, brighten them up, reduce the noise. so it was a much cleaner image and you could see important details. the main thing is we got a description of what he looked like the night of the bombing. tom bush: and it took a considerable amount of time, but we ultimately got down to an individual that you could identify some physical characteristics. david hathaway: we knew how tall the bench was. we knew how tall the wall and back of them was. so we could use that to estimate his height

and from build his weight. and we figured he was about 6' 0", maybe 180. tom bush: and what he was wearing. david hathaway: khaki shirt and shorts. tom bush: even shoe size, size 9. so it was fascinating to see what we started with. what we ended up with was pretty amazing. david hathaway: the picture we presented of the bomber could help identify the bomber, or at least if you had a suspect, see whether that suspect was right size and shape to be consistent with what we had. [suspenseful music playing] henry schuster: it's january 1998. emily lyons is opening up the clinic. emily lyons: at the clinic, we did perform abortions up to 15 weeks. we did adoptions. we did pregnancy tests and ultrasounds.

before i started working there, i had no major concept of abortion as an issue. henry schuster: this was a place that had more than its share of protesters. so that's why they've got an off duty police officer there for security, officer sandy sanderson. and he sees something. he starts looking at it. emily lyons: it was a green toolbox. sandy was standing beside it. i was up closer to the door. he pulls out a baton, and as officer sanderson gets closer to figuring out what it is, it detonates. [explosion] that force just-- [vocalizing] pushed him back. and then the nails and stuff went to the building, and then i hit the window. sandy was literally torn to pieces. kitty pilgrim: when we got there, the scene was very disturbing. there was glass all over. you could smell burnt things.

and it was extraordinarily chaotic. kitty pilgrim (voiceover): the birmingham fire and rescue service arrived to find an off duty police officer had been killed by the blast. a nurse at the clinic had severe injuries and was taken to the hospital. kitty pilgrim: it got worse and worse and worse. also very upsetting because it's an abortion clinic. it's an environment that's a vulnerable, environment. kitty pilgrim (voiceover): investigators describe it as an act of cowardice, the first fatal bombing of a women's health clinic in the us history. jeffrey lyons: i went on over to the hospital. emily was on her way into surgery, and they said she might lose both legs. she might die. the bomb had a lot of nails, over 7 pounds of nails and shrapnel. one nail or a piece of copper went into this eye, acted like an egg beater. and so there was no hope for that, so they had to take that out.

my face was covered in shrapnel holes, tears. my eyelids were torn back. jeffrey lyons: i didn't see her until that night, and i honestly thought i'd walked into the wrong room. it was kind of in shock. i still didn't know if she was going to live or not. emily lyons: the fireball is over 5,000 degrees fahrenheit. so i had first, second and third degree burns. it tore the skin off, both my shins. pretty much destroyed the muscle there, too. and it took weeks for that to even get to where it wouldn't bleed. jeffrey lyons: i knew that if she did live, it was not going to be the life she had before. emily lyons: there have been 54 surgeries and four of those were this year. she had a lot of surgeries from the skin grafts and the broken bones. but most of emily's surgeries were foreign body removals, and most of the foreign bodies were nails.

many of them, they left because going in after them would have caused more damage. emily lyons: i am a survivor. fighting is pretty much what you had to do every day in the hospital. jeffrey's what got me through it. always said he was my lifeline. she's amazing. she's the superhero. i'm the sidekick. you know? so she survived a bomb. i'm fortunate to be married to such an amazing woman. reporter: the federal bombing task force set up after the olympic park bombing in atlanta in 1996, is now operating in birmingham, trying to learn if there are any links between the family planning clinic bombing and the atlanta bombings over the past year and a half. joe kennedy: we arrived the day of the bombing that afternoon to see the bomb scene. i remember lloyd erwin commenting that he had suspicion that there might be parts of an improvised detonator.

well, i saw somebody that had seen that day that told me remote control. tom bush: there had been time devices left at the other locations at the olympics, at sandy springs, other side lounge. the difference and the deadly difference in this one was that this particular device was remote-control detonated. they used a remote control device to detonate the bomb, but everything else was pretty much the same -- the metal plate the nails, dynamite. it was basically identical to the other bombs, except for remote control to detonate it. when somebody setting the remote control device, he has to be able to see the device. so he had to be in line of sight in order to set it off when you want it to go off. rick schwein: he watched the officer lean over the device and executed the officer. killed him. it's cowardly, but it's also-- it's just evil.

he had control over that device. it was remotely detonated by his finger. emily lyons: sandy was doing his job that day. i'm thankful for that. it's not the way to die, though. sandy didn't believe in abortions. he was not pro-choice, but he knew what his job was. he came to work. that was to protect women coming in and out of that clinic. and that day he protected me too.

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really happened. 886. three bombings and investigators have little more than a blurry image of the deadly bomber. then, as first responders and investigators rushed to the site of another explosion, they get a possible break. a witness noticed a man walking away from the scene. rick schwein: an alert university of alabama birmingham student saw this individual walking away from the explosion site while everybody else is running to it and responding to it and thought, that's suspicious. the witness was doing his laundry on the balcony of one of the dorms and he saw somebody walking away after the bomb had exploded, walking calmly with a blonde wig.

and he followed him. tom bush: he follows this individual on foot and in a vehicle, sees this individual change clothes, take a wig off, put a hat on, put sunglasses on, changes an overcoat, and now is dressed differently. jim russell: it was quite an involved route that he followed to finally get the individual placed inside a vehicle, which was a nissan pickup truck. and the witness was able to jot down the north carolina tag number. once the witness had provided the license plate number to law enforcement, they would run the tag through our national crime information center, and they were able to get the registration to that vehicle, which would include a name, an address. rick schwein: and the license plate is registered to eric rudolph and at an address in asheville, north carolina.

jim russell: when i received the information from my headquarters, the instructions were there was an individual that was acting suspiciously at the scene of the bombing, go out to asheville, and identify if, in fact, this person was in birmingham that day. and if he was, what was he doing in birmingham? that was the actual beginning of the manhunt because they knew who they were looking for. investigators in birmingham, alabama are looking for a man who may have witnessed yesterday's deadly bombing of a women's clinic. one person was killed, another severely wounded in the blast. tom bush: those initial description fits a lot of what we were looking for from the description from the centennial park bombing. he was about 6' 0", 175 pounds, size 9 shoes. that's the kind of detail we were able to get off of that blob man photograph. once we had reasonable belief that eric robert rudolph could be a person of interest. you look everything you can possibly

find about him, his personal stuff, his credit cards. he had no credit cards. he hadn't paid taxes. he had no income. he didn't have a job at that time. we start doing interviews, surveillance, bank records, things like that. anybody that knew him were interviewed, looked at every aspect of his life that you can find through your investigation. but then you're also looking at his background. he had a short military career. he was trained in bombing techniques. he was trained in what they called l-shaped ambush techniques, which is again, setting up an ambush using secondary devices. [explosion] as we did more in his background, he's known to be anti-government, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual. once we do interviews with different family and friends, and it became clear that a lot of aspects of his life to date fit the type of individual that could be our bomber. [suspenseful music playing]

jim russell: randy cochran opened the door to us. and before we could do anything more than identifying ourselves, randy said, well, i guess you must be here about eric. and we were kind of dumbfounded. and asked randy, why do you think we're here for eric rudolph? and he said, well, because he's all over the news. we have issued a warrant for a mr. eric robert rudolph, a white male, age 31. rick schwein: there was a media leak. information was going to be transmitted about rudolph and the us attorney in birmingham, doug jones, decided to hold a press conference. last known address was in a small north carolina community in western north carolina called marble, north carolina.

jim russell: we were just pretty much upset that that information was now being broadcast to the general public. shortly after the name became available and was announced, they assumed that he was going to flee at that point. again, this is a material witness warrant and no one should jump to any conclusions about the fact that we are looking to question mr. rudolph. we talked to randy and said we need to get in touch with eric rudolph. do you have any idea where he's at? he said my thought is he's somewhere in western cherokee county, out near the city of murphy, north carolina. as soon as he said that, got on the phone with the sheriff of cherokee county and asked him to run a public records check on eric rudolph, if he's ever been arrested out there. sheriff said, yes, i've got an eric rudolph. he's never been in any of our arrest records,

but he's getting power on a trailer that's located off a caney creek road, which is located west of murphy, north carolina.

that the bomber of a birmingham, alabama women's clinic will be found soon. reporter: a north carolina man is being sought for questioning as a material witness in the birmingham clinic bombing. at a late afternoon press conference, law enforcement officials put out this description. eric robert rudolph, a 31-year-old white male. jim russell: we drove to murphy and it was determined at that location that myself and an atf agent was going to make at least an initial reconnaissance of the residence of eric rudolph. it's dark out. it's in the middle of winter, and we're getting more and more certain that this individual that has already committed a bombing in birmingham has killed a police officer. we had to be careful for any kind of booby traps or ieds as we were making the approach to the trailer. the front door was wide open, and this was january

and it was cold. and i thought, geez, you know, with that door being wide open like that, no truck, it looks like, in my opinion, that he must have just exited that trailer in a hurry. it looked like he took at least a rifle and he left other firearms back there and left $1,600 in cash, in $100 bills hidden behind a picture. it just reinforced in my opinion, that he left that trailer in a hurry. and i had just got there a little too late. rick schwein: he missed rudolph by, i believe, less than an hour. but at that point, it was very apparent that eric rudolph was on the run. reporter: who is eric rudolph? and where is he? federal agents continue to search for the elusive material witness in the january 29 bombing of an alabama abortion clinic. jim russell: we dug into the background to eric rudolph. it became apparent that this was a loner, never had any real close friends, never

had any real close girlfriends, was never married, never had a legitimate job. he was raised in florida and his mother moved the family to north carolina to be ready for any terrible event that could happen, any cataclysm, the apocalypse, to be bunkered and hunkered down. in this case, they lived in this little community called topton, north carolina. there are a lot of people that have moved into the area that were anti-government and felt that they would be more accepting in that area because of the community itself and the community's beliefs. art harris: he didn't have a father figure after his father died. deborah rudolph: mr. rudolph had passed away. he had melanoma. they had wanted to administer laetrile, which is not approved by the fda, and he ended up passing. it sort of fell into that... “well, the government is keeping these sort of cures

away from us.” so, you know, they're just become layers of conspiracy. art harris: suddenly, here's eric with grief in his mind. but no one to-- to single out except the feds, the bureaucracy that denied his father the one elixir of hope he wanted, who he thought would cure his cancer. and looking back, i think, ok, they already had these sentiments, but i think it progressed after robert died. his mom seemed to be somebody who was a spiritual searcher. art harris: eric rudolph grew up in somewhat of a preached-at childhood where his mother would visit different churches that were very fundamentalist or had a new christian identity movement. eric is exposed to a really toxic mix of ideas-- white nationalism, white separatism,

white supremacy, all mixed in. deborah rudolph: how it was explained to me is if you want to further your race, you need to be true to your race. you need to breed within your race. you need to stay in your lane. tom bush: he'd had some education. he'd been in the military, and he'd had bomb training in the military. deborah rudolph: it was such a shock when eric went into the military. when he went in the military, ok, you're this anti-government dude. why would you do that? i know that lifestyle. if you're anti-government and you're narcissistic and you're very self-centered, that's not going to work because you have to be part of a team. tom bush: he was dishonorably discharged from the military for use of marijuana. deborah rudolph: he became a little more aggressive about his sentiments about the government, about the fda, about the races, and about abortion. he used to say the olympics is all the races coming together,

but he turned it into something ugly. now we have a picture of an individual, so we know where his hatreds and motivations and problems are. joe kennedy: by then, eric rudolph's name had been circulated through the news media, and the owner of a mini storage unit called said, hey, i rented a unit to this eric rudolph. so we proceeded to get into that storage unit and that's when a bag of nails was collected. those were cut nails. lloyd erwin: it was later identified as the same type of nail, the same manufacturer as the ones in sandy springs device. a mobile home is one focus of the investigation into last week's bombing of a women's health clinic in alabama.

federal agents searched the marble, north carolina home, which is the last known address of a material witness to the attack. eric rudolph is still at large. authorities say that even though he's simply wanted as a witness, rudolph should only be approached by the police. rick schwein: now, the manhunt is on, and we're looking for him. we have a start point. we have this trailer. joe kennedy: there were items that contained the presence of trace explosives, egd in particularly, which is only found in dynamite. there was the walmart receipt and on the receipt was a number of items that could be used to manufacture improvised explosives. now, you're not going to find improvised explosives per se at walmart, but the measuring cup, gloves, other things that you would think a person in a makeshift chemical lab might want to use to formulate a high explosive.

[suspenseful music playing]

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xfinity internet customers can buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. get the fastest connection to paris with xfinity. escended on the community of murphy, north carolina, in the woods nearby. they have found what could be a link to last month's bombing of a women's health clinic in birmingham, alabama. joe kennedy: on february the 7th, eric rudolph's truck was located by some hunters in nantahala forest. it was within five miles of his trailer,

but it was off the road, hidden deep into the woods. reporter: federal agents pulled eric robert rudolph's vehicle from a deeply wooded area monday afternoon. the truck, wrapped in plastic, was being taken by flatbed for extensive analysis in a forensic lab. i swabbed the door handles, swabbed the steering wheel, the gearshift lever. we got dynamite residue off the steering wheel. joe kennedy: this was just another indication that this is the bomber of the birmingham attack. so this combination of parts were indications of a serial bomber, and most of us on the task force felt confident that the bomber was the same guy that was responsible for sandy springs and for centennial park as well. we found a receipt for groceries-- canned tuna, oatmeal, raisins, stuff that he

could take to the woods. and the belief was that he could probably live for about five or six months with what he had. jim russell: he was on the run. he knew he was being hunted. reporter: from the air and on the ground. the hunt intensifies for an elusive witness to that fatal bombing at an alabama women's clinic. with the abandonment of the truck and no report of any other vehicles stolen in the area. we were confident that we had our fugitive on foot. rick schwein: he's in the nantahala national forest area, so it's very rural, it's rugged. it's a five-county area in the far western part of the state. reporter: searching for a needle in a haystack. scouring the southern appalachians for eric rudolph. the 31-year-old north carolina carpenter and laborer has been sought for questioning about the clinic bombing for a week and a half now. rick schwein: it was an area that we knew he had grown up in. he knew how to navigate. he knew how to move. he knew the best routes. he knew all the game trails, and he knew how to stay hidden.

there are areas where you can't see more than a couple of feet in front of you, particularly if you get off the path. so there's the physical danger of having an armed confrontation with a wanted fugitive that has no compunction about killing. reporter: you know, here, he's been living out here in the woods and all this. i mean, you think some folks might be helping him? i'd say he's had some help somewhere or another, but i won't say for sure. but i would have helped him if i'd had seen him. reporter: and why is that? because i figure he didn't do what they got him charged with. i don't believe he done it. rick schwein: you would see the signs. eric rudolph, hide and seek champion, fill in the blank number of days. there were certainly small pockets of people who were sympathetic and may have assisted eric.

reporter: but the fbi says he is armed and dangerous, still hiding in these mountains. jim russell: the manhunt would ebb and flow and then there would be a potential sighting of rudolph by members of the public. so that would kind of send us out back into the woods. and we spend weeks and months and ultimately years searching the mountains for our bomber, for eric rudolph. jim russell: '99, 2000, 2001, 2002. four years. no sightings of him in four years. i became firmly convinced that eric rudolph had died out there in the woods. [suspenseful music playing] art harris: small town cop just doing his drive bys at night, 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, sees a guy wandering around behind a shopping center and stops him and gets him out of the dumpster where he's been

dumpster diving for food. rick schwein: they took him to the sheriff's department. and they started talking to him. and his story wasn't matching up. he said he was an indigent living under the bridge, couldn't produce any id, and finally pulled out a wanted poster and held it up to his face and said, who are you really? and he admitted his identity, said, i'm eric robert rudolph, and you got me. we have some breaking news to report to you this morning regarding a long fbi and multi-agency investigation that has been going on early since the late 90s. rick schwein: jeff postell, a young 21-year-old rookie police officer, ran across america's most notorious top 10 fugitive and domestic terrorist, diving in a dumpster at 3:00 in the morning in a save-a-lot grocery store in murphy, north carolina. i'm just glad i was out there doing my job and was glad i was in the right place at the right time.

rick schwein: ending one of the longest manhunts in american history. as we speak, eric rudolph is in the jail building, which is right behind this courthouse over my shoulder. it's expected that sometime tomorrow, he'll be transported to asheville, north carolina, where he'll make a first appearance in a federal courtroom monday morning, 10:00 am eastern time. it's then expected he will quickly be transferred to either alabama or georgia, the states where the bombs went off. by then, there's enough evidence for the federal government to levy charges against eric rudolph for the bombings. and so he's charged and held in federal custody. jim russell: the us attorney's office was going to seek the death penalty against rudolph. but if he didn't want the death penalty he had to offer some cooperation. jim russell: rudolph had offered, through his attorneys, to provide us with the locations of some ied components and an actual intact ied and over 200 pounds of dynamite.

rick schwein: he had buried his explosive devices in the dynamite cache. that was important because we didn't want somebody to run across that and have somebody else get hurt or killed. it was decided to accept his offer and in return, not seek the death penalty. the dynamite was so unstable we had to blow it in place. [explosion] and i do remember it. it rattled windows in that five-county area. it was quite the hole that that explosion made. reporter: today, eric rudolph pleaded guilty to those bombings in several court appearances. his pleas will spare him the death penalty, which some of his victims believe is a worse deal than they got from him. emily lyons: i am angry he didn't get the death penalty. he should have. it was premeditated. he planned it.

he made those bombs. he killed those three people. how much more do you need? [suspenseful music playing] watson bryant: richard jewell was there when eric rudolph pled guilty. it was sort of like a big weight came off. but people still think of him with some shame associated with his name because of the park bombing instead of being a guy that saved a lot of lives. mark winne: you can stand there in centennial olympic park today and see where eric rudolph perpetrated this huge act of terror. then you can look to the south, and you can see the towering federal courthouse where eric rudolph pled guilty.

you can see the beginning and the end of the eric rudolph saga. it took a long time, but justice got there. richard jewell, married in 1998 and eventually became a deputy sheriff. tragically, he died from heart disease in 2007 at the age of 44. captured after more than five years on the run in the north carolina wilderness, eric rudolph is now serving multiple life sentences. he's in the federal supermax prison in florence, colorado living in a tiny cell where he gets only one hour of daylight a day. i'm jesse l. martin thank you for watching. good night. [music playing] ♪