Eric Rudolph’s rage was a long time brewing

Michael E. Ross Reporter • Profile • E-mail

Before he entered the military, before being implicated in homegrown terrorism that cost two people their lives, Eric Rudolph had a life on a downward spiral, a descent into a free-floating anger that developed over time, an intolerance of differences in race and gender preference that was festering years before the attacks of which he stands accused.

Numerous published reports, and an interview with a former girlfriend, reveal a portrait of a disaffected, angry man who trusted few, a dutiful son who deeply mourned the death of his father, a man who sought refuge in an embrace of drugs, the army, racial intolerance, and an all-consuming rage.

The man who pleaded guilty to four bombings between 1996 and 1998 had an upbringing that predisposed him to the subculture of intolerance long an undercurrent of American life.

The former soldier and survivalist accused of killing two people and injuring at least 100 more in bomb blasts had a checkered past: according to one former member of his extended family, Rudolph espoused anti-Semitic and racist views as a teenager.

The young man described as quiet and shy was a classic stoner with a lucrative business selling marijuana; he reportedly wrote a high school paper denying that the Holocaust ever took place; and the quiet young paramour with a Southern accent harbored anger and sadness, life's twists and turns leading him to beliefs that may have metastasized into hatred.

'Memories of what he was'
Eric Rudolph was born in Florida on Sept. 19, 1966, one of six children of Robert and Patricia Rudolph. Patricia, who hailed from Philadelphia, left a convent where she was training to be a nun. They moved to Homestead, Fla., south of Miami.

“He was a high school sweetheart of mine,” said Cathy, a former Rudolph girlfriend when he attended Homestead Senior High School. For Cathy, a single mother living in Florida who insisted that only her first name be used here, the past week has been a challenge attempting to reconcile the gentle southern soul she knew in high school with the lean, taciturn, mustachioed man who took the perp walk on television in June, a man repeatedly characterized as a monster.

“I knew the guy when he was 14, 15 years old,” she told MSNBC.com. “I have a hard time seeing his face on the television and knowing he was someone very different. He was a really well-mannered guy, it's kind of a strange thing considering what they're saying he believes in now. I can't put that together. It's hard for me to think of him in a bad way. I have the memories of what he was.

“This was like in the ‘Urban Cowboy’ days and people were following the whole country-music thing,” Cathy said, referring to the 1980 John Travolta-Debra Winger movie that popularized cowboy-bar chic. “I thought he was that type of persona. He assumed the whole country-boy thing. I never thought he would be a redneck or a skinhead type of guy. I was attracted to him because he was quiet and shy. He had the southern accent, he spoke like a country boy. I remember him being a smoker, or chewing tobacco. He introduced me to chewing tobacco!”

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