May 24, 2013
Hundreds of seats are being set aside in Atlanta's federal courthouse to accommodate victims who want to see the sentencing of the North Carolina man behind the deadly 1996 Olympics bombing and two other blasts in Georgia's capital. Eric Rudolph will be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the three Atlanta blasts on Monday. The 38-year-old got the same sentence last month for the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, women's clinic that killed a police officer and maimed a nurse. He was identified as the bomber after the Birmingham blast and spent the next five years on the run in the North Carolina wilderness. He was captured in 2003 while scavenging for food behind a grocery store in Murphy. Rudolph had faced a possible death sentence. Federal prosecutors agreed to a deal in exchange for revealing the location of more than 250 pounds of stolen dynamite he buried in the western North Carolina forests. During his sentencing in Alabama, Rudolph portrayed himself as a devout Christian and said the bombings were motivated by his hatred of abortion and a federal government that lets it continue. About a dozen victims plan to speak at Monday's sentencing hearing in Atlanta.
