After five years on the lam, Eric Rudolph was captured. Prosecutors in Georgia and Alabama jockeyed to have the first crack at taking him to trial, convicting him and, as they planned, sentencing him to death. It was decided that Birmingham had better evidence, and a reliable witness in Jermaine Hughes. Jurors had been assembled and questioned. But Rudolph had one bargaining chip: the location of 200 pounds of stolen dynamite. On the eve of his trial he made a decision to save his own life. He would reveal the location of the explosives, and plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. The “great outdoorsman” would spend the rest of his life in a tiny underground cell, in the most secure of all American prisons.

Rudolph would be forgotten by many. After all, his four bombings killed far

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