Private Team Calls Off Search for Bomb Suspect
Vietnam veteran and right-wing militia figure James “Bo” Gritz ended his weeklong search Friday for abortion clinic bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph, saying he did not believe Rudolph would surrender.
Gritz, who offered Rudolph one week to give himself up peacefully and avoid a potentially bloody confrontation with armed FBI agents, broke his paramilitary camp in the western North Carolina mountains, where Rudolph is believed to be hiding.
One of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives, Rudolph faces charges stemming from the Jan. 29 bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic that killed an off-duty policeman and critically injured a clinic nurse.
He also is wanted for questioning about three similar Atlanta-area blasts, including the July 1996 bombing at Olympic Centennial Park that killed a Georgia woman.
Rudolph has become a local legend, as he has evaded teams of heavily armed federal agents searching for him in woods near his boyhood home.
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