Product Description

He was supposed to be dead. Five years after Eric Rudolph escaped into the mountains of North Carolina, the FBI had long since abandoned the largest manhunt ever launched on U.S. soil. The fugitive accused of bombing the Atlanta Olympics, a gay bar, and two abortion clinics, leaving a trail of carnage across the southeast, had become a figure of folk legend. Many of his pursuers thought he had either skipped the country or crawled into a cave to die. In fact, Rudolph had been haunting the mountains and towns he knew best, pilfering food, stealing trucks, stalking the men who hunted him, and keeping his secrets buried in the woods. Then one night Rudolph got careless, and a rookie cop captured him a few miles from where he had first disappeared. But even in custody, Rudolph remained a mystery.

In Lone Wolf, Maryanne Vollers brings the reader inside one of the most sensational cases of domestic terrorism in American history. In addition to her unprecedented correspondence with Rudolph, Vollers had access to the FBI, the ATF, federal prosecutors, members of Rudolph's defense team, and his family to re-create the story in all its sweeping breadth and complexity.

Lone Wolf asks the inevitable questions: Who is Eric Rudolph, and why did he kill? Is he the hate-filled neo-Nazi described by federal agents, or is he the passionate, curious, and engaging man described by his lawyers and his family? Can both personalities exist in one rare, complicated, and deadly individual?

The profilers and psychologists Vollers interviews identify Rudolph as a "lone offender," a self-appointed avenger with no real alliances and no meaningful social ties. It puts Rudolph in the same category as Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The "lone wolf" believes history will judge him to be a hero. Society judges him to be a monster. Without losing sight of the hideous violence of his crimes, Lone Wolf seeks to put a human face on this iconic killer as it explores the painful mysteries of the human heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #198191 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-07
• Released on: 2006-11-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Eric Rudolph, who in 1996 and 1997 set off deadly bombs in Atlanta and Birmingham—at two abortion clinics, a gay bar and at Olympic Centennial Park—was both reviled as a terrorist and celebrated as a folk hero when he evaded the largest manhunt in FBI history for five years. Vollers, a National Book Award finalist for Ghosts of Mississippi, was—for reasons Rudolph never made clear—the only journalist he consented to communicate with (in writing only) while he was awaiting trial. She draws on his letters to her to great effect in providing not just a page-turning account of the hunt for Rudolph, but, more important, a look into the "remarkable and frightening mind" of a man who, after finally pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty, remained proud of his murderous actions. The cunning fugitive, whose aim was to protest abortion, explains to Vollers how he survived the winter cold in North Carolina's Nantahala forest, how he scavenged for food, talked to himself and read newspapers aloud to prevent his vocal cords from deteriorating during the years when he spoke to no one. Vollers provides an equally striking portrait of Rudolph's mother, a misguided spiritual seeker who led her son into contact with a Christian Identity compound and other survivalist, antigovernment extremists. There are plenty of surprises and conundrums in this breathtaking and deeply disturbing attempt to answer the elusive question, "Who is Eric Rudolph?" (Nov. 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
That Eric Rudolph admired the film version of Maryanne Vollers's book Ghosts of Mississippi perhaps explains why Vollers was the only journalist with whom he corresponded while awaiting trial. On the basis of Rudolph's letters, FBI files, and interviews with his family, this compelling true-crime storydraws a portrait of a "lone-wolf" criminal who, fueled by antiabortion and antihomosexual sentiment, felt compelled to kill. The best parts center on Rudolph; when he disappears, the narrative slows down. While most reviewers agree that Vollers's grisly details and humanistic approach create a "gripping investigation of the bomber's mind" (New York Times Book Review), a few contend that readers never fully understand Rudolph's actions. In the end, notes the Los Angeles Times, Voller acknowledges that a satisfying answer to the question "Who is Eric Rudolph?" may be "as elusive as the man himself once was."
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

About the Author

The author of Ghosts of Mississippi (National Book Award finalist), coauthor (with Jerri Nielsen) of the #1 New York Times bestseller Ice Bound, and collaborator on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's bestselling memoir, Living History, Maryanne Vollers is a former editor at Rolling Stone and has written for Time, Esquire, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine. She lives in Montana with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Scharlette Holdman background - she is cited in this book.
First an introduction: From 1986 - 1992 I was employed as an investigator at the Office of Capital Collateral Representative (CCR) in Tallahassee, Florida, where Scharlette Holdman worked as the supervisor of the investigators from October 1985 - March 1988.

I have known Scharlette since the mid-1970s death penalty debates at Florida State University, including the debate between Professor Richard L. Rubenstein (author of "After Auschwitz", "My Brother Paul", "The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future", "The Age of Triage", "Religion and Eros", and other books) vs. Baptist Minister and Philosopher Will Campbell (the debate was circa 1977).

Her office, the Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice, was in the same wing of the Petroleum Building as my office at Common Cause in Florida (where I was a full-time volunteer during the day and worked at the Brown Derby Restaurant at night from 1981 - 1986).

The Petroleum Building was next to the State Capital, the Florida Supreme Court and the State Archives and Library. When it was torn down, the space and the space for the first CCR office became the Mary Brogan Art and Science Museum and a storm water retaining pond. The Petroleum Building was called by those of us who worked or volunteered there the "Forces of Good" (FOG) Building -- as opposed to FOE -- Forces of Evil, such as Associated Industries, the Chamber and other big business interests in Florida. The FOG building also included (not an exhaustive list) the Clean Water Action Project, the ACLU, NOW, Florida Legal Services, Migrant Farmworker's Organization (directed by Cliff Thaell, who has more recently been a Leon County Commissioner for over ten years), Mike Vasilinda's television news service.

About every two years at CCR there was a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist purge due to the pressures and dysfunctions of the work and the people. I survived two such purges. With the third, I was the first to go in the spring and summer of 1992.

When Scharlette had essentially declared war upon CCR in 1987 and thereafter, some of us decided to investigate her background given some things that we had heard. Low and behold, Scharlette's claim of a PhD in anthropology from the University of Hawaii and a Master's Degree from Memphis State (now University of Memphis) don't exist. A claimed undergraduate degree from Memphis State: I no longer recall if this was confirmed by the university.

We used Scharlette's Social Security number, her maiden name and her married name -- with all this information, both universities had no record of Scharlette having received any degrees from these institutions.

As I understand Scharlette, she needed the "degrees" to confer upon her "credentials" that she really never needed as she is indeed then and now a national expert on capital mitigation, litigation, etc. However Scharlette can be deceptive, as her lack of a PhD and Masters so demonstrates. Even today she claims to have the degrees as when she gives presentations regarding capital cases, she is identified as "Dr." A key word search of her name will bring up some of the presentations that she has made in the past several years with the title "Dr." preceding her name.

If she has received any honorary or other degrees since 1990, that would be new information for me. If anyone can assist in this matter, please contact me at [...]. Thank you.

A positive review to offset dear Patricia...
I can't stand it when individuals use the incredibly valuable resource that is Amazon book reviews to make some parochial comment, especially one who thinks what they have to say is so important that they type it all in caps. When that happens I am compelled to offset it with a 5-star review (I read the book and it is a quality work).

BTW, I grew up in NC and the author's description of Asheville is fine in the context it is given. So sorry that it offended an Ashevillian who can't see the forest for the trees...

Right Winged Radical
I enjoyed Maryanne Vollers' book entitled Ghosts of Mississippi and thought I'd give her effort on bomber Eric Rudolph a try. I found the book worth my time, but felt disgust for Eric Rudolph's twisted logic. He claims his actions in bombing abortion clinics were consistent with his beliefs. He can't understand why other pro-lifers don't act in a similar way. As an analogy he states Thoreau was imprisoned for abolitionist activities. When Emerson asked him why he was in prison, Thoreau stated for being anti-slavery. "The real question, Emerson, is why aren't you in here with me?" Pro-lifers who don't advocate violence to end abortion would be despised by Eric Rudolph. The time that Rudolph was hiding in the woods he was practically under the noses of the authorities as Rudolph observed them from his post in the hills. I especially enjoyed the section of the book that tried to explain the mind of Eric Rudolph. He currently resides in the supermax prison nicknamed "Alcatraz of the Rockies" in Florence, Colorado, with other notorious characters such as spy Robert Hanssen, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, terrorist Zacharias Moussaoui, and Ramzi Yousef who planned the first World Trade Center bombing.