a partial license plate number that identified thirty-
year-old Rudolph.
Despite a $1 million reward for his arrest, Ru-
dolph managed to escape capture in the heavily
wooded hill country of the North Carolina Appala-
chian Mountains for five years. Finally, on May 31,
2003, Rudolph was arrested behind a Save-A-Lot gro-
cery store in Murphy, North Carolina.
Federal grand juries in Atlanta and Birmingham
had indicted Rudolph on November 15, 2000. In an
effort to avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty
in 2005 to the Olympic Park bombing and the three
other bombings, claiming his purpose in the 1996
bombing was to punish the government for legaliz-
ing abortion and to ensure that the canceled Olym-
pic Games would lose money. On August 22, 2005,
Rudolph was sentenced to three concurrent life sen-
tences without the possibility of parole. At his sen-
tencing, he apologized to the Olympic Park bomb-
ing victims and their families and stated that he was
angry at the government, not them. He was sent to
the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
At Centennial Olympic Park, the Quilt of Remem-
brance stone mosaic memorializes the bombing vic-
tims.
Impact Before the 1996 Summer Olympic Games
commenced, chief organizer Billy Payne stated that
“the safest place on this wonderful planet will be At-
lanta, Georgia, during the time of our Games.” How-
ever, the occasion that was to bring people together
in international fellowship was marred by an act of
terrorism. While the Olympic Park bombing did not
lead to the cancellation of the Games, government
officials became increasingly concerned about ter-
rorism on U.S. soil. The bombing also led to in-
creased domestic surveillance and heightened secu-
rity at places such as shopping malls, parks, and
airports. At the closing ceremonies, the president of
the International Olympic Committee, Juan Anto-
nio Samaranch, called the Atlanta Games “most ex-
ceptional”—instead of the customary declaration at
the end of each Olympics, “the best Olympic Games
ever”—out of respect for the bombing victims.
Further Reading
Schuster, Henry, and Charles Stone.Hunting Eric
Rudolph. New York: Berkley, 2005. Account of
the five-year hunt for the man behind the 1996
Atlanta Olympic Park bombing by Schuster, a
CNN senior producer, and Stone, the former
head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Anti-
Terrorist Force.
Turchie, Terry D., and Kathleen M. Puckett.Hunting
the American Terrorist: The FBI’s War on Homegrown
Terror. Palisades, N.Y.: History Publishing Com-
pany, 2007. Focuses primarily on the cases of The-
odore Kaczynski (Unabomber), Timothy McVeigh
(Oklahoma City bomber), and Eric Rudolph.
Vollers, Maryanne.Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph—Murder,
Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw. New
York: HarperCollins, 2006. The author ofGhosts of
Mississippi(1995) was the only journalist with
whom Rudolph corresponded. The book at-
tempts to understand the mind of the Olympic
Park bomber.
M. Casey DianaSee also Abortion; Clinton, Bill; Homosexuality
and gay rights; Oklahoma City bombing; Olympic
Games of 1996; Reno, Janet; Terrorism; Unabomber
capture; World Trade Center bombing. Ondaatje, Michael
Identification Canadian novelist and poet
Born September 12, 1943; Colombo, Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka)
During the 1990’s, Ondaatje published the poetr y collec-
tionThe Cinnamon Peeler(1991) and the novelThe
English Patient(1992), for which he is now most cele-
brated.
Michael Ondaatje was born to an English mother
and a Burgher (European-native) father in Ceylon.
The family split because of his father’s alcoholism,
and young Michael and his mother moved to En-
gland in 1954, then to Canada in 1962. There he
earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of To-
ronto in 1965 and a master’s degree at Queen’s Uni-
versity in 1967. He began teaching at the University
of Western Ontario, and then moved to his current
post at Glendon College, York University, in 1971.
Ondaatje wrote amusingly about his childhood in
Running in the Family(1982), but he became known
principally as a poet.
The English Patienttakes place in the waning days
of World War II, bringing together two Canadians, a
nurse and a soldier; an Indian sapper from the Brit-
ish army; and a mysterious, badly burned man recov-The Nineties in America Ondaatje, Michael 649