Evidence in Rudolph Case Is Detailed

ATLANTA — Court documents unsealed Friday provide a glimpse into the case against Eric Robert Rudolph in the Olympic bombing, including fiber and ballistics evidence and testimony that it was his voice on a 911 warning call minutes before the 1996 blast.

The papers -- released after a request filed by Associated Press -- also tie Rudolph’s handwriting to several letters claiming responsibility for other bombings in Alabama and Georgia.

In addition, a statement from a sibling included in the court file says Rudolph speculated, shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, that the Olympics would be a prime target for a terrorist attack because the whole world would be watching.

“Rudolph said something to the effect of ‘Yeah, something like the Olympics,’ ” FBI Special Agent Tracey A. North wrote in the previously sealed affidavit.

The papers say fibers on the bombs match material from Rudolph’s truck, and five shell casings found in a storage locker belonging to him contained powder chemically consistent with debris from the Olympic bomb.

The 911 call was received minutes before the bomb exploded in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. The documents say 15 acquaintances listened to the tape and said the caller sounded like Rudolph.

A call after business hours seeking comment from Richard Jaffe, Rudolph’s Birmingham, Ala., lawyer, was not immediately returned.

Rudolph, 36, a former soldier and survivalist, was taken into custody last Saturday in the same wilderness region of North Carolina where he long was suspected of living on the lam. He remains jailed in Birmingham.

He has pleaded not guilty in the Jan. 29, 1998, bombing of New Woman All Women Health Care that killed an off-duty police officer and critically injured a nurse.

Rudolph is also accused in the 1996 Olympic park bombing in Atlanta, where a woman was killed and more than 100 people were injured, and a pair of 1997 bombings in Atlanta at a gay-oriented bar and at a building that housed an abortion clinic.