August 22, 2024 • 32 mins
Five years into this manhunt, he finally makes a mistake.
And we take a look back into the not-so-ordinary childhood and coming of age of a homegrown, far-right, religious domestic terrorist.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:17):
You're listening to Flashpoint, a production of tenderfoot TV and
association with iHeartMedia. The views and opinions expressed in this
podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be
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Speaker 3 (00:39):
You know, as a young police officer starting my career
in Murphy, Rudolph was not something that was talked about,
you know, every day.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
In two thousand and three, Jeff Postell was a twenty
one year old rookie police officer in Murphy, North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Growing up in the area.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
He saw the Manhunter Eric Rudolph Ebb and flow over
the years.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Was there a notion, was there knowledge? Was there information
that he was still wanted? Yes, but his name did
not come up as often. The manhunt had really died out.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Postel was just sixteen years old when the Man Hunter
Rudolph began. By this point, five years under the search,
there were just a few federal agents.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Left in the area.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
No sightings, no leads, nothing.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
There was a lot of speculation that he was dead,
lot of speculation that he was, you know, sitting on
some beach in the Caribbean. There was no proof, there
was no solid information or intelligence that was coming forth
that he was still actively in that area.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Episode six, Death to the New World Order.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Then it was a pain in the butt of a shift,
and I will tell you I hated it, and frankly
be honest with it, didn't nothing ever happened.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
On May thirty first, two thousand and three, Jeff Postell
was working the overnight shift ten at night to six
in the morning.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And some nights I would go through areas with no headlights,
and this night I went into the Valley Village shopping
center and immediately turned off my head lights and cut
through the parking lot, and as I came around the
left side of the building, I activated my right alley
spotlight and I observed a silhouette of somebody kind of
crouched down in the road, almost like they were kind
(02:40):
of sneaking over to the rear of the building. And
when I drove up on this person, I startled them
as they startled me and I exited my patrol car,
took cover behind my door with my weapon drawn, and
began giving commands to who this individual was to come
out show me their hands, and after a few moments,
the individual emerged from the loading dock, came down onto
(03:02):
the pavement, and I made him get down on their stomach.
To me, it was somebody that was potentially breaking into
a business, potentially had a weapon, and so I handcuffed
the individual as he was lying on the ground before
the first backup unit arrived, and we began kind of
doing a field investigation of what was going on. Who
he was, checked him for id You know, he had
(03:23):
told me initially that he had no idea on him.
He had hitchhiked from Murphy from Ohio. So I asked
him for his name and day of birth. He gave
me a name, He give me a day of birth.
I had our dispatch center run him through the National
Crime Information Center and there was no return for any
of the information, so there was no match found. The
sheriff's deputy who had arrived on scene, he pulled me
(03:46):
off to the side and said, you know, this guy
has a very uncanny resemblance to Eric Rudolph. When nothing
came back from the name of day of birth that
he give us, we then asked, well, do you have
a social Security number, you have any other identification that
would help us prove who you are, And at first
he says, you know, I don't have a sobial Security number. Well,
(04:09):
when he was pushed on that a little bit more,
he changed his comments and he said, well, I've not
really had a need for him for the last several years.
I took him into custody for safekeeping, and that was
to kind of give him a place to get out
of the element, to put his head down on a
pillow at night, to get a hot meal in him,
and also give us a little bit of time to
kind of further investigate this. So I loaded him up
(04:32):
into my police car and I took him down to
the Sheriff's office to the detention center.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
FBI agent Rick Swine, who is now the supervisor to
the search, got the call from the sheriff around three am.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
The rest of us are high tailing it out eighty
miles an hour on the road to Murphy. I'm working
the phones. I'm talking to Sieges, the Criminal Justice information
system up in West Virginia that processes all the fingerprints,
and I'm trying to get him to expedite this set
of finger prints because ruff had been printed in the military,
so we had known prints. So we're trying to get
(05:06):
verification that it's him. And I call up there and
the guy goes, yeah, we'll have him for you Monday morning.
And said, now, let me give you the identification order,
which is the number on the wanted poster, and he goes, oh,
I'll have him for you in twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Back at the Sheriff's office, the man who identified himself
as Jerry Wilson was being held in a booking room.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So I immediately went across the hallway to the office
and pulled up the FBI's website and began looking for
the FBI wanted poster for Eric Rudolph. So it's got
his pictures and it's got his you know, all these
descriptions on who he was or what he looked like,
and so I kind of went hight, okay, check wait.
Wait was a little debatable, right, but when we get
(05:48):
into the hair color, the eye color, I kind of
started going check check, receding hairline check and then you
get down to noticeable mark, scars and tattoos, and it
says that Eric Rudolph had a very noticeable scar to
his chin. And to this day, I'll never forget looking
over my shoulder across the hallway and seeing Eric Rudolph
(06:10):
with his hands behind his back in a holding chair,
looking up at the ceiling and staring at me. Was
the scar on his chin. And so we printed off
the FBI wanted poster and the four of us, the
four officers, went into the holding area with the wanted
poster stuck in behind his head so he couldn't see it.
So we're kind of looking at the picture, looking back
(06:31):
at the picture, looking at the picture, looking back at him,
back and forth for a few moments, at which time
one of the officers said, tell us who you are,
and he replied, well, what does the paper say, And
we said, well, that's not the question. It was asked,
tell us who you really are, And there was a
(06:52):
brief pause, and he says, I'm Eric Robert Rudolph, and
you've got me.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
He disappeared into the mountains almost five years ago. But
no one in this area, and no law enforcement agent
ever gave up on finding him. This morning, at four
point thirty in the morning, an alert Murphy police officer
noticed something unusual going on behind the Valley Village shopping
center here in Murphy and ultimately arrested Eric Robert Rudolph
(07:24):
at about four thirty am this morning.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It's poetic in a way the way the search came
to an end, because it's so mundane. I mean, he
was hunted by hundreds of federal agents for five years,
and in the end he was caught by a local
police officer who wasn't even looking for him, caught dumpster diving.
It's all very sloppy. Agent Rick Schwin remembers Rudolph's behavior
(07:51):
just after his arrest.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I mean, he had a great poker face. He just
seemed unfazed by everything that was going.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
On around me.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
The only time I think that he showed any emotion.
We obtained through the North Carolina National Guards some uh
sixty Blackhawks to fly him from Murphy to Asheville for
his initial appearance. You know, it's a long road out there,
to a forty minute drive, and so we flew him
and the agents at escort of Humes said that he
(08:23):
didn't quite break down, But it was clear that he
understood that this was the last view he was going
to have with the mountains of western North Carolina. But
I think that's the only time in my awareness that
he showed any kind of emotion at all.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Maybe he was tired, tired of running. Has this settled
in what.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Has just happened today?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
And you have her all this time?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
If he thought all the speculation whether.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
He's alive, did he's gone out of the area, Has.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It settled in what happens for you have probably not?
Speaker 6 (08:57):
I mean, I know with the officers you see as
you see up here, every one of them invested a
substantial amount of their life and their time up here looking.
But you know, five years a long time, and a
lot of people thought that, you know, that we had
given up, and in fact, everybody here had spent a
lot of times behind the scene still looking for him.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
But I have a different theory. I think he wanted
to be caught. At this point in the search, he
was no longer a story. He was no longer the
story Eric Rudolph was becoming folklore. Everything I've learned about
Eric Rudolf tells me that he has this need to
be the focus of the conversation, to be the center
(09:40):
of things. And when the search slowed down, when it
all just turned into a routine, I think he also
found himself missing that game of cat and mouse. Well,
the game may have ended, but Rudolf was certainly back
in the center of attention. Except this time people were
asking new questions. Instead of where is Eric Rudolf, it
(10:03):
was who is Eric Rudolf? And what motivated him to
become a murderer and a terrorist? I'm packing up gear
(10:28):
from the car with my partner on this podcast. Doug,
you met him in the last episode. I met him
on a film he was producing back when I was
getting my journalism degree. A couple of years later, when
we sat down to talk about potentially working on podcasts together,
he was reading a piece in Outside magazine about Eric Rudolf,
how he carried out these bombings, how he evaded authorities,
(10:50):
how he disappeared, and how he survived.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Okay, let's rock it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Doug went on about Rudolph's matching up with the rise
of the religious right, the moral majority, and the growing
domestic militia movement, and then I said, well, then I've
got a story for you. I told him about my mom,
about her pregnancy and the clinic bombing.
Speaker 7 (11:15):
That was that Maymi, You're not cheating any younger.
Speaker 8 (11:19):
They call you mimi.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, that's that's what my son calls Really.
Speaker 9 (11:23):
Yeah, I'm a Mimi.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Yeah cool.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
We're just outside Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. We connected with
Eric Rudolf's sister in law, Deborah Rudolph, and arranged to
sit down with her in her home. I wanted to
ask you before getting into Eric, why did you keep
the Rudolph name?
Speaker 9 (11:43):
You know, I have thought about changing it now I
don't even know. I just wanted divorced.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Deborah was married to Eric Rudolf's older brother, Joel for
six years before they divorced in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 9 (11:56):
I have thought about it since very recently, actually thought
about going back to my maiden name. But you know,
that's a big paint in the ass. Name is nothing.
A name is nothing, It's a name.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Deborah tells me about how she first met Joel Rudolph.
She was at a restaurant. He winked at her, and
she had the waitress send him a note that said
call me. She later met the entire family at a
Thanksgiving dinner where ak forty sevens were brought out to
shoot and religion was talked about passionately. Much of it
she felt was brought on by Eric Rudolph's mother, Pat.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Tell me about Pat. Pat.
Speaker 9 (12:38):
She was a novice, what was going to be a
nun and she left the convent before she took her vowels.
One word to describe Pat pioneer woman hiking walking. She
was very crafty, very crafty. She got into a lot
of different things. She had tried roma therapy for a while,
and she was really into tofu for a while. So
(13:01):
Eric used to make a joke. He goes, oh my god,
Mom's making tofu again. So I mean there were some
good times. I mean we laughed and wasn't also serious
and bad and preaching. But Pat, she had a search
for the church. Eric would say that that was a
phrase coined by Eric mom's search for the church.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
Pat Rudolph was a religious seeker and remains one to
this day.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Along with Deborah, I also sought out the insights of
Mark Podock, previously editor in chief at Southern Poverty Law
Center for twenty years. His research focused on hate groups,
domestic terrorism, and extremist ideology and how these things crept
into the political mainstream. With that, he had also heavily
studied Eric Rudoff's actions, his family, and his background.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
Early on as a Roman Catholic non novitiate. But she
kind of jumped from this set of faith ideas to
that set to another set. Throughout her life, as she
said herself, she's always searching for sort of spiritual meaning.
And this really was the kind of animating idea inside
this family to kind of pursue some of these ideas
(14:21):
of who and where was God really and that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
There's a family member that's clearly missing from these conversations,
the father, Bob, and that's because he died when Eric
Rudolf is just fourteen. Not much as known about Bob,
but his death ignited a paranoid spark in the family,
one that had long been lying dormant.
Speaker 7 (14:41):
When Eric's father was sick with melanoma, he was very
interested in sort of alternative medicine cures, and in particular leatrill,
something made from poisonous pits of apricots.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
To this day, the drug leatrill is still not approved
by the FDA, and it has never proven to be
an effective treatment for cancer, but the family believed it
would cure their dad, so naturally, there are folks who
speculate that this is one of the root causes for
the anti government sentiment within the Rudolph family.
Speaker 7 (15:14):
Certainly, I don't think that the latural episode, you know,
was the one factor that sort of drove an otherwise
perfectly normal, middle of the road family into the sort
of arms of the radical right. I think this was
a much longer standard development, and it particularly seemed to
originate with Pat Rudolph, the mother, you know, who was
very interested in all kinds of unorthodox ideas. You know,
(15:36):
vaccines are evil, the government is hiding successful medical cures.
You know, they could cure cancer, but they won't tell
us how to do it. And ultimately some of those
ideas were transmitted, at least in some form to several
of her children.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
This was long before the digital age and social media.
Pat Rudolph found this world through a few neighbors and
church friends. One of these folks was Lord Davis, a
white supremacist who headed a very radical group in western
North Carolina called the North Point Tactical Teams. Another was
Tom Brandham, the Rudolph's next door neighbor in Topton, who
(16:14):
you heard from last episode. Brandham and the family were
very close.
Speaker 9 (16:19):
He had a big influence on Pat. He's the one
that found that land up there in the mountains. Hey,
you know, there's only a half acres up here, and
you know you're gonna love it. So, being anti government
thinker that he is, he wasn't memorable in a crazy
whack away because the dude was like.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Out there.
Speaker 9 (16:39):
You know, he's one of these apocalyptic kind of guys.
You know what I'm saying, Well, there's ever an apocolose,
there's ever you know, Uh, they're going to come in
and take over our country. You know, I'm armed to
the hilt and I got all these damn cam goods
in my house that I got gasoline stored in the back,
and I live in a brick o block house. I
think he had some major influence over those boys too,
and it was not good, not good.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
This part of western North Carolina had been home to
all kinds of radical rightists, white supremacists, jew haters of
all kinds. They lived an extremely rural life. So you know,
Eric is growing up in a home in which things
like Holocaust denial pamphlets are floating around all the time.
And in fact we know that because Eric, in ninth
(17:24):
grade at Nantahala High School, submitted an essay to his
teacher in which he denied the existence of the Holocaust.
He told his teacher that it was based on a
pamphlet that he'd found in his home.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Eric Rudolph only made his way through the ninth grade
before his mother decided to homeschool on The decision went
hand in hand with Pat's search for the church. It
was convenient for moving the family around, always looking for
the next thing. The first move, as we've heard, was
to top to North Carolina, where they lived off the grid,
growing their own food and using a water pump system
(18:01):
they built themselves. Then, in nineteen eighty three, Pat moved
eighteen year old Eric Rudolf and his younger brother Jamie
from Topton to Chelseaity, Missouri, to a Christian identity compound
called the Church of Israel, and that's when things got
a hell of a lot stranger.
Speaker 7 (18:18):
The Church of Israel is essentially a religious kind of
compound or set of buildings run by a guy for
many many years named Dan Gamon. The theology practiced by
Dan Gaman and the Church of Israel was a version
of a theology known as Christian Identity, and Christian Identity
(18:39):
in its more radical version, is really quite something. This
theology posits the idea that what really happened in the
Garden of Eden was not Eve taking a bite from
an apple from the tree of knowledge. No, no, that
was you know, that's how the Old Testament has been
mistranslated for the ears of children. You only knew what
(19:00):
the original writings really said, you would know that what
really happened was Eve had sex with the serpent in
the garden and gave birth to Cain. And you know,
the story goes on from there. But basically, Christian Identity
says that the people who call themselves Jews today are
not the Hebrews of the Old Testament, but in fact
(19:23):
are the direct biological descendants of Satan himself. They are
Satanic literally, and are working every day to prepare the
earth for the return of their father Satan and his rulership.
Dan Dayman was at the heart of a very very
(19:44):
radical movement, and in fact, in one remarkable episode, Gaiman
was given and accepted ten thousand dollars from a very
scary terrorist group called the Order. This is a group
that believed Jews and rice mixers need to be killed
to make the world a better place, and so Dan
(20:04):
Gaman treated Eric Rudolf like a very special kind of disciple.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
In the few interviews Pat has done since the bombings,
she admits regret when speaking about the family's time at
Church of Israel. Quote everybody makes mistakes, Pat says about
the experience. So Pat Rudolph left with her son Jamie,
but Eric Rudolph stayed at the compound. He had designs
(20:34):
of his own, and the head of the church, Dan Gamon,
took a particular interest in Rudolph, seeing him as a
surrogate son and a potential successor. Eric Rudolph went to
Missouri at age eighteen, and so did I. He went
to a Christian identity compound. I went to journalism school.
(20:56):
He took cues from six or seven people in his
immediate vicinity growing up and took a severe, hard right turn.
I took cues from six or seven people, including him,
that steered me in a different direction. And that's really
all it takes.
Speaker 8 (21:15):
You know, so much of what we believe is perspective
and how we see things. So there was a time
when I fiercely defended Eric and just you know, could
not believe that he did that.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
I'm speaking to a former member of the Church of
Israel who wished to remain anonymous. She lived on the
compound at the same time as Eric Rudolf and was
very close with him during his time there.
Speaker 8 (21:41):
It's very difficult for people to understand how, even as
a teenager, someone could willingly get involved with a group
like that. You know, I guess when I came on
the scene, they were very much pushing sort of an
evangelical Christian image, which is kind of what my family
(22:01):
was more about. Dan was trying to pull in fresh blood,
new people, young people, and he had had a lot
of psychology and he's just naturally extremely manipulative. I mean,
he is a true cult leader, but more of the
Bible based cult genre, and he's really dangerous in that way.
(22:25):
They just demonize whoever disagrees with them. He is in
his eighties now, so I don't think he's as effective
as he was, but he was pretty much in his prime.
I'd say when I met him. When Eric got involved
in Eric's mom and brothers, and I think these predators
(22:45):
they really prey upon people who have something missing in
their lives, you know, father, hunger, PTSD, some kind of need,
and then they just move in and fill that need
with all this mistake love. And all you had to
do was throw Eric's ego a little bit and you
had him.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
While working on this project, I've found myself asking the
same question over and over, when do ideas turn into action?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
For Rudolph and for.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So many narcissistic types appealing to the egos, the activation code,
the trigger word. Once they hear it, the mission is greenlit.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
I feel like it's kind of like Donald Trump, who
needs to answer for what he did with what happened
on January sixth. It's the same type of thing with
Dan Gaymon. You know, I feel like he's behind a
lot of these acts of violence.
Speaker 9 (23:58):
Eric Hayde my guts from the get He likes submissive women,
and I'm not submissive. I think when he really opened
up with Sober Thanksgiving, because they were like soldier of
Fortune magazines laying around, he would talk about being a mercenary,
and you know, and of course I was. You know,
this was something new to me. This is like you know,
he would talk about you know, philosophy and you know,
(24:22):
being a mercenary and his opinion of the Bible, and
you listen and then all of a sudden you're like, oh,
anti government, what is that? I've never heard of that?
And then you think, well, have I gotten this wrong
all my life? You know, he'd get real animated, and
just watching them react to things on TV, you pick
(24:45):
up what their life is about and what their lifestyle
is about. They thought it was the electric TV was
the electric juice. And he'd jump up and he'd be
marching up down in front of the TV and be
very animated about something on TV, some kind of news
story or some kind of show or something.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
You know.
Speaker 9 (25:01):
The credits would roll and he'd get on his thing
about the Jews and how they run the media. And
look at that name. You know that's Jewish and you
know they run the media, they run the banks, they
run the stalk Mark, they run everything. This country they've
been they've broke every country they've ever been in. They've
been run out of every country. You know, no wonder
there a people without a home or some crap like that.
(25:21):
I mean, he would just get justcum nuts.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
As Rudolph's racism and hatred grew during this time, he
was being fed a steady diet of anti government, white
Christian nationalist ideas by the people around him, ideas straight
out of the Christian identity theology. And at the same time,
this militant theology was beginning to find common cause with
the more mainstream religious right, the moral majority, and political
(25:48):
conservatism in general. In other words, just as Eric Rudolph
was beginning to make a plan to take his ideas
and grow them into a blueprint for action, all these
extremeists ideas were simultaneously beginning, slowly but surely to seep
into the mainstream.
Speaker 7 (26:10):
You know, the ideas we hear about today from the
radical right from January sixth, insurrections and the rest of
them are direct descendants, you know, of the same ideas
that the Rudolph family was talking about over their kitchen table.
It's worth remembering that when Eric Rudolph sent letters to
the media, he signed them typically death to the New
World Order.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
In the eighties and nineties, for many Christians, the end
times described in the Book of Revelation was finally upon us.
Revelation prophesied the emergence of a charismatic figure known as
the Antichrist, who is destined to be the leader of
a singular global government, the New World Order. This end
time scenario was a fundamental piece of their theology, and
(26:56):
for millions of Evangelical Christians it still is. But back
in the nineties, fear of this new world Order was
spawning a renewed interest in survivalism and paramilitarism, as people
on the far right stockpiled their home arsenals and actively
prepared for apocalyptic scenarios. At the time, political scientists warned
(27:18):
that hysteria about the New World Order could have devastating
effects on American life, everything from escalating lone wolf terrorism
to the rise of authoritarian ultra nationalist demagogues.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
Well, you know, the New World Order is the boogeyman,
the imaginary plot conjured up by radical right militias in
this country as the enemy. The global elites were going
to come into our country and basically destroy all that's
good and right about being American.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
New World Order quickly became a shorthand for a sprawling
set of fears about the state, the deep state, and
it went full conspiracy theory very quick balluting into a
wild eyed fear of Christians being rounded up and put
into concentration camps run by Communists and Jews. This fear
legitimate or not, united people across a wide variety of
(28:13):
different substrains on the right, and for Eric Rudolph back
in the mid nineties, the Olympic Games perfectly represent the
global singularity that would give rise to a new world order.
This he simply could not abide.
Speaker 9 (28:28):
And he would watch that and it would just piss
Eric off. He would be like, Oh, look at all
the countries coming together, and all the colors coming together,
and all the races coming together. This is going to
bring everybody together under a one world government. Blah blah blah,
blah blah. He hated the Olympics, the fact that all
(28:50):
these people came together in peace to compete with each
other in a friendly way, in a good way. And
that's why I think he blew up the Olympics. He
hated it. He believed about mud people, about gay people,
about the different races. Eric would say he wasn't a racist,
(29:13):
he was a separatist, meaning you should stay true to
your race, because eventually all these racists are going to
merge together and we're going to be all one color.
We're going to be all one people under one world government.
You know, he's big on that one world government thing.
This ties him in with the Olympics.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
See did it ever occur to you that he was
capable of being a domestic terrorist?
Speaker 9 (29:41):
Well, this is what I told Joel. Eric is either
going to be famous or he's going to be infamous.
You know, you want to believe that somebody still got
some good, you know what I mean? You know, I
never hated Eric. I never disliked Eric. A product of
his upbring and he took it way beyond.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
For a long time now, the Church of Israel and
Dan Gamon have been this kind of boogeyman for me. Historically.
They're militant and hateful. I mean a church that puts
its members through paramilitary training. That's batshit crazy. From where
I stand, I was intimidated, but that didn't change the
(30:29):
facts that I needed to talk to Dan Gamon directly.
Speaker 10 (30:39):
Hello, you have reached to Israel and the Watchmen outreach ministries.
If you would like to speak to after gaming and
plead press three all of them by the pound sign.
Speaker 5 (31:01):
Could that Forno Me I Helped You.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Flashpoint is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeartMedia.
I'm Your Host. Cole La Caassio, Donald Albright and Payne
Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV. Flashpoint
was created, written, and executive produced by Doug Mattica and
myself on behalf of seven nine nine seven. Lead producer
(31:39):
is Alex Espastad, along with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Our associate producer is Witt Lakassio.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Editing by Alex Espostad with additional editing by Liam Luxon
and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Original music by Jay Ragsdale mixed by Dayton Cole. Thank
you to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at Uta Beck
Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. Special thanks to
Angela q, Tylie Revive, Mattica and Tim Livingston. For more
podcasts like Flashpoint, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app,
(32:24):
or visit us at tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Flashpoint. This series
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(32:48):
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Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus dot com
Flashpoint is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free,
but for ad free listening, early access and exclusive bonuses,
subscribe to tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com or on
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Speaker 2 (00:17):
You're listening to Flashpoint, a production of tenderfoot TV and
association with iHeartMedia. The views and opinions expressed in this
podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be
suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
You know, as a young police officer starting my career
in Murphy, Rudolph was not something that was talked about,
you know, every day.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
In two thousand and three, Jeff Postell was a twenty
one year old rookie police officer in Murphy, North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Growing up in the area.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
He saw the Manhunter Eric Rudolph Ebb and flow over
the years.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Was there a notion, was there knowledge? Was there information
that he was still wanted? Yes, but his name did
not come up as often. The manhunt had really died out.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Postel was just sixteen years old when the Man Hunter
Rudolph began. By this point, five years under the search,
there were just a few federal agents.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Left in the area.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
No sightings, no leads, nothing.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
There was a lot of speculation that he was dead,
lot of speculation that he was, you know, sitting on
some beach in the Caribbean. There was no proof, there
was no solid information or intelligence that was coming forth
that he was still actively in that area.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Episode six, Death to the New World Order.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Then it was a pain in the butt of a shift,
and I will tell you I hated it, and frankly
be honest with it, didn't nothing ever happened.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
On May thirty first, two thousand and three, Jeff Postell
was working the overnight shift ten at night to six
in the morning.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And some nights I would go through areas with no headlights,
and this night I went into the Valley Village shopping
center and immediately turned off my head lights and cut
through the parking lot, and as I came around the
left side of the building, I activated my right alley
spotlight and I observed a silhouette of somebody kind of
crouched down in the road, almost like they were kind
(02:40):
of sneaking over to the rear of the building. And
when I drove up on this person, I startled them
as they startled me and I exited my patrol car,
took cover behind my door with my weapon drawn, and
began giving commands to who this individual was to come
out show me their hands, and after a few moments,
the individual emerged from the loading dock, came down onto
(03:02):
the pavement, and I made him get down on their stomach.
To me, it was somebody that was potentially breaking into
a business, potentially had a weapon, and so I handcuffed
the individual as he was lying on the ground before
the first backup unit arrived, and we began kind of
doing a field investigation of what was going on. Who
he was, checked him for id You know, he had
(03:23):
told me initially that he had no idea on him.
He had hitchhiked from Murphy from Ohio. So I asked
him for his name and day of birth. He gave
me a name, He give me a day of birth.
I had our dispatch center run him through the National
Crime Information Center and there was no return for any
of the information, so there was no match found. The
sheriff's deputy who had arrived on scene, he pulled me
(03:46):
off to the side and said, you know, this guy
has a very uncanny resemblance to Eric Rudolph. When nothing
came back from the name of day of birth that
he give us, we then asked, well, do you have
a social Security number, you have any other identification that
would help us prove who you are, And at first
he says, you know, I don't have a sobial Security number. Well,
(04:09):
when he was pushed on that a little bit more,
he changed his comments and he said, well, I've not
really had a need for him for the last several years.
I took him into custody for safekeeping, and that was
to kind of give him a place to get out
of the element, to put his head down on a
pillow at night, to get a hot meal in him,
and also give us a little bit of time to
kind of further investigate this. So I loaded him up
(04:32):
into my police car and I took him down to
the Sheriff's office to the detention center.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
FBI agent Rick Swine, who is now the supervisor to
the search, got the call from the sheriff around three am.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
The rest of us are high tailing it out eighty
miles an hour on the road to Murphy. I'm working
the phones. I'm talking to Sieges, the Criminal Justice information
system up in West Virginia that processes all the fingerprints,
and I'm trying to get him to expedite this set
of finger prints because ruff had been printed in the military,
so we had known prints. So we're trying to get
(05:06):
verification that it's him. And I call up there and
the guy goes, yeah, we'll have him for you Monday morning.
And said, now, let me give you the identification order,
which is the number on the wanted poster, and he goes, oh,
I'll have him for you in twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Back at the Sheriff's office, the man who identified himself
as Jerry Wilson was being held in a booking room.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So I immediately went across the hallway to the office
and pulled up the FBI's website and began looking for
the FBI wanted poster for Eric Rudolph. So it's got
his pictures and it's got his you know, all these
descriptions on who he was or what he looked like,
and so I kind of went hight, okay, check wait.
Wait was a little debatable, right, but when we get
(05:48):
into the hair color, the eye color, I kind of
started going check check, receding hairline check and then you
get down to noticeable mark, scars and tattoos, and it
says that Eric Rudolph had a very noticeable scar to
his chin. And to this day, I'll never forget looking
over my shoulder across the hallway and seeing Eric Rudolph
(06:10):
with his hands behind his back in a holding chair,
looking up at the ceiling and staring at me. Was
the scar on his chin. And so we printed off
the FBI wanted poster and the four of us, the
four officers, went into the holding area with the wanted
poster stuck in behind his head so he couldn't see it.
So we're kind of looking at the picture, looking back
(06:31):
at the picture, looking at the picture, looking back at him,
back and forth for a few moments, at which time
one of the officers said, tell us who you are,
and he replied, well, what does the paper say, And
we said, well, that's not the question. It was asked,
tell us who you really are, And there was a
(06:52):
brief pause, and he says, I'm Eric Robert Rudolph, and
you've got me.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
He disappeared into the mountains almost five years ago. But
no one in this area, and no law enforcement agent
ever gave up on finding him. This morning, at four
point thirty in the morning, an alert Murphy police officer
noticed something unusual going on behind the Valley Village shopping
center here in Murphy and ultimately arrested Eric Robert Rudolph
(07:24):
at about four thirty am this morning.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It's poetic in a way the way the search came
to an end, because it's so mundane. I mean, he
was hunted by hundreds of federal agents for five years,
and in the end he was caught by a local
police officer who wasn't even looking for him, caught dumpster diving.
It's all very sloppy. Agent Rick Schwin remembers Rudolph's behavior
(07:51):
just after his arrest.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I mean, he had a great poker face. He just
seemed unfazed by everything that was going.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
On around me.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
The only time I think that he showed any emotion.
We obtained through the North Carolina National Guards some uh
sixty Blackhawks to fly him from Murphy to Asheville for
his initial appearance. You know, it's a long road out there,
to a forty minute drive, and so we flew him
and the agents at escort of Humes said that he
(08:23):
didn't quite break down, But it was clear that he
understood that this was the last view he was going
to have with the mountains of western North Carolina. But
I think that's the only time in my awareness that
he showed any kind of emotion at all.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Maybe he was tired, tired of running. Has this settled
in what.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Has just happened today?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
And you have her all this time?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
If he thought all the speculation whether.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
He's alive, did he's gone out of the area, Has.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It settled in what happens for you have probably not?
Speaker 6 (08:57):
I mean, I know with the officers you see as
you see up here, every one of them invested a
substantial amount of their life and their time up here looking.
But you know, five years a long time, and a
lot of people thought that, you know, that we had
given up, and in fact, everybody here had spent a
lot of times behind the scene still looking for him.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
But I have a different theory. I think he wanted
to be caught. At this point in the search, he
was no longer a story. He was no longer the
story Eric Rudolph was becoming folklore. Everything I've learned about
Eric Rudolf tells me that he has this need to
be the focus of the conversation, to be the center
(09:40):
of things. And when the search slowed down, when it
all just turned into a routine, I think he also
found himself missing that game of cat and mouse. Well,
the game may have ended, but Rudolf was certainly back
in the center of attention. Except this time people were
asking new questions. Instead of where is Eric Rudolf, it
(10:03):
was who is Eric Rudolf? And what motivated him to
become a murderer and a terrorist? I'm packing up gear
(10:28):
from the car with my partner on this podcast. Doug,
you met him in the last episode. I met him
on a film he was producing back when I was
getting my journalism degree. A couple of years later, when
we sat down to talk about potentially working on podcasts together,
he was reading a piece in Outside magazine about Eric Rudolf,
how he carried out these bombings, how he evaded authorities,
(10:50):
how he disappeared, and how he survived.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Okay, let's rock it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Doug went on about Rudolph's matching up with the rise
of the religious right, the moral majority, and the growing
domestic militia movement, and then I said, well, then I've
got a story for you. I told him about my mom,
about her pregnancy and the clinic bombing.
Speaker 7 (11:15):
That was that Maymi, You're not cheating any younger.
Speaker 8 (11:19):
They call you mimi.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, that's that's what my son calls Really.
Speaker 9 (11:23):
Yeah, I'm a Mimi.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Yeah cool.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
We're just outside Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. We connected with
Eric Rudolf's sister in law, Deborah Rudolph, and arranged to
sit down with her in her home. I wanted to
ask you before getting into Eric, why did you keep
the Rudolph name?
Speaker 9 (11:43):
You know, I have thought about changing it now I
don't even know. I just wanted divorced.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Deborah was married to Eric Rudolf's older brother, Joel for
six years before they divorced in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 9 (11:56):
I have thought about it since very recently, actually thought
about going back to my maiden name. But you know,
that's a big paint in the ass. Name is nothing.
A name is nothing, It's a name.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Deborah tells me about how she first met Joel Rudolph.
She was at a restaurant. He winked at her, and
she had the waitress send him a note that said
call me. She later met the entire family at a
Thanksgiving dinner where ak forty sevens were brought out to
shoot and religion was talked about passionately. Much of it
she felt was brought on by Eric Rudolph's mother, Pat.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Tell me about Pat. Pat.
Speaker 9 (12:38):
She was a novice, what was going to be a
nun and she left the convent before she took her vowels.
One word to describe Pat pioneer woman hiking walking. She
was very crafty, very crafty. She got into a lot
of different things. She had tried roma therapy for a while,
and she was really into tofu for a while. So
(13:01):
Eric used to make a joke. He goes, oh my god,
Mom's making tofu again. So I mean there were some
good times. I mean we laughed and wasn't also serious
and bad and preaching. But Pat, she had a search
for the church. Eric would say that that was a
phrase coined by Eric mom's search for the church.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
Pat Rudolph was a religious seeker and remains one to
this day.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Along with Deborah, I also sought out the insights of
Mark Podock, previously editor in chief at Southern Poverty Law
Center for twenty years. His research focused on hate groups,
domestic terrorism, and extremist ideology and how these things crept
into the political mainstream. With that, he had also heavily
studied Eric Rudoff's actions, his family, and his background.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
Early on as a Roman Catholic non novitiate. But she
kind of jumped from this set of faith ideas to
that set to another set. Throughout her life, as she
said herself, she's always searching for sort of spiritual meaning.
And this really was the kind of animating idea inside
this family to kind of pursue some of these ideas
(14:21):
of who and where was God really and that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
There's a family member that's clearly missing from these conversations,
the father, Bob, and that's because he died when Eric
Rudolf is just fourteen. Not much as known about Bob,
but his death ignited a paranoid spark in the family,
one that had long been lying dormant.
Speaker 7 (14:41):
When Eric's father was sick with melanoma, he was very
interested in sort of alternative medicine cures, and in particular leatrill,
something made from poisonous pits of apricots.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
To this day, the drug leatrill is still not approved
by the FDA, and it has never proven to be
an effective treatment for cancer, but the family believed it
would cure their dad, so naturally, there are folks who
speculate that this is one of the root causes for
the anti government sentiment within the Rudolph family.
Speaker 7 (15:14):
Certainly, I don't think that the latural episode, you know,
was the one factor that sort of drove an otherwise
perfectly normal, middle of the road family into the sort
of arms of the radical right. I think this was
a much longer standard development, and it particularly seemed to
originate with Pat Rudolph, the mother, you know, who was
very interested in all kinds of unorthodox ideas. You know,
(15:36):
vaccines are evil, the government is hiding successful medical cures.
You know, they could cure cancer, but they won't tell
us how to do it. And ultimately some of those
ideas were transmitted, at least in some form to several
of her children.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
This was long before the digital age and social media.
Pat Rudolph found this world through a few neighbors and
church friends. One of these folks was Lord Davis, a
white supremacist who headed a very radical group in western
North Carolina called the North Point Tactical Teams. Another was
Tom Brandham, the Rudolph's next door neighbor in Topton, who
(16:14):
you heard from last episode. Brandham and the family were
very close.
Speaker 9 (16:19):
He had a big influence on Pat. He's the one
that found that land up there in the mountains. Hey,
you know, there's only a half acres up here, and
you know you're gonna love it. So, being anti government
thinker that he is, he wasn't memorable in a crazy
whack away because the dude was like.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Out there.
Speaker 9 (16:39):
You know, he's one of these apocalyptic kind of guys.
You know what I'm saying, Well, there's ever an apocolose,
there's ever you know, Uh, they're going to come in
and take over our country. You know, I'm armed to
the hilt and I got all these damn cam goods
in my house that I got gasoline stored in the back,
and I live in a brick o block house. I
think he had some major influence over those boys too,
and it was not good, not good.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
This part of western North Carolina had been home to
all kinds of radical rightists, white supremacists, jew haters of
all kinds. They lived an extremely rural life. So you know,
Eric is growing up in a home in which things
like Holocaust denial pamphlets are floating around all the time.
And in fact we know that because Eric, in ninth
(17:24):
grade at Nantahala High School, submitted an essay to his
teacher in which he denied the existence of the Holocaust.
He told his teacher that it was based on a
pamphlet that he'd found in his home.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Eric Rudolph only made his way through the ninth grade
before his mother decided to homeschool on The decision went
hand in hand with Pat's search for the church. It
was convenient for moving the family around, always looking for
the next thing. The first move, as we've heard, was
to top to North Carolina, where they lived off the grid,
growing their own food and using a water pump system
(18:01):
they built themselves. Then, in nineteen eighty three, Pat moved
eighteen year old Eric Rudolf and his younger brother Jamie
from Topton to Chelseaity, Missouri, to a Christian identity compound
called the Church of Israel, and that's when things got
a hell of a lot stranger.
Speaker 7 (18:18):
The Church of Israel is essentially a religious kind of
compound or set of buildings run by a guy for
many many years named Dan Gamon. The theology practiced by
Dan Gaman and the Church of Israel was a version
of a theology known as Christian Identity, and Christian Identity
(18:39):
in its more radical version, is really quite something. This
theology posits the idea that what really happened in the
Garden of Eden was not Eve taking a bite from
an apple from the tree of knowledge. No, no, that
was you know, that's how the Old Testament has been
mistranslated for the ears of children. You only knew what
(19:00):
the original writings really said, you would know that what
really happened was Eve had sex with the serpent in
the garden and gave birth to Cain. And you know,
the story goes on from there. But basically, Christian Identity
says that the people who call themselves Jews today are
not the Hebrews of the Old Testament, but in fact
(19:23):
are the direct biological descendants of Satan himself. They are
Satanic literally, and are working every day to prepare the
earth for the return of their father Satan and his rulership.
Dan Dayman was at the heart of a very very
(19:44):
radical movement, and in fact, in one remarkable episode, Gaiman
was given and accepted ten thousand dollars from a very
scary terrorist group called the Order. This is a group
that believed Jews and rice mixers need to be killed
to make the world a better place, and so Dan
(20:04):
Gaman treated Eric Rudolf like a very special kind of disciple.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
In the few interviews Pat has done since the bombings,
she admits regret when speaking about the family's time at
Church of Israel. Quote everybody makes mistakes, Pat says about
the experience. So Pat Rudolph left with her son Jamie,
but Eric Rudolph stayed at the compound. He had designs
(20:34):
of his own, and the head of the church, Dan Gamon,
took a particular interest in Rudolph, seeing him as a
surrogate son and a potential successor. Eric Rudolph went to
Missouri at age eighteen, and so did I. He went
to a Christian identity compound. I went to journalism school.
(20:56):
He took cues from six or seven people in his
immediate vicinity growing up and took a severe, hard right turn.
I took cues from six or seven people, including him,
that steered me in a different direction. And that's really
all it takes.
Speaker 8 (21:15):
You know, so much of what we believe is perspective
and how we see things. So there was a time
when I fiercely defended Eric and just you know, could
not believe that he did that.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
I'm speaking to a former member of the Church of
Israel who wished to remain anonymous. She lived on the
compound at the same time as Eric Rudolf and was
very close with him during his time there.
Speaker 8 (21:41):
It's very difficult for people to understand how, even as
a teenager, someone could willingly get involved with a group
like that. You know, I guess when I came on
the scene, they were very much pushing sort of an
evangelical Christian image, which is kind of what my family
(22:01):
was more about. Dan was trying to pull in fresh blood,
new people, young people, and he had had a lot
of psychology and he's just naturally extremely manipulative. I mean,
he is a true cult leader, but more of the
Bible based cult genre, and he's really dangerous in that way.
(22:25):
They just demonize whoever disagrees with them. He is in
his eighties now, so I don't think he's as effective
as he was, but he was pretty much in his prime.
I'd say when I met him. When Eric got involved
in Eric's mom and brothers, and I think these predators
(22:45):
they really prey upon people who have something missing in
their lives, you know, father, hunger, PTSD, some kind of need,
and then they just move in and fill that need
with all this mistake love. And all you had to
do was throw Eric's ego a little bit and you
had him.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
While working on this project, I've found myself asking the
same question over and over, when do ideas turn into action?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
For Rudolph and for.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So many narcissistic types appealing to the egos, the activation code,
the trigger word. Once they hear it, the mission is greenlit.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
I feel like it's kind of like Donald Trump, who
needs to answer for what he did with what happened
on January sixth. It's the same type of thing with
Dan Gaymon. You know, I feel like he's behind a
lot of these acts of violence.
Speaker 9 (23:58):
Eric Hayde my guts from the get He likes submissive women,
and I'm not submissive. I think when he really opened
up with Sober Thanksgiving, because they were like soldier of
Fortune magazines laying around, he would talk about being a mercenary,
and you know, and of course I was. You know,
this was something new to me. This is like you know,
he would talk about you know, philosophy and you know,
(24:22):
being a mercenary and his opinion of the Bible, and
you listen and then all of a sudden you're like, oh,
anti government, what is that? I've never heard of that?
And then you think, well, have I gotten this wrong
all my life? You know, he'd get real animated, and
just watching them react to things on TV, you pick
(24:45):
up what their life is about and what their lifestyle
is about. They thought it was the electric TV was
the electric juice. And he'd jump up and he'd be
marching up down in front of the TV and be
very animated about something on TV, some kind of news
story or some kind of show or something.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
You know.
Speaker 9 (25:01):
The credits would roll and he'd get on his thing
about the Jews and how they run the media. And
look at that name. You know that's Jewish and you
know they run the media, they run the banks, they
run the stalk Mark, they run everything. This country they've
been they've broke every country they've ever been in. They've
been run out of every country. You know, no wonder
there a people without a home or some crap like that.
(25:21):
I mean, he would just get justcum nuts.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
As Rudolph's racism and hatred grew during this time, he
was being fed a steady diet of anti government, white
Christian nationalist ideas by the people around him, ideas straight
out of the Christian identity theology. And at the same time,
this militant theology was beginning to find common cause with
the more mainstream religious right, the moral majority, and political
(25:48):
conservatism in general. In other words, just as Eric Rudolph
was beginning to make a plan to take his ideas
and grow them into a blueprint for action, all these
extremeists ideas were simultaneously beginning, slowly but surely to seep
into the mainstream.
Speaker 7 (26:10):
You know, the ideas we hear about today from the
radical right from January sixth, insurrections and the rest of
them are direct descendants, you know, of the same ideas
that the Rudolph family was talking about over their kitchen table.
It's worth remembering that when Eric Rudolph sent letters to
the media, he signed them typically death to the New
World Order.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
In the eighties and nineties, for many Christians, the end
times described in the Book of Revelation was finally upon us.
Revelation prophesied the emergence of a charismatic figure known as
the Antichrist, who is destined to be the leader of
a singular global government, the New World Order. This end
time scenario was a fundamental piece of their theology, and
(26:56):
for millions of Evangelical Christians it still is. But back
in the nineties, fear of this new world Order was
spawning a renewed interest in survivalism and paramilitarism, as people
on the far right stockpiled their home arsenals and actively
prepared for apocalyptic scenarios. At the time, political scientists warned
(27:18):
that hysteria about the New World Order could have devastating
effects on American life, everything from escalating lone wolf terrorism
to the rise of authoritarian ultra nationalist demagogues.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
Well, you know, the New World Order is the boogeyman,
the imaginary plot conjured up by radical right militias in
this country as the enemy. The global elites were going
to come into our country and basically destroy all that's
good and right about being American.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
New World Order quickly became a shorthand for a sprawling
set of fears about the state, the deep state, and
it went full conspiracy theory very quick balluting into a
wild eyed fear of Christians being rounded up and put
into concentration camps run by Communists and Jews. This fear
legitimate or not, united people across a wide variety of
(28:13):
different substrains on the right, and for Eric Rudolph back
in the mid nineties, the Olympic Games perfectly represent the
global singularity that would give rise to a new world order.
This he simply could not abide.
Speaker 9 (28:28):
And he would watch that and it would just piss
Eric off. He would be like, Oh, look at all
the countries coming together, and all the colors coming together,
and all the races coming together. This is going to
bring everybody together under a one world government. Blah blah blah,
blah blah. He hated the Olympics, the fact that all
(28:50):
these people came together in peace to compete with each
other in a friendly way, in a good way. And
that's why I think he blew up the Olympics. He
hated it. He believed about mud people, about gay people,
about the different races. Eric would say he wasn't a racist,
(29:13):
he was a separatist, meaning you should stay true to
your race, because eventually all these racists are going to
merge together and we're going to be all one color.
We're going to be all one people under one world government.
You know, he's big on that one world government thing.
This ties him in with the Olympics.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
See did it ever occur to you that he was
capable of being a domestic terrorist?
Speaker 9 (29:41):
Well, this is what I told Joel. Eric is either
going to be famous or he's going to be infamous.
You know, you want to believe that somebody still got
some good, you know what I mean? You know, I
never hated Eric. I never disliked Eric. A product of
his upbring and he took it way beyond.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
For a long time now, the Church of Israel and
Dan Gamon have been this kind of boogeyman for me. Historically.
They're militant and hateful. I mean a church that puts
its members through paramilitary training. That's batshit crazy. From where
I stand, I was intimidated, but that didn't change the
(30:29):
facts that I needed to talk to Dan Gamon directly.
Speaker 10 (30:39):
Hello, you have reached to Israel and the Watchmen outreach ministries.
If you would like to speak to after gaming and
plead press three all of them by the pound sign.
Speaker 5 (31:01):
Could that Forno Me I Helped You.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Flashpoint is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeartMedia.
I'm Your Host. Cole La Caassio, Donald Albright and Payne
Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV. Flashpoint
was created, written, and executive produced by Doug Mattica and
myself on behalf of seven nine nine seven. Lead producer
(31:39):
is Alex Espastad, along with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Our associate producer is Witt Lakassio.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Editing by Alex Espostad with additional editing by Liam Luxon
and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Original music by Jay Ragsdale mixed by Dayton Cole. Thank
you to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at Uta Beck
Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. Special thanks to
Angela q, Tylie Revive, Mattica and Tim Livingston. For more
podcasts like Flashpoint, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app,
(32:24):
or visit us at tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Flashpoint. This series
is released weekly absolutely free, but for ad free listening,
(32:48):
early access, and exclusive bonuses. You can subscribe to tenderfoot
Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus dot com
Host
Cole Locascio
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