WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Accused serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph will avoid a possible death sentence by pleading guilty to a string of attacks in Alabama and Georgia, including a deadly blast at the 1996 Olympics, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday.
Rudolph will be sentenced to life in prison in exchange for guilty pleas to all charges against him -- a deal that a survivor of one bombing called extremely disappointing and drew mixed reactions from former federal prosecutors.
According to the Justice Department, Rudolph will enter his first guilty plea Wednesday morning in Birmingham, Alabama, where jury selection began this week for what was to have been his trial in the January 1998 bombing of a women's clinic. (Background)
Rudolph will then be transferred to Atlanta, Georgia, where he will plead guilty to the attack at a concert in Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics; the bombing of a lesbian nightclub in 1997; and a blast outside a suburban women's clinic the same year.
The Olympic Park bombing killed Alice Hawthorne, 44, an Albany, Georgia, woman, and wounded more than 100 others, including her teenage daughter. Another nine people were wounded in the 1997 Atlanta attacks.
The Birmingham blast killed Robert Sanderson, 35, an off-duty police officer guarding the clinic, and maimed a nurse, Emily Lyons, who was 41 at the time.
Lyons, who lost an eye in the bombing, said she and her husband were "extremely disappointed" by the agreement.
"We felt that the crime fit the punishment of death," she told CNN. But she added, "We knew it was the best choice to protect others."
Lyons said she was about to have her 20th operation to remove shrapnel from her face and neck, and could have to undergo many more surgeries.
"As far as closure, there isn't any," she told CNN affiliate WBRC. "Even though he goes away to prison, I'm still here every day. I see myself every day. I look in the mirror; I know what I can't do anymore. You can't forget it, and there's no closure if you can't forget it."
Lyons said she would want to ask Rudolph, "How could you do something like this and why?"
The clinics in Atlanta and in Birmingham both performed abortions.
Rudolph was a follower of the white supremacist Christian Identity movement, but investigators have never ascribed a motive for the attacks to him.
A group calling itself the Army of God claimed responsibility for the Birmingham blast and the Atlanta bombings that followed the Centennial Olympic Park attack.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the plea agreement, saying it served "the best interests of justice.
"The many victims of Eric Rudolph's terrorist attacks in Atlanta and Birmingham can rest assured that Rudolph will spend the rest of his life behind bars," Gonzales said in written statement announcing the deal.
Kent Alexander, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta at the time of the bombings, said he was "surprised" by the plea agreement.
Alexander said he believed the Bush administration wanted to secure a death sentence in a domestic terrorism case, but acknowledged that the government "wouldn't necessarily want to make a martyr out of Eric Rudolph."
Doug Jones, the former U.S. attorney in Birmingham, said he was "ecstatic" about the agreement.
He said he never had any doubt Rudolph would be convicted, but said "cultural factors," such as opposition to abortion among jurors, could have made a death sentence difficult to obtain.
Alice Hawthorne's daughter, Fallon Stubbs, who was 14 at the time, was one of those wounded by flying screws and nails in the Olympic Park bombing.
Stubbs and her mother's husband, John Hawthorne, issued a statement Friday saying they supported the plea agreement "in the interest of preserving and protecting the lives of other citizens."
"It was a fair compromise and a decision they could grudgingly support," according to a statement from their lawyer, Gilbert Deitch.
"The prospect of Mr. Rudolph never being free to hurt anyone else and having the rest of, hopefully, a very long and difficult lifetime to think about what he has done -- and what he has lost -- provides some measure of satisfaction for John and Fallon," the statement said.
Rudolph provided information about explosives
A witness spotted a man leaving the scene of the Birmingham blast and gave police the license number of a gray pickup registered to Rudolph.
Rudolph disappeared from his home in Murphy, North Carolina, and remained a fugitive for more than five years before agents of the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives picked him up in May 2003.
Rudolph was arrested after a Murphy police officer spotted him about to go into a trash bin behind a grocery store in a search for food.
Based on information provided by Rudolph during the plea negotiations, FBI and ATF agents located and destroyed explosives stored in the mountains near Murphy, law enforcement sources said.
The caches included 250 pounds of dynamite and an assembled but inert bomb, the Justice Department said.
The material was considered unsafe to move and was destroyed in a series of five explosions over the past two days, a senior law enforcement officer said.
One site included bomb components that matched parts recovered after the bombings, the officer said.
Rudolph will be sentenced to life in prison in exchange for guilty pleas to all charges against him -- a deal that a survivor of one bombing called extremely disappointing and drew mixed reactions from former federal prosecutors.
According to the Justice Department, Rudolph will enter his first guilty plea Wednesday morning in Birmingham, Alabama, where jury selection began this week for what was to have been his trial in the January 1998 bombing of a women's clinic. (Background)
Rudolph will then be transferred to Atlanta, Georgia, where he will plead guilty to the attack at a concert in Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics; the bombing of a lesbian nightclub in 1997; and a blast outside a suburban women's clinic the same year.
The Olympic Park bombing killed Alice Hawthorne, 44, an Albany, Georgia, woman, and wounded more than 100 others, including her teenage daughter. Another nine people were wounded in the 1997 Atlanta attacks.
The Birmingham blast killed Robert Sanderson, 35, an off-duty police officer guarding the clinic, and maimed a nurse, Emily Lyons, who was 41 at the time.
Lyons, who lost an eye in the bombing, said she and her husband were "extremely disappointed" by the agreement.
"We felt that the crime fit the punishment of death," she told CNN. But she added, "We knew it was the best choice to protect others."
Lyons said she was about to have her 20th operation to remove shrapnel from her face and neck, and could have to undergo many more surgeries.
"As far as closure, there isn't any," she told CNN affiliate WBRC. "Even though he goes away to prison, I'm still here every day. I see myself every day. I look in the mirror; I know what I can't do anymore. You can't forget it, and there's no closure if you can't forget it."
Lyons said she would want to ask Rudolph, "How could you do something like this and why?"
The clinics in Atlanta and in Birmingham both performed abortions.
Rudolph was a follower of the white supremacist Christian Identity movement, but investigators have never ascribed a motive for the attacks to him.
A group calling itself the Army of God claimed responsibility for the Birmingham blast and the Atlanta bombings that followed the Centennial Olympic Park attack.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the plea agreement, saying it served "the best interests of justice.
"The many victims of Eric Rudolph's terrorist attacks in Atlanta and Birmingham can rest assured that Rudolph will spend the rest of his life behind bars," Gonzales said in written statement announcing the deal.
Kent Alexander, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta at the time of the bombings, said he was "surprised" by the plea agreement.
Alexander said he believed the Bush administration wanted to secure a death sentence in a domestic terrorism case, but acknowledged that the government "wouldn't necessarily want to make a martyr out of Eric Rudolph."
Doug Jones, the former U.S. attorney in Birmingham, said he was "ecstatic" about the agreement.
He said he never had any doubt Rudolph would be convicted, but said "cultural factors," such as opposition to abortion among jurors, could have made a death sentence difficult to obtain.
Alice Hawthorne's daughter, Fallon Stubbs, who was 14 at the time, was one of those wounded by flying screws and nails in the Olympic Park bombing.
Stubbs and her mother's husband, John Hawthorne, issued a statement Friday saying they supported the plea agreement "in the interest of preserving and protecting the lives of other citizens."
"It was a fair compromise and a decision they could grudgingly support," according to a statement from their lawyer, Gilbert Deitch.
"The prospect of Mr. Rudolph never being free to hurt anyone else and having the rest of, hopefully, a very long and difficult lifetime to think about what he has done -- and what he has lost -- provides some measure of satisfaction for John and Fallon," the statement said.
Rudolph provided information about explosives
A witness spotted a man leaving the scene of the Birmingham blast and gave police the license number of a gray pickup registered to Rudolph.
Rudolph disappeared from his home in Murphy, North Carolina, and remained a fugitive for more than five years before agents of the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives picked him up in May 2003.
Rudolph was arrested after a Murphy police officer spotted him about to go into a trash bin behind a grocery store in a search for food.
Based on information provided by Rudolph during the plea negotiations, FBI and ATF agents located and destroyed explosives stored in the mountains near Murphy, law enforcement sources said.
The caches included 250 pounds of dynamite and an assembled but inert bomb, the Justice Department said.
The material was considered unsafe to move and was destroyed in a series of five explosions over the past two days, a senior law enforcement officer said.
One site included bomb components that matched parts recovered after the bombings, the officer said.
