Rudolf, Beethoven, and The Chainsaw Man

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Got JB with me today.
Hey everyone, so I'm excited toget into this podcast.
I will tell you the title rightnow Rudolph Mozart and the
Chainsaw man.
Welcome to no Sanity Required.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Welcome to no Sanity Required From the Ministry of
Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters.
A podcast about the Bible,culture and stories from around
the globe.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
All right.
So where this is coming from isI want to talk about Eric
Robert Rudolph.
So when people heard me in thatintro, they probably thought I
meant Rudolph the Red-NosedReindeer.
When people heard me in thatintro they probably thought I
meant Rudolph the Red-NosedReindeer, so Eric Robert Rudolph
, who was at the end of the lastcentury coming into this
century.
I don't think he made it to thenumber one on FBI's most wanted

(00:57):
list.
I think he made it to numbertwo.
I think there was aninternational terrorist, maybe
that was number one, but he wason the top ten for a long time,
which is a big deal.
That means the federalgovernment sees you as a top 10
criminal.
Right.
Yeah, and he was from right hereyeah.
In the Andrews area and we'llget into the back story as I

(01:24):
know it and as I have studied it.
I've gone down a rabbit holewith this guy's story because I
lived through the manhunt and Ithought it'd be fun to just tell
the story yes um, then we'llget into the mozart and chainsaw
man thing that's separate fromrudolph already already told jb
what I'm thinking with that.
Um, but there's going to be aspiritual application, I think,

(01:47):
a really important one.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
I would agree yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
So let's talk about Rudolph.
So, eric Robert Rudolph, youcan go do your own Wikipedia
work and figure out who this guyis and what he did.
But Eric Robert Rudolph iscurrently serving a life
sentence.
But eric robert rudolph iscurrently serving a life
sentence.
The prison he's in is in is in,I think, colorado, and it's

(02:11):
like it's a prison for uhterrorists.
You ever hear of a guy calledthe unabomber?

Speaker 5 (02:15):
yeah, I actually get him and rudolph confused, okay,
I think a lot of people do yeah,so I think that so that guy's
dead now he, he died, the shoebomber.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, yeah, I think his name was Ted Kaczynski.
Theodore Kaczynski, I think hedied.
He was in this same prison.
Have you ever heard of the shoebomber?
No, I don't think so.
So after 9-11, that's wheneverything got really crazy.
When you travel, you've onlyever known travel where-.

Speaker 5 (02:43):
With TSA.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yes, all that stuff so before 9-11 wasn't like that,
yeah, and like I used to carrypocket knife.
You carry pocket knife on aplane if it was under three
inches or something like that,um, but anyway, uh, the unit I
mean the shoe bomber was thisguy that sometime after 9-11 he
was on a flight and he had madea bomb that was in like out of

(03:08):
the sole of his shoe orsomething On a plane.
And he got onto a plane.

Speaker 5 (03:14):
However, I don't remember the details.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
You have to look it up.
But, he gets on a plane andthen all these people tackle him
.
Once he's on the plane startsthreatening to blow it up and
then they all jump.
The guy was an idiot, he wasnot a very good criminal, so
they hold him down, you know,and take his shoe away.
But he went to prison as aterrorist.
So he's serving alongside ofRudolph in his prison in

(03:38):
Colorado.
But I read a book about theRudolph thing.
So part of Rudolph's plea dealthey were going to go for the
death penalty and part of hisplea deal was to get him.
He didn't want to.
He wanted to get life in prison.
So he pled out.
But part of that plea deal washe can't write books, it can't

(03:58):
be movies, he can't getroyalties.
So this lady who was ajournalist got permission to
write letters back and forthwith him and then she wrote a
book and it's called lone wolf.
So he got kidnapped orkidnapped.
He got captured, apprehended in2003.
She wrote the book, I think, in07 okay and I read it a couple

(04:19):
times.
I don't think there's an audibleversion, I think it's just, uh,
and it's out of print, but youcan still find it.
I looked it up when we weretalking about this version.
I think it's just and it's outof print, but you can still find
it.
I looked it up when we weretalking about this, the other
day.
It's pretty fascinating.
She's super liberal,progressive and that comes
through kind of someanti-Christian slant which is
going to play into what we'regetting into today, because
Rudolph professes to be aChristian representing the will

(04:41):
of God, you know.
But if you can look past that,she tells the story and it's
pretty fascinating and you get areally good, accurate out of
his mouth out of his pen as hewrote letters to her of what his
five years on the run lookslike.
So you made the comment earlier.
Before we tell kind of tell thestory who Eric Rudolph is, if
our listeners haven't alreadyGoogled it, and they're

(05:03):
currently as they're listening,to this on.
Wikipedia, yeah.
Um, so he was on the run forfive years here in these
mountains.
Yeah.
And you had said you thought itwas a few months.

Speaker 5 (05:13):
I thought it was just like a month stakeout of trying
to find him.
I didn't know, it was fiveyears.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's crazy.
Did you have you ever seendocumentary or like the netflix
series?

Speaker 5 (05:24):
on eric rudolph so I had.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
There were people a few years ago this had been
fairly recent there was anetflix series and I don't
remember if it's calledmanhunter or manhunt, but it
told it was.
It was like a almost like adocudrama and it was the rudolph
case.
Um, so let me, let me, let metell folks and tell you, just to

(05:47):
be clear on what I know forsure, he was charged with and
found guilty of.
I think he was found guilty ofall these things.
The main thing he's in prisonfor, the main two things, what
ultimately got him caught andtried was he bombed an abortion
clinic in Birmingham, alabama,okay.
And in that bombing an off-dutypolice officer who was pulling

(06:10):
security because he's abortionclinics.
You've got Christiananti-abortion groups, pro-life
yes, pro-life groups, who willoften stand outside of abortion
clinics.
Sometimes they'll sort ofpicket, which I don't think is
maybe the best approach, butthat's neither here nor there,
and sometimes they'll stand outthere and offer counseling

(06:34):
services.
They'll try to, they'll justtry to speak to women that are
going in, but then you've gotthese sort of militant yelling,
screaming pictures of bloodyaborted babies you know stuff
like that, people that stand outin Asheville like the square in
Asheville.
Yes.

Speaker 5 (06:49):
With like crazy sayings on their posters.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
And then like the posters with pictures of a baby
that's been aborted and it'slike chopped up arms and legs
and stuff like that, which,again, I don't I ain't judging
nobody.
It's brutal.
You know, I think if we'retalking about during the Nazi
Holocaust, if someone stood on astreet corner in Asheville

(07:14):
because because, uh, hitler wasexterminating Jews in
concentration camps and hadpictures of those Jews, we have
those in our textbooks at school.
So I you know this is not adebate about that but there's
probably good ways to go aboutit and less effective ways to go
about it.
But a lot of these abortionclinics have off-duty police

(07:36):
officers that most policedepartments.
You can go make money as anofficer.
The department allows you tomake money working a ball game,
a concert in your uniform,whatever.
So I don't know if that guy wasuniformed, I don't know what
his situation was, but he wasoff-duty police officer.
Again, I haven't done theresearch to remember the names
of these people.
I'm not trying to bedishonoring to them, but you can

(07:58):
go do research on what his namewas.
It was a nurse that was killed.
What Rudolph did is he set abomb and blew this abortion
clinic up, and prior to thatthat was in 1998.
That was in January, I believe,of 98.
January, february, I believe itwas January.
That's when he came onto myradar.

(08:21):
But prior to that he had in1996, 1996.
Did you ever the richard jewelcase at the olympic?
I've like heard like snippets oflike he bombed the olympics in
atlanta, but I don't really knowany details okay, so what that
was there was a in centennialpark because that was, I think

(08:42):
that was the centennial olympicswas the 100-year Olympics and
you, being from Atlanta, youprobably grew up hearing bits
and pieces of that whole thing,because that was a big deal.
Having the Olympics in Atlantain 98 was a huge deal.
And so there was like a concertvenue at the Olympics and he
set a bomb.
What he would do is he wouldmake these bombs, he would put

(09:04):
them in a backpack and it wouldbe a homemade bomb.
That would do is he'd makethese bombs, you put them in a
backpack and it would be ahomemade bomb.
That would be prettydestructive and when it would
blow up it would have like a lotof metal shard nails, 16 penny
nails or whatever, somethinglike that like it would be
bunches of fragments of metal.
So when it would blow, up?
yeah, it would just shred peoplethat were in proximity, so he

(09:25):
sits this bag in this one areawhere they're doing a concert.
It's like a, an outdoor venue,just apparently during the
olympics.
There's a, there's a lot ofnightlife and a lot of
extracurricular stuff.
It's.
It's.
It's a real fair and festivalkind of atmosphere.
So and there's a famous um,there's a really uh famous

(09:47):
person.
Now he's he's dead now.
His name is richard jewel.
He was a security guard who sawthis suspicious package, gets
this backpack, gets set down bythis bench, yeah, and he tries
to report it.
But he's a security guard, he'snot a.
He's not a like sworn policeofficer, so nobody takes him

(10:08):
serious.
He ends up becoming the suspectof that.
There's this huge investigation.
They basically ruined thatguy's life because they said you
did it yeah we know you did itjust real bad police work.
So he was eventually cleared andhe was really the hero of the
day because he was trying to getpeople out of there.
He's like there's a, there's abomb and there's a bag here and

(10:31):
we got to get so.

Speaker 5 (10:32):
Anyway, eric rudolph had done that but didn't get
caught, but did get caught atthat time yeah, all the
attention went to this securityguard.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
So rudolph was pretty slick the way he would set
stuff up.
He had he had been livingpretty much truly off the grid
and so anyway, uh, he had hewould go do bomb something and
he would be like untraceablebecause he didn't have.
He didn't have a bank account,jeffy, he'd never had a bank
account that's crazy he dideverything under the table.

(11:04):
A lot of his money that he madecame from growing and selling
pot like weed.
Yeah.
So, trivial fact of the week,this area is like really good
pot growing climate.
Right.
That's why there's now a weedfarm on the Cherokee.
Reservation.
The Cherokee Nation made itlegal and I got one of Tuck's

(11:27):
buddies that he graduated withis.
Uh is working on the weed farm.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
The reservation so they're justlegally.
There's a pot farm over there,you know, 30 miles from here,
and they're just growing weed.
Um, but you can.
Apparently it's.
This is like the right climatefor growing weed.
So what he would do is he'sliving pretty much quote unquote

(11:50):
off the grid.
He doesn't really have like acyber footprint.
Also, remember this is the 90s.
The internet's brand new.
I mean, at that time theinternet was what was called
dial-up internet, so it wasn'thigh speed To get on the
internet.
You would take your computerand plug it into a phone jack.
It was all done through phonelines.

(12:10):
So when you want to go looksomething up and you type in
your favorite, you type in theESPN website.
It's like this long, slowprocess to load the first page.
Dang.
And you can see it slowly, thescreen slowly coming in.
It would take a while.
You know when you're trying toget on a on a website and the

(12:31):
little wheel spinning orwhatever it was like that, but
it would make this noise in thebackground.
So it's dialing, it's trying todial and then pull the images
in.
So then internet websites werevery slow.
There was no video.
Yeah, it was like looking at anewspaper or a magazine.
So the first page would come up, would be very few links.

(12:51):
You click on a link and itwould do the same thing to get
to that page.
So browsing the internet, peopledidn't just surf the internet.
You had to have some time, youhad to sit down in front of a
computer because you didn't havea personal device yeah, yeah.
So this is in that time period,so he had no cyber footprint.
There was no social media atthat time.
Dude was living off the gridand he was living on cash money

(13:14):
that he was making from growingpot.
Yeah.
He would.
He would the majority of hispot he would sell in Nashville.
He had, he had a D, he had deal, a dealer network in Nashville
where he had gotten tied in andhe would grow it.
Okay, get this.
He would grow pot in the powerlines here.
No way.
Yeah, so you know how, when youlook through the mountains,

(13:34):
there's different gaps, you cansee through the power line gap.
There's enough sun that hitsthose power lines, enough
elevation and nobody's lookingthere.
Yeah.
Nobody's looking there for potplants.
So he's growing pot in thepower lines here in Cherokee
County and in this end of MaconCounty, which is the top of the
Nantahala area, like if you'regoing towards Franklin and he's

(13:56):
growing pot and then he's takinghis pot and he's harvesting,
prepping it and then selling it,primarily in Nashville, because
he had a network he was tiedinto but he was sort of
anonymous, so he's selling it.
It's all cash money.
He's bankrolling wads of cashand then putting it, you know
like vacuum sealing it andstoring his cash.

Speaker 5 (14:19):
So he was like, I guess you would say, based out
of this area.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yes, he was from here , he was based out of this area,
so he had grown up.
I think he moved here in likeeighth grade.
So this is where the rabbithole gets crazy.
There was a network in the 90sof militia people.
Now a militia is an armedanti-government group.
For today's purposes you candefine militias different ways.

(14:45):
There are terrorist militias.
There are legal governmentmilitias, like the Second
Amendment of the Constitution inthe Bill of Rights says that
the people of the United Statesare a well-regulated militia.
That was written to keepcitizens free from government
tyranny and oppression.
So the government knows hey,our citizenship, our citizenry

(15:06):
is armed and they will fight.
And that goes back to theAmerican War for Independence.
So that's a militia.
That's different than ananti-government militia in the
1990s that's based out of theSouthern Appalachians.
Yeah.
So we were talking the other dayyou watched some of the Waco
stuff.
So Waco and I told you, I toldyou and laylee, I know you and

(15:28):
hackett about an event called,uh, ruby ridge, randy weaver,
ruby ridge.
So there were several eventsthat happened in the 90s that
ramped up militia activitybecause there was this real
suspicious mindset of thegovernment's trying to take over
our personal private lives andso we got prepared against that.
Well, there was a group ofpeople out in Montana called the

(15:51):
free men and they were thisanti-government off the grid you
could kind of get off the gridin the early nineties because
there was no internet, um, andso there was a sale of those
people here and I've been on oneof their compounds.
It's now a housing development,but in the late nineties I was

(16:11):
in one of those compounds like,and you might think, why were
you in the?
Militia compound.
There was a piece of, a guy haddied that owned a large piece of
land and they were chunking itup and selling it off and so
that that sale of that militiahad died off.
I'm I don't remember what theywere called, but it was fairly

(16:31):
close to camp and we werelooking at purchasing a piece of
that land.
So we're looking at that landand there were these underground
bunkers, food that 30 year foodcans stored.
It was pretty wild ammunition,um.
So anyway, rudolph was kind oftied into some of those groups.
What was happening is peoplewere moving here in the 90s from

(16:54):
from bigger cities and so hisfamily moved to the area to get
away from you city, the citywhere they felt like the
government had overreach.
Yeah.
Mountain.
People are a little bit moreout outside of that, so they
moved here.
He went to public school.

(17:14):
His ninth grade year he went toNana Hala school.
You know where that's at.
Yes.
So my sister-in-law, tammy, is.
She works at Nana Hala school.
She's one of the administratorsup there.
And then mine and Little'snephew.
Her brother, stephen, ismarried to Tammy.
Tammy's kids went to school andgraduated from Nantahala.

(17:35):
But for context, nantahala is aschool that we're still very
connected to because they justinstalled a pinwheel program up
there.
So Little's going to be on herenext month.
We're going to do a pinwheelpost installed a pinwheel
program up there.
Little's going to be on herenext month.
We're going to do a pinwheelpost school year pinwheel
episode where we explain andtalk about what pinwheel
tutoring is and local ministryepisodes.
Anyway, nantahala School haspinwheel but they graduate

(18:01):
anywhere from two to six peopleas an average graduating class.
Nantahala School is K through12 in one building and it's
about 50 to 60 students.
It's a public school.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
I think one time I I kept seeing signs for it, you
know, like near the put in andstuff.
So one day I was like I'm justgoing to go see what it looks
like, and I think I drove pastit three times before.
I was like wait, that's it,that's the school.
That's the school.
Yeah, that's crazy.
It's teeny, tiny.
It's tiny, yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, and it's so great because most of the middle
school and high school studentsthere come to Snowbird every
summer, because they all go tothe same church.
Most of them go to BriartownChurch.
Shout out, bo Phillips, he'sthe pastor there and he brings a
group of them every year.
So awesome community.
I love that.

(18:49):
If it wasn't for sports, Iwould have wanted Tuck to go
there.
Kilby, laila it's the bestschool, the best community.
I love those people.
It's like in some ways steppingback in time.
Life is just simpler and slower.
There's good people, there'smountain people, and so Rudolph

(19:13):
was living in that communitywith his family, but they were
quote unquote off the grid andhe was homeschooled, and that
homeschooling was nowhere nearas prominent and prolific then
as it is now.
Right.
But his freshman year he went toschool.
Up there there's a guy namedKenny who was a deputy with
Macon County prominent andprolific then as it is now Right
but his freshman year he wentto school.
Up there there's a guy namedKenny who was a deputy with
Macon County that ended up onpart of the task force that was
tracking him.
Kenny was the only guy thatwould have been friends with

(19:34):
Rudolph.

Speaker 5 (19:34):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, and so he was kind of.
It was this cat and mouse game.
They had been high schoolfriends.
But the story be told thatRudolph.
But the story be told thatRudolph, his freshman year of
high school, the only year hewent to public school, he would
leave school on Friday and showback up to school on Monday.
Having not gone home, he wouldwalk into the mountains on

(19:58):
Friday and he would just stay inthe mountains all weekend.
He was just, he was a woodsman,he just loved being in the
woods, being off the grid.
And so then Rudolph did a stintin the army, but that didn't go
well.
I don't remember the nature ofhis discharge, but I feel like
he in the book it was talkedabout that he he was discharged
from the army because ofinsubordination, because he had

(20:19):
such chauvinistic and whitesupremacist views he would not
salute or yield to a womanofficer or a black or minority
officer.
That was that.
That's probably open for debate, but I remember that was talked
about in the book, but that wasfrom the author's side, not
from rudolph himself.
But it fits the profile of kindof what he was into as as a, as

(20:40):
a white supremacist.
So anyway, he was living inthese mountains after he'd
gotten out of the army, kind ofoff the grid, and he just
decides he's on a mission fromGod.
Now this is where it getsconvoluted.
So he's on a mission from Godto eradicate the world of

(21:01):
certain things, one beingabortionists.
Eradicate the world of certainthings, one being abortionists,
but another being certain racialminorities, jews, et cetera.
So the Olympic Park bombing wasan effort and an attempt to
humiliate the United States.
So most people, like Rudolph,are part of what's called the

(21:24):
accelerationist movement.
Accelerationists believe thethe perfect society would be a
society of just white people.
Okay, what they want to do isthey want to accelerate the
downfall of society.
So, like they'll vote forliberal, leftist, progressive

(21:45):
candidates, they'll promotethose candidates because they
believe they're in totalopposition to those candidates
ideology.
But their belief is thesecandidates will try to disarm
the populace.
They'll create, you know,movements like blm, defund the
police, and that's going tocause societal collapse.
So let's accelerate that,because the faster we can make

(22:08):
that happen, the faster we canthen reestablish and take over a
society the way we want it.
So thus, accelerate thedownfall.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
If you ever meet one of thesepeople and I met, I've met a few
in person, um, and I'll tellyou about one of them Um, if you
ever meet him, you kind of sitthere and go.
Oh my gosh.
Are there hidden cameras.

(22:29):
Is this a joke?
They really believe this.
So Rudolph was like into let'scause the collapse of society.
So the Olympic Park bombing wasto humiliate the US on the
international stage and there'smore layers to it than that.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Do you know if anyone died?

Speaker 1 (22:48):
in the olympics.
Yes, there was a.
There was a, a lady who, anafrican-american lady and, I
believe, her daughter, but yeah,there was.
I think.
I think there were two peoplethat died again.
Um, listeners can look that up,the folks that maybe look that
up right quick while we'retalking, okay, so what?
We got.
This is victims of the 96bombing.

Speaker 5 (23:07):
Two people died a 44 year old woman, um, who was
killed from the shrapnel fromthe explosion, and then a
cameraman, a 40 year oldcameraman that was covering the
event.
Okay, both he died from a heartattack.
Oh wow, probably from themoment.
Just the stress of it all, yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, wow, and I think that guy Richard Jewell
really did save some lives,maybe, if I remember, yeah, got
people to move.
But okay, so the statement islet's humiliate the US, yada
yada yada, but nobody has a cluewho did it, like they have no
leads in somewhere in that timeframe.

(23:47):
Uh, he bombed.
He did something at a gaynightclub in atlanta and I think
it was a bombing I think so sothere was that and then um, a
lot of neo-nazi views.
You know the Nazis were.
They wanted to exterminatehomosexuals.
And then in Forsyth I don'tremember if it was Forsyth,

(24:11):
georgia or Forsyth County whichis coming coming Georgia there
was an abortion clinic attack,but I don't think anybody died
in that that he got tagged withI think as well.
So he was just and he wasspacing these attacks out.
You know he would do one or twoa year, something like that,

(24:31):
but he had this plan, thismanifesto.
All these guys, they alwayshave a manifesto.
For sure.
He's going to accelerate hisattacks.
So what happens is in Januaryof 98, he bombs this abortion
clinic in Birmingham.
And this is crazy.
But there's a student, a UABstudent, who when the explosion

(24:54):
happens, it happens in themorning, I think, before the
clinic's open.
I think they're like he did itbefore it was open.
This guy, he sees or hears theexplosion and he's looking out
the window.
This is where they start to getthings wrong in the docudrama.
They've got to dramatize stuff,right.
But the guy looks out and hesees the explosion, hears it,

(25:15):
sees it, whatever.
But everyone's aware, man,something huge just happened,
this bomb went off.
And he sees everybody going tothe explosion, first responders,
everybody's going that way andthe crowd's just sort of chaotic
.
And he sees a guy quicklyleaving the area, yeah, walking,
hoodie, backpack, and he'sleaving the area.

(25:37):
And so this guy sort of fixates.
He's like everybody's going inone direction, this dude's going
, going away.
So this college dude, collegeguy, follows this dude.

Speaker 5 (25:48):
Dang.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
And he sees him at some point, either from his
window because he's in a like a,say he's three, four, five
stories up, or whatever he's upin this building.
Either he sees him from thatvantage point or when he starts
following him.
He sees him go behind adumpster and he comes out in
different clothes.
So he changes.
So he had stashed a change ofclothes, comes out, this guy

(26:11):
follows him and the dude goesand gets in a truck that's
parked at a mcdonald's a blockor two away, a couple blocks
away.
So he runs into mcdonald's,writes down the tag number smart
calls the police.
It's a North Carolina tag.
It comes back to Eric RobertRudolph or whatever.

(26:31):
If it comes back to him, Ithink it comes back to him.
He was living at this time onCaney Creek.
Okay, you know, if you gothrough Murphy, you go out the
other side of Murphy, like youcan go to Blairsville, like if
y'all can go to Chick-fil-A orsomething, you can go to
Blairsville.
You go out the other side ofMurphy.
There's a road called CaneyCreek Road that goes back to the
left.

(26:52):
He was living out there in atrailer and so it comes back to
Caney Creek, which is from thatend of the county to Birmingham.
You can be there in less thanfour hours.
It's not a long drive.
So he drives back.
It's January and I remember this, it was snowy and he goes to

(27:13):
his trailer.
This is crazy.
This is where the story getscrazy.
This is where the Netflixseries completely botched it.
They blew it completely wrong.
So our this is where the storygets crazy.
This is where the Netflixseries completely botched it.
They blew it completely wrong.
So our sheriff at the time,who's dead now, his name was
Jack Thompson.
Jack Thompson was an older guy.
He was like in his 70s, maybe60s or 70s.
So Rudolph goes to his trailer.

(27:38):
Jack Thompson gets a call fromthe FBI.
Hey, there's a guy, he's aperson of interest in this
bombing.
We want to come question him.
So Jack Thompson and a deputygo to the trailer on Caney Creek
and they stake out.
Rudolph, wow, it's snowing.
Yeah, it's cold.
They're hunkered down and JackThompson says hey, we can just

(28:02):
apprehend him.
We just take him, we'll haulhim in and then just hang on to
him until y'all get here.
These special agents, or thisteam, is coming out of Atlanta.
They're like no, no, no, do notengage with him, he's armed and
dangerous.
Yeah, blah, blah, we're theprofessionals.
I'm going to tell you somethingI got some good friends in the
FBI.

(28:22):
I really do.
Vic Carpenter, who's a pastor.
He's with the hostage rescueteam.
He's a, he's a bivocationalpastor.
You talk about a cool church.
Your pastor is on, is part ofthe hostage rescue team, the
only tier one unit in indomestic law enforcement in
America, and he's your pastor.
That's cool and I think they'reelders, you know, at that

(28:44):
church.
So Clay Hicks is one of theirelders.
Yeah yeah, so Allison's dad,clay's retired Clay was FBI.
He worked in gangs.
He's a fascinating dude to talkto.
He is very cool and he's agreat storyteller.
Yes, I'm going to have him onhere.
Yes, I would be clay, youlisten to nsr, you're coming on
nsr.
Another guy, mark alexander,who's from that church.

(29:05):
Mark and kim alexander, they,they're, they're real faithful,
swole folks.
Um, mark uh retired from thefbi last year.
He was, uh, counter terrorism.
So I have good friends in thefbi.
Um, at that time I had a friendnamed jim named I won't say his
last name, friend named Jim,because I think he's still
involved, but he was from WestNorth Carolina.

(29:26):
I graduated with his brother.
We were best friends.
He got relocated here to workthe case, all those dudes I just
named, very squared away.
But there's some knuckleheadsand particularly the best way to
catch Rudolph would have beento use the local network Because
he was on their radar and itcould have ended that day.

(29:47):
I really think.
Crazy to think about.
Yep, like Jack Thompson and thisdeputy are watching Rudolph.
Yeah.
From across the road in thebushes.
They're looking, they can seehim moving around in the trailer
.
We can take him right now.
Don't do it, he's dangerous.
Okay, so they said we got ateam in bounds.
So Jack Thompson, if I rememberright and now go fact check me

(30:11):
on this stuff, but I'm doing allthis from memory.
I haven't studied on this inprobably five or six years,
maybe more.
But Jack Thompson and hisdeputy go to the house.
They're freezing, they maybemore, but Jack Thompson and his
deputy go to the house, they'refreezing.
They're like we're going to thehouse, he's there, he's home,
go get him.
They go home.
Well, somewhere it leaks.
And so what Rudolph would do ishe would keep news radio on and

(30:34):
it comes across.
The scanner, not the scanner,not the police scanner.
He would run a police scanner.
You know what that is.
Yeah, he would run a policescanner.
You know what that is.
Yeah, he would run a policescanner and he would run news
24-7.
And he's monitoring.
So he's in his trailer, he'spreparing a meal, he's cooking
supper and he hears Eric RobertRudolph of such and such, such,
such Murphy, north Carolina iswanted for questioning as a

(30:57):
person of interest.
He's not quote unquote, he's nota suspect.
Well, he hears that.
Yeah.
So here's what he does Leaveseverything as is, goes out.
Gets in his truck okay, hefigures I got an hour or two
head start Right.
Drives from Caney Creek toWalmart in Murphy.
Goes into Walmart, buys a bunchof supplies he was already sort

(31:22):
of prepped for a getaway.
He knew this day would come, Ithink Buys some supplies.
He's got a little truck with acamper shell on the back.
Puts all his stuff in thereit's like tarps, cold weather
stuff Just gets some foodsupplies.
Goes through the Burger King inMurphy they found the receipt
in the truck that's so that evenbuys two like big whopper meals

(31:46):
.
He's gonna like just load up onfood before he goes on the run.
It's middle of winter rightokay, check this out.
He drives to the head of firescreek.
I talked about fires creek inthe sermon sunday night.
You got to drive out towardshayesville and then you go up
into fires creek.
Fires creek is a Creek is a, Ithink it's a.
It's like a 19,000 acrerecreation area of national

(32:07):
forest, so it's real thick, it'sreal steep.
He goes up in there and he'sgot a spot picked where he's
going to hide out for the firstpart of this.
So he unloads the stuff hebought at Walmart.
This is all after dark now.
He then drives his truck backto Caney Creek which would be,
let's call it, 25 miles, butit's curvy miles Drives it over

(32:31):
to Caney Creek, drives it intothe woods, brushes it in and
hides it there, knowing it'llget found because the
concentrated search is going tobe over there.
It's right there, yeah.
Then in the middle of the nightwalks the 20 something miles on
the paved road on 64 highwayjust walking down.
How many times you see somebodywalking down the road at night
around here you don't thinkanything about it yeah, true so

(32:52):
he's just walking with abackpack and some food in it to
get him back to fires creek.
he walks to fires creek and sohe's just walking along the road
and cars are passing and as itgets later into the night he
started, I believe, when carswould be coming.
He would just step off into thewoods and then he would step
back into the road and so hewalked to Fires Creek.
Well, it takes them like a weekor two.

(33:12):
They find his truck and thenall the search is right there.
Yup, and it's not just CherokeeCounty now it's the FBI it's the
GBI, because we're a bordercounty.
Yeah, we're right on theGeorgia line.
It's the North Carolina StateBureau of Investigation.
The Georgia Bureau ofInvestigation, fbi, atf was
there.
I'll call it the back offirearms.
All these agencies, thesethree-letter agencies show up.

(33:36):
I think that that first pushthere was like two to three 300
agents that just start searching.
North Carolina Highway Patrol,everybody's searching.
He's up in Fires Creek roastingmarshmallows, which I don't
think.
He's building fires but he'shiding.
If you ever go up in themountains here 365, the mountain
laurel's thick, so the leavesfall off all the trees, but
mountain laurel doesn't ever, itjust stays thick so you can get

(33:58):
under mountain laurel.
Thick, so the leaves fall offall the trees, but mountain
laurel doesn't ever, it juststays thick.
So you can get under mountainlaurel and they're not going to
see you from an airplane.
And so he hides in the mountainlaurel, creates a little
campsite.
He's got big bins buried thathe stored food in and that's
when he starts hiding.
that that's in like January,february.

(34:19):
So there's like a one-monthsuper concentrated search and
then they say he's left the area, he's got help, he's tied into
the Freeman.
We know he's got ties to somemilitia groups or whatever.
So they think he's left thearea.
In July he shows up.

(34:41):
He basically comes out ofhiding and there's some
connection with some people thatthen it's like okay, he's still
in the area.
And that's when he's in thehe's come.
So from fires creek you cancome over the mountain into the
nantahala community okay the waythese mountains are laying.
Like you come out of fires creek, you can come to a place called
county corners.
That drops you in on nantahalaLake, where we do our canoeing

(35:04):
on the Chogie boat ramp.
So you can come in on that side.
But if you drove it on the roadback this way it'd take you
over an hour to drive around.
But you just go right up andover the mountain.
So he goes over into NantahalaLake area and he's taking food
out of some of those summerhomes.
Breaking in, he's getting food,so that kind of puts him back
on his trail and that's when heuses cayenne pepper to throw off

(35:29):
the bloodhounds.
Pretty slick.
Yeah.
He throws the dogs off In theNetflix thing.
The day that he goes on the runfrom his trailer the way they
portray that the FBI comes inhot to his trailer.
He sees him jumps in his truckand takes off and there's a car
chase that ends up in themountains.
He gets out, runs into themountains, they put the dogs on

(35:51):
him, he kills the dogs and thenescapes it's just complete
garbage.
Hollywood is full of idiots.
It's a wonderful story.
Just tell it, you don't have tomake up a mess.
They've watched too many Marvelmovies, so, anyway, that's
where they put the bloodhoundson him.
So they're not attack dogs,they're bloodhounds, they're
trail dogs, and he uses cayennepepper to throw them off.

(36:13):
Pretty slick.

Speaker 5 (36:13):
That is crazy.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
And then he uses some other tactics that I don't
remember, some techniques andtactics to confuse the dogs and
he gets away back in themountains.
But so from long story, reallylong story, cut into one episode
here.
He then spends the next fiveyears hiding in these mountains
and they can't find him.
That's crazy.
There was a famous bumpersticker.
Muggs has one on the door ofhis shop.

(36:39):
It says Eric Rudolph, 1998 hideand seek champion.
That's so funny so I'm in.
So opening day of deer season1998 at this point he's seven or
eight months in I take a couplelocal boys hunting.
They're like 12, 13 year oldguys and we go in that morning
actually I hunted by myself thatmorning and then they're going

(37:01):
to get dropped off.
One of them's dad's going todrop them off and I'm going to
hunt with them that evening.
So I walk out to the truck.
I'm 45 minutes in from my truck.
I walk out of the truck to meetup with these boys.
I get these boys.
We're walking in and we cameacross a tactical team that hid
from us.

(37:21):
They had on like canvas they.
They went and just disappearedand I could see them.
Yeah, they just kind of wentinto the woods.
I don't think they were verygood woodsman.
A lot of the, a lot of theagents were not skilled woodsman
.
They were.
They were out of the atlantafield office, the miami field
office, the oklahoma city fieldoffice and so their city guys
that then little worked at theshoe store in town at the time,
gibson Shoes, and they wouldcome in there 10 or 12 agents

(37:43):
and all buy new boots on aDepartment of Treasury American.
Express card.
Because they didn't have boots.
But I remember walking withthose boys and all of a sudden
there's these agents and I waslike all right boys, there's a
bunch of federal agents up here.
So we stopped and talked tothem and you got to know them.
Like two nights a week we wouldplay pickup basketball at the

(38:04):
high school and all those agentsand they would come.
Yeah, these guys would be offduty.
A lot of them were in their 20s.
Yeah 20s and 30s, so we playedhoops.

Speaker 5 (38:11):
That's so funny.
So in this area during thattime was there a lot of
suspicion?
Were people on edge?

Speaker 1 (38:21):
What was that like, yeah, most people were
suspicious toward the governmentokay, gotcha, most people were
somewhat indifferent to Rudolph.
this was my one person'sexperience.
The what I felt like was thatmost people just thought the
government was was the guys didnot represent the government
well, because a lot of them likeI remember one time where a

(38:42):
dude found a hornet's nest,didn't know what it was and
pulled it off the limb and endedup in the ER because he got
stung a thousand times orwhatever so a lot of these guys,
they didn't represent theirdepartments well, like the
Georgia, the GBI guys, the NorthCarolina Highway Patrol guys
that were like the woods units.
They were good.
Yeah.

(39:03):
They were the guys that knewwhat they were doing.
But most people were just kindof like we just want to get on
with our lives.
But okay, andrews is a town of1,000 people.
There were 300 agents.
Yeah, like, if you went toimagine this, you know how we
train our staff and we say whenyou go to the mexican restaurant

(39:23):
in town and your table with 15,20 people, be quiet, be
respectful.
If y'all all go to onerestaurant, it's going to
overwhelm the restaurant and theother patrons.
Just be mindful.
300 agents.
And at that time we had moneyout bond burger basket, which at
the time was called reeds reedsburgers.
Um, we had a restaurant calledthe garden restaurant and that

(39:47):
was really it.
Um, and so if you would go to arestaurant there'd be you could
not go eat that there weren'tbetween 20 and 40 agents in
there.
You know, it was like crazy, goto ingles.
They were just everywhere.
So, um, you know where thewalgreens is.
It just just shut down.
Right across from walgreens isthe housing project, the

(40:08):
government housing project.
Behind that they built acommand center.
They were landing helicopters.
They had two helicopters here.
They had.
They had planes.
They were flying all night withinfrared looking for him.
So they had a command centerover there.
It was fenced in, they had abig like command post and uh,
and those agents were based outof there.

(40:28):
A lot of agents long-termrented cabins and houses and
they just moved in here.
So people kind of learned tolive with it with some, a lot of
people mountain people aresuspicious anyway.
Right, so you had mixedsentiment about Rudolph.
The problem was Rudolph was aweird dude so he hadn't built
strong local relationships.
So he was from here but notfrom here.

(40:49):
He was based out of here but hedidn't have strong
relationships in the area.
The guy I told you that I met,he was a plumber who had moved
to the area from somewhere inFlorida.
Most of them had come fromFlorida and most of them weren't
from Florida, they were fromall over the country.
They had moved to Florida andthen they ended up here.
So this guy, the first cabin webuilt, freedom Cabin.

(41:13):
We hand-dug all thefoundational stuff, little and I
dug the footings for that cabinand then we ran the plumbing.
But we had to get a plumbinginspection.
So this guy, we met him and heand he said, yeah, man, I'll
help y'all.
So we did the work and he camein, inspected the work and
pulled the permits because youhad to get a permit for that and
I got to know him.

(41:33):
He had bought Rudolph's oldhouse.
So Rudolph had a house up here.
He bought it, moved into thatwhen Rudolph went more off the
grid, but he had bought itbecause he was in that network.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
Oh, okay, I see, so he had a lot of those same views
, just less extreme.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
So, getting to know a guy like that, you found out
pretty quick they're prettyradical in their thinking.
This dude was making a living,he was a plumber and he was
doing installs and houses thatwere going up on the lake stuff.
But he was in the area for sixor seven years and I don't know
where he went.
But there was the other thingthat I think stands out to me

(42:13):
that maybe people might notthink about is there were so
many news crews that came here.
I'm sure yeah.
So, like you know where the mainentrance to camp is.
So at that time when he went onthe run in 98, all we had was
two Outfitters tents.
We were building Freedom Cabinand the old Army surplus tent

(42:36):
was down there.
That's going to.
You know we talk about in thebook.
We got a picture of it in thebook.
Shout out NSR book yes, comingwas down there.
That's good you know we talkabout in the book.
We got a picture of it in thebook.
Shout out nsr book yes, comingout this year.
So we have a.
We found a picture of the armytent, um, so it was like a mess
tent where we would serve meals.
So that tent was set up.
Well, it looks like somethingyou'd see at a militia compound.
It's an old korean war era armytent and then we've got these

(42:56):
two outfitters tents.
So one of the militia quoteunquote compounds was just up
Snyder Creek from us.
So everyone thought we weretied in.
These news crews thought wewere tied in.
So from the entrance to campalong McClellan Creek Road,
above the old bathhouse, therewere satellite trucks for news

(43:18):
organizations from all overEurope CNN, fox, abc, nbc, cbs,
msnbc, all of them.
They had their trucks lined allthe way up McClellan Creek Road
, that's crazy.

Speaker 5 (43:30):
It was crazy Trying to like interview you guys.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
So I got interviewed three times.
I got interviewed by theAtlanta Journal-Constitution,
the New York Times and CBS.
That's crazy, and then we had agroup of students that were
staying.
We had gotten Freedom Cabindried in.
A group of students from FirstBaptist Hendersonville, north
Carolina, was there.
The boys were in the twooutfitter tents, the girls were

(43:53):
in the cabin and Little and Iwere sleeping on the porch of
the girls' cabin.
We were just camping out.
We had a couple of cots, one oneach side of the porch.
I think she was sleeping insidethe cabin with the girls.
I was sleeping on the porchbecause the parents were a
little freaked out and so thelocal NBC affiliate out of
Greenville, south Carolina, cameand interviewed all those.

(44:15):
They asked could they interviewsome of the kids?
The youth pastor was like, yeah,they took some footage of our
worship service.
Quote unquote worship service.
It was 25 kids and we're doinga little Bible study thing.
There was a lot of mediapresence.
They were.
I mean, the media was like allover this thing and um, it was.
It was definitely a crazyexperience.

(44:37):
I remember going bear huntingwith the Curtis boys and uh uh
news crew from a europeancountry.
I don't remember where maybe agerman crew wanted there that
people started working all thesedifferent angles on what
southern appalachian life islike.
So they went out on this huntand I remember, um, I think I

(45:00):
think we killed a hog.
I don't think we killed a bearlike the hog and we're bringing
that thing out of the woods.
The crew's following andthey're interviewing I remember
them interviewing steve curtisand uh, it's crazy it's crazy.
Um.
So yeah, I got interviewed afew times.
Rudolph had a brother who wascrazy and this is the craziest
thing you'll ever hear in thisstory in in defiance of the

(45:25):
government, he did a home videowhere he turned the camera on,
sat down in front of a big chop,saw, put his hand in it and
sawed his hand off.
No.
Then freaks out, picks his handup, calls 911 or drives to the
ER or whatever.
They surgically reattach it.
The whole family's crazy, yeahwhat.

(45:47):
So then his mom, rudolph's mom,I watched her give a press, a
thing with the press.
You know what the gazebo is bythe post office.
Yes, louis Free was thedirector of the FBI.
Louis Free was doing a pressconference at the gazebo.
Rudolph's mom went right overby where a state employees

(46:08):
credit union is across from thepolice department and she drew a
bunch of attention and a bunchof the news crews went over
there and she gave her ownlittle press conference.

Speaker 5 (46:15):
And.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
I stood and listened to that.
I was standing behind thecamera man.

Speaker 5 (46:18):
That's crazy she was crazy.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
I mean she was a lunatic, so wrap it up, but uh,
but we're almost an hour intothis thing.
We're 45 minutes into this, Iknow that's crazy.

Speaker 5 (46:31):
Well, did it stay like for all those five years?
Was it that hectic, or did itkind of die down?

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, it died down.
So it was hectic the firstmonth, like February, march of
98.
Then they thought he left thearea when he resurfaced in july.
That's when they flew back inhere and that's when the news
crew showed up at camp andbecause that was that 98 summer,
we had a few groups comethrough that summer and then

(47:00):
that fall is when the bearhunting trip, the bear hunt that
day when the crew went.
So that would have been fall of98.
So from like summer of 98, itwas about a year of intense
presence, law enforcementpresence, and then then they
they said, okay, he's left thearea.
Well, what he tells in the bookis what he was doing is in the

(47:21):
summer when the vegetation andfoliage is real thick.
He was living on web Creek,which is, if you you go, if you
go out of north campus and youturn on the four lane like you
can go to murphy, you turn likeyou can go the airport way.
Web creek's the first turn tothe right up at the head of web
creek.
He was up in those woods becauseit's so thick he could stay up
there.
He was staying up there.

(47:41):
I'll tell you one little,really funny personal story
where I had a brush with Rudolph.
No way.
Um, in in indirectly.
So I was working on Mondays.
We're trying to get campstarted.
So I was trying to.
I was having to work, I wasn'tmaking a living with snowbird,
so I I was shooing horses,hanging drywall, did it me and

(48:04):
little, put a couple roofs onhouses, just make money.
So we would like, like Iremember we we roofed a house,
for it was a four-day job and itpaid us enough money to live
for six weeks or whatever.
And then we work every day atcamp for six weeks cutting trees
down, digging footers forcabins, whatever.
Well, on mondays I got a jobworking.

(48:24):
It's now called dockckery TireShop down there by the movie
theater.
Back then it was called HodgeAuto Parts.
It was a Napa affiliate andthey did oil changes, brakes,
tires, front end alignments.
So I got a job working there.
Well, I ran the oil change bay.
I just changed oil all day long, did oil changes and tire

(48:46):
rotations, and I just workedthere changes and tire rotations
, and I just worked there onMondays.
So Mondays I worked down therebecause one of their guys,
mondays, was his day off and wehad this old trash bin, trash
barrel thing that we would throwall of the trash in in the oil
change bay and I remember comingin on a Monday morning and

(49:10):
Phillip who lives down the roadfrom me on Robinson Road,
phillip Hodge.
He was fired up becausesomebody had stolen our trash
can which sat right outside theoil change bay.
Rudolph tells in the story inthe book in one of his letters
he's living on webb creek.
He needed a way to transport umgrain that he was getting out

(49:32):
of the feed bins out past theairport yeah.
So he came down, went behind thenapa auto parts store at the
end of business 19, took a trashbarrel, cleaned it out in the
valley river.
It was that trash barrel.
That's crazy.
And then he hauled it up WebbCreek and what he did was he
would take feed sacks.
He would go to those feed binswhen he had enough to fill.

(49:56):
That can so check this out.
There was a used car lot rightwhere you know that Cherokee
County Cycles out here on the 4lane.
Yes, across from North Campus.
Yes, there was a used car lotthere.
He goes to that car lot.
He would break in.
The office was like a littlesingle wide trailer and they
kept 10 or 12 used vehicles.

(50:16):
He would break in, get keys toa pickup truck they would do
this at one in the morning put adealer tag on it.
Out of the office, drove upWebb Creek, took that trash
barrel he had taken from Napa,filled it up you know whatever

(50:39):
that he was going to fill itwith feed, put all the feed
sacks full of grain that he hadtaken out of the bin.
Drove that up to the head ofFires Creek preparing his winter
camp because he would go intoFires Creek during the winter.
Offloaded that barrel, buriedit.
It, put all that feed in it,sealed the top of it, drove that
truck back, parked the truck,hung the keys up, put the thing
back and then went up web creekbefore daylight that's kind of

(51:01):
genius, crazy kind of genius oneof those trips.
So he had taken uh, a a shirtand tie I mean a shirt and
khakis, not a type like a dressshirt and khakis, he had a nice
suit of clothing and he had, uh,some glasses and he would put
on.
He put on those, khakis, thatshirt, those glasses.

(51:22):
Steal.
That truck drove to walmartbecause it was a 24-hour walmart
yeah go into walmart buy a fewsupplies.
Nobody be the wiser.
That's crazy.
And one night, when he was goingto walmart, that truck ran out
of gas and so he is about, uh,outside of walmart, a cherokee

(51:42):
county deputy gives him a rideto walmart.

Speaker 5 (51:45):
That's crazy.
So how did he eventually getcaught?

Speaker 1 (51:54):
So the way he eventually got caught.
So back to your question abouthow long did it stay?
Crazy about a year.
I think he stayed on thatpattern Webb Creek and Fires
Creek, which are either side ofthis valley.
Webb Creek is down just abovethe valley here, fires Creek is
just across the Valley, riverMountains there, so he would go
there in the winter.
He'd be here in the summer andthen he started to go as it
tapered off.
They closed the command centerhere and they started using the

(52:17):
one, the National Guard Armory,which is near the casino in
Murphy.
The casino wasn't there then,right, so he moved his main
summer camp to Indian land, totribe land where the casino now
is, because nobody goes on tribeland.
It's kind of like nobody goes ontribe land, they kind of

(52:38):
control their own stuff, and sohe had a vantage point where he
could.
They shifted the headquartersto the national guard armory and
so he was watching them and itwas down to just a skeleton crew
of guys just chasing leads.
So hey, somebody said theythink they saw something
suspicious at this house up inanahala so he was kind of

(52:59):
monitoring what they were doing.
So after about a year he wasable to kind of just live in the
woods here yeah and then hemoved so close to town because
he, I think he realized I canlive pretty close to town.
There's so many people you seeout walking at night, these you
know, folks in the drug, drugworld or homeless people.
And the way he got caught washe had started dumpster diving

(53:23):
for food.
He quit living off of people'sgardens and feed bins and and uh
, because there was such asmaller law enforcement presence
, he had a camp like anencampment.
There's pictures of it onlineyou can see we had a little tarp
stretch and he was living undersome laurels above ingles and
murphy up on that mountain yeahthat ridge and he had gone down

(53:44):
to.
Uh, there's a save aa-lot in theshopping center where CrossFit
Murphy and Advanced Auto Partsis.
He'd gone.
He was in the dumpster behindthat save-a-lot and a young new
first-year police officer pulledaround, saw him and, just on a
suspicion, took him in.

Speaker 5 (54:01):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
You could keep, I think the way the law read.
Then he could bring him in onsuspicion of nothing for 24
hours or something.
He doesn't know who he is.
This guy gets to be the herobut has no idea who he's picked
up.
It was luck of the draw.

Speaker 5 (54:15):
That's crazy and a guy.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
A friend of mine named Turtle his nickname's
Turtle he was a detective at thetime sees him in there and he
says that's Eric Rudolph.
So Turtle walks in, sits downacross from him and says all
right, man, gigs up, I know whoyou are.
And he had been given an alias.
He had told that when thatyoung officer picked him up, he
gave him a fake name.
He said I'm just passingthrough.
And I think he even had a fakeID.

(54:38):
He's like I'm just passingthrough and I'm just looking for
some food and there had beensome complaints at that shopping
center that people had beenstealing, and I don't think it
was him.
But anyway, just randomly a guycatches him.
So Turtle says know who you are?
You're Aircraft Rudolph.
And that's how he's busted.

Speaker 5 (54:58):
That is crazy, yeah, crazy story.
I remember my first summerObviously this is a rumor, but
somebody where Super Coop isNorth Campus is if you've been
here you know it's like rightnext to a bunch of storage units
.
Cal Styles owns a bunch of likethe storage units and somebody
told me they were like yeah,eric Rudolph bought a storage

(55:21):
unit from Cal and was living outof it and Cal had no idea, and
so for a long time I don't evenremember who told me that.
So for a long time I don't evenremember who told me that, but
for a long time I was like noway like Cal Stiles sold him a
storage unit, but yeah well,what's really funny about that
rumor is Cal did not own those.
Then yeah, well, that's what Ilike thought.
But in my head I was like, well, maybe he owned different
storage units.
He did.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
He did own storage units.
So that story is that that EricRudolph's true.
Eric rented a unit from Cal andJanet, but that was before he
was wanted.
Yeah, and so yeah.
So Cal tells a story.
It's it's, cal's a greatstoryteller, and so he tells a
story about you know.
They come to Cal and they say,hey, we need to go in.

(56:04):
So Cal has to deal with thefederal law enforcement who
they're going to go basicallycommandeer this unit and pretty
fascinating.
But that's what it was.
But those units were downtowards Marble.

Speaker 5 (56:16):
Okay gotcha.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, so Cal, yeah, he had rented.
You know, people just rentthose things out and I don't
think they found anything there.
But yeah, it's fun to hear Caltell that story.
I bet yeah Pretty crazy.
Yeah, there's also just so manyfunny things that happened
during that time period becauseyou just learned to live with

(56:38):
these guys being around.
Yeah, I bet.
So there's a spiritualapplication in all this.

Speaker 5 (56:46):
The reason we just spent an hour of y'all's time, I
know, talking about a bomb.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
A bomb guy, a manhunt ?
We were talking.
You had to learn to play therecorder.

Speaker 5 (56:55):
Yes, yeah, in like fourth and fifth grade it was
called recorder karate and wewould get little belts and the
best one was obviously the blackbelt.
But you'd get little ropes thatwould hang off the edge of your
recorder.
No.
I think I still have itsomewhere, probably at home,
you've got to find your recorder, I will.
I'll have to find a picture ofit.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Did you learn to play Hot Cross Buns?

Speaker 4 (57:16):
Yes, yep, that's the first one, of course.
Yeah, everybody can play that.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah, so what started all this was we were talking
about when I was in fourth orfifth grade.
You had to learn to play therecorder, and I never could
learn to play it.
And at the end of it we had toplay some Beethoven song.
And at the end of it, at theend of school year, all the

(57:41):
fifth graders from HaywoodCounty, north Carolina, went to
Asheville Civic Center it wasactually the Thomas Wolfe
Auditorium to watch the NorthCarolina Symphony Orchestra play
some Beethoven thing and we hadto play our recorders for one
of the one frame or whatever.
Whatever you call it, one song.
And I remember we just blowingon our recorders, being

(58:02):
obnoxious.

Speaker 5 (58:02):
As loud as you could.
As loud as you could, Wah, wahwah yeah, and that turned into.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
You know you could take a stradivarius, which I
looked up, stradivarius violins.
I know we're switching gearshere, but hang with us.
We're calling this episoderudolph beethoven or mozart
beethoven, the chainsaw man, yep, and you can ruin beethoven's
music by butchering it.
You can take a million dollarStradivarius violin and you can

(58:30):
play it.
If I take that violin and Iplay it, it's going to sound
awful.
Yeah.
That doesn't change the qualityof what Stradivarius built Right
or what Beethoven wrote andcomposed.
I'm just a poor reflection orrepresentative of it.
Rudolph's whole thing was I'mon a mission from God and a lot

(58:51):
of people have done a lot ofdamage in the name of Jesus and
for us as Christians.
We need to keep in mind that werepresent Christ.
I don't answer for thehypocrisy of others, for the
hypocrisy of others, and I don'ttake ownership over the
crusades or the televangelistthat's having affairs with

(59:12):
multiple women or the youthpastor that abuses I don't.
Those aren't my people.
Jesus is my people.
Yeah.
And you're my people and theSnowbird family's my people, and
we're gonna hold each otheraccountable.
But in the world's eyes I'm notgonna shrink back from
professing faith in Jesus justbecause there have been people
that have represented what Ibelieve is our true faith poorly

(59:34):
or wrongly.
Right.
And I mean I'm sure you've hadfriends or family members or
people that said no,christianity is fully hypocrites
.
I'm not going to be a Christian.
Yeah.
Well, the hypocrites don'tdefine who we are, and we're all
hypocritical to a degree, right.
Everybody's some degree ahypocrite.
We're defined by Christ.
Yeah.
I told the chainsaw story thatI bought a chainsaw when we were

(01:00:00):
first starting camp and there'sa guy down on Blairsville
Highway that does chainsawcarvings.
I was like I want to see if Ican carve one of those grizzly
bears.
Yeah, and what I made.
I would love to see it now.
It did not look like a bear.
It did not look like anythinghuman, anything in the animal
kingdom.
It looked somewhat like analien.
But that doesn't change.
Just because I did a butcherjob, a hack job, doesn't change

(01:00:21):
what that chainsaw is capable ofor what a real artist can do,
or what a real bear looks likeSaul's capable of, or what a
real artist can do or what areal buyer looks like Poor
representations of Christianityhave done more to harm the cause
of Christ.
But what we can do is representChrist in the best way that we
can represent Christ.

Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
Yeah, I think it might have been an episode a
while ago when you were coveringmaybe some pastors or leaders
who had fallen and you saidsomething that really stuck with
me.
That was like if we put ourfaith in those people, whether
that's the best pastor, thebiggest pastor, whatever and
they fall like which they will,hopefully not drastically, but

(01:01:02):
you know, we're human, we'regonna fall um, you're just
putting your faith in thatperson and not in Christ.
Like you're, you're followingthis person as your savior and
not Christ as your savior.
Um, and I feel like I willoften catch myself doing stuff
like just looking up to peopleor like really respecting
people's word, which is not abad thing but then just putting

(01:01:23):
too much weight or too much likefaith into that person.
And then when maybe they saysomething that I don't agree
with or like maybe do fall orwhatever, then I'm like almost
like heartbroken over it.
When it's really like man,these people are great tools for
ministry potentially, or likeum can say great things, but

(01:01:44):
they're not your savior you knowthat's right, and like same
thing, savior, you know that'sright.
And like same thing with youknow, to me.
I hear this story of EricRudolph and I'm like man, that's
crazy that he said that Godtold him to do this.
But I don't think really twiceabout it.
I'm like what a shame, that'scrazy.
But people who don't have arelationship and a solid, you
know, theological foundation,that will really mess them up of

(01:02:06):
like how can a you know, aloving god do this, or you know
so definitely crazy to thinkabout yeah, and it gives us, you
know, it makes us even moreaware of the opportunity we have
to maybe be the first authenticchrist follower that somebody
has ever seen right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
And even I think in last week's episode I think I
mentioned Paul saying imitate meas I imitate Christ Right.
There is a place to learn fromolder believers or people that
are further along in the to lookup to spiritual leaders, but
only in as much as they imitateChrist Right.
And you know, paul says we arethe fragrance of Christ and

(01:02:49):
there's an opportunity for us toshow that to others.
And it's a good reminder.
Crazy story that we have funwith, hopefully, but I don't
know.
I hope that was entertainingfor people, but I did.
When that Netflix thing cameout, so many people would come
to camp say hey.
I'm watching this Netflix thing.
What do you think about it?
And I hadn't seen it.

(01:03:10):
Finally, after about six months, I watched one episode and I
was like this is so good, thisis crap.
Yeah, yeah.
So Wes Huff was the one thatmade me think of the violin.
He was on a podcast with thisguy named Patrick David
something.
And he said what do you say?

(01:03:30):
You know people say, well,Christianity is responsible for
the Crusades, for the witchtrials, you know the
inquisitions, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he said and he's the onethat said look, you can take a
cello, can be a really nicecello, a really nicely written
or composed piece of music, andyou put somebody on that that

(01:03:52):
butchers it.
You don't go, man, that's areally crappy cello, you go.
That person doesn't know how toplay that cello.
So, recognize, like we need toknow what the authentic
teachings and sayings of Jesuswere.
What does his word teach?
Right, what the authenticteachings and sayings of Jesus
were what does his word teach,right, particularly in the
epistles that are written to NewTestament believers?

(01:04:12):
This is kind of the guide forour lives, and then say that's,
that's what we're strivingtowards, and then give each
other grace.
And though some people areidiots and they're false
Christians, they're, they'resaying they are.
Yeah.
But then others, like people,can make mistakes.

Speaker 5 (01:04:26):
Like you said, they're saying they are, but
then others, like people, canmake mistakes, like you said.
Yeah, they really are, andespecially for people who are
just living in the world and forthe world, I think sometimes
they're almost looking for anEric Rudolph or someone who's
fallen or use God as an exampleto do something horrible, to
kind of write off Christianity,you know, and not really give it

(01:04:46):
a chance and not really connect, like you were saying, with
like authentic believers andfaithful, fruitful believers.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a very goodpoint.
People that want to find somereason to not believe.
There's enough examples likethat.
I think it's a really importantpoint, which also is a point of
that's where we go.
Okay, I don't have to give ananswer for Eric Rudolph or for
the pastor.
That's hypocritical.
I don't have to give an answerfor those guys.

(01:05:15):
I give an answer for myself.
And if people are going toreject Christianity, reject who
Jesus is, and they're going touse those extreme cases as their
reasoning, I can't reason withthat Right?

Speaker 5 (01:05:29):
Well, I also think there's a few stories of when
maybe these people come incontact and start to build a
relationship with, like I wassaying, like fruitful, faithful
believers.
You can't deny that either.
Like Rosaria Butterfield, shehas a book called the gospel
comes at the house key and shewas a very radical leftist, um,

(01:05:49):
lesbian professor at some maybeuniversity of Pennsylvania, I'm
not really sure, um, and she hadneighbors that were faithful
believers and they would alwaysinvite her over and she kept
like denying, thought they werestupid, whatever kind of like
what we're saying, just kind ofput a blanket statement all over
all christianity and you know.
And then, um, she eventuallywent over there and she was

(01:06:13):
gonna write, I think, like alesson outline on like combating
christianity and she was goingto use her neighbors as an
example.
That's how it started.
So she, so she, basically in thebook she's saying like they
were my like research subjects,without even knowing.
But I was just going to go overthere and kind of like pick
them apart, pick their religionapart.
So she went over there and thenit started a whole relationship

(01:06:36):
.
Um, she started going overthere for dinners, like weekly,
and then now she's very faithfulbeliever.
Um, what?
cool people I know crazy andeven um, this is not like as
full circle I would say, but Ihave a family member who has
walked away from the faith andat a time was living in a
homosexual relationship and soobviously I was very hard for my

(01:07:00):
family but we were veryobviously open, like we wanted
them both to feel loved by ourfamily.
It's not like we were likewe're done, we're cutting you
off, like, um, obviously thecircumstance was like a little
bit different, but, um, I thinkthe partner that my family
member was seeing also hadsimilar stereotypes of

(01:07:21):
Christianity, blanket statements, and I remember the first time
we met um her name is Jackie.
The first time we met Jackie,she was very hostile towards my
family.
And I remember the first timewe met um her name is Jackie.
The first time we met Jackie,she was very hostile towards my
family.
Cause I think she had justwritten off Christianity as a
whole, um, but I think it's just, you can't deny it.
You can't deny that my family islike loving and kind and
welcoming and like we tookJackie on vacation with our

(01:07:43):
family and like obviously notcondoning um what they were
doing, but, um, I think it wasnow.
Since then, jackie has, um,walked away even more and is now
completely transitioned into aman and everything like that.
But I mean, for the time beingthat she was in our life, it was

(01:08:03):
hard, like the circumstanceswas hard, why she was in our
life.
But I remember my parentssaying like well, like we still
just need to be like a constantlight and like just let our
lives be a reflection of Christ.
And I think maybe my sister andmy parents maybe had a few like
more intentional conversationswith Jackie, like about

(01:08:24):
scripture and stuff, um, but Ido think like like my mom would
send her like Valentine's daycards or Easter cards with like
a $15 Duncan gift card and juststuff like that, just being kind
, and I think that I pray thatthat the Lord use that.
Yeah, and just even if it'sgetting a bad taste of
Christianity out of her mouth,you know well, there's going to

(01:08:45):
be a point in Jackie's lifewhere there's going to be this
existential moment.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Everybody goes through it, and what I mean by
that is there's a moment, or aseason of moments where you're
going.
Why do I exist?
What is the real meaning of allthis?
What am I pursuing?
Am I finding what I'm lookingfor?
You know that you two, you twosong.
I still haven't found what I'mlooking for.
When I was preparing for theecclesiastes message uh, week

(01:09:16):
two, chapter two I looked up thelyrics of that song.
It just kept coming to my headyeah because he's basically,
it's this, it's what we'redescribing.
It's this yearning cry, forI've done everything that I can
possibly do to find what isgoing to satisfy me and I have
not found what I'm looking for.
It's like there's somethingbeyond me Jackie's going to have

(01:09:37):
.
That's an existential moment.
Why do I exist?
What's the reason, what's thepurpose?
And in that moment, what I prayis that that Dunkin' gift card.
In that moment, what?
I pray.
Is that that?
Dunkin' gift card.
You know, all of a sudden it'slike wait, there's something
about those people that I'venever seen in someone else, that

(01:09:57):
I've definitely not seen in mycommunity, yeah, and the
authenticity of that you knowChristians we have nothing to
hide.
The.
Mormons have a lot to hide.
You go back and you read thewritings of Brigham Young Racist
, like, believed that AfricanAmericans were subhuman.

(01:10:19):
That's something I'd want tohide, right?
We don't have to hide whatJesus taught.
We don't have to hide what Paulor Peter preached Right, we
have nothing to be ashamed of.
That's why Paul could say I'mnot ashamed of the gospel, I'm
not ashamed of it.
I don't have to hide EricRudolph.
He doesn't represent me orChristianity.
I don't have to hide thehypocrite in my family or the

(01:10:40):
pastor who's prominent and fellinto sexual sin.
Who's prominent and fell intosexual sin.
I don't have to hide.
I want to shine the light onwho Jesus is and what he's done,
and I want to be the light ofwho Jesus is and what he's done,
so that when I meet the Jackiesof this world, there's

(01:11:01):
something authentic anddifferent.
And I remember Little and Ibefriended and got to know a gal
and she was a lesbian.
Her name was, say, s, e, a, hor Y, and she was a bike
mechanic, mountain bike mechanicat a local bike shop and at the

(01:11:26):
time I would go in there and Igot to know her and and I'm a
guy that typically when I meetsomeone in that community I
think they assume I'm going tobe a knuckle-dragging,
right-wing flag-waving,gun-toting, whatever, and I get
it.
I mean that's exactly how Ipresent myself when someone sees
me.
But I don't think I am that atmyself.

(01:11:51):
You know, like when someonesees me but I don't think I am
that and um, so I just tried tobe her friend, little, I tried
to be her friend and we becamefriends with say yeah, and, but
I never I knew she was a lesbian.
Um, she dressed like a boy,carried herself like a boy.
We knew she was a girl.
This is before the transmovement was as big.
This was a little over 10 yearsago, it's probably 15 years ago
, and I remember seeing say andher partner, this girl, at, uh,

(01:12:17):
a place that we like to eat inbryson city, and they they'd
ordered a pizza and a pitcher ofbeer, whatever they're over
there and so spoke to her whenwe came in.
I always go out of my way tospeak to her, spoke to her and
uh, or they came in.
We were already sitting down.
They came in when we left.
I picked up their tab, didn'ttell them yeah it just paid for

(01:12:38):
their food.
Now a lot of people would saywould criticize me.
A lot of people in that are inconservative christianity.
I have some good friends I'mthinking of a pastor friend
right now that would say man, Alot of people that are in
conservative Christianity.
I have some good friends I'mthinking of a pastor friend
right now that would say man,that's out of line, you
shouldn't have done that, whichis fine.
You got to wrestle with thatyourself, but say it was my
friend and we're trying to showher the love of Jesus.

(01:12:58):
And so we did that.
And the next time I saw her shewas just like over the top,
thankful, and I'd like to saythat eventually she became a
believer.
I don't know what happened.
She transitioned and moved awayand I don't know what happened.

(01:13:19):
But I think if we would justlook for opportunities, Right.
There's discernment, like yousaid, where we don't condone
something.
Right.
Cause it is sin, it is wrong, itis.
I'm not going to condonesomeone's decisions to live in
drug addiction or a same sexrelationship or whatever, but I
want to show them love.

Speaker 5 (01:13:37):
Right and it's even like you know the saying, like
love the center, hate the sin,or like trying to, like you say,
like find that balance of likeloving the sinner and supporting
the sinner, but killing thatsin and not supporting that sin,
and you know, which is even inmy life, like even believers
life like just still findingthat balance of, you know,

(01:13:58):
serving the sinners well, likeChrist did, but not supporting
that, that sin.
And yeah, I also think for me meit was kind of convicting
because just how we're saying,oh, sometimes people will throw
a blanket over Christians orbelievers, I think, at least for
me I can say I do the same or Iused to do the same before I

(01:14:20):
think Jackie was in our lifelike people who maybe obviously
are in a homosexual relationshipor just live that way.
I think I would throw a blanketover them of being like, well,
immediately they're going to behostile towards me because I'm a
believer, or immediatelythey're going to have a problem
with me, or they're going tothis, that and the other.
And I think a part of thatstemmed because my, my sister is

(01:14:43):
the one who's like walked away.
Um, a part of that I think Iwas bitter because I was like
you took her away from, like myfamily.
And you know, but that's beensuper, just a growing process
and still currently in thatprocess.
But just spending time withJackie Jackie is a human being
and she still has feelings and aheart and emotions and like a

(01:15:04):
soul, and so even that of like,okay, we were able to be friends
, like you're saying, be friendsand communicate and joke around
and talk about different videosthat are funny, that we thought
, or the way that we dress, thatwe like, whatever, like we're
still able to have thoseconnections and believe
completely separate things, andso I don't have to throw that
blanket on her or those peoplewho believe certain things of oh

(01:15:28):
, they're immediately going tobe hostile towards me,
regardless if they are or not.
Like, like you're saying, youcan still be a friend and like
love and serve them.
So I think that was, I think, agood learning experience for me
and just convicting in general,but how old were you during
that?
So it's honestly been kind of along process, but I think I was

(01:15:51):
a senior in high school,freshman in college, when my
sister and Jackie were togetherPretty recent yeah, you're 22
now.
Yes, yes, sir, and so now fastforward.
My sister and Jackie are nottogether.
So now fast forward.
My sister and Jackie are nottogether and Jackie, like I said

(01:16:13):
, has proceeded to transitionand get surgery and testosterone
and so I don't really knowwhere she's at.
But yeah, I think it definitelywas growing and, like I said,
still definitely working througha lot of those like feelings
and processes and stuff.
And sometimes it's harder whenit's, you know, close to home
and you know versus just likesomeone that you're not as

(01:16:34):
closely tied to.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
But you are you.
You only have oneresponsibility.
I guess you could, if you'regoing to narrow it down to we
always have a responsibility toshare the gospel right To to, to
proclaim it, to speak it, toarticulate it down to.
We always have a responsibilityto share the gospel right To to
, to proclaim it, to speak it,to articulate it.
But outside of theresponsibility of declaring,
proclaiming and speaking thegospel is, I just have a

(01:16:57):
responsibility to other people,to to, to live as Christ would
have me to live right.
To be a reflection and anexample of who jesus is, and
that's that's.
This is very if you're stillwith us after almost an hour and
a half hour and 15 minutes.

(01:17:18):
Whatever, this is veryimportant if you will simply let
christ live through you, havethe mind of Christ, speak the
words of Christ, be the handsand feet of Christ, love like
Christ, live like Jesus wouldhave you to live.
That's your responsibility, andhow people respond to that is

(01:17:41):
between really it's between themand the Lord.
But my opportunity I thinksometimes Christians get so
derailed where we actually lookmore like Rudolph.
Maybe we're not bombing aclinic, but we're plastering
anti-abortion stuff all over oursocial media, or we're
plastering anti-LGBTQ.

(01:18:03):
I don't know how productivethat is for a Christian, you
know.
I just don't know howproductive it is when maybe a
more productive thing would beto befriend someone that needs
Jesus.
Just do the best I can to be agood friend to them and look for
that opportunity to share.
Christ.
Because there's that momentwhere you're going to say let me

(01:18:24):
tell you why I live my life theway I live my life.
I need to share this with youand then, sharing it, paul will
word this by saying this ismultiple times in scripture live
a manner of life that is worthyof the calling.
So it's not just say what youneed to say, it's live what and

(01:18:44):
how.
You need to live A manner oflife.
That's a life pattern, my theway I live my life out, the way
I walk it out day to day.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
You know, yeah, it's fun, jb yep, very interesting
rudolph beethoven and thechainsaw man and I thought about
adding the marlboro man,because I remember when I was
about 19, I bought me a cowboyhat.

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
I was going to be the .

Speaker 5 (01:19:06):
Marlboro man and a cowboy hat does not make you the
Marlboro man Right All right,it's fun.
Yep, Thanks for tuning in y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
Yep and one other thing Respond oh, yes, it's
coming up.
Yes, we still got a little bitof space.
It's filling up fast.
It always fills up late, all ofour adult conferences, but I'm
looking forward to it.

Speaker 5 (01:19:29):
Me too.
We've had a few creativemeetings about it.
I'm getting excited.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
All the games, and the breakouts and everything
like that.
And I'm excited because NSR'svery own JB will be doing the
Wednesday Girl Talk this summer,yes so excited.
Very excited about that Me too.

Speaker 5 (01:19:49):
I've been praying a lot about that.
It's definitely been on my minda lot.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Let's before summer.
We'll do a little preview onkind of where you feel like
Laura's taking you with that.
For sure I'll be fine, cool Yep.
All right, y'all have a goodweek.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required.
Please take a moment tosubscribe and leave a rating.
It really helps.
Visit us at SWOutfitterscom tosee all of our programming and
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