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WCU professor may be called to testify in Eric Rudolph trial
By Lynn Hotaling
A local professor may soon find himself making history rather than teaching it.
Curtis Wood, a member of the Western Carolina University history department faculty since 1969, may be called to testify during the federal trial of Eric Rudolph, who is accused of bombing a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic in early 1998, killing an off-duty police officer and maiming a clinic nurse. Rudolph was linked to the case when a man driving his pickup was spotted in Birmingham near the scene of the crime.
Rudolph vanished days later and eluded capture for more than five years. At times as many as 200 federal agents combed the 500,000-acre Nantahala National Forest for Rudolph, who was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. He was apprehended in May 2003 by Murphy Police Officer Jeff Postell, who was a member of Sylva’s police force for eight months last year.
Though it’s Rudolph’s defense attorneys who may call Wood to the stand to testify about the role Appalachian culture could have played in Rudolph’s decision to take his chances in the woods, it was the FBI who first approached the professor about the fugitive.
“My first contact with the entire Rudolph case was in late summer 2001 when two FBI agents talked with me at length about Appalachian culture and history and its possible relevance to apprehending – or at least understanding – Rudolph,” Wood said. “They were interested in the history and attitudes of the region and asked lots of questions.”
It’s those same types of issues that Rudolph’s defense team has discussed with Wood.
“I had a series of conversations with several people from the defense team in recent months before I was asked to have a role,” he said.
If he is called to testify, it could be that his part in the trial will be to give context for evaluating the trial evidence, Wood said.
“If I do testify, I think it will be late in the proceedings but obviously that will not be my call,” Wood said. “In the context of the trial, my part – if it happens – will be pretty small.”
According to an Associated Press story last week, defense attorneys have asked the court to allow Wood’s testimony, which prosecutors oppose.
While he doesn’t know exactly why he was tapped as the mountain culture expert for the case, Wood said he has researched and taught classes since the late 1970s in the areas of Scots-Irish migration and early settlement of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Other focuses of his research have been the early history of Jackson County and of WCU, he said.
Wood and fellow history professor Tyler Blethen have published work in all those areas, he said.
In addition, Wood said he worked at WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center during most of the 1980s on a lot of projects that touched upon almost all periods of mountain history since the late 18th century.
Wood, who said he has been advised not to discuss any aspects of the trial, declined to comment on what he thinks his research about Western North Carolina culture has revealed that defense attorneys could use to bolster their case or on specific cultural patterns that might have encouraged Rudolph to become a fugitive.
“That potentially goes to the case,” he said.
Wood said that he did not have any contact with Rudolph while the accused bomber was a student at WCU or lived in Jackson County.
Another connection to Jackson County surfaced in the weeks following Rudolph’s 2003 capture. The Herald learned the bombing suspect had lived here during the 1980s after his mother, Pat Rudolph, moved him and his siblings to North Carolina after the death of his father.
The family initially moved to Macon County's Nantahala community but later rented a house on Sylva’s Maple Street. At one point Eric Rudolph occasionally stayed at a downtown apartment rented by his older brother, Danny, and also lived for a time in an apartment on Hampton Street.
Pat Rudolph was president of the Jackson County Visual Arts Association in 1989 and helped initiate the grand opening of Gallery One Art Studio on Main Street. Eric Rudolph frequently accompanied his mother to the upstairs studio, according to JCVAA member Ray Menze.
JCVAA members remember Eric Rudolph for his carpentry skills.
“Eric and his older brother, Danny, were fine carpenters, great craftsmen,” said JCVAA member Perry Kelly shortly after Eric Rudolph’s arrest. “Danny and Eric did a lot of work converting that space into a gallery, straightened up the windows and fixed the ceiling. They did a perfect job; they were very meticulous,” Kelly said. “Their brother, Jamie, was the more artistic one; he took after his mother, who painted watercolors.”
Jamie Rudolph took art classes at WCU. A high school dropout, Eric Rudolph went on to receive his GED and attended WCU during the fall 1985 and spring 1986 semesters.
FBI agents inspected Eric Rudolph’s carpentry work at Gallery One during the years he was a fugitive, Menze said.
Preliminary jury selection for Rudolph’s trial in connection with charges stemming from the 1998 abortion-clinic bombing is set to begin this month. He is also accused of the fatal July 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta’s Centennial Park.
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