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The Day the World Came to Murphy, NC - the Capture of Eric Rudolph

By
Real Estate Agent with Country Homes and Land Murphy NC Realtor

 

                     It was a quiet Saturday morning in Murphy, NC, the last day of May, 2003.  As I drove through downtown Murphy, I flipped on the radio just in time to hear that Eric Rudolph, one of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives, had just been apprehended in North Carolina.

 "Wouldn't it be a kick," I thought, "if they found him somewhere near here?"

 Within two hours (of course!) CNN, NBC and every other major news provider had vans with enormous satellite dishes parked in every available space around the courthouse.  By Saturday evening, the old train depot had been commandeered as a makeshift location for press conferences. Reporters from every media from the New York Times to the BBC were swarming the streets like a Biblical plague of locusts.

 It was a dream story.  Jeff Postell, the rookie police officer living in a trailer with grandma, Eric Rudolph, the dangerous fugitive who eluded the country's top law enforcement for years, the bizarre midnight capture as he scavenged scraps of food from a dumpster behind the Save-a-Lot - all played out in a quiet mountain town where folks don't even lock their doors.

 Suddenly, Murphy, North Carolina was caught in the merciless lens of a media microscope.  A local businesswoman was working at The Daily Grind coffee shop at the time.  Here's how she describes the events that followed.

 "Our business was the only place in town back then that had Internet access.  I had reporters from every major news group bringing in their stories for me to email.  At first we capitalized on the situation, selling specialty drinks like "Captured Cappucino."  Then we started taking the time to read what we were sending."   

             "They were portraying our town and our people as rabble-rousing backwoods folk who approved and applauded what Rudolph had done.  I watched them interview scores of people who came into our shop.  But they never quoted the well educated, rational citizens in print or on the air.  Finally, we told all of them we refused to send out any more of their stories until they began airing the views of the majority of the locals and reporting fairly rather than focusing on a handful of radicals who would say anything just to get that 15 minutes of attention."  

 But there's an old saying that there's no such thing as negative publicity.  The capture of Eric Rudolph that summer was followed not long after by the worst hurricane season in years along the Gulf coast of Florida. Scores of people seeking a safe haven who had heard of the mountain town of Murphy, North Carolina came here to see the area for themselves.

 And what they found is what I found when I came here for the first time.  A town where my daughter can walk from the movie theatre to the candy store all by herself.  A town where people wave when you drive by - whether they know you or not.  A place where the only sounds I hear from my porch on Sunday morning are the birds singing and the faint pealing of church bells. 

 Murphy, NC is two hours from everywhere once again - but for those of us who call it home, we wouldn't want it any other way.

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