Yesterday, USA Today published excerpts from letters from homegrown terrorist Eric Rudolph to his mother.

The article reads like the script to The Fugitive Three. Rudolph craftily steals from dumpsters and grain silos. He hides mere yards from feckless state troopers.

In one scene, Rudolph is in a dumpster, reading a discarded USA Today. (The script even has produce placement!) He reads about abusive sweat shop managers, and reinacts the scene described outloud.

"Out of the corner of my eye, just as I was finishing this line, the long rectangular box began to slowly open like a coffin lid in a vampire movie, and there in the box was the barely visible figure of a human being," he writes. "My thoughts started racing. 'Was this an ambush? Did someone see me going through the garbage on a previous night and set this up?' With my heart in my throat, the figure suddenly spoke.

"'Who's making you lick the floor, buddy?' said the figure. His voice came hard ... " he writes, "and had probably been damaged by years of alcohol and cigarettes. Suddenly it came to me. 'This is a bum. ... Without thinking I said, 'Nobody ... nobody is making me lick the floor,' and slowly moved away, back towards the river."

But Rudolph couldn't help but worry. "Did he recognize me? Would he run and tell? I thought to myself. I made my way quickly back across (the river), splashing through the cold water, and climbing up the bank, my half-soaked body was beginning to feel the cold," he writes. Then he looked back. The transient hadn't moved.

Spooky!

On the verge of capture, he succombs the pain of life on the run from 'worms':

"I rush behind a stack of milk crates," Rudolph writes. "He pulls up in front of them; I think about running, about the headache of hiding, the many nights rooting through garbage, the 10 degrees below zero days when I sit in my tent all day and shiver; and I decide that I don't care. It was meant to happen."

The music swells as a harsh light eluminates Rudolph's face. He closes his eyes, and the camera turns to the imposing silhoette of a policeman, black against the glare of his enormous flashlight. He barks an order to freeze, and the audience's hearts break for the plight of the tragic anti-hero.

Maybe there's some public good in publishing letters from a fugitive terrorist. I doubt it, but it's possible. Even if there is, the tone of this piece is what bothers me. There's no mention of what can be learned from the methods he used to evade capture for years. The word 'terrorist' is never used, and the people he killed are only mentioned once, in passing, at the beginning. Instead, the article takes the reader on a wild ride through the backwoods.

I'm all for understanding what makes criminals tick, and for not completely dehumanizing them. But it's also important not to lose sight of the fact that they're criminals.

[His mother] can't get enough of her son's stories. She sometimes wishes he were still out there, free. But if he were, then she would never be sure if he were alive. She would never read these stories.

Not every mother would be so impressed by tales of stolen trucks and thievery. But considering the crimes to which her son has confessed, Pat Rudolph allows herself to enjoy the victimless ones.

If only he could be free, like a beautiful bird. A bird that steals without taking from anyone. Yes, a magical bird, indeed!

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