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Hunting Eric Rudolph
Henry Schuster  More Info

About the Georgia Bureau of Investigations

From the time Georgia was founded in 1733 until 1937, law enforcement in the state was the responsibility of local governments. In March 1937, at the request of Governor E. D. Rivers, the General Assembly passed Act 220 that established the Department of Public Safety, the first statewide law enforcement agency in Georgia.

 

Today, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is an independent, statewide agency that provides assistance to the state's criminal justice system in the areas of criminal investigations, forensic laboratory services and computerized criminal justice information. The Bureau consists of three divisions: Investigative Division; Division of Forensic Sciences, (State Crime Laboratory); and, Georgia Crime Information Center.

 

The Investigative Division, under the direction of the Deputy Director for Investigations, is the largest division of the GBI with 400 employees, working in Regional Offices, Regional Drug Enforcement Offices and other work units that provide specialized services in criminal investigations. Special agents from the Investigative Division respond to requests for assistance from local law enforcement officials to investigate major crimes such as: homicide, rape, child abuse, armed robbery, fraud and other felonies. Drug investigations can be initiated without request.

 

At this time, the Investigative Division is prioritizing its resources to combat violent crime in Georgia. Death investigations, investigations of violent crime, and investigations of drug activity which directly contribute to violent crime, currently consume the majority of Investigative Division resources. GBI agents are constantly exploring and developing more effective investigative techniques to address violent crime.

 

Established in 1952 as the second statewide Crime Laboratory in the United States, the Division of Forensic Sciences furnishes scientific support to the Criminal Justice System of Georgia. Laboratory scientists and technicians in specialized disciplines collect, analyze, and interpret all aspects of physical evidence for officers, investigators, and District Attorneys throughout the state. The analyses employ the most recent scientific technologies and are performed on highly sophisticated instrumentation. Scientists are often required to present their findings in the form of expert courtroom testimony. Statewide availability of laboratory services are made possible through the headquarters laboratory in Decatur and regional laboratories in Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Moultrie, Savannah, Summerville and Cleveland.

 

The Georgia Crime Information Center (GCIC) was established in 1973 as an operating division within the GBI to serve as the chief provider of criminal justice information services in Georgia. Since then, the principal mission of GCIC has been to assist all officials and agencies of the criminal justice system in the fulfillment of their varied responsibilities on a statewide basis by providing round-the-clock access to needed information.

 

GCIC is mandated by Georgia law and by binding agreements with several federal agencies to monitor and enforce compliance by Georgia criminal justice agencies with certain state and federal statutes, the Rules of the GCIC Council (i.e., the Georgia Board of Public Safety) and with relevant federal regulations.

 

The Georgia Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) Network, operated by GCIC teleprocessing specialists, provides direct terminal access to computerized databases maintained by Georgia agencies, by agencies in other states and by the FBI Criminal Justice Services Division. Georgia's CJIS network has more than 1,500 member agencies operating over 10,000 terminals able to communicate instantly with tens of thousands of terminals operated by other federal, state and local criminal justice agencies throughout the United States. The CJIS network handles more than 13 million messages per month in support of Georgia's criminal justice agencies.

 

GCIC maintains Georgia's computerized criminal history database that includes the fingerprint and criminal history records of more than 2,600,000 persons. Georgia traditionally ranks among the top states in the nation, along with California, New York and Florida in the number of criminal fingerprint records processed each year

 

Source:

state.ga.us/gbi/index.html

 

Charles Stone was a Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s agent for more than 25 years.  As head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Anti-Terrorist Unit, was one of the three primary investigative supervisors on the Atlanta Bomber Case.   He is a co-author of the book that explores that case, Hunting Eric Rudolph.

 

According to Publisher’s Weekly, “This is a suspenseful account of the five-year hunt for the man behind the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing. Eric Rudolph is now also facing federal charges for bombings of a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala. Descriptive anecdotes of Rudolph and his family help Schuster, a CNN senior producer, and Stone, former head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Anti-Terrorist Force, illustrate how a man on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List with a million-dollar reward on his head managed to elude the FBI for years by hiding out in the mountains of North Carolina.”

 

According to one reader, “This account of Eric Rudolph was very interesting. I found the book a little more interesting than the average reader probably will because he was born in my hometown, I lived in B'ham and I was also vacationing in Murphy in the summer of 98 when the fbi had helicopters and officers searching the entire nantahala area. The only complaint I have about the book (and it's minimal) is that I thought that they spent too much time on details about his family in the middle of the book and it kind of slowed down the pace. Having said that, the pace is still as good as any fiction novel/mystery novel I’ve ever read. If you enjoy a fast paced, puzzle solving-type story, this book is right up your alley.”

According to another reader, “Hunting Eric Rudolph is an awesome read. The authors deliver the story of Rudolph's entire life, often with an insightful and sometimes humorous backdrop. It goes in depth to explain the reasons for Rudolph's perplexing psyche and the culture in which it was cultivated.  The real value of the book however is the context in which it is delivered. Schuster explains why this story was not only significant in our past, but what we can extract from it to prevent similar types of domestic terrorism in our future. Thoroughly researched and masterfully presented, this was definitely a book that I could not put down.”

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