Subject: Looking at investigations from the inside
Joyce Vance White, a former federal prosecutor, looks at a health care center bombing investigation from the POV of the prosecutor on the scene.

https://joycevance.substack.co...

On the morning of January 29, 1998, I was getting ready for work when I heard an explosion. It was a bomb that went off at the New Woman All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. An off-duty police officer working security was killed, and a nurse was seriously injured.

I was the prosecutor on call, but I also had experience handling explosive cases. I was already dressed and ready to go in the few minutes it took an ATF agent to get me on the phone and ask me to meet him at the scene, a couple of miles from my house. Our immediate concern was public safety. Who was responsible? Did they have additional attacks planned? Did they have a “bomb factory” in a place that posed a risk to others? Those questions and many others swirled through our minds.

/snip

We got a lucky break that first day. A premed student had observed one person slowly walking away from the scene while everyone else ran toward it. He followed him and got a partial ID and other information. He convinced some folks at a local fast-food place to call the police. It was excellent evidence as the investigation developed, but it wasn’t enough in the moment. The bomber got away. Eric Robert Rudolph, a member of a right-wing Christian nationalist group, came prepared with a disguise and a strategy and became a fugitive even as he was being identified as the bomber. He signed letters using the moniker “Army of God” and remained a fugitive for years, until he was arrested on May 31, 2003, in Murphy, North Carolina. Rudolph ultimately pled guilty to the Birmingham bombing and three others in Atlanta, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

There is more at the link and worth the time to read it.