Police: No threats in Rudolph case
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Jeffrey Postell, left, and a fellow officer, James Pack, share a laugh after Rudolph's capture last week.
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MURPHY, North Carolina (CNN) -- Law enforcement officials investigating reports of threats against the police officer who caught alleged serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph have found no credible evidence, Murphy, North Carolina, police said Wednesday.
A family member relayed threats allegedly made against Officer Jeffrey Postell to authorities, but a preliminary investigation did not yield evidence to substantiate the report, police said.
"We arrest people all the time on traffic violations and drug charges, and sometimes they spout off at the mouth," said Chief Deputy Jerry Prull. "It don't mean anything."
Postell, 21, arrested Rudolph, one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives, early Saturday after finding him rummaging through trash behind a Murphy shopping center. (Full story)
Rudolph, 36, had eluded authorities for five years, hiding out in the mountains of western North Carolina near Murphy.
He was wanted in connection with a series of bombings in Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama, that killed two people and injured more than 100.
At his arraignment in a Birmingham courtroom Tuesday, Rudolph pleaded not guilty in the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham clinic that performs abortions that killed an off-duty policeman and seriously wounded a woman.
Rudolph is also charged with the explosion at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that killed one person and injured more than 100, and the 1997 bombings of a suburban Atlanta health clinic that performs abortions and an Atlanta lesbian nightclub, which together wounded 11 people.
Rudolph's court-appointed attorney said his client is innocent on all counts.