Postell was working the overnight shift from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and by 3 a.m., he was the only officer on duty for his 10-officer department. Most of the evening was typical, he said. Locals cruising, a few traffic stops, answering calls.
“It was no different than any other night,” he said. “I never had a system, because I was trained that criminals will do research. They map out how people do things, if they have some type of a system.”
Postell said he tried to alter his patterns.
Sometime around 3 a.m., Postell said he brought his police cruiser around the back of a Save-A-Lot grocery store in Murphy.
“I saw somebody in the alleyway, and they recognized my presence and they ran. I saw what appeared to be something like a long gun,” he said. (The gun, in fact, was a long Maglite flashlight that Rudolph had tied to himself, said Postell.)
“I remember getting on the radio and calling off very quickly, ‘Man with a gun.'”
Benzie tracked down Postell and caught up on his life. Postell is now a campus cop at Boston College:
It’s, of course, a coincidence that Postell was in Boston during the recent marathon bombings, which drew comparisons to the Rudolph case.
He was off the day of the race and said neither he nor his agency had anything to do with the investigation, outside of keeping the campus of Boston College safe.
“I cannot sit here and tell you that the image of the marathon finish line did not take me back to the image of Olympic Park,” he said. “Because you have so many people brought together for common purposes. This has been one of the first bombings since then. It was kind of a flashback.”
Rudolph is writing his autobiography.
Here’s more of Rudolph’s story, Lone Wolf, as told by an award-winning writer.