The Atlanta Centennial Park Bombing

The Olympics

The event that serves as the catalyst for today’s episode occurred at a world event that takes place every four years, the Summer Olympics.  So, we are going to start out by taking a look at the Olympic games, and what hosting the games can do for a city or country.  We all know what the Olympics are, but what many might not know is the effect that hosting the games can have on an area.  The host cities are decided years in advance, as an example, right now the summer games of 2028 are set to take place in Los Angeles, and the 2030 Winter Games host city will be announced next summer (2024).  There is generally about a 6 to 7 year gap in the time that a city is selected to host and when the games take place.  This is to give the city enough lead time to make good on their sales pitch.  

Cities don’t just get awarded the games based on their name or popularity.  Now, that statement could be a little misleading, because the games aren’t going to be awarded to Bell Buckle, TN, or any city that wouldn’t be able to handle the influx of people that would come.  But, in order to be considered for hosting duties, each city has to give a sales pitch essentially.  And we’re not talking about a quick power point presentation thrown together the night before your term paper is due.  Cities invest millions of dollars just on gathering information, preparing a bid, then submitting it to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).  Now, the amounts that a city has to put up for these bids can vary from year to year depending on the size of the cities, facilities that they already have to accommodate the games, etc, but as an example, in a bid for the 2016 games, Tokyo is estimated to have spent as much as $150 Million for a FAILED bid.. Meaning they didn’t even get the games that year.  Then, for the 2020 games, they spent around half that amount and were selected as the host city. 

Now, you might think, that’s not bad considering how many people it will bring and the tourism boom that will come from it.  But that amount spent is only to try to win the rights to host.  Next, the cities have to meet all the requirements that the IOC sets in place.  One of these requirements is that the host cities have, at minimum, forty thousand hotel rooms available.  For the 2016 games in Rio, they had to construct fifteen thousand hotel rooms to meet this requirement.  Facilities that are currently in place might need to be upgraded, new infrastructure may need to be built, roads, train lines, airports, etc… it all adds up.   The cost of the construction of new facilities or upgrades on current ones can vary and range from $5 billion to $50 billion.  

Cities and countries justify these costs in a few ways.  One is the immediate economic benefits that come.  There are TONS of people who come from all over the world to root on their countrymen.  While at the games, those people spend money, invigorating the local economy.  These upgrades or newly built areas can leave a lasting legacy, and improve the overall infrastructure of the city, which in turn can make it more attractive for future residents or businesses.  Jobs are created from the day a city is awarded the games, various industries see a boom in employment; from construction to hospitality, and security and event management.  These new jobs in turn, boost the local economy further.  

It also opens up future opportunities for the cities.  Let’s say that a city doesn’t have an updated stadium and a state of the art stadium is built for the Olympics.  After the games, the city can now use that to lure in a sports team to relocate, or maybe it puts them in the running to get a stop on the Taylor Swift tour.  

While there are many positives, there are also some negatives associated with hosting the games.  The least of which is the displacement of local residents.  Sometimes the new construction can cause social disruptions for communities, and in some cases people have been forced to relocate without proper compensation or alternative housing available.  There are also security concerns that may impact the daily lives of residents, and the costs associated with maintaining proper security at these events can be astronomical.  Another big thing that can be impacted is the trust that locals have with their government.  If something happens that paints the town in a negative light, or if the promised benefits that come with hosting the games don’t materialize, it can lead to social and political tensions amongst residents. 

In 1996, the Summer Olympics were held in the city that has the busiest international airport in the US, the city that Coca Cola calls home, Atlanta, Georgia.  The estimated cost of the 1996 Olympics was around $1.7 Billion.  Over 10 thousand athletes competed across 26 sports.  The US topped the medal table, with 101 total; this included winning the most gold medals (44) and silver medals (32).   

While the Olympic Games are generally a time that the world comes together and celebrates the athletes representing them, the 1996 games were marred by a tragic event….

The Bombing

On July 27th, 1996 thousands had gathered in Centennial Park for a late night concert featuring Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.  (I had heard of this band before but never would have been able to name a song of theirs.  Did some looking, and they’ve had 10 albums released from 1980 to 2019.  One of their most popular songs appears to be a cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”  For the most part it appears to be one of those bands that people join and leave frequently.  There are currently 9 members of the band, and 30+ previous members…)  The actual bomb didn’t detonate until around 1:20 AM.  

There were several security personnel on site during the concert, including the FBI.  One Agent, David Johnson received a notice that 911 received a call about a bomb being placed at the venue.  We would later learn that the call was placed 18 minutes before the actual detonation.  The caller was described as “a white male with an indistinguishable American accent.”  The caller told the operator that a bomb would go off within 30 minutes somewhere in the park.  It was later determined that the call came from a payphone near the park.  

Now, let’s meet Richard Jewell.  Jewell was working security near the sound and light tower for the concert.  He was born in Virginia, but moved to Georgia with his mom when he was six years old.  He graduated from Towers High School and worked at a law office after school.  One lawyer he befriended while working there described him as very earnest… sometimes to the point of being annoying.  So basically, when he believed in something or believed he was right, he would not back down.  Jewell always wanted to be a police officer.  

In 1990 he landed an entry-level job as a jailer with the Habersham County Sheriff’s Department, while also working a second job as a security guard for the apartment complex he lived in.  While working this job, Jewell was arrested for impersonating an officer.  He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was put on probation.

He worked as a deputy sheriff for five years, and he was remembered for his zeal for the job and his tendency to wreck patrol cars. After his fourth crash, Jewell was demoted back to a jailer, but he chose to resign instead.  

He was hired as a campus cop in 1995 at Piedmont College.  He was not a great fit at the college though.  Jewell would write long, detailed reports on minor incidents.  He upset college officials when he stopped someone for operating with one tail light.  Although the main highway ran past the school, traffic violations were supposed to be handled by the Demorest police department, not campus security.  He got into trouble when he made a DUI arrest on the highway and didn’t follow protocol by radioing the police department to handle the case.

He resigned in May of 1996 and moved from his apartment to his mothers apartment.  She was about to have foot surgery; he wanted to be there for her and also to find a police job in the Atlanta area after the Games. In June he began working for a security firm contracted by AT&T, which was building a stage in Centennial Park; they were the sponsor of the concert. Jewell joked to a friend that if anything happened at the Games, he wanted to be in the middle of it.

Jewell was around the sound tower, where there were also some benches scattered about.  Around midnight, the band took a break, and a group of seven college aged guys went to the benches and sat down.  They were drunk and had been drinking for a while.  Five of them sat on one bench and two on another.  They were very loud, which drew Jewell’s attention, so he watched them closely.  He noticed that they had two large bags.  One was a cooler that he saw them take cans of beer out of, the other appeared to be a big, army style backpack, which they had shoved under the bench. 

After telling the men to calm down and stop throwing beer cans into the sound tower, Jewell got the attention of Tom Davis, a Georgia Bureau of Investigations agent working security at the park.  He asked Tom to talk to the men because they wouldn’t listen to him, he thought that hearing from someone who was actually in law enforcement would make them stop.  They walked to the tower, but most of the men had already left, and a couple were picking up cans from around the tower.  Jewell looked at the benches and noticed the army bag still there and said one of them must have left it.  

Davis yelled to them, asking if they forgot a bag and they said it wasn’t theirs.  There were a few hundred people sitting in a grassy knoll in front of the tower.  Davis and Jewell quickly went to people close asking if the bag belonged to any of them.  No one claimed it.  Davis declared it a suspicious package and called the bomb squad.  They cleared a 15 foot radius to give the bomb squad room to investigate.  This was at 12:57 AM.  About a minute later, the 911 call was placed, so they found the bag right around the same time as the call.  

Jewell had radioed his direct supervisor when they found the bag, and after the bomb squad was called, he went into the sound tower.  He went to each floor and told everyone there “We’ve got a situation in front of the tower. Law enforcement is on the scene, and they [are] checking it. I don’t know what it is right now, but it is a suspicious package. If I come back in here and tell you to get out, there will be no questions, there will be no hesitation. Drop what you’re doing and get the fuck out.”

Jewell said that as he came back down the tower, he counted everyone in there, so he knew exactly how many people were there, there were eleven.  By the time he left the tower, the bomb squad was on the scene.  

As you would expect, they were being extremely careful, but trying to check the bag from every angle.  One man laid on the ground with a small flashlight and shined it inside … and he just froze.  He very very slowly crawled back from under the bench.  He was asked the size and he said “Big, Real Big.”  When asked if they should evacuate, he nodded his head.  All of the officers began to evacuate people as quickly as possible, while avoiding causing a panic.  The last thing they wanted was the crowd all running towards exits and crushing one another.  

Jewell went to the tower and began to go floor by floor, telling everyone to leave.  As people tried to pack things to take with them, he grabbed them and shoved them down the steps, trying to make them grasp the seriousness of the situation.  Jewell went floor by floor and confirmed that each one was empty.  When he walked out of the tower, a trooper asked him if it was clear and he said yes.  Around the benches where the bomb was, there were still people just meandering about or sitting in the grass or on other benches, refusing to leave.  The officers that were on the scene formed a line of sorts between the bomb and these people.  

About a minute after Jewell left the tower, he said all he heard was a big boom.  It knocked him forward and he fell on his hands and knees.  He quickly regained his bearings and looked around.  The line of officers that had formed had been blown through the air.  He rushed to the nearest one and tried to help him. He told him to just lay flat and they were going to get him help.  

Tom Davis described it as just utter chaos.  There were troopers and agents down.  There was screaming coming from all over.  Alice Hawthorne was 44 years old when she drove from Albany, Georgia to join in the Olympic festivities.  She was killed by shrapnel from the explosion.  She was hit six times, one wound to her head proved to be fatal.  Melih Uzunyol was a cameraman for a Turkish news organization.  He was 40 years old and had survived the wars of Azerbaijan, Bosnia, and the Persian Gulf.  After the explosion, he was rushing to the scene when he had a heart attack and passed away.  There were 111 other injuries, but no other fatalities.  

The city and country were in shock after the bombing.  An investigation into who was responsible kicked into gear immediately.  

An Unlikely Hero Villainized

Officials held a press conference later in the morning after the explosion.  During that press conference, they credited a security guard with finding the bomb, enabling evacuation procedures to start and a large number of people were removed from harm’s way.  Later that afternoon, Richard Jewell gave his first interview.  He said he was nervous because he had never done an interview or anything like that before, and the interviewer told him just to relax and tell everyone what had happened.  He also told Jewell that he was about to be inundated with interview requests, and he should put some thought into how many he wanted to do.  

This first interview wasn’t very in-depth, so after Jewell talked with the FBI about what happened, he sat down again for a more in depth interview.  Then, the calls came in from all over the country, USA Today, The Boston Globe.. Everyone wanted to talk to the hero.  At the time, Richard Jewell was getting everything he had wanted; recognition for doing his job well, for being the hero, but it didn’t take long for that to unravel. 

After seeing his interview on TV, Ray Cleere, the president of Piedmont College where Jewell worked, called the FBI.  He expressed concern that Jewell might have been involved with the bombing, telling them that he had information about “improper conduct” by Jewell while he worked at the school.  He was referring to Jewell pulling cars over when he wasn’t supposed to.  Cleere would later say that the call was only placed so the FBI would know that the school would fully cooperate with any investigation, because they assumed that Jewell would be investigated because he was so close when the bomb went off.  

There was intense pressure on the FBI after the explosion.  No radical groups took credit for the bombing, no eye witnesses saw the bomb being placed.. There was nothing, it was like it appeared out of thin air.  

There were twice daily between the Washington and Atlanta FBI calls, and Richard Jewell’s name first arose during a call at 5PM on Sunday, the day after the bombing.  

There were other factors that drew the FBI towards Jewell as well.  One was from a series of fires that had been set in Southern California.  It turned out that the fires were actually being set by a volunteer firefighter.  He would then put the fires out and become a hero for it.  Another thing that made them suspect Jewell came from back in 1984, when the games were held in L.A.  A security guard working there had planted a fake bomb on a bus, with a plan to “discover” it later, again becoming the hero.  

The FBI began to investigate Jewell.  They talked with people who knew him and looked into his work history.  One man told them that he thought that Jewell would be capable of placing a bomb if he thought no one would get hurt.  He also told them that Jewell was “blackballed” from joining local law enforcement because of his history as a sheriff’s deputy.  The FBI also saw where he had been arrested for impersonating an officer.  For them, things were falling into place perfectly. 

Behavioral specialists at Quantico had watched the interviews Jewell gave and  said that he “fit the profile of a person who might create an incident so he could emerge as a hero.”  

Monday afternoon, Kathy Scruggs, a reporter who covered the Atlanta Police Department heard rumors from a source that the FBI was investigating Jewell.  The source told her that she couldn’t do anything with the info because it could impede their investigation.  She agreed, but said that if she was able to corroborate this info from an independent source, she was running with it.  

Meanwhile, the FBI makes plans to interview Jewell, a non-confrontational interview they called it. That was to take place Tuesday afternoon.  They had already had someone talk with Jewell while wearing an audio recorder.  Depending on how that first interview went, they planned on having a confrontational interview and possible polygraph Wednesday morning.  Before they could though, things changed. 

Kathy Scruggs received a page from the Atlanta Police.  When she called them, they told her that the authorities were looking into Jewell.  She asked how they knew and they told her that everyone was talking about at the station; everyone knew it.  Kathy told her employers that they needed to run the story, if everyone at the police station knew, it would be common knowledge very soon.  So, they ran the story, which went out in their daily “extra” edition on Tuesday at 3:30 PM.  Minutes later, a news anchor on CNN held the paper up on TV, showing the headline “FBI Suspects ‘Hero’ Guard May Have Planted Bomb.”  The anchor then read the entire article on air, word for word. 

Jewell and his mom were watching the Olympic games that night when Tom Brokaw came on, basically telling the world that the authorities had enough evidence to arrest him and prosecute him, but they wanted to fill in some missing pieces before doing so.  

Jewell was named as a person of interest, but was never arrested.  His home was searched, his background was exhaustingly investigated, and he became the subject of some of the most intense media scrutiny we’ve ever seen.  On October 6th, the FBI interviewed Jewell for 6 hours, and at the conclusion told him that they didn’t think he had anything to do with the bombing.  Twenty days later, a US attorney delivered a letter to Jewell’s attorney saying the same, it had been 88 days of hell for Jewell and his mother.  They couldn’t go check their mail without the media flocking to them.  They couldn’t go to the grocery store. 

He was exonerated, and afterwards filed defamation suits against NBC News, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and other media outlets, insisting on a formal apology from them.  Many of the suits were settled or tied up in appeals courts, and unfortunately, Richard Jewell passed away on August 29th, 2007 from complications related to diabetes.  12 years later, his story would be told on the big screen in the film bearing his name “Richard Jewell,” directed and produced by Clint Eastwood. 

Okay.. so who was responsible?

After Jewel was cleared, the FBI admitted that they had no clue who did it.  Then, in 1997 two more bombings took place.  One at an abortion clinic, and one at a lesbian nightclub.  Both were in the Atlanta area.  There were similarities in how the bombs were constructed and materials used, which led investigators to believe the person was also responsible for the Olympic bombing.  Another bomb went off at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.  This time, a police officer working as a security guard was killed and a nurse was injured.  But, upon investigating the Alabama bomb, theFBI was able to get clues from witnesses, including a partial license plate of the person they thought planted the bomb. 

The plate led them to Eric Robert Rudolph.  Rudolph was a handyman and carpenter.  When he learned he was a suspect, he fled.  He disappeared into the wilderness of the southern Appalachian Mountains, which he was familiar with from when he visited as a young man.  He was put on the FBI ten most wanted list and a million dollar reward was offered for his capture.  In October of 1998, he was officially named as the suspect in all four bombings.  

In May of 2003, a rookie officer was patrolling around a Save-A-Lot grocery store in Murphy, North Carolina at 4AM.  He spotted a man near the dumpster around the back of the store and initially suspected a burglary.  He approached the man who was unarmed and didn’t resist.  The man was clean shaven except for a mustache, with dyed black hair.  The man was Eric Rudolph.  In October of 2003 he was formally charged with the bombings.  In April of 2005, the DOJ announced that Rudolph had accepted a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty.  As part of the deal, he led the FBI to 250 pounds of dynamite he had hidden in the woods of North Carolina.  

Rudolph released a statement explaining his actions; he rationalized the bombings as serving the cause of anti-abortion and anti-gay terrorism.  In his statement, he claimed that he had “deprived the government of its goal of sentencing me to death and the fact that I have entered an agreement with the government is purely a tactical choice on my part and in no way legitimates the moral authority of the government to judge this matter or impute my guilt.”

In total, Eric Rudolph was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences.  He was sent to the ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado.  He spends 23 hours per day alone in his 80 square foot cell.  

The TV series Manhunt told the story of Richard Jewell, the Atlanta Bombing, and Eric Rudolph in season 2 of the show.