Richard Jewell and the Night of the Atlanta Olympics Bombing

JULY 26, 1996, DAY 8 OF THE GAMES

Late Friday afternoon, Richard Jewell tousled his Doberman Lacy’s short brown fur, clicked the TV remote, and hoisted himself off the couch. His standard twelve-hour graveyard shift lay ahead— “1800–0600,” as he’d scribbled in police-speak on his calendar. Jewell swung into the tidy peach-and-white wallpapered kitchen of his mom’s apartment he temporarily called home. He grabbed a pair of apples from the table and dropped the fruit into his backpack for a future snack. Then he tucked in his white polo shirt, branded on the left chest with a red Olympic flame, snapped on his fanny pack, and slipped out the door of Apartment F-3.

There could hardly have been a more mundane start to the demarcation line of a man’s life.

As Jewell was bouncing along in the MARTA subway car, his thoughts turned to how little time he had left in his current work. Since losing two straight law enforcement jobs, his hunt for permanent employment had been frustrating. No police forces were hiring until after the Olympics, and in nine days the Games would be over and he’d be unemployed again. He had work to do.

Hopping off the train, Jewell descended International Boulevard, the lime-green lanyard that held his credentials swinging across his ample belly. Downtown Atlanta, traditionally a ghost town after work hours, had become home to the newly constructed Centennial Olympic Park. The twenty-one-acre city of pavilions, stages, and exhibits was now the heartbeat of the world’s largest sporting event, the 1996 Olympic Games. Here in the crowded park, the blue and gold of Sweden mixed with the red and white of Canada, the black, yellow, and red of Germany. Thais mingled joyfully with Tanzanians, Americans, and Brazilians. Entering the park, Jewell could smell the chlorinated water cascading from the fountains shaped to form the Olympic rings. He loved hearing the squeals of the children as the water shot skyward. The park was a party for all ages.

Impatient to start his shift, Jewell marched across the park’s pathways constructed of more than two hundred fifty thousand commemorative bricks. Atlantans had purchased the etched pavers for $35 apiece as their way of supporting the host city—and crafting personal messages. By now, Jewell had read hundreds of the two-liners: “A smile worth 1000 words—CES,” “Loving memory, Lt. Bob Connors,” “In love and laughter, Terri ❤ Geoff,” even “Elvis Presley 1935–1977.”

Jewell arrived nearly half an hour early at his post, the five-story light and sound tower for the park’s main concert stage below. White canvas draped over the steel frame; a sloped roof allowed the summer rains to easily slip off onto the month-old sod below. Jewell approached the day-shift guard, Mark Tillman, and offered to take over before six o’clock. When Tillman accepted, Jewell reminded him, “Hey, I’m cutting you out. Make sure you’re here early.” By six a.m., Jewell knew, he’d be ready to leave.

Although he was primarily assigned to guard the entrance, Jewell viewed his role as protector of the entire perimeter and interior. So, as Tillman walked away, Jewell carefully circled the tower built for AT&T and NBC, even looking under the three dark-green benches facing the main stage for anything amiss. All clear. Then Jewell climbed the interior stairs of the temporary structure, surveying the five floors to make sure each person had the appropriate blue wristband. He greeted the staffers by name. The process took less than fifteen minutes. It was business as usual, and for Jewell that was just fine.

Good security, Jewell believed, required two elements. The first was attentiveness. One of his favorite games was to close his eyes and try to precisely recall the nearby scene—the color and make of parked cars, signs on the pavilions, the straw panama hat of the Olympic volunteer standing a dozen feet away. e second attribute was unpredictability. Each night, Jewell patrolled at odd intervals. Ten p.m. outside the tower; 10:30 inside. Maybe both again at 11:15, then again at 11:45. Stay sporadic. Don’t set patterns.

For the next several hours, Jewell made his checks, taking in the music and the sights. Occasionally, his thoughts drifted to the security risks at hand. In the past three years the world had witnessed a deadly procession of attacks: the World Trade Center truck bomb, two sarin gas attacks in Japan, and the hideous murder of 168 adults and children at an Oklahoma City federal building. Just two days before the Opening Ceremony in Atlanta, TWA Flight 800 had exploded mysteriously o the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 on board. Law enforcement officers in the park were telling Jewell they thought the downing was an act of terror.

Jewell harbored quiet doubts whether his provincial law enforcement experiences in rural Habersham County had prepared him for what might befall the 1996 Games. “Me and you are just pretty much good old boys from North Georgia,” he confided to a police friend. “Hell, what the fuck is terrorism up there to us? Somebody writing on the street signs. Or knocking down mailboxes with a baseball bat, or threatening to kill the neighbor’s cat.”

* * *

At 11 p.m., the R&B band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack took the stage to start their set. Fifty thousand people now jammed the park, with a quarter of them crowded in the expanse between the tower and the main stage. In the middle walked Alice Hawthorne, wearing festive red lipstick, a white Albany State T-shirt, and matching white Keds. She strolled side by side with her daughter Fallon. Thee night was the perfect birthday gift for the fourteen-year-old, well worth the three-hour drive from South Georgia.

At 12:30 a.m., as Jewell stood guard, he noticed seven young men who had walked over from the nearby Speedo tent. The group, who the FBI would later call the “Speedo Boys,” clustered near two of the front green benches. Jewell watched them pull twelve-ounce Budweisers from a green pack. They grabbed the cans, poked holes, and then pulled the tabs to “shot-gun” the beers in unison. Frat boys, Jewell thought in disdain. He’d seen plenty of that nonsense in his campus cop job at Piedmont College.

Jewell took note of a second green pack under the far left bench occupied by two of the Speedos, but never saw them touch it. Probably just more beer, he decided. these guys could be at it all night. Annoyed, Jewell returned to his post by the entrance on the other side of the tower.

Twenty minutes later, Jewell circled back. The rowdy young men had now littered the ground with over a dozen of their empties. Enough, Jewell fumed. He flagged down Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Agent Tom Davis, the assistant commander of park security.

Davis embodied Jewell’s professional dream. Five-foot-eleven and a former college athlete, the agent had a still-muscular physique covered with law enforcement trappings—a state-issued black mesh police vest, badge, phone, walkie-talkie, and 9mm Smith & Wesson. Davis listened carefully as Jewell shouted over the music; the agent agreed to handle the Speedo Boy problem. But moments after Davis left, several of the beer guzzlers breezed past Jewell and began disappearing into the crowd. Damn, Jewell thought. He sprinted after Davis to inform him of their movement.

As Jewell and Davis spoke, the chubby guard looked at the vacated benches. Wait. Something was wrong. There, beneath the shadow-cloaked seat, lay a large olive-green backpack. Damn drunks, Jewell thought. “Hey, Tom,” he yelled over the music. “They left one of their bags right under that bench.” Pointing, he hollered, “How do you want to handle this situation?”

What “situation”? Davis wondered to himself. The Olympics had been a week of abandoned bags, drunk partiers, and forgetful tourists. Ain’t nothing to this, he thought. We’re probably going to have another bag where we’re going to blow up somebody’s Mickey Mouse stuffed toy. Davis shrugged. They walked up to within a yard of the bag to look for a tag. But they saw none and began hunting for the pack’s owner.

Jewell pointed out two Speedo Boys still in sight, and Davis hustled after them. “Did y’all leave a bag up here?” he shouted. “Not ours,” came the reply. No big deal, Davis thought. He returned to Jewell and asked the guard to help find the owner. They split up, Jewell to the west side of the tower, Davis to the east. “Excuse me, ma’am, did you leave a bag?” “Sir, is that yours?” No one claimed the pack.

They met back at the front of the tower, again a few feet from the pack. Over the blaring music, a distressed Jewell grabbed Davis’s arms. Jewell’s “seventh sense,” as he would later describe it, told him something was wrong. He pressed Davis again: “What do you want to do about this situation?” The GBI man continued to believe that Jewell was overreacting, maybe a little overzealous. Just the week before, the security guard had insisted that the tower’s aluminum siding needed shoring up and that a small opening surrounding the sound and light cabling be sealed.

Still, with no one claiming the bag, Davis decided to follow the next step in protocol, the same as officers across the city had done more than a hundred times in the eight days since the Opening Ceremony. Davis radioed the Centennial Park command center, a “27.” Suspicious package report. It was 12:57 a.m.

* * *

Across the park, FBI bomb technician Bill Forsyth picked up Davis’s call. He gathered his ATF counterpart, Steve Zellers. The pair, designated Assessment Team 33, began weaving through the crowd. Meanwhile, Jewell climbed the tower steps to deliver a “pre-warning.” “It’s a suspicious package,” he told people on all five levels. “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 made a mental note of who was on each floor, totaling the head count at eleven. He left the tower to help Davis discreetly back people away from the bag.

The two men began to create a small perimeter roughly fifteen feet from the pack. Other law enforcement officers arrived to help. As they buffered the crowd, Jewell spotted the bomb techs, both wearing white shirts, emerge from the mass of revelers, hurried but far from panicked. Davis pointed the techs to the pack. It was 1:05 a.m.

Standing less than ten feet from the bench, Jewell watched Forsyth and Zellers study the package. Forsyth dropped to his knees for a better look. Penlight in hand, he crawled on his stomach toward the pack. His training was clear: Do not touch the bag. The flap or buckles could be booby-trapped. But sometimes bomb techs go with their gut. Forsyth broke protocol and peered inside. In the flashlight beam, there was no missing the danger. Wiring. Pipes. End caps. Timing device. Forsyth froze for a second, then jumped back. He froze again, waiting for an explosion.

Jewell stared as the tech cautiously crawled away “just as slow as fucking molasses in wintertime,” the guard later would say. When one of the agents switched off his radio, Jewell gulped. The guard knew from the Bomb Response course he had taken four years earlier that radio waves could trigger a device. The ATF agent, Zellers, urgently asked Davis for his flip phone, then sprinted away from the tower toward Techwood Drive. “God,” Jewell gasped, “he don’t even fucking want to use a cell phone around it.” It was 1:08 a.m.

Zellers frantically dialed the Bomb Management Center at Dobbins Air Force Base. His call registered as “BMC #104,” the 104th full-fledged bomb threat since the start of the Olympics. The center quickly dispatched its Render Safe team armed with equipment to disarm the device. Dobbins was a twenty-minute drive from the park. It was 1:10 a.m.

Jewell’s worst suspicions confirmed, he sprinted back into the tower. “Get out. Get out now!” he yelled on each level. On the fifth floor, two of the spotlight operators dawdled, pausing to shut down the equipment. “Fuck that,” Jewell barked, grabbing both men and shoving them down the stairs.

Certain the tower was clear, Jewell was the last to leave. Jack Mack and the Heart Attack played their song “I Walked Alone.” It was 1:15 a.m.

By now, over a dozen uniformed officers formed a human shield and, for the next several minutes, expanded the perimeter that Davis and Jewell had begun. They’d already pushed back two hundred people spread across the lawn immediately in front of the device. Thousands more stood between there and the stage. Managing the crowd wasn’t easy. Many were “drunker than skunks, smoking dope,” one agent later explained. Others, including Alice Hawthorne and her daughter Fallon, were paying more attention to the music than the officers. It was 1:19 a.m.

Park Commander Tommy “Foots” Tomlinson arrived. Davis briefed the supervisor in staccato police-speak: probable improvised explosive device; Dobbins notified; bomb team in route, expected arrival 01:30.

The officers continued to push the crowd away from the package. A mob of dancing, singing, intoxicated people partied between the tower and stage. The Hawthornes had called it a night and were walking toward the exit, twenty feet from where Tomlinson and Davis were meeting. They paused for a final photo.

Tomlinson surveyed the scene and weighed a full evacuation. He feared a stampede. It was 1:20 a.m.

Time had run out.

Text excerpted from THE SUSPECT: AN OLYMPIC BOMBING, THE FBI, THE MEDIA, AND RICHARD JEWELL, THE MAN CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen, published by Abrams Press.