August 27, 2025 • 41 mins
In this first episode of a multi-part Zone 7 series on the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, CSI Sheryl McCollum talks with her longtime colleague Irv Brandt, a former Atlanta police officer and U.S. marshal.
Brandt was on duty when the bomb exploded in Centennial Park. He recalls pulling the injured to safety, protecting bomb evidence, and witnessing the moment security guard Richard Jewell went from hero to suspect. The investigation later led to Eric Rudolph, a domestic terrorist tied to multiple bombings.
Listeners will learn how frontline officers responded in the first minutes and what lessons still guide law enforcement today. Irv Brandt is a retired U.S. Marshal, a former Atlanta police officer, and a U.S. Navy veteran. He served as attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica and worked with Interpol and the Department of Justice, investigating cases in more than 50 countries.
He is the author of the Jack Solo crime fiction series and has appeared on America’s Most Wanted, Escape to Vegas, and Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
To learn more about Irv Brandt, find him on X @JackSoloAuthor
Highlights:
- (0:00) Sheryl opens the Olympic Park Bombing series with guest Irv Brandt
- (2:45) A 911 caller warns: “There's a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes.”
- (3:00) The bomb explodes, injuring 111 and killing two in the Olympic crowd
- (7:15) Policing Atlanta's violent Zone 3 and building frontline experience
- (12:15) Securing VIP gates and athletes inside Centennial Park
- (14:45) “I thought the building exploded.” Irv describes the blast
- (16:30) Pulling injured agents to safety and guarding bomb evidence
- (21:45) Watching Richard Jewell shift from hero to suspect
- (27:30) Reconstructing the pipe bomb from nails, a battery, and an alarm clock
- (31:15) Launching the search for Eric Rudolph, later tied to more bombings
- (32:00) Appearing on global news as the bombing coverage unfolds
- (38:30) Applying lessons on teamwork in mass-casualty response
- (40:15) Closing with a quote from Irv’s book Solo Shot: Curse of the Blue Stone
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Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award-winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnline, forensic and crime scene expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and co-author of the textbook Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. She is the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a national collaboration that advances techniques for solving cold cases and assists families and law enforcement with unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnappings.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
- Instagram: @officialzone7podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Y'all welcomed a Zone seven. Tonight is the first episode
in a series on the Olympic Park bombing. This is
a sentimental journey for me. I'm going to tell stories
in this series that I've never told before. Most people
don't know, but I was in charge of the Olympic
(00:30):
Crisis Response Team. Nobody would know that except we had
a bomb. So this particular evening, I had just gotten
home from a twelve hour ship, plus some social events,
so we would work all day and honey, we would
party till after midnight. We were having so much fun
(00:53):
in Atlanta. I can't even tell you. I was just
getting home. It was about twelve, four forty five, and
I did not have to be back on duty till
eleven o'clock the next morning. So I was just sitting
there and I was thinking, Man, you know, we've got
July nineteenth through August fourth, and we've got two hundred
(01:16):
and seventy one events across twenty six forts. We had
over ten thousand athletes from one hundred and ninety seven countries,
and the opening ceremonies had already knocked me out because
Muhammad Ali, I mean, are you kidding me? And Atlanta.
(01:38):
We were just showing off. I mean, that's all there
was to it. I was having the best experience. There
were famous people, there were athletes, there were parties, there
were events. Everywhere you looked. You could not go anywhere
in Atlanta that there was not a function dedicated to
(02:00):
the Olympics going on almost twenty four hours a day.
So I had just poured myself a glass of wine,
and I was going to sit down and just kind
of relax a minute, and I was thinking about all
of these experiences that I'd had, and suddenly both pagers
(02:21):
went off. My big old bag cell phone started ringing,
and my landline was ringing. I knew it was something catastrophic.
I knew this was not a drill. It was July
twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, when a call came into
(02:42):
nine one one with just eleven words. The caller said,
there's a bomb in Centennial Park. You have thirty minutes. Now.
Those eleven words came from a payphone down the street.
We didn't have thirty minutes. We only had twenty two minutes.
(03:04):
It was the largest pipe bomb in North America and
it had gone off in the middle of Centennial Olympic
Park during a concert. It was approximately one twenty am.
By forty five am, I was on site running the crisis.
You saw seen from the command center. We had one
(03:26):
hundred and eleven victims, two fatalities, and we had one
hundred and fourteen of us to assist. Alice Hawthorne died
from the blast, forty four years old. From all Benny,
Georgia and her daughter Fallon suffered great injuries. Y'all, tonight,
(03:51):
I could not be more honored to have IRV Brandt now.
IRV was a police officer with the Atlanta Police Department
during the time of the Olympics, but before that he
was in the US Navy. He's an author. He's offered
several books on Jack Solo. They're a mystery series of novels.
(04:17):
But when he was with Atlanta Baby, he was in
Zone three. He worked under cover. He worked in narcotics.
He later went to the Marshall Service. He worked in
DC in Superior Court. He was part of the Fugitive
Strike Team. He's worked for Interpol, the Department of Justice.
(04:40):
He was the United States Marshall Service attache for the
US Embassy in Jamaica. Y'all, he has investigated cases in
over fifty countries own six continents. So when I tell you,
this man knows investigation, this man knows how to track
(05:02):
people down. He don't flinch, He ain't scared of nothing.
And we're gonna get into that in a minute too.
He's received numerous citations, one the US Attorney General's Distinguished
Service Award. He's been featured on America's Most Wanted Breakout,
Escape to Vegas, and Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Now
(05:26):
IRV and I work together in the day in Zone three.
We both worked the Olympic Park bombing as well, and
then we were reunited on crime stories with Nancy Grace
and Nancy, as y'all know, was my prosecutor when I
was assigned to Operation Weed and Seed in the Major
Case Division with the Crime Commission. So tonight it is
(05:49):
my pleasure to bring into Zone seven one of the
original just bad ass police men from Atlanta. IRV Brandt, IRV.
Welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Cheryl Mac. It's a pleasure to be with you. I
look forward to talking about the old days and I'm
with you living with seven.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You know, y'all, he's starting already. So back in Zone three.
They used to call me living with seven all the
gang members. I was the only Caucasian female assigned to
that task force. I did not even know what living
with seven meant, and then quickly it just got reduced
to seven. But absolutely, like IRV said, they were calling
(06:39):
me snow white. But let me tell you about yourself, sir,
I have met few people with the ability to not
be afraid, to not be concerned with their own safety
at any given time. You would stay in the cut,
you would stay in the bluff, you would swing through
(07:01):
and you know, make sure you got you know, your
cigarettes with Sam and A's while you were you know,
working b sector in the umbrella car tell us about
those early days, Well.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Charl Mac, I got to say the things that we
did when we were young and we didn't know the
danger that we were in. Atlanta back in the early
nineties was one of the most violent cities in the nation.
I remember that we led the nation and shootings and
(07:37):
homicides and most of them occurred in Zone three. And
working as a you know, working patrol, Working in Zone
three as a police officer was probably one of the
most dangerous places in the nation. But we didn't realize it.
(07:57):
We didn't know because we thought we were invincible. We
were young and didn't believe anything could happen to us.
And when I graduated from the Atlanta Police Academy, I
had graduated towards the top of my class and I
got the pick of the assignments and they have you
put down three choices, you know, which precincts, and they
(08:21):
and they want you to list the three precincts you know,
in order that you want to go to. And I
put down Zone three, Zone three, Zone three, and they said, well,
Officer Brent, you're going to Zone three. And like you,
(08:41):
being one of the few Caucasian officers in there, the
field investigation team immediately put me into undercover work because
they had so few white officers and I wasn't known
in the pre so I hadn't been out of the
(09:02):
academy a week when I was working undercover vice and
narcotics operations. Like I said, just a brand new rookie
and never thought once of the danger that I was in.
But that just comes with part of the job, That
(09:25):
just comes with working that part of Atlanta, as you
well know, working Henry Thomas, you know, working Englewood, and
you know Capital homes and Carver homes and you know
all of them, and you know we those were wild,
(09:50):
wild times.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And you know you and I have talked. You remember
when the most violent person in Zone three, he went
by the code named Geronimo, his mama's house got destroyed
in a burglary, and I thought, you know what, this
is my chance again to your point, being young, not
knowing any better, I thought, I will do her a favor.
(10:14):
I will get the windows boarded up, and I'll replace
some of the Christmas gifts and then we'll be straight. Well,
sure enough, Geronimo put the word out, don't touch seven,
leave her alone. I never had the first issue anywhere
in Zone three ever for eight years.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You're so much smarter than me, Cheryl Mack. The first
thing that I did after I came out from undercover
and they put me in a patrol car was I
went straight to Stuart in Cleveland and started messing with
the McKissick twins, who you know ran that area. You know,
(10:57):
they ran all the drug operations. And when homicide put
a warrant out for him, I walked into that burger
king at Stuart in Cleveland because Homicide had sent me
the warrant saying they wanted the Kissing brothers. And I
walked in and Twin and Anton were sitting in a
(11:18):
booth with eight of their crew members there, and I
walked in on him and pulled out my gun and
held him at gunpoint and put it out over the
radio that I had him at gunpoint, and the whole
city came and I arrested guarantee it. Yeah, I arrested him,
(11:38):
you know, on the murder charges, which of course they
beat and got back out on the street, then put
a hit out on me from then after, you know.
So I spent my time in Zone three running and
ducking for cover, while you were the smart one and
(11:59):
had protect.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I'll tell you what some of your stories. So let's
talk about the early morning of the bombing. Now your
own duty. You had been assigned to the Olympic part.
Tell us about your day to day leading up to
day nine.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Well, Cheryl mckett, you know, as we talked about before,
when you know, we all got our you know, special assignments,
you know, for the Olympics, and I was waiting for
mine and seeing which venue I was going to be
assigned to h and I got assigned to Centennial Park,
and I was telling everyone I was one of the
(12:46):
lucky ones, you know, because I wasn't, you know, at
a high profile venue. I was, you know, basically just
where everybody went to after words to blow off steam
and party and things like that and meet the athletes.
So I figured I had caught a great assignment. And
(13:09):
like you said, up until that day, it was a
great assignment. I you know, went to work at eight
in the evening and worked until eight in the morning.
And we had a few incidents. I mean everyone was
drinking and having a good time. There was a few fights,
but nothing nothing serious. You know, we had plenty of
(13:33):
law enforcement there with a big presence by the GBI
inside the park and my assignments, I worked the athletes
gate to the park and I would check the vans
bringing in the athletes, and you know, we had that
(13:53):
section of tech Wood we had like a corridor blocked
off for the vans to come up and I would
open the gate and they would follow me into the
park and I make sure that you know, athletes, you know,
got out safely and things like that, and like I said,
it was it was a great assignment. I got to
(14:15):
meet all of the Olympic athletes. It was. It was
a very thrilling time right up until that moment that
bomb went off and just completely rocked my world. I
was actually probably i'd say, maybe fifty feet from that
sound tower, you know, from that bench where the bomb was,
(14:39):
and I had my back to it, and when the
bomb went off and you know, just rattled my teeth.
In my head, I had thought the building across on
Techwood had exploded because the sound had echoed off that
building and kind of like bounced back. So I was
(15:00):
sitting there looking at the building, you know, looking for
smoke and things like that, when I heard the screams
behind me, and I turned around and just about everyone
was flat on their backs, you know, from the explosion,
including all the GBI agents who were easy to spot.
(15:20):
They were wearing khaki pants and black polo shirts and
you know, it said GBI on the back, and all
of them were on their back, and I thought they
were all dead. Then everyone began to sit up and
things like that, and I could see they were covered
in blood. So I started, you know, dragon GBI agents,
(15:47):
you know, away from the scene because as you know,
you're always concerned about a secondary.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Device, a secondary device, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, you don't know there's another, you know, explosion coming.
So I was dragging him out of the park. And
once we got the you know, park basically cleared, and
you know, the people moved out, the woman, miss Hawthorne,
that had died, you know, I was I wasn't that
far from her, and you know, she was one of
(16:22):
the first people that we checked on. But there was
nothing that could be done, and but we got all
the injured people out, and you know, we got everybody out,
and this was kind of the bizarre part. Cheryl mack. I.
You know, I was the only Atlanta Police officer inside
(16:43):
the park. There were plenty outside the park, and inside
the park were the GBI agents, who almost all of
them were injured. So we got them out of there.
So after we finally cleared it all out, I was
alone in the park, which was completely eerie, you know
(17:05):
and bizarre, and I was getting ready to leave and
as I started walking out, I found a very large
part of the pipe bomb. I could see the threads
of the pipe and stuff like that, and I radioed
my supervisor and I told him I said, look, I
(17:27):
got a piece of the bomb. I don't want to
leave this unattended. I don't want it to be accidentally moved.
I don't want someone to step on it. I said,
I'm going to stand on, you know, by until the
evidence texts get here. And the supervisor said okay. So
I was alone in the park for hours, just you know,
(17:50):
standing there really in the events in my head. And
I started to hear some sounds coming from Techwood and
I peeked over the fence and the ATF and the
FBI and the lantipede evidence texts. We're going up Techwood,
putting out their little orange flags, you know, over the
(18:14):
shrapnel and things like that. And as they work their
way up tech Wood, one of the texts saw me,
you know, peeking over the fenence and he asked me.
He's like, what are you doing in there? And I
told him, I said, look, I'm standing guard over an
actual piece of the bomb and I don't want it
(18:35):
to be disturbed. And he said, we'll work our way
to you. And I'm like great. And he's like, do
you need anything, and do you need water? Do you
need food? Anything like that? And I was like, now
I just picked the worst time in the world to
quit smoking.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And he's like, I got you covered, and he gave
me a packet of cigarett He said, just you know,
hang tight. And so it was when they it took
them hours, but they finally they made it to me.
So when I finally left the park, the sun was up.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
When when I left the park and Cheryl Mack, I
gotta tell you, I you know, I looked at that
sea of orange flags. You know, they were everywhere, and
I was standing right in the middle of them. But
somehow I didn't get hit with any shrapnel. You know,
(19:40):
I wasn't bleeding, you know, my uniform wasn't torn up
or any I don't know how that happened. I truly
to this day. I've been thinking about it for nearly
almost thirty years, and I don't know how I could
have been in that spot I was and not get hit.
(20:01):
But here I am.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
And you know, it's so important for me to point
out for folks that I've seen people nearly jump out
of their skin when a balloon is popped near them
and they're not ready for it. What you are conveying
to us. This thing was so loud you thought it
(20:24):
was the building across the street. It was so powerful
it knocked people down like you see in movies. And
for you to immediately jump into action, for you immediately
to say I'm going to stay right here, you still
didn't know if there was a secondary device. You still
(20:47):
didn't know where these people were or where the bomber was.
You didn't know anything, and you stayed all alone. And
there's bravery, IRV. And then there's just I will sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Is that the word you're looking for?
Speaker 1 (21:06):
No, But I mean, honestly, there's bravery, and then there's
people that say I will gladly sacrifice myself for the
betterment of other people that I don't know, and you're
one of those people. So I just wanted to say
it out loud. But I also want to point out
I want to go back just a little because you're
old school and you don't really fool with and talk
(21:30):
to private investigators or bondsmen or security guards. But you
made a concession when you worn't day to day with
one particular security guard. Can you talk about that a
little bit?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, Cheryl Mac, I was, you know, all the way,
you know, leading up, I was, you know, talking to
the GBI agents in the park, and we're all real friendly,
you know how it is. It's truly, you know, a
family when you're talking about law enforcement. But there was
(22:04):
also a lot of private security in the park, and
like you said, I normally wouldn't talk to a security
guard or you know, you know, you know, a private
investigator or a bounty hunter because we don't in law
enforcement really consider him be part of the family. But
(22:24):
there was a security guard that I saw regularly and
he was a super nice guy and you knew him.
His name was Richard Jewele, and I talked to him
every day and you know, we you know, whenever I
came on, he would you know, come over to me
(22:45):
because he he liked to talk, and you know, he
was really interested in law enforcement, and he liked to
talk about how he was, you know, wanted to be
a police officer and he was testing for you know,
at different agencies and things like that. And I talked
to him because he seemed like a like a real
good guy. And after you know, the incident, after the
(23:13):
the explosion, and I came back to work and then
all the news reports started, you know coming out about
you know, everything, and the FBI was conducting their investigation,
which I got to say, I was very surprised at
all the people they interviewed. They didn't interview me. I
was the only one left inside the park, and you know, well,
(23:37):
like I said, I was standing over a significant portion
of that pipe bomb, and for some reason, they didn't
come and talk to me. And I didn't seek them
out either. I mean, I wasn't you know, I wasn't
a detective. I was a police officer, and I wasn't
part of the investigation. But you know, I started seeing
(24:00):
the news and things like that that Richard Jewel was
their main suspect, and I thought it was the most
ridiculous thing that, you know, I had ever heard. I'm like,
this guy didn't set this bomb off. And I told
my sergeant, and I told my lieutenant, and I actually
went to my captain and I told him, I said, look,
(24:24):
you know, I know, you know, this isn't our investigation,
but somebody needs to tell the bureau that I believe
they're on the wrong track, that that's not the guy.
And all of them agreed with me. My sergeant agreed
with me, my lieutenant agreed with me, My captain agreed
with me. But that's the way that investigation kept going.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And you know, for me, it was like a movie.
We had already determined where the command center would be
if something were to happen in Centennial Part. So we
comandeered the hotel and we did that because they had
a bank of phones, they had blankets, they had TVs
to get information in real time. They had private rooms,
they had bottled water, they had tons of restrooms. Like
(25:11):
it worked out perfect to interview all of these witnesses
and victims that didn't have to go immediately to the hospital.
And I don't remember how long we were there working,
but I mean we were working. We were interview and
we were taking people's shoes that had shrapnel. We were
taking cuts of clothing if it had anything on it
that we thought could help identify the bomb, just like you.
(25:34):
And that's important for people to understand that when they
see photographs of these agents on their hands and knees,
they're getting every single piece of that bomb to rebuild
it so that they know exactly what this thing was.
And so here we are in full swing and all
(25:54):
of a sudden, the doors open and it looked like
twenty agents walked in all in the same blue suit,
and whoever the lead guy was was clearly in charge.
He looks right at me and says, whose crime scene
was this was? Or And I'm like, well, I guess
the party's over for us, even though we've been working
(26:17):
this thing. And they came in and took over and
that was it. And I had met Richard for the
first time that day. We had even reached out to
him to see if he needed anything, you know, debriefing
or to talk or anything, because he was in the
middle of it too, you know, and like you, it
was a miracle he wasn't heard in some way. But
(26:39):
when word came out, we had the exact same reaction
you did. That guy like it didn't fit to us
at all. And I remember one of the first things
we talked about is who runs down the street and
makes a call on the phone and then runs back
and turns their back on what they know is.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
A bomb, a suicide bomber. That's the only person that
would do that. But they would have the bomb on them, correct,
They wouldn't set it down because someone could move it.
Someone could have picked up that bag and walked out
of the park with.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It, and essentially they did move it. They changed that
thing from being a pipe bomb that was going to
destroy that tower to essentially a roaming candle because those
teenagers kicked it. I tell people, they rebuilt it, y'all.
They were able to tell us that the bomber had
(27:38):
used a six volt ever Ready battery hooked to a
model rocket engine igniter and was triggered by a west
clock alarm clock. They knew the six pounds of nails
were two point five inches surrounded by gunpowder. Like, they
rebuilt that thing.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, I know what they did, Cheryl Mac. They you know,
I watched them place every orange flag on there as
I smoked cigarette after cigarette after cigarette.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But you know that large piece that you found was significant.
You know. That's like when you're putting together any puzzle,
if all of a sudden somebody comes up and says, hey,
here's six pieces, it gives you such a vision of
what you're actually looking at, what the endgame is.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Cheryl Mac, you're the you're the I know, the expert
on it, but uh, you know, I've been when you
work and you know this more than anyone. When you
work a place like Zone three and you answer the
number of calls that you go to and the number
(28:48):
of crime scenes that you go to, shooting, stabbings, you know, robberies, burglaries,
all of them. And I may only had a few
years of experience, but the place that I worked, the
number of crime scenes that I had been to, especially
(29:11):
homicide scenes, and I had probably twenty years of experience
crammed into three years. You know, as opposed if you
would have been assigned to Buckhead, you know, you know
another precinct, or you know, you work maybe Gwenet County,
or you know, you know, or worked up in Smyrn Hours,
(29:35):
you know, someplace like that. When you worked Zone three,
you had a lifetime of experience in a very small,
you know, matter of time. And so I knew the
importance of protection of evidence. I knew it was critical.
Trust me. I wanted to get out of that park,
(29:56):
I did, you know. I wanted to leave with everybody else.
I did not want to stay there, and I especially
didn't want to stay there alone. But when when you've
been to that many crime scenes and you know, God,
if this thing gets kicked, if someone picks it up,
you know, if it gets moved, you know, this can
(30:18):
really hamper an investigation, and you realize on how important.
You know, it's like when you get to a shooting
crime scene and you start circling, you know, with chalk,
you know, shell casinges, and you're keeping everyone back so
no one kicks those shell casings around, you know, from
(30:39):
the original spot that they fell. You know, the same
principle when you're at a scene of a bombing, you
need everything left just as it was. You know, if
you're going to, like you said, you're going to put
that jigsaw back together, you know, if you want to
(30:59):
paint that picture of what really happened, then that's the
way it needs to be done.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And I know when the other side bombing happened, again,
I was not prepared, not just for that event at
that location, but now we had our secondary device, so
we knew this person wasn't playing and I think most
of us at that point knew we were the target
(31:31):
a fact.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
You know, that was a fact. There was definitely an intent,
and that intent was towards law enforcement or first responders
in general.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
And you know, you had a unique experience with all
of this because the first bombing made you a little famous.
And then I think as you went around town, people
are like, hey, are you the guy? And You're like, yeah,
I'm the guy. Because there's a very distinct moment where
(32:08):
you're captured on TV. Can you tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I didn't realize it at the time when the bomb
first went off, and like I said, I you know,
was first going over to help people. If you watch,
like when there's an anniversary of the bombing and they
show it, they always have the scene where I think
(32:34):
it's German television is talking to one of the Olympic
swimmers and they're in the tower and the tower shakes,
you know, from the blast. Then they cut to the
park and you see a very chaotic scene. The camera
is shaking, going back and forth. And the first thing
(32:56):
that you see that when the camera comes into focus
is my back and I'm wearing a red vest over
my blue Atlanta police uniform. I'm wearing my traffic vest
that says Atlanta Police. So it's like the cameraman used
that as a focus point and brought the camera into
(33:18):
focus on Atlanta Police. And I remember I was helping
someone up off the ground and I turned and I
almost ran into the camera. So my face was maybe
just a foot away from the camera, and I had
to dodge around the cameraman. Then the cameraman started to
follow me. As I was picking up GBI agents off
(33:41):
the ground and dragging him out in the park, the
cameraman was following me. So that was kind of the
lead for all the cable networks, you know, off of
that one feed, all the agent, you know, all the
news channels was using that. And I didn't realize it,
you know, because I had gone home and when and
(34:03):
I finally got some rest in sleep at all. But
you know, this was back before, like you said, you
talked about your pager blue up. You know, this was
back before cell phones and you know, back before the
Internet and social media and things like that. And I
hadn't turned on the television. I wasn't watching the news.
(34:27):
And it wasn't until I checked my messages, you know,
because like I said, I didn't have a cell phone.
I had a landline, and you know, I had an
answering machine, and my answering machine was fault and it
was from people calling me, and one was from my
mother down in Florida said that she knew all was
all right because she saw me on the news. Then
(34:47):
my sister had called from Italy and said she knew
all was all right because she saw me on the news,
and I was, I was laughing. I'm like, I got
to turn on the news because everybody saying and so
I watched some of it before I was getting ready
to go back to work at the park, and sure enough,
you know, like I described, you know, the cameraman followed
(35:10):
me around. And so I was heading back to go
back to work at the park, and I stopped at
Stewart in Cleveland, like we talked about, at the gas
station where Sam and Ace ran the gas station, and
Ace was behind the counter and when I walked in,
he's like, oh my god, he goes. Sam called me
(35:35):
from Mumbai and said, I know Irv's all right because
I saw him on the news, and I'm like, yeah,
everybody has. And I actually just stopped in there to
get a pack of smokes because I was, you know,
back on that habit again. And then I went back
(35:55):
to work, and like, you know, it just wasn't the
same after that, you know, the park was closed, the
mood was terrible, and you know, the what was a
party wasn't a party any longer.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
And you know, after the other three bombings, you know,
we had experiences and you know, an education. I guess
pretty quick on how to work mass events because we
did it over and over and over. And I can
only imagine when you went on to your other jobs
that some of that working with multiple agencies, working with
(36:39):
mass victims, working with media as a huge umbrella. You know,
how did that help you? How did that come into
play for you?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
That experience, I mean, you know, set an imprint on
me that it's going to last the rest of my life.
You know, I approached things ever since then. I approach
things completely different. And as far as my law enforcement
career goes, you know, I've been to so many you know,
(37:11):
on so many protection details, and you know, working in Washington,
d C. With the Attorney General and members of Congress
and things like that, and it gives you a difference,
a different sense, I mean, the things that you look for.
You know, it's just different if you haven't been through
(37:34):
something like that before. And it even carries over to
your personal life. You know, if I go to a
baseball game of our go to any place that attracts
a big crowd, and I'm not even working I'm looking
at all the exits, I'm looking at people in the crowd,
I'm looking at bags that are unattended. You know, I'm
(37:58):
always look looking for these things now and that's gonna
that's going to be me for the rest of my
life now that I'm retired. I don't go to events,
Cheryl mac Honestly, I don't go to you know, sporting events.
I avoid any place that have large crowd, music festivals,
(38:23):
things like that that has the potential as being a target.
It's just really has affected me for the last thirty years,
and you.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Know, my career will never be the same either. And
one thing that I insist on is working with a team,
because that, to me is the only way we got
through what we got through. And one thing we were
all at manuals one night, and this is once the
FBI started searching for Eric Robert Rudolph. And we're watching
(38:58):
them and there's all these agents and they've got on
you know, of course they're jackets and everything, but they've
got bug spray, bottle water and ATVs and we were
all almost laughing, saying they're never going to catch him
because if they've got to have bug spray he doesn't.
If they've got to have bottle of water, he doesn't,
(39:21):
and they've got to have an ATV, he doesn't. So
one thing that taught me is you get the person
it's best at that job. Whatever that job is, whether
it's tracking somebody, locating, contacting, fighting, whatever it is, you
get the best person possible, not just a team of
(39:44):
whoever's available, correct or. And again that's not a slam accountants.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yes, no, Mi, Cheryl Mackett's my job to slam the
dude in my books all the time, and I relish
in it, you know. But I'm not going to sit
here and talk bad about the FBI. But I'm going
to sit here and talk bad about the FBI. They're
really good at some things. There's no one better at fraud.
(40:12):
There's no one better at tracking money. There's no one
worse a fugitive investigations. Leave that to the United States
Marshall Service, RV.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Brand. I could talk to you all day and all
night and then call you back the next day. I
just adore you, I respect you, I appreciate you, and
we got to come back sometime and talk specifically about
Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
We will, Cheryl mac anytime all you've got to do
is call me.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I will do it. I will do it because me and.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
To Grace does it all the time. You know I
always take her call.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
You.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I'll take your call.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Absolutely, y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven the way
that I always do with a quote chief in fact,
so we've been expecting you. I look down at the
front of my coat, then back at her. Am I
wearing a name tag? She laughed and said, I recognize
you from the telly you've been all over the news.
(41:15):
Quoted from solo shot Curse of the Blue Stone by
IRV Brandt. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Y'all welcomed a Zone seven. Tonight is the first episode
in a series on the Olympic Park bombing. This is
a sentimental journey for me. I'm going to tell stories
in this series that I've never told before. Most people
don't know, but I was in charge of the Olympic
(00:30):
Crisis Response Team. Nobody would know that except we had
a bomb. So this particular evening, I had just gotten
home from a twelve hour ship, plus some social events,
so we would work all day and honey, we would
party till after midnight. We were having so much fun
(00:53):
in Atlanta. I can't even tell you. I was just
getting home. It was about twelve, four forty five, and
I did not have to be back on duty till
eleven o'clock the next morning. So I was just sitting
there and I was thinking, Man, you know, we've got
July nineteenth through August fourth, and we've got two hundred
(01:16):
and seventy one events across twenty six forts. We had
over ten thousand athletes from one hundred and ninety seven countries,
and the opening ceremonies had already knocked me out because
Muhammad Ali, I mean, are you kidding me? And Atlanta.
(01:38):
We were just showing off. I mean, that's all there
was to it. I was having the best experience. There
were famous people, there were athletes, there were parties, there
were events. Everywhere you looked. You could not go anywhere
in Atlanta that there was not a function dedicated to
(02:00):
the Olympics going on almost twenty four hours a day.
So I had just poured myself a glass of wine,
and I was going to sit down and just kind
of relax a minute, and I was thinking about all
of these experiences that I'd had, and suddenly both pagers
(02:21):
went off. My big old bag cell phone started ringing,
and my landline was ringing. I knew it was something catastrophic.
I knew this was not a drill. It was July
twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, when a call came into
(02:42):
nine one one with just eleven words. The caller said,
there's a bomb in Centennial Park. You have thirty minutes. Now.
Those eleven words came from a payphone down the street.
We didn't have thirty minutes. We only had twenty two minutes.
(03:04):
It was the largest pipe bomb in North America and
it had gone off in the middle of Centennial Olympic
Park during a concert. It was approximately one twenty am.
By forty five am, I was on site running the crisis.
You saw seen from the command center. We had one
(03:26):
hundred and eleven victims, two fatalities, and we had one
hundred and fourteen of us to assist. Alice Hawthorne died
from the blast, forty four years old. From all Benny,
Georgia and her daughter Fallon suffered great injuries. Y'all, tonight,
(03:51):
I could not be more honored to have IRV Brandt now.
IRV was a police officer with the Atlanta Police Department
during the time of the Olympics, but before that he
was in the US Navy. He's an author. He's offered
several books on Jack Solo. They're a mystery series of novels.
(04:17):
But when he was with Atlanta Baby, he was in
Zone three. He worked under cover. He worked in narcotics.
He later went to the Marshall Service. He worked in
DC in Superior Court. He was part of the Fugitive
Strike Team. He's worked for Interpol, the Department of Justice.
(04:40):
He was the United States Marshall Service attache for the
US Embassy in Jamaica. Y'all, he has investigated cases in
over fifty countries own six continents. So when I tell you,
this man knows investigation, this man knows how to track
(05:02):
people down. He don't flinch, He ain't scared of nothing.
And we're gonna get into that in a minute too.
He's received numerous citations, one the US Attorney General's Distinguished
Service Award. He's been featured on America's Most Wanted Breakout,
Escape to Vegas, and Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Now
(05:26):
IRV and I work together in the day in Zone three.
We both worked the Olympic Park bombing as well, and
then we were reunited on crime stories with Nancy Grace
and Nancy, as y'all know, was my prosecutor when I
was assigned to Operation Weed and Seed in the Major
Case Division with the Crime Commission. So tonight it is
(05:49):
my pleasure to bring into Zone seven one of the
original just bad ass police men from Atlanta. IRV Brandt, IRV.
Welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Cheryl Mac. It's a pleasure to be with you. I
look forward to talking about the old days and I'm
with you living with seven.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You know, y'all, he's starting already. So back in Zone three.
They used to call me living with seven all the
gang members. I was the only Caucasian female assigned to
that task force. I did not even know what living
with seven meant, and then quickly it just got reduced
to seven. But absolutely, like IRV said, they were calling
(06:39):
me snow white. But let me tell you about yourself, sir,
I have met few people with the ability to not
be afraid, to not be concerned with their own safety
at any given time. You would stay in the cut,
you would stay in the bluff, you would swing through
(07:01):
and you know, make sure you got you know, your
cigarettes with Sam and A's while you were you know,
working b sector in the umbrella car tell us about
those early days, Well.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Charl Mac, I got to say the things that we
did when we were young and we didn't know the
danger that we were in. Atlanta back in the early
nineties was one of the most violent cities in the nation.
I remember that we led the nation and shootings and
(07:37):
homicides and most of them occurred in Zone three. And
working as a you know, working patrol, Working in Zone
three as a police officer was probably one of the
most dangerous places in the nation. But we didn't realize it.
(07:57):
We didn't know because we thought we were invincible. We
were young and didn't believe anything could happen to us.
And when I graduated from the Atlanta Police Academy, I
had graduated towards the top of my class and I
got the pick of the assignments and they have you
put down three choices, you know, which precincts, and they
(08:21):
and they want you to list the three precincts you know,
in order that you want to go to. And I
put down Zone three, Zone three, Zone three, and they said, well,
Officer Brent, you're going to Zone three. And like you,
(08:41):
being one of the few Caucasian officers in there, the
field investigation team immediately put me into undercover work because
they had so few white officers and I wasn't known
in the pre so I hadn't been out of the
(09:02):
academy a week when I was working undercover vice and
narcotics operations. Like I said, just a brand new rookie
and never thought once of the danger that I was in.
But that just comes with part of the job, That
(09:25):
just comes with working that part of Atlanta, as you
well know, working Henry Thomas, you know, working Englewood, and
you know Capital homes and Carver homes and you know
all of them, and you know we those were wild,
(09:50):
wild times.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And you know you and I have talked. You remember
when the most violent person in Zone three, he went
by the code named Geronimo, his mama's house got destroyed
in a burglary, and I thought, you know what, this
is my chance again to your point, being young, not
knowing any better, I thought, I will do her a favor.
(10:14):
I will get the windows boarded up, and I'll replace
some of the Christmas gifts and then we'll be straight. Well,
sure enough, Geronimo put the word out, don't touch seven,
leave her alone. I never had the first issue anywhere
in Zone three ever for eight years.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You're so much smarter than me, Cheryl Mack. The first
thing that I did after I came out from undercover
and they put me in a patrol car was I
went straight to Stuart in Cleveland and started messing with
the McKissick twins, who you know ran that area. You know,
(10:57):
they ran all the drug operations. And when homicide put
a warrant out for him, I walked into that burger
king at Stuart in Cleveland because Homicide had sent me
the warrant saying they wanted the Kissing brothers. And I
walked in and Twin and Anton were sitting in a
(11:18):
booth with eight of their crew members there, and I
walked in on him and pulled out my gun and
held him at gunpoint and put it out over the
radio that I had him at gunpoint, and the whole
city came and I arrested guarantee it. Yeah, I arrested him,
(11:38):
you know, on the murder charges, which of course they
beat and got back out on the street, then put
a hit out on me from then after, you know.
So I spent my time in Zone three running and
ducking for cover, while you were the smart one and
(11:59):
had protect.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I'll tell you what some of your stories. So let's
talk about the early morning of the bombing. Now your
own duty. You had been assigned to the Olympic part.
Tell us about your day to day leading up to
day nine.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Well, Cheryl mckett, you know, as we talked about before,
when you know, we all got our you know, special assignments,
you know, for the Olympics, and I was waiting for
mine and seeing which venue I was going to be
assigned to h and I got assigned to Centennial Park,
and I was telling everyone I was one of the
(12:46):
lucky ones, you know, because I wasn't, you know, at
a high profile venue. I was, you know, basically just
where everybody went to after words to blow off steam
and party and things like that and meet the athletes.
So I figured I had caught a great assignment. And
(13:09):
like you said, up until that day, it was a
great assignment. I you know, went to work at eight
in the evening and worked until eight in the morning.
And we had a few incidents. I mean everyone was
drinking and having a good time. There was a few fights,
but nothing nothing serious. You know, we had plenty of
(13:33):
law enforcement there with a big presence by the GBI
inside the park and my assignments, I worked the athletes
gate to the park and I would check the vans
bringing in the athletes, and you know, we had that
(13:53):
section of tech Wood we had like a corridor blocked
off for the vans to come up and I would
open the gate and they would follow me into the
park and I make sure that you know, athletes, you know,
got out safely and things like that, and like I said,
it was it was a great assignment. I got to
(14:15):
meet all of the Olympic athletes. It was. It was
a very thrilling time right up until that moment that
bomb went off and just completely rocked my world. I
was actually probably i'd say, maybe fifty feet from that
sound tower, you know, from that bench where the bomb was,
(14:39):
and I had my back to it, and when the
bomb went off and you know, just rattled my teeth.
In my head, I had thought the building across on
Techwood had exploded because the sound had echoed off that
building and kind of like bounced back. So I was
(15:00):
sitting there looking at the building, you know, looking for
smoke and things like that, when I heard the screams
behind me, and I turned around and just about everyone
was flat on their backs, you know, from the explosion,
including all the GBI agents who were easy to spot.
(15:20):
They were wearing khaki pants and black polo shirts and
you know, it said GBI on the back, and all
of them were on their back, and I thought they
were all dead. Then everyone began to sit up and
things like that, and I could see they were covered
in blood. So I started, you know, dragon GBI agents,
(15:47):
you know, away from the scene because as you know,
you're always concerned about a secondary.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Device, a secondary device, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, you don't know there's another, you know, explosion coming.
So I was dragging him out of the park. And
once we got the you know, park basically cleared, and
you know, the people moved out, the woman, miss Hawthorne,
that had died, you know, I was I wasn't that
far from her, and you know, she was one of
(16:22):
the first people that we checked on. But there was
nothing that could be done, and but we got all
the injured people out, and you know, we got everybody out,
and this was kind of the bizarre part. Cheryl mack. I.
You know, I was the only Atlanta Police officer inside
(16:43):
the park. There were plenty outside the park, and inside
the park were the GBI agents, who almost all of
them were injured. So we got them out of there.
So after we finally cleared it all out, I was
alone in the park, which was completely eerie, you know
(17:05):
and bizarre, and I was getting ready to leave and
as I started walking out, I found a very large
part of the pipe bomb. I could see the threads
of the pipe and stuff like that, and I radioed
my supervisor and I told him I said, look, I
(17:27):
got a piece of the bomb. I don't want to
leave this unattended. I don't want it to be accidentally moved.
I don't want someone to step on it. I said,
I'm going to stand on, you know, by until the
evidence texts get here. And the supervisor said okay. So
I was alone in the park for hours, just you know,
(17:50):
standing there really in the events in my head. And
I started to hear some sounds coming from Techwood and
I peeked over the fence and the ATF and the
FBI and the lantipede evidence texts. We're going up Techwood,
putting out their little orange flags, you know, over the
(18:14):
shrapnel and things like that. And as they work their
way up tech Wood, one of the texts saw me,
you know, peeking over the fenence and he asked me.
He's like, what are you doing in there? And I
told him, I said, look, I'm standing guard over an
actual piece of the bomb and I don't want it
(18:35):
to be disturbed. And he said, we'll work our way
to you. And I'm like great. And he's like, do
you need anything, and do you need water? Do you
need food? Anything like that? And I was like, now
I just picked the worst time in the world to
quit smoking.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And he's like, I got you covered, and he gave
me a packet of cigarett He said, just you know,
hang tight. And so it was when they it took
them hours, but they finally they made it to me.
So when I finally left the park, the sun was up.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
When when I left the park and Cheryl Mack, I
gotta tell you, I you know, I looked at that
sea of orange flags. You know, they were everywhere, and
I was standing right in the middle of them. But
somehow I didn't get hit with any shrapnel. You know,
(19:40):
I wasn't bleeding, you know, my uniform wasn't torn up
or any I don't know how that happened. I truly
to this day. I've been thinking about it for nearly
almost thirty years, and I don't know how I could
have been in that spot I was and not get hit.
(20:01):
But here I am.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
And you know, it's so important for me to point
out for folks that I've seen people nearly jump out
of their skin when a balloon is popped near them
and they're not ready for it. What you are conveying
to us. This thing was so loud you thought it
(20:24):
was the building across the street. It was so powerful
it knocked people down like you see in movies. And
for you to immediately jump into action, for you immediately
to say I'm going to stay right here, you still
didn't know if there was a secondary device. You still
(20:47):
didn't know where these people were or where the bomber was.
You didn't know anything, and you stayed all alone. And
there's bravery, IRV. And then there's just I will sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Is that the word you're looking for?
Speaker 1 (21:06):
No, But I mean, honestly, there's bravery, and then there's
people that say I will gladly sacrifice myself for the
betterment of other people that I don't know, and you're
one of those people. So I just wanted to say
it out loud. But I also want to point out
I want to go back just a little because you're
old school and you don't really fool with and talk
(21:30):
to private investigators or bondsmen or security guards. But you
made a concession when you worn't day to day with
one particular security guard. Can you talk about that a
little bit?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, Cheryl Mac, I was, you know, all the way,
you know, leading up, I was, you know, talking to
the GBI agents in the park, and we're all real friendly,
you know how it is. It's truly, you know, a
family when you're talking about law enforcement. But there was
(22:04):
also a lot of private security in the park, and
like you said, I normally wouldn't talk to a security
guard or you know, you know, you know, a private
investigator or a bounty hunter because we don't in law
enforcement really consider him be part of the family. But
(22:24):
there was a security guard that I saw regularly and
he was a super nice guy and you knew him.
His name was Richard Jewele, and I talked to him
every day and you know, we you know, whenever I
came on, he would you know, come over to me
(22:45):
because he he liked to talk, and you know, he
was really interested in law enforcement, and he liked to
talk about how he was, you know, wanted to be
a police officer and he was testing for you know,
at different agencies and things like that. And I talked
to him because he seemed like a like a real
good guy. And after you know, the incident, after the
(23:13):
the explosion, and I came back to work and then
all the news reports started, you know coming out about
you know, everything, and the FBI was conducting their investigation,
which I got to say, I was very surprised at
all the people they interviewed. They didn't interview me. I
was the only one left inside the park, and you know, well,
(23:37):
like I said, I was standing over a significant portion
of that pipe bomb, and for some reason, they didn't
come and talk to me. And I didn't seek them
out either. I mean, I wasn't you know, I wasn't
a detective. I was a police officer, and I wasn't
part of the investigation. But you know, I started seeing
(24:00):
the news and things like that that Richard Jewel was
their main suspect, and I thought it was the most
ridiculous thing that, you know, I had ever heard. I'm like,
this guy didn't set this bomb off. And I told
my sergeant, and I told my lieutenant, and I actually
went to my captain and I told him, I said, look,
(24:24):
you know, I know, you know, this isn't our investigation,
but somebody needs to tell the bureau that I believe
they're on the wrong track, that that's not the guy.
And all of them agreed with me. My sergeant agreed
with me, my lieutenant agreed with me, My captain agreed
with me. But that's the way that investigation kept going.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And you know, for me, it was like a movie.
We had already determined where the command center would be
if something were to happen in Centennial Part. So we
comandeered the hotel and we did that because they had
a bank of phones, they had blankets, they had TVs
to get information in real time. They had private rooms,
they had bottled water, they had tons of restrooms. Like
(25:11):
it worked out perfect to interview all of these witnesses
and victims that didn't have to go immediately to the hospital.
And I don't remember how long we were there working,
but I mean we were working. We were interview and
we were taking people's shoes that had shrapnel. We were
taking cuts of clothing if it had anything on it
that we thought could help identify the bomb, just like you.
(25:34):
And that's important for people to understand that when they
see photographs of these agents on their hands and knees,
they're getting every single piece of that bomb to rebuild
it so that they know exactly what this thing was.
And so here we are in full swing and all
(25:54):
of a sudden, the doors open and it looked like
twenty agents walked in all in the same blue suit,
and whoever the lead guy was was clearly in charge.
He looks right at me and says, whose crime scene
was this was? Or And I'm like, well, I guess
the party's over for us, even though we've been working
(26:17):
this thing. And they came in and took over and
that was it. And I had met Richard for the
first time that day. We had even reached out to
him to see if he needed anything, you know, debriefing
or to talk or anything, because he was in the
middle of it too, you know, and like you, it
was a miracle he wasn't heard in some way. But
(26:39):
when word came out, we had the exact same reaction
you did. That guy like it didn't fit to us
at all. And I remember one of the first things
we talked about is who runs down the street and
makes a call on the phone and then runs back
and turns their back on what they know is.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
A bomb, a suicide bomber. That's the only person that
would do that. But they would have the bomb on them, correct,
They wouldn't set it down because someone could move it.
Someone could have picked up that bag and walked out
of the park with.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It, and essentially they did move it. They changed that
thing from being a pipe bomb that was going to
destroy that tower to essentially a roaming candle because those
teenagers kicked it. I tell people, they rebuilt it, y'all.
They were able to tell us that the bomber had
(27:38):
used a six volt ever Ready battery hooked to a
model rocket engine igniter and was triggered by a west
clock alarm clock. They knew the six pounds of nails
were two point five inches surrounded by gunpowder. Like, they
rebuilt that thing.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, I know what they did, Cheryl Mac. They you know,
I watched them place every orange flag on there as
I smoked cigarette after cigarette after cigarette.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But you know that large piece that you found was significant.
You know. That's like when you're putting together any puzzle,
if all of a sudden somebody comes up and says, hey,
here's six pieces, it gives you such a vision of
what you're actually looking at, what the endgame is.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Cheryl Mac, you're the you're the I know, the expert
on it, but uh, you know, I've been when you
work and you know this more than anyone. When you
work a place like Zone three and you answer the
number of calls that you go to and the number
(28:48):
of crime scenes that you go to, shooting, stabbings, you know, robberies, burglaries,
all of them. And I may only had a few
years of experience, but the place that I worked, the
number of crime scenes that I had been to, especially
(29:11):
homicide scenes, and I had probably twenty years of experience
crammed into three years. You know, as opposed if you
would have been assigned to Buckhead, you know, you know
another precinct, or you know, you work maybe Gwenet County,
or you know, you know, or worked up in Smyrn Hours,
(29:35):
you know, someplace like that. When you worked Zone three,
you had a lifetime of experience in a very small,
you know, matter of time. And so I knew the
importance of protection of evidence. I knew it was critical.
Trust me. I wanted to get out of that park,
(29:56):
I did, you know. I wanted to leave with everybody else.
I did not want to stay there, and I especially
didn't want to stay there alone. But when when you've
been to that many crime scenes and you know, God,
if this thing gets kicked, if someone picks it up,
you know, if it gets moved, you know, this can
(30:18):
really hamper an investigation, and you realize on how important.
You know, it's like when you get to a shooting
crime scene and you start circling, you know, with chalk,
you know, shell casinges, and you're keeping everyone back so
no one kicks those shell casings around, you know, from
(30:39):
the original spot that they fell. You know, the same
principle when you're at a scene of a bombing, you
need everything left just as it was. You know, if
you're going to, like you said, you're going to put
that jigsaw back together, you know, if you want to
(30:59):
paint that picture of what really happened, then that's the
way it needs to be done.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And I know when the other side bombing happened, again,
I was not prepared, not just for that event at
that location, but now we had our secondary device, so
we knew this person wasn't playing and I think most
of us at that point knew we were the target
(31:31):
a fact.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
You know, that was a fact. There was definitely an intent,
and that intent was towards law enforcement or first responders
in general.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
And you know, you had a unique experience with all
of this because the first bombing made you a little famous.
And then I think as you went around town, people
are like, hey, are you the guy? And You're like, yeah,
I'm the guy. Because there's a very distinct moment where
(32:08):
you're captured on TV. Can you tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I didn't realize it at the time when the bomb
first went off, and like I said, I you know,
was first going over to help people. If you watch,
like when there's an anniversary of the bombing and they
show it, they always have the scene where I think
(32:34):
it's German television is talking to one of the Olympic
swimmers and they're in the tower and the tower shakes,
you know, from the blast. Then they cut to the
park and you see a very chaotic scene. The camera
is shaking, going back and forth. And the first thing
(32:56):
that you see that when the camera comes into focus
is my back and I'm wearing a red vest over
my blue Atlanta police uniform. I'm wearing my traffic vest
that says Atlanta Police. So it's like the cameraman used
that as a focus point and brought the camera into
(33:18):
focus on Atlanta Police. And I remember I was helping
someone up off the ground and I turned and I
almost ran into the camera. So my face was maybe
just a foot away from the camera, and I had
to dodge around the cameraman. Then the cameraman started to
follow me. As I was picking up GBI agents off
(33:41):
the ground and dragging him out in the park, the
cameraman was following me. So that was kind of the
lead for all the cable networks, you know, off of
that one feed, all the agent, you know, all the
news channels was using that. And I didn't realize it,
you know, because I had gone home and when and
(34:03):
I finally got some rest in sleep at all. But
you know, this was back before, like you said, you
talked about your pager blue up. You know, this was
back before cell phones and you know, back before the
Internet and social media and things like that. And I
hadn't turned on the television. I wasn't watching the news.
(34:27):
And it wasn't until I checked my messages, you know,
because like I said, I didn't have a cell phone.
I had a landline, and you know, I had an
answering machine, and my answering machine was fault and it
was from people calling me, and one was from my
mother down in Florida said that she knew all was
all right because she saw me on the news. Then
(34:47):
my sister had called from Italy and said she knew
all was all right because she saw me on the news,
and I was, I was laughing. I'm like, I got
to turn on the news because everybody saying and so
I watched some of it before I was getting ready
to go back to work at the park, and sure enough,
you know, like I described, you know, the cameraman followed
(35:10):
me around. And so I was heading back to go
back to work at the park, and I stopped at
Stewart in Cleveland, like we talked about, at the gas
station where Sam and Ace ran the gas station, and
Ace was behind the counter and when I walked in,
he's like, oh my god, he goes. Sam called me
(35:35):
from Mumbai and said, I know Irv's all right because
I saw him on the news, and I'm like, yeah,
everybody has. And I actually just stopped in there to
get a pack of smokes because I was, you know,
back on that habit again. And then I went back
(35:55):
to work, and like, you know, it just wasn't the
same after that, you know, the park was closed, the
mood was terrible, and you know, the what was a
party wasn't a party any longer.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
And you know, after the other three bombings, you know,
we had experiences and you know, an education. I guess
pretty quick on how to work mass events because we
did it over and over and over. And I can
only imagine when you went on to your other jobs
that some of that working with multiple agencies, working with
(36:39):
mass victims, working with media as a huge umbrella. You know,
how did that help you? How did that come into
play for you?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
That experience, I mean, you know, set an imprint on
me that it's going to last the rest of my life.
You know, I approached things ever since then. I approach
things completely different. And as far as my law enforcement
career goes, you know, I've been to so many you know,
(37:11):
on so many protection details, and you know, working in Washington,
d C. With the Attorney General and members of Congress
and things like that, and it gives you a difference,
a different sense, I mean, the things that you look for.
You know, it's just different if you haven't been through
(37:34):
something like that before. And it even carries over to
your personal life. You know, if I go to a
baseball game of our go to any place that attracts
a big crowd, and I'm not even working I'm looking
at all the exits, I'm looking at people in the crowd,
I'm looking at bags that are unattended. You know, I'm
(37:58):
always look looking for these things now and that's gonna
that's going to be me for the rest of my
life now that I'm retired. I don't go to events,
Cheryl mac Honestly, I don't go to you know, sporting events.
I avoid any place that have large crowd, music festivals,
(38:23):
things like that that has the potential as being a target.
It's just really has affected me for the last thirty years,
and you.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Know, my career will never be the same either. And
one thing that I insist on is working with a team,
because that, to me is the only way we got
through what we got through. And one thing we were
all at manuals one night, and this is once the
FBI started searching for Eric Robert Rudolph. And we're watching
(38:58):
them and there's all these agents and they've got on
you know, of course they're jackets and everything, but they've
got bug spray, bottle water and ATVs and we were
all almost laughing, saying they're never going to catch him
because if they've got to have bug spray he doesn't.
If they've got to have bottle of water, he doesn't,
(39:21):
and they've got to have an ATV, he doesn't. So
one thing that taught me is you get the person
it's best at that job. Whatever that job is, whether
it's tracking somebody, locating, contacting, fighting, whatever it is, you
get the best person possible, not just a team of
(39:44):
whoever's available, correct or. And again that's not a slam accountants.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yes, no, Mi, Cheryl Mackett's my job to slam the
dude in my books all the time, and I relish
in it, you know. But I'm not going to sit
here and talk bad about the FBI. But I'm going
to sit here and talk bad about the FBI. They're
really good at some things. There's no one better at fraud.
(40:12):
There's no one better at tracking money. There's no one
worse a fugitive investigations. Leave that to the United States
Marshall Service, RV.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Brand. I could talk to you all day and all
night and then call you back the next day. I
just adore you, I respect you, I appreciate you, and
we got to come back sometime and talk specifically about
Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
We will, Cheryl mac anytime all you've got to do
is call me.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I will do it. I will do it because me and.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
To Grace does it all the time. You know I
always take her call.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
You.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I'll take your call.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Absolutely, y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven the way
that I always do with a quote chief in fact,
so we've been expecting you. I look down at the
front of my coat, then back at her. Am I
wearing a name tag? She laughed and said, I recognize
you from the telly you've been all over the news.
(41:15):
Quoted from solo shot Curse of the Blue Stone by
IRV Brandt. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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