September 3, 2025 • 38 mins
In Part 2 of the Olympic Park bombing series, Sheryl McCollum talks with Kent Alexander, who served as U.S. Attorney during the investigation. Alexander recalls the tense hours after the blast, the FBI and media’s rush to label Richard Jewell a suspect, and the non-target letter that cleared him. He also explains how Eric Rudolph became the focus, what investigators learned from the case, and how his book The Suspect grew into Clint Eastwood’s film Richard Jewell.
Kent Alexander served as U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Georgia during the Olympic Park bombing investigation. He is the co-author of The Suspect, the book that became the basis for Clint Eastwood’s film Richard Jewell.
To learn more about Kent Alexander, visit The Suspect
Highlights:
- (0:00) Sheryl introduces guest Kent Alexander, former U.S. Attorney during the Olympic Park bombing
- (2:45) The 911 call and Alexander’s first moments of the investigation
- (5:30) Securing evidence and rebuilding the bomb
- (8:15) Remembering victims Alice Hawthorne and Melih Uzunyol
- (9:15) Media and FBI rush to judgment against Richard Jewell
- (12:30) The non-target letter that cleared Richard Jewell
- (17:30) Eric Rudolph emerges as the true bomber
- (22:00) Alexander start writing The Suspect, documenting the case
- (25:15) Understanding Eric Rudolph’s motives and methods
- (30:00) Sheryl recall firsthand stories of victims and media exposure
- (33:15) How The Suspect became the film Richard Jewell
- (37:00) “He was a hero. What he did saved a lot of lives.” - Kent Alexander on Richard Jewell
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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
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Kent Alexander was the US Attorney for the Northern District
of Georgia. He has been the general counsel for Emory University.
He was a partner with King and Spalden. He also
co authored a book called The Suspect, an Olympic Park Bombing,
(00:29):
the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, The Man in
the Middle, and that was later made into a Clint
Eastwood movie called Richard Jewell. Now Ken Alexander and I
we know each other. He was in charge of a
federal task force that I was involved in called Operation
(00:50):
Weed and Seed, and I just have to tell y'all
he is the most ethical, kind, brilliant and solidly I
think I have ever worked with and had the honor
of knowing. So y'all please help me welcome Kent Alexander
to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Thank you, Cheryl, you're too kind.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, I just want to start on a personal note too,
if I can. I was so sorry to hear about
you losing your dad and you know some of the
things that I was reading, Oh, Miles Alexander, I mean
the accolades were just overwhelming. I mean he was not
only you know, a legal genius, he was just a
(01:37):
good man.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh, thanks so much, Cheryl. He was awesome, just very
special and amazing life.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Lived, a life well lived. And you know it makes me,
you know, just want to take a second too, because
all those people that were saying such wonderful things. I
don't know that I've ever said anything wonderful to you,
but I'm going to tell you tonight, without question, my
time with you in Operation Whedon Seed is one of
(02:04):
the highlights of my career and it was because of you.
So thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, thank you, Cheryl. What you did for kids and
neighborhoods in Whedon's theaters extraordinary too. You and my dad
follmed the same category. That's how I praise well.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I appreciate that. So Atlanta wins the Olympic Games, honey.
And we trained and we prepared, we were ready. We
had more security than any Olympics ever in.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
History, That's true.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
And then you got the call. Now, where were you
and how did you get called about the Olympic Park
bombing On July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I was at home. I was actually sleeping. I had
spent the day talking with a lot of people, including
the head of security for a Cove, which the group
that play in the games, and I had a little
bit of a cough, so I thought, I'll go home
and get to sleep early, and I'm so glad I did.
(03:07):
When I got the call, it was not from law enforcement,
it wasn't from a just department command center or the FBI.
Is from a buddy of mine named Jim Green, who
happened to be up watching CNN or some network and
saw everything live. So he was the first call. And
I we'd done enough training. I knew exactly what to do.
(03:28):
Just get up, take a shower, sings clothes, and drive
straight down to the FBI headquarters.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's right. I mean everybody knew what they were supposed
to do, and I think for the most part, it
was pretty amazing the response. I mean, we had one
hundred and eleven victims, and I know from us the
crisis response team, we had one hundred and fourteen people
on site within forty five minutes, so everybody knew what
(03:56):
to do. You're absolutely right now your initial thought. I mean,
we have this crime, we have this terrorist event, there's
a perpetrator out there, there's a security guard that saw
the bag started moving people away, you know, where the
games going to go on. Were there other terrorist events
that were fixing to happen. How do we protect all
(04:16):
these athletes and visitors. I mean your mind must have
been reeling.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well like all of our minds. Mine was reeling. All
those questions were absolutely out there. We didn't know if
the bomber is going to strike again, We didn't know
where the bomber was from, if there was more than one,
if we were about to have a series of catastrophes.
So and then there was the question, as you said,
(04:43):
should the games even go on, which was a decision
that went to the highest levels conversation with the president.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
And I know for us in the you know, central
area in the command center, it was an unusual event
to watch APD, Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County, the GBI.
I mean, everybody's there and then all of a sudden,
the FBI swings in and it's a different day. I mean,
(05:12):
this was like nothing I had ever seen. And one
of the first things that struck me was all the witnesses.
They wanted their shoes, and I remember there were people
really upset by that, like they did not want to
give their shoes up. And that's something you didn't even
know was going to happen. There was no way to
prepare for it. But it was something that really upset people.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, it sure did. And of course one reason to
take their shoes. The main reason was people had shrapnel
in them, and so you want to check all shoes
for shrapnel. And it was just it was a crime scene.
The entire entirety of Centennial Park and its surroundings was
one large crime scene.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
One thing that sticks in my mind is law enforcement
own their hands and knees collect in every just scrap
piece of metal, not just nails that were intact, anything
they could find because they were going to rebuild that bomb.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's exactly right. There were law enforcement agents from all
branches on their knees, including SWAT members in full SWAT gear,
down on their knees. The area had been marked off
with concentric circles expanding from this place where the blast happened,
where the bomb was, so they could mark every area
(06:36):
into quadrants among those concentric circles, so they could chronicle
where every piece of scrapnel, every possible piece of the bomb,
every nail was, so that they could figure out even
the power of the buck blast and what had happened
is they reconstructed it later on. It was the site
to behold.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
It was, and to your point, it's one of the
largest crime scenes I've ever walked through, been a part of.
And it's the most number of victims, without question, that
were still on scene.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, it was you. I was, as I said, home sleeping,
but certainly was able to reconstruct the whole scene from
the hundreds and hundreds of interviews. But there were, as
you said, there are all the victims who were still there,
many on the ground, many or most bleeding. You had
ambulances rushing in, you had fire trucks rushing in, police
(07:32):
rushing in. And I remember talking with Bernie Keenan, who
was the deputy director of the GBI at that point.
He talked about driving in from the outskirts of Atlanta
and he was looking there was still smoke above the
Centennial Park and there were all the different colored lights
flashing into smoke, and he likened it to the Aurorus Borealis.
(07:53):
He said he'd never seen anything like that ever at
a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I will tell you it was. There were so many things.
I don't even know if I could put into words,
because at some point it was so loud, like all
the emergency vehicles you're talking about, people you know, saying
go here, do this, do that, And then there were
other times it was almost eerily quiet. It was a
strange event. And you know, of course we lost Alice Hawthorne,
(08:23):
she was killed in the blast, and her daughter, Fallon
was extremely injured and had to have surgery, and I
went to the hospital to be with Fallon for part
of the night the next night after surgery, you know,
And there's just so much that was happening, so fast,
and so much unknown, and like you're saying, we didn't
(08:44):
know if there was going to be another attack, We
didn't know how many people. All we knew is a
nine to one one call eleven words, and twenty minutes
later we have this event exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
And of course there's the Turkish journalist who died of
a hearted running to film the scene. Absolutely really two deaths.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Agreed, yes, agreed, because it would not have happened. He
would still be alive that day if not for that bomb.
I have no doubt about that. You're absolutely right. Let's
talk about the media. How quickly do you think the
media rushed a judgment very.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah. It was in a word, yes, everybody who's trying
to figure out who the bomber was. And as you know,
for the first couple of days, there are lots of
suspects out there and the media didn't have many names
to go on. But as soon as Richard Jule's name surfaced,
(09:47):
you know, there was a brush judgment. But to my mind,
both with the media and with many in law enforcement,
so there's there's a lot a lot of assuming going on.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, you know, I'm Southern, obviously, and I have always
told people, if Hollywood wants an idiot, they make them Southern,
and if they want a real idiot, they make them
a Southern police officer. So he was right for the
picking for that type of vulture because they just insulted him.
(10:22):
They called him names. I remember one newspaper they called
him the Bubba bomber. You're just hitting all cylinders, you know,
Let's talk about where he's from, let's talk about how
he looks, let's talk about what he did for a living.
And you know, people ran with it, and then unfortunately,
I think when the profiling started, they were making some
(10:45):
square pegs fit in those round holes.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, you're exactly right. And of course there was an
actual profile too, so I profiling people did on their
own in the media and in the public thinking about
this white Southern Scarity guard and former cap. There was
a profile out of Quantico, Virginia FBI Behavioral Science Units
(11:14):
it was called at the time, which was later derisively
referred to by some as a BS unit because they
got that one wrong. But there was a whole profile
explaining why Richard Jewel was very likely the bomber.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I remember part of it when they talked about tupperware
and I'm like, seriously, I mean, I've got some, every
one of my sisters has some, everybody I know's got some.
How can that be a major factor in what they're
printing for people to run with? And then, you know,
I think the way he carried himself, the way his
(11:49):
mama tried to speak out sometimes did not help them, right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I think sometimes things that Richard Jewel said and his
late mother Bobby said, set into the narrative. So did
the search when they searched his apartment, and he had
a lot of guns because he was in the law
enforcement guy and he liked guns. He liked to hunt,
but the fact that there were a lot of guns
fed into the narrative even more.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Here's one thing I want to point out. You did
one of the most stand up things I have ever
heard of in my life. I don't know that it
had ever been done before. But you wrote a letter.
And not only did you write it and sign it,
you hand delivered it. And that's why when I say
(12:41):
to people, you're one of the most ethical and kind people.
That proves it right there. Tell us a little bit
about how the letter came about.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
The letter came about because we had been investigating, we
being law enforcement, the bombing for quite some time, and
Richard Jeul in particular, hundreds and hundreds of FBI three
oh two's, that's what the reports are called. Three o
two's about Richard Jewele, the team that I put together
at the US Attorney's office, which included people who would
(13:11):
later go on to become US attorneys. Sally Yates and
she was later Deputy Attorney General. Dave Namius became a
US attorney as well. We all read through every FBI
three h two, every report. The more we read, the
more the stacks that we put in. Did he do it?
Didn't he do it? Started becoming much more pronounced in
(13:37):
the didn't do it stack because we were reading just
taking a look at at it objectively and not looking
to prove his guilt, but to see what happened. So
we had decided in our minds we just didn't think
he did it. So the letter came about because I
met with the head of the FBI in the Atlanta office,
(13:59):
Would Johnson, who's a completely stand up guy, and reviewed
everything and I said, what do you need for us
to say he didn't do this? Figure out whether he
did it or not, and he said, we need to
interview Richard Jewel. So the letter came about after Jack
Martin Jeuwles defense attorney, and I spoke and Richard was
(14:20):
represented by other people too, including Watson, Bryan and Lynn Wood,
but Jack was the criminal defense attorney, and we just
had a handshake deal followed up by a letter. But
it was mainly a handshake deal that if Richard came
in and interviewed and the FBI and GBI could interview
him with one attorney from our office, a guy John
(14:40):
Davis was on my staff sitting in that we would
then take three weeks. I think it was to follow
up on that interview and if there wasn't evidence strong
evidence that he was the guy who was the bomber,
then I said I would I'd make that announcement. So
(15:02):
the interview happened, and in fact, many people have probably
seen the movie. The movie's more or less like the interview,
but they had to do with the movie version, so
it was much shorter in the movie. It was several
hours in real life. Then all the investigation started anew
based on any leads they took from Richard Jewel, and
after three weeks, the FBI and our office, the US
(15:25):
Attorney's office, and really Woody and I and everyone around
us met We reviewed everything, and then Woody Johnson at
the FBI said, well, yeah, a deal is a deal.
This is what you said you do, and you've done it,
and we do not have strong evidence that he did it.
So some people at the FBIS and elsewhere still thought
he did it, but there was an evidence even to
(15:48):
go bring in front of the grand jury. So that's
when I just decided the best way to clear him
was to write a letter, and it was called a
non target letter, So I know, you know this your
listeners might not. In federal investigations, you can be a target,
which means there's a lot of evidence against you, and
you can probably be indicted maybe the subject to the investigation,
(16:09):
which means, well, you know it's maybe maybe not who knows,
or a witness, and what you want to do is
as a witness if you're a peuted defendant, because you
know that means you're never going to get indicted. So
the letter I wrote, it's called a non target letter,
So I said he wasn't a target, and then I said,
it's a very short letter. I said, and I hope
(16:30):
you will cooperate as a witness. So it's a way
to straddle the line between saying you're not a target
and also saying sort of saying you're a witness. And
I knew that when it went out, even though a
couple of defense turns were upset by the letter because
it wasn't it didn't say you're cleared, you didn't do it.
I knew that the media would with the same fervors
(16:51):
that many had used to say Richard Jewel was likely
the bomber would turn around and say this is a
clearance letter. And so that's what they did. I never
did a news conference after that. I did a news release,
but my goal was just to turn straight from that
to pivot to the investigation to find the real bomber.
And if I had gone on all these news stations,
(17:13):
national news, everybody wanted to interview, it would have been
a distraction as opposed to being able to turn to
make sure this bomber was found and didn't bomb again.
So that's the background in a long nutshell.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
When did you first hear the name Eric Robert Rudolph.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I heard the name after the Birmingham bombing, so it
would have been nineteen ninety eight. So there had been
three bombings. There was the Olympic bombing, there was the
other Side lounge bombing, which this mixed largely lesbian nightclub,
and there's the Sandy Springs abortion clinic bombing, family planning
(17:53):
center bombing. So those had happened while I was US attorney.
I left the office in late fall of nineteen ninety seven,
but I was keeping very close tabs on the investigation
because that had been my life since the Olympics, really
trying to find this bomber. So the first time I
heard the news was probably it was late January of
(18:17):
ninety eight, right after Eric Rudolph bombed another clinic, and
this one in Birmingham. As you know, there are witnesses
and his name ended up surfacing. So I was General
Counsel Emory University at that point, but still sort of
trying to be an arm chair prosecutor. Not that I
(18:38):
had any role in the case, but I called people
from the office to keep up with it, and that's
when I heard the name, and it became pretty clear
very early on that he was the guy. And at
that point Dave Namius, who had been the junior member
of the team at the Olympics on the Olympic bombing,
the prosecution team was US attorney. Sally Yates, who had
(18:59):
been member of the prosecution team, was the first assistant
US attorney, so the second in charge. So the two
of them had been with it the entire time, and
it was nice talking with them just to keep up
with what was going.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
On, and they knew it from ground level.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, they remembered, and also they had all the evidents.
So Eric Rudolf's name never surfaced until the Birmingham bombing
of the hundreds. And I really mean hundreds of suffects
who are out there who came and went. His name
wasn't on any list. In fact, in the book that
Kevin Saltwin and I wrote, we noted that a lot
(19:38):
of a lot of agents were scrambling to take a
look at their logs, their investigated logs, to make sure
they didn't have that lead assigned to them to investigate
Eric Rudolf, because that would be not just an egg,
but the entire omelet on your face. And it turns
out nobody had his name because he had lived completely
off the grid. So getting back to your point on
(19:59):
Dave Sally, the two of them knew all the evidence.
So by the time this fourth bombing happened and they
got the shrapnel and other things from the bombing, there's
they had a pretty good idea of that this was
the same guy.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Same guy, right, And you know the first the Olympic bombing,
that was the largest pipe bomb in North America, and
it had some elements to it that I think we
were lucky because he really didn't know what he was
doing because only one of them went off, not all
(20:40):
three pips.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well we'll never know what really went off and what
didn't but you're right, we were lucky. But in part
the luck happened because of the way the backpack had
been tipped over. Ye backpack, if you remember, had a
directional plate, correct, a metal plate that went in the
(21:01):
back and at one part of the backpack, and the
whole bomb would basically explode against the directional plate, and
the idea was that the shrapnel would then spray directly
into the crowd. But what happened is Richard Jewel actually
bothered some kids who were drinking and carrying on, and
he kicked them out. And before they left, they went
(21:23):
and they kicked this bag, the alice packed the military
pack of the bomb. They tried to lift it to
see if they have maybe had beer they could take
with them, and then they kicked it and it tipped over,
so the directional plate was actually on its back, facing
straight up skyward. Had it stayed where it was originally
a positioned, the blast would have gone straight into the crowd.
(21:46):
And of course that night there were fifty thousand people
in that park, so you can only imagine how many
people would have died. So there was a lot of luck.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
That night, a lot of luck. And I will take
that every time. Really, instead of imploding and exploding, it
became the largest roaming candle.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, it was this big arc that went skyward but
also to the side, which is why Alice Hawthorne, who
you mentioned was was killed by because she was hit
by shrap and I was like a machine gun and
fired at her. But that same machine gun that was
a lower part of that arc, would have gone full
throttle into the entire crowd, So there would have been
(22:28):
a lot of Alice Hawthorne's.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
That's right, no question. When did you decide to write
the book.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I had it in my mind after I left the
US Attorney's office that sometime when I was really old,
even older than I am now, that I would write
a book because I thought there was it was such
an extraordinary time, and there were things that I knew
that I knew other people didn't know. But I also
knew that there was so much that went on that
I had I hadn't a clue about. So I decided
(23:00):
after I left the office late nineteen ninety seven, at
some point down the road, i'd write a book. The
point where I really decided that I was going to
move forward on it was when a federal judge named
Owen Forrester passed away and I went to his funeral.
Owen Forrester or Judge Forrester, was the judge who heard
some of Richard Jules's case and when they were trying
(23:22):
to get the AJC to the Atlanta Drunk Constitution to
turn information over and other things, and I appeared in
front of him on that case, in a lot of others.
But when I went to his funeral, I looked around
and some of the players from the bombing were there.
But I also realized I was fairly young as a
US attorney, and a lot of the people like Judge
Forrester were not as young and working to be around forever.
(23:45):
So that's the point where I decided, I think it's
time to write this book. So it was a lot
earlier than I intended, but I was, but it was something.
It was like it was a dream I had that
I decided to try to realize earlier and planned.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
And you interviewed a ton of people. I mean, you
laid it out beautifully, and you know, it's almost like
putting the case together. I mean the way it reads,
it's like you're telling us something and then you're backing
it up, and you're telling us something and you're backing
it up. So it was not only easy to follow,
but it was also clear as a beil what occurred
(24:24):
at every stage of this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah. Well, we tried to tell a story in a
way people could relate to, and it's written as a
narrative nonfiction book it's called so it's written like a novel.
The whole thing's character driven. Of course, Richard Jule's the
main character. That there's this wild AJAC reporter, journalists, there's
the FBI and who made the case that wasn't and
(24:49):
there was Eric Rudolph. So we've got these intertwined characters.
As you know, we talked about their lives, but lay
out the evidence as told through their lives, so it's
not like an encyclopedia account. Instead, it's more like a
movie that it turned into. So we tried to make
it both both educational and historical, but a fun read.
(25:15):
So that was the goal.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Did you find when you really got into the whole
Eric Rudolph, his lifestyle, his background, the bombings, the places
that he selected, were you pretty clear about a motive
before it was put out there? Or were you kind
(25:38):
of surprised about his motive?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Pretty clear early on that hit what he claimed was
his motive, which was hated abortions and all of that
was a beard that wasn't really what it was after
And what was clear to me by the second bombing,
when he had sucker bombs for the second and third
(26:00):
bombing at the Sandy Springs clinic and at the other
side lounge, and by way, when I say sucker bombs,
they're also called secondary devices. A bomb went off, and
then as you know, there was a time that lagged
and all the law enforcement came in, and then the
second bomb went off where the bomber knew there would
be law enforcements. So I figured that the guy hated
(26:23):
the government, and it turns out he did. So it
became more nuanced what he was doing and why he
was doing things, but through his own writings, because not
only were there two books written on him biographies of
him and the bombing, but afterwards he wrote his autobiography,
(26:43):
so we had three accounts, really thorough accounts. So by
the end I had an even better idea. As I
say that the nuances of it, but at art at
the root, he doesn't trust the government. He hates the government,
and he is he wanted this kind of an anarchist.
He just thought by bombing the Olympics that everybody would
(27:05):
start joining in and then suddenly there would just be
mass protests and the government would be undermined.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And that's what the nine one one call is about.
He thought he gave plenty of time for all the
first responders to get there and be harmed.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Exactly so the nine one one calls. He called and said,
there's a bomb in Centennial Park, and you have twenty minutes,
I think he said. So. His assumption was that based
on all the planning that you and I and everyone did,
the word would have had immediately and everyone would evacuate,
law enforcement would come in and look. But as it
(27:41):
turns out, as you know, there was a screw up
with the nine to one one system. The message did
not get to the park, so the bomb goes off
with all the civilians. I don't know that Eric Ruff
didn't plan to kill civilians too. I think he would
probably just view that as necessary casualties side casualties. But
(28:04):
he clearly wanted law enforcement on the spot, on the scene,
and then he tried three more times, especially.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
When he got to Birmingham. He changed it up because
he used the remote control in Birmingham.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, because he was kind of the bomber who couldn't
bomb straight. He kept trying to kill law enforcement and
he wasn't succeeding. He injured law enforcement at the Sandy
Springs clinic, but when it came to the Birmingham bombing,
he literally had a remote control, so he had planted
the device right outside the doorway. Off duty police officer
(28:41):
went over bent over a bush, this fake bush t
kind of thing. He got at a store to poke
at it to see what it was, and then Eric
Rudolph was looking with binoculars from a distance, pressed the
button and just blew M to smithereens. It was just horrible.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
You mentioned luck. You know there was a car, a
squad car parked near the secondary bomb that took the
majority of those nails. I mean that would have killed
I don't know how many first responders, certainly severely injuring.
Who knows how many.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
In fact, yeah, there was an FBI agent who was
on the phone with somebody in my office in the
US Attorney's office just before that bomb went off, and
the bomb went off, and the phone goes dead. And
it turns out the agent was standing right on the
(29:42):
other side of the car with the bomb in between.
The car was in between the bomb and him. The
car lifted off the ground, we found out later, and
the agent got hurt and lost hearing and I think
permanently in one air here, but he was yeah, he
would have been dead, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And I know by the time our team got there again,
it was a scene almost like out of some movie.
I mean it was it was like a war zone again,
nothing like we had ever seen. And of course that
was a different avenue. And I remember one young woman
when I got to her, she said cover my face.
(30:24):
And I instinctively I was like, honey, you're fine. You're
gonna be okay. I mean, she had some injuries, but
it wasn't going to kill her. And she was like, no, no,
cover my face. And I said, I am right here.
You are going to be fine. They're about to put you,
you know, in the amulets and they're going to take
care of you. She grabbed my shirt, pulled me to
(30:45):
her and said cover my face. That was the first
time kent that it dawned on me, some of these
victims are being outed because the media is here. It
had not crossed my mind before. And then I was like,
oh girl, I got you, okay, so we're gonna cover
you up because you know, she was from a smaller
(31:06):
town and she had a job that wasn't going to
understand why she was in Atlanta and where she was at.
So you know, again I.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Tell you there was there's a teachers conference in town.
That's right. There's a lot of the teachers were there,
and that's right. They were really worrying. It was another
it was another era, another time when it people have
just had to go undercover.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's right, that's right out themselves. And that was again
a learning experience for me. And I tell every you know,
rookie and every young detective I can find, you're going
to be taught some great lessons that you never thought coming.
I mean, I was there thinking, oh, I'm doing such
a great thing, and I'm not doing a great thing.
(31:48):
I'm not helping her the way she needed me to
help her. So lesson learn. So let me ask you this.
When you're doing these one hundred and fifty plus interviews,
did anybody surprise you. Was there anything that they told
you you didn't know prior to talking to them.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I think almost every interview had a surprise because if
you think about it, you and I Seryl with law enforcements.
So we saw one side of this equation. But there's
also the side from the media and what they're seeing.
There's a side from Richard Jewell and his team what
(32:29):
they're seeing, there's the public. So you start talking to
different people who have different perspectives. So I learned from
the media and Richard Jewels team a lot of things
I didn't know, but even talking with FBI agents and
GBI agents and a lot of police officers and others,
I learned things because you can only be in one
(32:50):
room at a time, and they're always they're all in
different rooms. So it was a way to He's together
a much richer story than anyone person could ever know.
So short answer, I really think we learned something from
every single interview that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Doesn't necessarily shock me, but kinda. I mean, that's incredible.
So you go on, you write the book. When does
Clint Eastwood call honey?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah? That was wild. So we knew there was a
movie that was underway, but it wasn't a Clint Eastwood movie.
I turned the Initially it was a movie that was that.
It was through Disney and they were they talked with
a sum when another director who had been slavey to it,
(33:42):
Ezra Adelman, who did the documentary OJ Maiden America. He
won an Academy Award for it. Great director, brilliant guy.
The Clint Eastwood piece came around because when Ezra Aidelman
was going to be the director, he took a look
at the script and said I need more. And then
he reached out because he heard we were writing a book.
(34:04):
We did a PowerPoint presentation for him and he just said,
I need your book. And at that point I think
we had five chapters written. He said I don't care.
I need your book. So he said, I need to
talk to your film agent or his producer called up
and I'd never never even met a film agent in
my life. So we scrambled and found somebody. So originally
the deal we did was with Disney, but then Warner
(34:29):
Brothers bought the whole project because Clint Eastwood decided he
wanted to do the movie. So they had a new director,
a new studio. We just came with the package and
initially got no calls from Warner Brothers, but we talked
with their producers. I sent an email to him and
I said, so, I don't know, maybe you've got the
(34:49):
hundreds of personal photographs we have from Richard Jewele's collection.
Maybe you have the actual videotape of the interview that
the FBI did with Richard Jewel when they gave the
Miranda rights the wrong way and it was everything went sideways.
You know, maybe you've got you've talked to one hundred,
one hundred and fifty plus people we've talked to. And
(35:09):
then I got a call right back saying could we
meet with you and Kevin, my co author, like tomorrow.
So we met with them, and that's when we ended
up getting on board with Clint Eastwood because they decided
they really wanted a lot of the information we had.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
That's unreal, unreal.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Ya, it was, it was. It was pinch pinched myself, unreal. Yeah,
we were writing a book thinking, well, there's some movie
going on to be part of it. Next thing, you know,
we're part of one movie and the next thing, you know,
it's a different movie. But a clinice Wood directed the movie.
So yeah, there was a lot of fun stuff that
went on with the movie after that. It was great.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
And let me tell you, that movie was so good.
I thought it was fantastic. But you know, I was
a little sad because Richard Jewel died before the movie
came out, and I just thought, well, you know what,
he would love this because it vindicates him. I know
from Dana. He was a huge Clint Eastwood fan, and
(36:09):
I think it would have really done a lot for
him on a personal level.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right, and Dana knows better
than anybody. Also Richard's mother, who would have said the
same thing. He died, of course, at forty four, very young.
The reporter who broke the story that he was the suspect,
the aj Seerborg, died at forty two. The FBI agent
who made the case that wasn't died at fifty seven,
(36:38):
which used to seem old to me. That doesn't seem
so old. So there's a Shakespearean aspect to the entire
story because you've got all the key characters who are
gone and ironically and unfortunately, the one character who's still
alive out of the main characters, is Eric Rudolph, the
one who really doesn't deserve to be Frankly.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Of course, because this is a track. Of course, he's
still here.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
If I were able to interview Richard Jewel, the first
thing I would do is the same thing I did
when I met him the first time, which is the
morning of the bombing. I was at Centennial Park, went
to the FBI command center, and then drove to Centennial Park.
Alice Hawthorne's body was still veiled out on the plaza is.
(37:24):
A light came up, somebody pointed out Richard Jewel and said,
that's the security guard who found the bomb. So I
went up to him and I shook his hand, and
I said, missus Jewel, I want to say thank you.
If I had a chance to interview him down later
and he was still alive and talk to him about
this movie, I would just tell him thank you again
(37:45):
because he was because he was a hero. What he
did saved a lot of lives.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Amen, Ken't, Alexander, I cannot thank you for the time
that I was able to work with you, and what
you showed me and what you did for not just
the city of Atlanta during the Olympics, but what you
have done for so many people across the United States.
I just want to say again, thank you so.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Much, Thank you Chel for all you've done too.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven the way that
I always do with a quote. Today I have delivered
a letter to Council for Richard Jewel advising him that,
based on the evidence developed to date, mister Jewel is
not a target of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing investigation.
(38:37):
US Attorney Kent Alexander. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven.
Kent Alexander was the US Attorney for the Northern District
of Georgia. He has been the general counsel for Emory University.
He was a partner with King and Spalden. He also
co authored a book called The Suspect, an Olympic Park Bombing,
(00:29):
the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, The Man in
the Middle, and that was later made into a Clint
Eastwood movie called Richard Jewell. Now Ken Alexander and I
we know each other. He was in charge of a
federal task force that I was involved in called Operation
(00:50):
Weed and Seed, and I just have to tell y'all
he is the most ethical, kind, brilliant and solidly I
think I have ever worked with and had the honor
of knowing. So y'all please help me welcome Kent Alexander
to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Thank you, Cheryl, you're too kind.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, I just want to start on a personal note too,
if I can. I was so sorry to hear about
you losing your dad and you know some of the
things that I was reading, Oh, Miles Alexander, I mean
the accolades were just overwhelming. I mean he was not
only you know, a legal genius, he was just a
(01:37):
good man.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh, thanks so much, Cheryl. He was awesome, just very
special and amazing life.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Lived, a life well lived. And you know it makes me,
you know, just want to take a second too, because
all those people that were saying such wonderful things. I
don't know that I've ever said anything wonderful to you,
but I'm going to tell you tonight, without question, my
time with you in Operation Whedon Seed is one of
(02:04):
the highlights of my career and it was because of you.
So thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, thank you, Cheryl. What you did for kids and
neighborhoods in Whedon's theaters extraordinary too. You and my dad
follmed the same category. That's how I praise well.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I appreciate that. So Atlanta wins the Olympic Games, honey.
And we trained and we prepared, we were ready. We
had more security than any Olympics ever in.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
History, That's true.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
And then you got the call. Now, where were you
and how did you get called about the Olympic Park
bombing On July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I was at home. I was actually sleeping. I had
spent the day talking with a lot of people, including
the head of security for a Cove, which the group
that play in the games, and I had a little
bit of a cough, so I thought, I'll go home
and get to sleep early, and I'm so glad I did.
(03:07):
When I got the call, it was not from law enforcement,
it wasn't from a just department command center or the FBI.
Is from a buddy of mine named Jim Green, who
happened to be up watching CNN or some network and
saw everything live. So he was the first call. And
I we'd done enough training. I knew exactly what to do.
(03:28):
Just get up, take a shower, sings clothes, and drive
straight down to the FBI headquarters.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's right. I mean everybody knew what they were supposed
to do, and I think for the most part, it
was pretty amazing the response. I mean, we had one
hundred and eleven victims, and I know from us the
crisis response team, we had one hundred and fourteen people
on site within forty five minutes, so everybody knew what
(03:56):
to do. You're absolutely right now your initial thought. I mean,
we have this crime, we have this terrorist event, there's
a perpetrator out there, there's a security guard that saw
the bag started moving people away, you know, where the
games going to go on. Were there other terrorist events
that were fixing to happen. How do we protect all
(04:16):
these athletes and visitors. I mean your mind must have
been reeling.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well like all of our minds. Mine was reeling. All
those questions were absolutely out there. We didn't know if
the bomber is going to strike again, We didn't know
where the bomber was from, if there was more than one,
if we were about to have a series of catastrophes.
So and then there was the question, as you said,
(04:43):
should the games even go on, which was a decision
that went to the highest levels conversation with the president.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
And I know for us in the you know, central
area in the command center, it was an unusual event
to watch APD, Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County, the GBI.
I mean, everybody's there and then all of a sudden,
the FBI swings in and it's a different day. I mean,
(05:12):
this was like nothing I had ever seen. And one
of the first things that struck me was all the witnesses.
They wanted their shoes, and I remember there were people
really upset by that, like they did not want to
give their shoes up. And that's something you didn't even
know was going to happen. There was no way to
prepare for it. But it was something that really upset people.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, it sure did. And of course one reason to
take their shoes. The main reason was people had shrapnel
in them, and so you want to check all shoes
for shrapnel. And it was just it was a crime scene.
The entire entirety of Centennial Park and its surroundings was
one large crime scene.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
One thing that sticks in my mind is law enforcement
own their hands and knees collect in every just scrap
piece of metal, not just nails that were intact, anything
they could find because they were going to rebuild that bomb.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's exactly right. There were law enforcement agents from all
branches on their knees, including SWAT members in full SWAT gear,
down on their knees. The area had been marked off
with concentric circles expanding from this place where the blast happened,
where the bomb was, so they could mark every area
(06:36):
into quadrants among those concentric circles, so they could chronicle
where every piece of scrapnel, every possible piece of the bomb,
every nail was, so that they could figure out even
the power of the buck blast and what had happened
is they reconstructed it later on. It was the site
to behold.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
It was, and to your point, it's one of the
largest crime scenes I've ever walked through, been a part of.
And it's the most number of victims, without question, that
were still on scene.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, it was you. I was, as I said, home sleeping,
but certainly was able to reconstruct the whole scene from
the hundreds and hundreds of interviews. But there were, as
you said, there are all the victims who were still there,
many on the ground, many or most bleeding. You had
ambulances rushing in, you had fire trucks rushing in, police
(07:32):
rushing in. And I remember talking with Bernie Keenan, who
was the deputy director of the GBI at that point.
He talked about driving in from the outskirts of Atlanta
and he was looking there was still smoke above the
Centennial Park and there were all the different colored lights
flashing into smoke, and he likened it to the Aurorus Borealis.
(07:53):
He said he'd never seen anything like that ever at
a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I will tell you it was. There were so many things.
I don't even know if I could put into words,
because at some point it was so loud, like all
the emergency vehicles you're talking about, people you know, saying
go here, do this, do that, And then there were
other times it was almost eerily quiet. It was a
strange event. And you know, of course we lost Alice Hawthorne,
(08:23):
she was killed in the blast, and her daughter, Fallon
was extremely injured and had to have surgery, and I
went to the hospital to be with Fallon for part
of the night the next night after surgery, you know,
And there's just so much that was happening, so fast,
and so much unknown, and like you're saying, we didn't
(08:44):
know if there was going to be another attack, We
didn't know how many people. All we knew is a
nine to one one call eleven words, and twenty minutes
later we have this event exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
And of course there's the Turkish journalist who died of
a hearted running to film the scene. Absolutely really two deaths.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Agreed, yes, agreed, because it would not have happened. He
would still be alive that day if not for that bomb.
I have no doubt about that. You're absolutely right. Let's
talk about the media. How quickly do you think the
media rushed a judgment very.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah. It was in a word, yes, everybody who's trying
to figure out who the bomber was. And as you know,
for the first couple of days, there are lots of
suspects out there and the media didn't have many names
to go on. But as soon as Richard Jule's name surfaced,
(09:47):
you know, there was a brush judgment. But to my mind,
both with the media and with many in law enforcement,
so there's there's a lot a lot of assuming going on.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, you know, I'm Southern, obviously, and I have always
told people, if Hollywood wants an idiot, they make them Southern,
and if they want a real idiot, they make them
a Southern police officer. So he was right for the
picking for that type of vulture because they just insulted him.
(10:22):
They called him names. I remember one newspaper they called
him the Bubba bomber. You're just hitting all cylinders, you know,
Let's talk about where he's from, let's talk about how
he looks, let's talk about what he did for a living.
And you know, people ran with it, and then unfortunately,
I think when the profiling started, they were making some
(10:45):
square pegs fit in those round holes.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, you're exactly right. And of course there was an
actual profile too, so I profiling people did on their
own in the media and in the public thinking about
this white Southern Scarity guard and former cap. There was
a profile out of Quantico, Virginia FBI Behavioral Science Units
(11:14):
it was called at the time, which was later derisively
referred to by some as a BS unit because they
got that one wrong. But there was a whole profile
explaining why Richard Jewel was very likely the bomber.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I remember part of it when they talked about tupperware
and I'm like, seriously, I mean, I've got some, every
one of my sisters has some, everybody I know's got some.
How can that be a major factor in what they're
printing for people to run with? And then, you know,
I think the way he carried himself, the way his
(11:49):
mama tried to speak out sometimes did not help them, right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I think sometimes things that Richard Jewel said and his
late mother Bobby said, set into the narrative. So did
the search when they searched his apartment, and he had
a lot of guns because he was in the law
enforcement guy and he liked guns. He liked to hunt,
but the fact that there were a lot of guns
fed into the narrative even more.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Here's one thing I want to point out. You did
one of the most stand up things I have ever
heard of in my life. I don't know that it
had ever been done before. But you wrote a letter.
And not only did you write it and sign it,
you hand delivered it. And that's why when I say
(12:41):
to people, you're one of the most ethical and kind people.
That proves it right there. Tell us a little bit
about how the letter came about.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
The letter came about because we had been investigating, we
being law enforcement, the bombing for quite some time, and
Richard Jeul in particular, hundreds and hundreds of FBI three
oh two's, that's what the reports are called. Three o
two's about Richard Jewele, the team that I put together
at the US Attorney's office, which included people who would
(13:11):
later go on to become US attorneys. Sally Yates and
she was later Deputy Attorney General. Dave Namius became a
US attorney as well. We all read through every FBI
three h two, every report. The more we read, the
more the stacks that we put in. Did he do it?
Didn't he do it? Started becoming much more pronounced in
(13:37):
the didn't do it stack because we were reading just
taking a look at at it objectively and not looking
to prove his guilt, but to see what happened. So
we had decided in our minds we just didn't think
he did it. So the letter came about because I
met with the head of the FBI in the Atlanta office,
(13:59):
Would Johnson, who's a completely stand up guy, and reviewed
everything and I said, what do you need for us
to say he didn't do this? Figure out whether he
did it or not, and he said, we need to
interview Richard Jewel. So the letter came about after Jack
Martin Jeuwles defense attorney, and I spoke and Richard was
(14:20):
represented by other people too, including Watson, Bryan and Lynn Wood,
but Jack was the criminal defense attorney, and we just
had a handshake deal followed up by a letter. But
it was mainly a handshake deal that if Richard came
in and interviewed and the FBI and GBI could interview
him with one attorney from our office, a guy John
(14:40):
Davis was on my staff sitting in that we would
then take three weeks. I think it was to follow
up on that interview and if there wasn't evidence strong
evidence that he was the guy who was the bomber,
then I said I would I'd make that announcement. So
(15:02):
the interview happened, and in fact, many people have probably
seen the movie. The movie's more or less like the interview,
but they had to do with the movie version, so
it was much shorter in the movie. It was several
hours in real life. Then all the investigation started anew
based on any leads they took from Richard Jewel, and
after three weeks, the FBI and our office, the US
(15:25):
Attorney's office, and really Woody and I and everyone around
us met We reviewed everything, and then Woody Johnson at
the FBI said, well, yeah, a deal is a deal.
This is what you said you do, and you've done it,
and we do not have strong evidence that he did it.
So some people at the FBIS and elsewhere still thought
he did it, but there was an evidence even to
(15:48):
go bring in front of the grand jury. So that's
when I just decided the best way to clear him
was to write a letter, and it was called a
non target letter, So I know, you know this your
listeners might not. In federal investigations, you can be a target,
which means there's a lot of evidence against you, and
you can probably be indicted maybe the subject to the investigation,
(16:09):
which means, well, you know it's maybe maybe not who knows,
or a witness, and what you want to do is
as a witness if you're a peuted defendant, because you
know that means you're never going to get indicted. So
the letter I wrote, it's called a non target letter,
So I said he wasn't a target, and then I said,
it's a very short letter. I said, and I hope
(16:30):
you will cooperate as a witness. So it's a way
to straddle the line between saying you're not a target
and also saying sort of saying you're a witness. And
I knew that when it went out, even though a
couple of defense turns were upset by the letter because
it wasn't it didn't say you're cleared, you didn't do it.
I knew that the media would with the same fervors
(16:51):
that many had used to say Richard Jewel was likely
the bomber would turn around and say this is a
clearance letter. And so that's what they did. I never
did a news conference after that. I did a news release,
but my goal was just to turn straight from that
to pivot to the investigation to find the real bomber.
And if I had gone on all these news stations,
(17:13):
national news, everybody wanted to interview, it would have been
a distraction as opposed to being able to turn to
make sure this bomber was found and didn't bomb again.
So that's the background in a long nutshell.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
When did you first hear the name Eric Robert Rudolph.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I heard the name after the Birmingham bombing, so it
would have been nineteen ninety eight. So there had been
three bombings. There was the Olympic bombing, there was the
other Side lounge bombing, which this mixed largely lesbian nightclub,
and there's the Sandy Springs abortion clinic bombing, family planning
(17:53):
center bombing. So those had happened while I was US attorney.
I left the office in late fall of nineteen ninety seven,
but I was keeping very close tabs on the investigation
because that had been my life since the Olympics, really
trying to find this bomber. So the first time I
heard the news was probably it was late January of
(18:17):
ninety eight, right after Eric Rudolph bombed another clinic, and
this one in Birmingham. As you know, there are witnesses
and his name ended up surfacing. So I was General
Counsel Emory University at that point, but still sort of
trying to be an arm chair prosecutor. Not that I
(18:38):
had any role in the case, but I called people
from the office to keep up with it, and that's
when I heard the name, and it became pretty clear
very early on that he was the guy. And at
that point Dave Namius, who had been the junior member
of the team at the Olympics on the Olympic bombing,
the prosecution team was US attorney. Sally Yates, who had
(18:59):
been member of the prosecution team, was the first assistant
US attorney, so the second in charge. So the two
of them had been with it the entire time, and
it was nice talking with them just to keep up
with what was going.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
On, and they knew it from ground level.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, they remembered, and also they had all the evidents.
So Eric Rudolf's name never surfaced until the Birmingham bombing
of the hundreds. And I really mean hundreds of suffects
who are out there who came and went. His name
wasn't on any list. In fact, in the book that
Kevin Saltwin and I wrote, we noted that a lot
(19:38):
of a lot of agents were scrambling to take a
look at their logs, their investigated logs, to make sure
they didn't have that lead assigned to them to investigate
Eric Rudolf, because that would be not just an egg,
but the entire omelet on your face. And it turns
out nobody had his name because he had lived completely
off the grid. So getting back to your point on
(19:59):
Dave Sally, the two of them knew all the evidence.
So by the time this fourth bombing happened and they
got the shrapnel and other things from the bombing, there's
they had a pretty good idea of that this was
the same guy.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Same guy, right, And you know the first the Olympic bombing,
that was the largest pipe bomb in North America, and
it had some elements to it that I think we
were lucky because he really didn't know what he was
doing because only one of them went off, not all
(20:40):
three pips.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well we'll never know what really went off and what
didn't but you're right, we were lucky. But in part
the luck happened because of the way the backpack had
been tipped over. Ye backpack, if you remember, had a
directional plate, correct, a metal plate that went in the
(21:01):
back and at one part of the backpack, and the
whole bomb would basically explode against the directional plate, and
the idea was that the shrapnel would then spray directly
into the crowd. But what happened is Richard Jewel actually
bothered some kids who were drinking and carrying on, and
he kicked them out. And before they left, they went
(21:23):
and they kicked this bag, the alice packed the military
pack of the bomb. They tried to lift it to
see if they have maybe had beer they could take
with them, and then they kicked it and it tipped over,
so the directional plate was actually on its back, facing
straight up skyward. Had it stayed where it was originally
a positioned, the blast would have gone straight into the crowd.
(21:46):
And of course that night there were fifty thousand people
in that park, so you can only imagine how many
people would have died. So there was a lot of luck.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
That night, a lot of luck. And I will take
that every time. Really, instead of imploding and exploding, it
became the largest roaming candle.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, it was this big arc that went skyward but
also to the side, which is why Alice Hawthorne, who
you mentioned was was killed by because she was hit
by shrap and I was like a machine gun and
fired at her. But that same machine gun that was
a lower part of that arc, would have gone full
throttle into the entire crowd, So there would have been
(22:28):
a lot of Alice Hawthorne's.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
That's right, no question. When did you decide to write
the book.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I had it in my mind after I left the
US Attorney's office that sometime when I was really old,
even older than I am now, that I would write
a book because I thought there was it was such
an extraordinary time, and there were things that I knew
that I knew other people didn't know. But I also
knew that there was so much that went on that
I had I hadn't a clue about. So I decided
(23:00):
after I left the office late nineteen ninety seven, at
some point down the road, i'd write a book. The
point where I really decided that I was going to
move forward on it was when a federal judge named
Owen Forrester passed away and I went to his funeral.
Owen Forrester or Judge Forrester, was the judge who heard
some of Richard Jules's case and when they were trying
(23:22):
to get the AJC to the Atlanta Drunk Constitution to
turn information over and other things, and I appeared in
front of him on that case, in a lot of others.
But when I went to his funeral, I looked around
and some of the players from the bombing were there.
But I also realized I was fairly young as a
US attorney, and a lot of the people like Judge
Forrester were not as young and working to be around forever.
(23:45):
So that's the point where I decided, I think it's
time to write this book. So it was a lot
earlier than I intended, but I was, but it was something.
It was like it was a dream I had that
I decided to try to realize earlier and planned.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
And you interviewed a ton of people. I mean, you
laid it out beautifully, and you know, it's almost like
putting the case together. I mean the way it reads,
it's like you're telling us something and then you're backing
it up, and you're telling us something and you're backing
it up. So it was not only easy to follow,
but it was also clear as a beil what occurred
(24:24):
at every stage of this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah. Well, we tried to tell a story in a
way people could relate to, and it's written as a
narrative nonfiction book it's called so it's written like a novel.
The whole thing's character driven. Of course, Richard Jule's the
main character. That there's this wild AJAC reporter, journalists, there's
the FBI and who made the case that wasn't and
(24:49):
there was Eric Rudolph. So we've got these intertwined characters.
As you know, we talked about their lives, but lay
out the evidence as told through their lives, so it's
not like an encyclopedia account. Instead, it's more like a
movie that it turned into. So we tried to make
it both both educational and historical, but a fun read.
(25:15):
So that was the goal.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Did you find when you really got into the whole
Eric Rudolph, his lifestyle, his background, the bombings, the places
that he selected, were you pretty clear about a motive
before it was put out there? Or were you kind
(25:38):
of surprised about his motive?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Pretty clear early on that hit what he claimed was
his motive, which was hated abortions and all of that
was a beard that wasn't really what it was after
And what was clear to me by the second bombing,
when he had sucker bombs for the second and third
(26:00):
bombing at the Sandy Springs clinic and at the other
side lounge, and by way, when I say sucker bombs,
they're also called secondary devices. A bomb went off, and
then as you know, there was a time that lagged
and all the law enforcement came in, and then the
second bomb went off where the bomber knew there would
be law enforcements. So I figured that the guy hated
(26:23):
the government, and it turns out he did. So it
became more nuanced what he was doing and why he
was doing things, but through his own writings, because not
only were there two books written on him biographies of
him and the bombing, but afterwards he wrote his autobiography,
(26:43):
so we had three accounts, really thorough accounts. So by
the end I had an even better idea. As I
say that the nuances of it, but at art at
the root, he doesn't trust the government. He hates the government,
and he is he wanted this kind of an anarchist.
He just thought by bombing the Olympics that everybody would
(27:05):
start joining in and then suddenly there would just be
mass protests and the government would be undermined.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And that's what the nine one one call is about.
He thought he gave plenty of time for all the
first responders to get there and be harmed.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Exactly so the nine one one calls. He called and said,
there's a bomb in Centennial Park, and you have twenty minutes,
I think he said. So. His assumption was that based
on all the planning that you and I and everyone did,
the word would have had immediately and everyone would evacuate,
law enforcement would come in and look. But as it
(27:41):
turns out, as you know, there was a screw up
with the nine to one one system. The message did
not get to the park, so the bomb goes off
with all the civilians. I don't know that Eric Ruff
didn't plan to kill civilians too. I think he would
probably just view that as necessary casualties side casualties. But
(28:04):
he clearly wanted law enforcement on the spot, on the scene,
and then he tried three more times, especially.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
When he got to Birmingham. He changed it up because
he used the remote control in Birmingham.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, because he was kind of the bomber who couldn't
bomb straight. He kept trying to kill law enforcement and
he wasn't succeeding. He injured law enforcement at the Sandy
Springs clinic, but when it came to the Birmingham bombing,
he literally had a remote control, so he had planted
the device right outside the doorway. Off duty police officer
(28:41):
went over bent over a bush, this fake bush t
kind of thing. He got at a store to poke
at it to see what it was, and then Eric
Rudolph was looking with binoculars from a distance, pressed the
button and just blew M to smithereens. It was just horrible.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
You mentioned luck. You know there was a car, a
squad car parked near the secondary bomb that took the
majority of those nails. I mean that would have killed
I don't know how many first responders, certainly severely injuring.
Who knows how many.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
In fact, yeah, there was an FBI agent who was
on the phone with somebody in my office in the
US Attorney's office just before that bomb went off, and
the bomb went off, and the phone goes dead. And
it turns out the agent was standing right on the
(29:42):
other side of the car with the bomb in between.
The car was in between the bomb and him. The
car lifted off the ground, we found out later, and
the agent got hurt and lost hearing and I think
permanently in one air here, but he was yeah, he
would have been dead, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And I know by the time our team got there again,
it was a scene almost like out of some movie.
I mean it was it was like a war zone again,
nothing like we had ever seen. And of course that
was a different avenue. And I remember one young woman
when I got to her, she said cover my face.
(30:24):
And I instinctively I was like, honey, you're fine. You're
gonna be okay. I mean, she had some injuries, but
it wasn't going to kill her. And she was like, no, no,
cover my face. And I said, I am right here.
You are going to be fine. They're about to put you,
you know, in the amulets and they're going to take
care of you. She grabbed my shirt, pulled me to
(30:45):
her and said cover my face. That was the first
time kent that it dawned on me, some of these
victims are being outed because the media is here. It
had not crossed my mind before. And then I was like,
oh girl, I got you, okay, so we're gonna cover
you up because you know, she was from a smaller
(31:06):
town and she had a job that wasn't going to
understand why she was in Atlanta and where she was at.
So you know, again I.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Tell you there was there's a teachers conference in town.
That's right. There's a lot of the teachers were there,
and that's right. They were really worrying. It was another
it was another era, another time when it people have
just had to go undercover.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's right, that's right out themselves. And that was again
a learning experience for me. And I tell every you know,
rookie and every young detective I can find, you're going
to be taught some great lessons that you never thought coming.
I mean, I was there thinking, oh, I'm doing such
a great thing, and I'm not doing a great thing.
(31:48):
I'm not helping her the way she needed me to
help her. So lesson learn. So let me ask you this.
When you're doing these one hundred and fifty plus interviews,
did anybody surprise you. Was there anything that they told
you you didn't know prior to talking to them.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I think almost every interview had a surprise because if
you think about it, you and I Seryl with law enforcements.
So we saw one side of this equation. But there's
also the side from the media and what they're seeing.
There's a side from Richard Jewell and his team what
(32:29):
they're seeing, there's the public. So you start talking to
different people who have different perspectives. So I learned from
the media and Richard Jewels team a lot of things
I didn't know, but even talking with FBI agents and
GBI agents and a lot of police officers and others,
I learned things because you can only be in one
(32:50):
room at a time, and they're always they're all in
different rooms. So it was a way to He's together
a much richer story than anyone person could ever know.
So short answer, I really think we learned something from
every single interview that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Doesn't necessarily shock me, but kinda. I mean, that's incredible.
So you go on, you write the book. When does
Clint Eastwood call honey?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah? That was wild. So we knew there was a
movie that was underway, but it wasn't a Clint Eastwood movie.
I turned the Initially it was a movie that was that.
It was through Disney and they were they talked with
a sum when another director who had been slavey to it,
(33:42):
Ezra Adelman, who did the documentary OJ Maiden America. He
won an Academy Award for it. Great director, brilliant guy.
The Clint Eastwood piece came around because when Ezra Aidelman
was going to be the director, he took a look
at the script and said I need more. And then
he reached out because he heard we were writing a book.
(34:04):
We did a PowerPoint presentation for him and he just said,
I need your book. And at that point I think
we had five chapters written. He said I don't care.
I need your book. So he said, I need to
talk to your film agent or his producer called up
and I'd never never even met a film agent in
my life. So we scrambled and found somebody. So originally
the deal we did was with Disney, but then Warner
(34:29):
Brothers bought the whole project because Clint Eastwood decided he
wanted to do the movie. So they had a new director,
a new studio. We just came with the package and
initially got no calls from Warner Brothers, but we talked
with their producers. I sent an email to him and
I said, so, I don't know, maybe you've got the
(34:49):
hundreds of personal photographs we have from Richard Jewele's collection.
Maybe you have the actual videotape of the interview that
the FBI did with Richard Jewel when they gave the
Miranda rights the wrong way and it was everything went sideways.
You know, maybe you've got you've talked to one hundred,
one hundred and fifty plus people we've talked to. And
(35:09):
then I got a call right back saying could we
meet with you and Kevin, my co author, like tomorrow.
So we met with them, and that's when we ended
up getting on board with Clint Eastwood because they decided
they really wanted a lot of the information we had.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
That's unreal, unreal.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Ya, it was, it was. It was pinch pinched myself, unreal. Yeah,
we were writing a book thinking, well, there's some movie
going on to be part of it. Next thing, you know,
we're part of one movie and the next thing, you know,
it's a different movie. But a clinice Wood directed the movie.
So yeah, there was a lot of fun stuff that
went on with the movie after that. It was great.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
And let me tell you, that movie was so good.
I thought it was fantastic. But you know, I was
a little sad because Richard Jewel died before the movie
came out, and I just thought, well, you know what,
he would love this because it vindicates him. I know
from Dana. He was a huge Clint Eastwood fan, and
(36:09):
I think it would have really done a lot for
him on a personal level.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right, and Dana knows better
than anybody. Also Richard's mother, who would have said the
same thing. He died, of course, at forty four, very young.
The reporter who broke the story that he was the suspect,
the aj Seerborg, died at forty two. The FBI agent
who made the case that wasn't died at fifty seven,
(36:38):
which used to seem old to me. That doesn't seem
so old. So there's a Shakespearean aspect to the entire
story because you've got all the key characters who are
gone and ironically and unfortunately, the one character who's still
alive out of the main characters, is Eric Rudolph, the
one who really doesn't deserve to be Frankly.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Of course, because this is a track. Of course, he's
still here.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
If I were able to interview Richard Jewel, the first
thing I would do is the same thing I did
when I met him the first time, which is the
morning of the bombing. I was at Centennial Park, went
to the FBI command center, and then drove to Centennial Park.
Alice Hawthorne's body was still veiled out on the plaza is.
(37:24):
A light came up, somebody pointed out Richard Jewel and said,
that's the security guard who found the bomb. So I
went up to him and I shook his hand, and
I said, missus Jewel, I want to say thank you.
If I had a chance to interview him down later
and he was still alive and talk to him about
this movie, I would just tell him thank you again
(37:45):
because he was because he was a hero. What he
did saved a lot of lives.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Amen, Ken't, Alexander, I cannot thank you for the time
that I was able to work with you, and what
you showed me and what you did for not just
the city of Atlanta during the Olympics, but what you
have done for so many people across the United States.
I just want to say again, thank you so.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Much, Thank you Chel for all you've done too.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven the way that
I always do with a quote. Today I have delivered
a letter to Council for Richard Jewel advising him that,
based on the evidence developed to date, mister Jewel is
not a target of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing investigation.
(38:37):
US Attorney Kent Alexander. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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