Speaker 1: Imagine you're walking through the park one day and you
Speaker 1: see a suspicious backpack sitting underneath a bench. You report
Speaker 1: it to the police, and upon investigation, they discovered two
Speaker 1: live pipe bombs inside. You rushed clear the area before
Speaker 1: they explode, saving countless lives and preventing injury. Everyone declares
Speaker 1: you a hero for a fleeting moment, until everything changes
Speaker 1: and you are declared the prime suspect. This was the
Speaker 1: story of security card Richard Jewell after the Centennial Park
Speaker 1: bombing killed one person and wounded more than one hundred.
Speaker 1: Public pressure and a media witch hunt pushed a desperate
Speaker 1: FBI to find a suspect. Despite obvious holes in the
Speaker 1: case and unethical tactics used by the FBI to get
Speaker 1: Jewel to confess, he was found guilty. In the newest
Speaker 1: season of Generation Y, the Olympic Park Bombing, hosts Aaron
Speaker 1: and Justin explore the aftermath of the nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Listen as they delve into the
Speaker 1: details of the case, the sway of public opinion, and
Speaker 1: the identity of the real killer, who, after a year's
Speaker 1: long manhunt, was apprehended through pure luck and was found
Speaker 1: to be responsible for other bombings across the United States.
Speaker 1: I'm about to play a clip from Generation Why the
Speaker 1: Olympic Park bombing. Follow Generation Why on the Wondery app
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Wonder we just went through an Olympics. But the case
Speaker 2: we're talking about today, it involves the nineteen ninety six
Speaker 2: Olympic Games. And to give you some idea of what
Speaker 2: was happening at the time, the first Motorola flip phone
Speaker 2: is on the market, and the beloved Forensic Files has
Speaker 2: premiered on television. And on July nineteenth, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, Georgia, the world celebrated one hundred years of
Speaker 2: the Summer Olympic Games.
Speaker 3: So a week later, on July twenty sixth, we have
Speaker 3: over fifty thousand people gathered for this free concert at
Speaker 3: Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park. It's twenty one acres. The Olympic
Speaker 3: Park was open to all visitors to walk through and
Speaker 3: explore and enjoy the music. And at around midnight, the
Speaker 3: band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack went on break
Speaker 3: And this is where things get interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a man named Richard Jewell who was
Speaker 2: working security in Olympic Park during the early morning hours
Speaker 2: of July twenty seventh, seven college aged intoxicated guys wandered
Speaker 2: over to two park benches near the control tower. Five
Speaker 2: on one bench and two on the other. Now, they
Speaker 2: pulled out some Budweisers from a large cooler bag, and
Speaker 2: that caught the attention of Richard Jewell. He's working security,
Speaker 2: so he flagged down Tom Davis, who was a Georgia
Speaker 2: Bureau of Investigations agent GBI, and asked for assistance. The
Speaker 2: men left the area, and after they did, Jewel's looking
Speaker 2: around and he sees a military style backpack under one
Speaker 2: of the benches. Now, of course this group they catch
Speaker 2: up to him. They want to know, hey, did you
Speaker 2: leave this bag behind? And they're saying, we didn't leave
Speaker 2: anything behind. Now, Jewel and Davis then rule this as
Speaker 2: a suspicious package because it's been left behind, and the
Speaker 2: GBI agent Tom alerted the bomb squad at around twelve
Speaker 2: forty five am. Richard Jewell also notified his supervisor, Bob Airing.
Speaker 3: And there's an interview with Richard who says the GBI
Speaker 3: officer was looking at this bag and moving his flash
Speaker 3: lad around and when he froze. That's when I knew
Speaker 3: this was a bad thing and they needed to call
Speaker 3: in the bomb squad.
Speaker 2: So they clear a perimeter. While the bomb squad arrives
Speaker 2: and the bag is inspected, one squad member crawled under
Speaker 2: the bench, looking inside it with a pen light, and
Speaker 2: then slowly crawled back. According to this squad member, the
Speaker 2: bag contained wires and a clock, making a large pipe bomb.
Speaker 2: A bomb expert opened the knapsack and identified the object
Speaker 2: inside as a forty pound pipe bomb filled with nails.
Speaker 3: So they're evacuating the premises. Davis and Erring focused on
Speaker 3: clearing out the crowd directly in front of the knapsack.
Speaker 3: Airing made sure not to use words like bomb because
Speaker 3: he didn't want to cause any panic. The crowd mostly
Speaker 3: cooperated and moved back. Richard went up to the NBC
Speaker 3: sound tower and had to tell the tech crew working
Speaker 3: there to get out. He came back outside to try
Speaker 3: to evacuate more people, but some refused to comply and
Speaker 3: stayed at their benches near the tower. They didn't want
Speaker 3: to lose their seats, I guess. At twelve fifty eight am,
Speaker 3: nine point one received a call from a telephone booth
Speaker 3: about five blocks away from the park. A man and
Speaker 3: on the line stated there is a bomb in Centennial Park.
Speaker 3: You have thirty minutes, and about twenty minutes later, as
Speaker 3: Jack Mack and the heart Attack finish their song I
Speaker 3: Walk Alone, the bomb exploded.
Speaker 1: You can listen to Generation Y the Olympic Park bombing
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Speaker 1: Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.