Inside Atlanta Olympics Bombing 28 Years Later, the Tragedy that Killed 2 and Unjustly Vilified a Hero

The 2024 Summer Olympic Games are underway in Paris, as the world gets set to celebrate the greatest athletes in the world. But nearly 30 years ago, the world was stunned when a bomb killed two people and injured more than 100 others during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.

The infamous bombing sparked a years-long hunt for the suspect, during which authorities falsely named Richard Jewell a suspect, before eventually clearing him of any wrongdoing. The actual culprit wouldn’t be caught until years later.

Before Jewell was named a person of interest, however, he was heralded as a hero. Jewell was working as a security guard at the ‘96 Olympics, when he noticed a green pack sitting under a bench in Centennial Olympic Park in Downtown Atlanta just before 1 a.m. on July 27, PEOPLE previously reported.

After Jewell and a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent unsuccessfully tried to locate the owner of the pack, the agent reported it as suspicious and a perimeter was created.

A minute later, a man called 911, saying a bomb had been placed in the park and warning, "You have 30 minutes." But the homemade device was mistimed, and the bomb detonated at 1:20 a.m., only several minutes into the evacuation, before many people could leave.

Two people were killed as a result of the blast. Alice Hawthorne, 44, was in the park with her daughter at the time and was killed by shrapnel. Her 14-year-old daughter, Fallon, survived.

A 40-year-old Turkish cameraman and father of two named Melih Uzunyol died of a heart attack, which authorities said was “precipitated” by the bombing, as he rushed to take pictures of the scene, PEOPLE previously reported.

111 others were injured, some of whom suffered head and chest injuries. Jewell was not seriously hurt.

Soon after, Jewell was applauded for being the one who discovered the bomb and credited with helping save lives. But the attention would soon sour.

Unbeknownst to Jewell, not even 24 hours after the bombing the chief of the Piedmont College Police Department, where the security guard had previously worked, had tipped off the FBI that Jewell had owned books about making bombs. Authorities then began looking into Jewell.

On July 30, Jewell was interviewed by Katie Couric and he was still considered a hero. But later that day, a report appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that changed everything.

Jewell’s name had been leaked to a reporter, who wrote that the FBI was investigating him and that he fit the profile they had developed of the bomber.

Though he was never arrested, Jewell became the subject of an intense media storm. After nearly three months, Jewell was finally exonerated when federal authorities said he was no longer a person of interest.

While Jewell filed several libel lawsuits, the FBI struggled to identify the actual suspect. 

Eventually, authorities zeroed in on Eric Rudolph, an anti-government terrorist, who placed three more bombs after the Olympic park one, injuring several others and killing a police officer, according to the FBI.

Rudolph was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in 1998 and he would remain on the loose for five years.

According to the FBI, Rudolph was arrested while rummaging through a trash bin in rural North Carolina in 2003. Two years later he would ultimately plead guilty to several charges related to the four bombings and was given multiple life sentences.

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Jewell died in 2007. His ordeal was adapted into the 2019 film Richard Jewell, directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Paul Walter Hauser in the title role. The film itself was not without controversy, due to its portrayal of reporter Kathy Scruggs, who co-wrote the original article naming Jewell as a person of interest.

During his 1996 interview with Couric, before he was publicly considered a suspect, Jewell said he was just trying to do the right thing.

“I feel like I am a person that did the job that I was supposed to do,” he said. “I was in the right place at the right time and used my training in the way I was taught.”