Doomed to Fail - Ep 121 - The Olympics Part 4: Richard Jewell & the Atlanta 1996 Bombing

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

In our final episode on The Olympics, Taylor tells the story of Olympic Hero Richard Jewell. Jewell was a "law-enforcement" type of guy who, despite being fired from law enforcement, would take any opportunity to tell you that he had 'scanned the perimeter' and 'knew how to diffuse a bomb.' In July 1996 he was working security at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta when a bomb very much did go off at 1:20am. Richard was a hero, getting people out of the way and cooperating with the cops.Unfortunately, in a rush to judgment, the FBI decided he was also the perfect suspect and decided to ruin his life. It wouldn't be until 2003 that the actual bomber was apprehended.  Sources:The SuspectAmerican Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/1fd2d7ae-10d8-474b-9bf1-d1558af697behttps://la.curbed.com/2018/7/12/17454676/los-angeles-olympics-homeless-police-militarization-securityhttps://nolympicsla.com/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-10-05-me-1099-story.htmlhttps://www.facebook.com/thesuspectbook  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are back. Hi, Taylor. How are you? Good. Fars. How are you? I am doing well as always.

Do you want to go ahead and introduce us before I start bantering? Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Doomed to Fail. We have a podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week every week. And we had a story about serial killers from South America on Monday. And then today I am going to finish my series on the Olympics. Are you excited?

I am very, very excited. I will also note that we are waiting for a hurricane to hit Texas. And so if you're in the path to hurricane, get out of the path go somewhere else do something different that's it it's not gonna hit you it's gonna hit you

it's gonna rain if you're like it's gonna rain if you're in Houston yeah if you're like Houston Galveston area like it's not gonna be good I think that like what we're gonna experience

it's gonna be a ton of rain which is great we need it but yeah hopefully it doesn't beer any further off so TBD I mean it is record hot here it's like just you can't even go outside

it's in the one-tens. Seriously? It's terrible. So here it is, right now, it's 100, and it's 6 o'clock at night. Every day this week, it's going to be, okay, it goes back to 90 next week. Every day this week is going to be over 100. Today, the high was 107. So hot.

That is worse than here, which is really weird. Usually we get it, Texas gets it worse, but. It's humid there, and it's not humid here. But Palm Springs is, right now it's 111 tomorrow's high high is 117 Paul Springs is so hot so bad I'm like I don't know how how much longer can we go on like this it's I mean yeah yeah you know like what do yeah he's gonna just go up forever and then like we can't live here I think so I think that's probably the most likely outcome unfortunately yeah I don't what a bummer but we'll see what

happens. But yeah, no, it's bad. It looks like it's going to It looks like it's going to rain for you tomorrow. It's so dumb. Sorry, everyone. Rane for you tomorrow, but that's it. It's only 65% chance of rain. So. Still, can I claim to be a victim

of this hurricane or no? Sure, sure, sure, sure. Go ahead. Thank you. Um, okay. And today so yeah, we're going to get into part four of Olympics. This is the last one you said, right? Uh, yeah. I can't do it anymore more. Has it been that trying for you? Well, I just feel like I've learned a bunch of these.

There's just like so much more that I would like to talk about. And I'm not going to get to it. And that is a bummer, you know? But I'm like, with every Olympics, there's like all these little stories. So I'm not going to talk about like all the doping scandals. I'm not going to get to the Winter Olympics things like Cool Runnings and Nancy Kerrigan. Maybe in two years in 2026 when they're having the Olympics in Milan. I can come back to those, you know?

Yeah, Nancy Kerrigan was a fun one. Yeah, no, definitely we should talk about that, but like it didn't even, not even going to get to it. Because today, in our final installment, we were going to talk about the Atlanta bombing in 1996 and Richard Jewell, who is the man who was suspected of being bomber. Poor bastard. Poor bastard, Jesus.

So we've talked about the origins of the Olympics, We talked about Pierre de Cupertine, who brought them back. It's kind of fun because now every book I read recaps what the Olympics are, and I'm like, oh, we already know all that, which is fun. We know about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. We know about the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and now we'll focus on 1996. So some of the things that happened between 1980, which is where we cut it off last time and now,

just to kind of go through what they had, In 1980, the Winter Olympics were in Lake Placid in the United States, and that was the Miracle on Ice. And I know there's a movie with, is it Kurt Russell? Probably. I think it's probably called Miracle on Ice, but the U.S. team beats the Soviet Union, and it's very exciting. In the 1984, L.A. Summer Olympics, actually.

And so the 1984 Winter Olympics were in Sarajevo. The Summer Olympics were in L.A. And those are the ones that I wanted to talk about just a little bit. So some fun things that happened there, Mary Lou Retton became the first American woman to win an individual all around gold medal in gymnastics. So that was super exciting. She's like super cute. I was like a little 80s short hair. That was a big deal.

There is a woman named Madeline de Jesus. And she had an identical twin sister who was also in the Olympics. And Madeline hurt herself during the long jump. So she had her sister pretend to be her during the relay. Seriously? just super fun yeah and they got caught and then they got the metal taken away but like that's hilarious um and and kind of fun um the opening ceremony for the LA Olympics was in the um it's called the Coliseum in by UCLA yeah that was Muhammad Ali was the one who lit he lit he lit at the end um no no that was in Atlanta was it okay yeah yeah yeah no he did it in 1996 but I don't I don't know who did it in LA but there was a guy in a jet pack i don't know if you ever seen this video watch it later um just google

1984 olympics jetpack it's like the late it's so lame he just like kind of goes up in the air like 10 feet and like moves around and it's just like hilarious and like very fun you can you can look it up now jetpack guy 84 olympics um so i wanted to mention that like this in general because obviously as you know the olympics are coming to l a l a again um is is it so this is not a jet pack so he's not actually being propelled by a jet pack he's just on a string or wire? No, it's a jetpack. Isn't it?

Like from the bottom. I mean, there's no flames coming out of it. I don't know this. I don't pretend to know the science, the schematics behind jet packs. Okay. Got it. But.

But. So, Olympics, as we know, is coming back to L.A. in 2028. And I found a website called no Olympics, L.A.com that goes over all the Olympics, all the reasons why L.A. shouldn't have it. There's a lot of them, obviously, like we've talked about how having the Olympics, like a bunch of on-house people

get displaced. You know, it doesn't really help the community. It costs a lot of money. The 1984 Olympics actually was one that, like, made some money for the city because they had just insane sponsorships and things that they hadn't had before. But there's also an article that I'll put into our sources from the nation. It's called Want to Understands the 1992 L.A. riots start with the 1984 L.A. Olympics. So the gist is that the police got so much funding. So this is like a couple years. Well, it's like a decade after Munich, but they want it to be like, you're safe because there's so many police here, right? So they were just like a huge police presence with tanks with all this stuff. And the police became like very aggressive because they had so much money being funneled into them. And that would eventually lead to. Rodney King. Yeah. That's, I'm on the no Olympics page and that's, yeah, what they're saying is likely going to

happen this time. So, yeah. So it's fair to say that they were like worried that something might happen during that time. It went off without anything really terrible happening. There was a thing where, and this is important for our story, an officer, a police officer named Jimmy Wade Pearson discovered a bomb on a bus. And he like very heroically took out of the bus and like ripped all of the cords off.

in a movie but um it wasn't a real bomb he had planted it to be a hero so oh so there was some precedent for yeah yeah yeah okay i didn't know that exactly yeah so it had it had happened it happened recently and in the u.s so just kind of remember yeah remember that that had happened so that's nice to 84 in 1988 the winter olympics were in calgary canada this is the cool running's olympics and the eddie the eagle olympics um so like silly comedy movie Olympics. Those happen then. In the Summer Olympics in 1988, they were in Seoul, South Korea. And Ben Johnson won the men's 100-meter sprint, but he was disqualified for doping, giving the gold to Carl Lewis. And Carl Lewis is going to dominate track and field in like the next four to five Olympics. In 1992, they were in Albertville, France. And the Summer Olympics were in Barcelona, Spain. This was the dream team Olympics when Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson got to to actually like and crew got to actually be in the Olympics. And also I posted something about I have this amazing CD called Barcelona Gold and had all this like great 90s music on it. So that also

happened during 1992. Not that it matters, but I thought it was really fun. In 94, they were in Lillehammer Norway in 1996. They were in Atlanta, which we'll talk about in a second. Some fun things that happened during that one. I think the funnest is Carrie Strug. Do you remember when she did the vault with her hurt ankle. Oh my God. Yeah. How excited it was. She did the vault, where she landed in her ankle, right? Was that the one? No, it was already hurt. Oh, it was. It was already

hurt. And then she landed on one foot because it was hurt, you know? Yeah, I remember that. And then like the coach carried her to get to get the gold. It was like a whole thing. So that was super exciting and cute. And then in 1988, I don't know where that was. In 2000, they were in Japan and in Australia.

2002, they were in Salt Lake City. So in the U.S., in 2004, the Summer Olympics were in Athens, Greece, and that's when Michael Phelps comes on stage. He won six gold and two bronze medals in his first Olympics. And then in 2008, they'll be in Beijing. Usain Bolt, that's his first Olympics. He won three gold medals. Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in 2008. I remember that.

Incredible. In 2010, yeah. these um the dream team if you look up the scores that they racked up against other countries it's just like dumb it's so stupid yeah so the one game june 28th national 22 u.s. points 136 to cuba's 57 oh my god i mean i'm shocked they even got 57 actually me too so kudos to them one day you're just like playing a basketball team and the next day they're like oh hey michael Jordan's here against you, good luck. And you're like, I remember being a kid and playing at the YMCA, like the basketball.

Every now and then it's like, it's like, the other kids will, like, the other team will have someone that's like crazy good and crazy dominant. It's like nobody wants to guard that guy. It's like, nobody wants to be the guy who like is obviously going to lose the game for you. And I just can't imagine being like this Cuban team. I mean, like, so who's got Michael Jordan? Yeah, yeah. Do you want to cover him?

You want Michael Jordan or do you want Carl Malone or do you want Patrick Ewing or do you want Scottie Pippen? Who do you want to cover today? It's like what a nightmare. I don't know this is not news, but man, these guys are tall. Patrick Ewing is seven feet tall. It's just so tall. Insane. Yeah, so that was a really fun year for America. What else? So just in general, 2012, Gabby Douglas, she's the first African-American woman to win. the gold medal in gymnastics, which is super exciting. They're in Russia

in 2014. They're in Rio in 2016, where Simone Biles comes to stage. She wins four gold medals and won bronze. Usain Bolt completed the triple-triple. He won the 100, 200, and 4x100 relay for the

third Olympics in the row. Like, he's just insane. He's so fast. Out of control. That's what he's doing for. Then they were in Pyongcheng, South Korea and then they were in Tokyo. I think it's super cool of Simone Biles that she withdrew because she was having

mental health issues. I think that was a good, you know, the thing for her to do, take care of herself. So she did that, but she's back this year. And then in 2022, they were in Beijing. And then this year, of course, they're in Paris. I'll let you know. I'll do a follow-up if anything crazy happens.

But I'm following so many Olympics accounts on her Instagram. It's wild. And I'm excited about track, of course. And swimming, Katie Ledecki's back. She's insane. Every, like the top 15 records for her events are all her. She's just like out of control. There's also a woman's rugby player named Alona Mayer, who I love. She's a great Instagram account. She's super, I can be super excited about that. And I only know about women. I don't know. That's also what's happening on our algorithm. But a woman named Sunny Choi is on our breakdown. team. There's 16 men and 16 women. And Sunday Choi, I watched a little documentary on her. She was a global marketing director at S. Day Lauder and quit to be on this breakdancing team,

which is really fun for her. And I'm excited. He's a breakdancing. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what's coming up in the next, I don't know, a couple of weeks when it actually starts. But let's talk about 1996. So Fars, it's 1996. You are a preteen. I'm a little 12-year-old fars. A little farce. So lest we start thinking that our times are uniquely turbulent, all times are turbulent. And the lead up to the 1996 Olympics, a bunch of crazy shit's happening like in the world. So there's a few things that you have to remember that backdrop this story.

And they happen in quick succession. So in August 1992, there's Ruby Ridge. And you know about that, right? Oh, yeah. Yep. Do you want to say what that is? That was when the FBI and the Bureau of Tobacco Firearms rated this compound where this white nationalist was living

with his family off the grid and sure he's a bad person overall whatever but he wasn't actually committing any crimes it was entrapment and they ended up actually killing his wife I think they might have killed this kid and arrest the guy Ruby Ridge was basically the precursor and the setup to domestic terrorism, as we know it. Like that was the T-Up to the Olympic bomb, or the, God, what was it, Timothy McVeigh bombing?

Yeah, and all that stuff. Exactly, exactly. Thank you. Exactly right. Because in April 1993 is the Waco, Branch Davidian standoff that ended up, you know, killing a bunch of those folks in that cult. At April, 1985, is Oklahoma City bombing. So there's a lot of like domestic terrorism, like you said, and a lot of like tension between the government and people who want to live off the grid. So that's what's happening right now.

And so that's in the zeitgeist. There's also one thing that happens right before the Olympics start. On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded 12 minutes after takeoff. Have you heard about this one? That's not Lockerbie, is it? no so it it was flying to rome from jfk via paris so it was headed to paris for a layover and it ended it being just like a short circuit in the engine so the flight took off fine 12 minutes later other planes were calling in saying this on explosion in the sky and the the burning wreckage was on

on the ocean um everyone died um like almost 300 people died uh in addition to the people on the plane like you know one of the groups on the plane was a group of 16 students and five adult chaperones from the french club of montorsville high school and pennsylvania and that is inspiration for final destination no way yeah which is kind of fun because fun because it's like a group of kids go into france you know and then they're at plane explodes so great those movies are awesome everybody should see they're so good they're great i love all of them um at the first time i saw them i was so scared i wanted i didn't know what to do but then i was I need to face my fear and watch them, and they're great.

When they tied the last one, exactly, they pinned it all together. Yeah, I was like, this is way, you didn't have to do that. But you did. We loved it anyways, but man, y'all really care about us. Thank you, Final Destination creators. Yeah, so this is the inspiration for it, which is a terrible tragedy. But, no, it's a tragedy. I think Andy Warhol's boyfriend was on the flight, a couple other, like, higher profile people

were on it. So definitely a tragedy, but fun that we got final destination. But by the time the Olympics start, the investigation is not done. And they think it might be a terrorist attack. Like it isn't, but it's still out there that it could be, you know? Basically, are you just framing it as like the world is topsy-turvy? Yes. And nobody, okay, got it.

And no one knows what's going on, you know? So that's like in the background. But the games are in Atlanta. And there's a lot of background reasons to why. but you know some a couple people were like we really wanted to be in Atlanta they put out the bid they spent a lot of money like wooing the people who get to vote it's the 100th anniversary of the modern games so Athens was like the favorite to get it because you know Greece

100 years all the things and Atlanta did the Abraham Lincoln thing and made themselves everybody's second choice you know so that's how you win things so in 1990 it's like 200 people on this committee get to vote on which city and they vote on like all 10 and then the two of the least votes are out and they do it again and then they do it again and they do it again until finally it was Atlanta and they got that in 1990 the games are in Atlanta now they got voted in they were everyone's second choice they wanted the park and Olympics to be open to everyone they expected bomb threats but they had a lot of security they did a training in the airport before with like fake gas so like there was there was a bomb in the airport so

everybody was like really ready um lots of famous people from the 90s were there um the brian sets our orchestra played that's fun it's very 90s it's like it's like 90s swing remember when everybody like swing in the 90s again everybody was swinging it's all we were known for um there's a very on brand story that donald trump was at the cheesecake factory and he dropped his wallet and a kid picked up his wallet and give it back to him and to thank him Donald trump asked the kid for a $20 bill, and he signed that one. I mean, I guess that's kind of nice. He didn't even give him any money for returning his wallet.

He took the kids money and signed it. Oh, he took money out of his own wallet. No, no, no, no, the kids. That's funny. That is funny. It's very, it makes sense. So all that's happening, everyone's excited. Atlanta is excited.

And so is a security guard named Richard Jewell. and if you have seen this man or heard any of the story, for better or worse, Richard Jewell is Rod Farva. Oh, yeah. And I mean that in a very loving and endearing way. Yeah, it looks like him too. Well, so Jay Leno is being an asshole this whole time and like talking about Richard Jewel when he's not convicted.

But Jay Leno will liken Richard Jewel to the person who hurt Nancy Kerrigan. you know, with the bat or whatever he hit her with. And the same actor, Paul Walter Houser, plays both those men in the movies. So it does make sense that those two looked alike. The same actor plays him. And Paul Walter Houser also plays Lonnie La Louch, who's the Canadian Farva and Super Tupers too.

So. Right, well, then, he was right. It's a brand. So he's like a fat guy with a mustache. He just, like, loves being a cop. And that's all he wants to talk about, you know, like he's so excited about it. He wants to tell you about his training. He wants to tell you how he could.

He could stop a bomb. He could do these things, all of that. That's just like his personality. So he's probably like a little annoying, but he's, but that's just who he is, you know? He just likes what he likes and we don't have to understand it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So Richard Jule was born Richard White on December 17th. 1962. His mom, Bobby and his dad, Robert, divorced when he was four. His mom remarried a man named

John Jewell, which is why he changed his name because he adopted and ended up adopting Richard. Things are going well until one day John Jewel, his stepdad, just leaves. He just abandons the family. He leaves a letter that says, I think I'm a failure. I can't do this anymore and just leaves. So Richard, who had just started college, moves back in with his mom to help her. And he has some law enforcement jobs. He got fired from two of them. One was because he pretended to be like an on-duty officer when he was being a security guard. He had like a side gig as doing security at an apartment building. And he sort of overstepped. So he got in trouble for impersonating an officer. And then he also wrecked a police car because he was kind of a reckless

driver. So he always considered himself law enforcement, but he had been fired from a couple law enforcement jobs. What a dweeb. At this point, he kind of sounds like it's a ring guy. like who Zimmerman whatever the guy was like just a fake police officer and he shot Trayvon Martin remember yes but like minus the racism

yeah right yeah I wasn't going with that I was just being like he's a rent a cop who's just like thinks too highly of himself in that capacity yeah yeah and he his goal is to go back into law enforcement and get a police officer job eventually he's also overweight which like doesn't help you know like you can be a fat cop

if you've been a cop for like 25 years but like and your first day you can't be. You'd be a fat detective. That's true. They don't have for anything. That's fair. But he wanted to be like a cop.

He wanted to be like a on the ground. Right. So during the Olympics, he got a job as a night guard at, on a tower at Centennial Olympic Park, which was this big park that was supposed to be like the central park of the Olympics where there were bands and there were gatherings and there were parties and all the things. He had the night shift, which was like not boring because things went into really, really late at night so it wasn't like just quiet evenings but he had like a very strict um thing that he would do every day he would like check the perimeter there was a bench next to him

where he would let let police officers sit there and he wouldn't let anybody else sit there he'd be like that's reserved for the police you know just like a little bit annoying taking his job a little bit too seriously is how people like had perceived him he sounds very obnoxious he sounds like an absolute fucking dweeb he's a dweeb but it's like not a bad guy he's just a dweeb you know um so on july 27 1996. Richard took a break from work. He usually never took breaks, but he had food poisoning and he had to go to the bathroom. So he went to the bathroom, which is like going to be suspicious later because he never took breaks, but he had food poisoning. He would remember everything in like such intense detail because that was his like, I'm going to quote, quote, quote, training. You know, like he was like, I'm trained to remember faces and remember this. And it's like annoying, but also helpful. if you used to want to do those things. He's such a dork. So he remembered that there were some drunks

and he was trying to get them to move. It was like one o'clock in the morning and there was a band called Jack Mack and the Heart Attack playing. And Richard noticed that there was an Alice pack which is a very big green army backpack underneath a bench. And they had had people leaving their bags

like they do all over the place before. But he got closer to it with another guard And they kind of opened it, like poked at it, and saw that it really was a bomb. So Richard alerts the GBI, which is the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, like the state place. And meanwhile, so this is happening. And him and the guy that he's with are trying to get people to leave, but also not cause a panic. So he's like trying to get people to move away from the bench, trying to get back up, trying to figure out what you do next.

He's doing everything right. He is trying to get people to move. And meanwhile, someone calls 911 from a payphone and says there's a bomb in the Olympic Park, you have 30 minutes. And this is like one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, but the 911 operator doesn't have the street address for Centennial Park because it's a brand new park. So she has to call around for like 13 minutes to find someone who will tell her the address because she can't send people there if she doesn't have an address. Kind of wild. It also sounds very like diehard. yeah exactly like someone's on the phone they can't do it everyone's panicking um and so

richard jule and another guard are trying to get people to move um but the bomb explodes at 120 a m and it is a shrapnel bomb so like the the boom obviously people hear it from all over but the real damage is going to be in the shrapnel so people get like you know nails and pieces of metal like thrown into their bodies um only one person dies from the bomb her name is alice hawthorne She's 44 years old. She was there with her daughter who was also injured. A cameraman with Turkish radio and television, his name is Meliae Uzniol. He was 40.

He, quote, survived coverage of wars in Azerbaijan, Bosnia, and the Persian Gulf, but died of a heart attack running to get coverage of the bombing. So technically only two people died, but 111 people were very severely injured. So Richard is there. you know from before the bomb went off and after the bomb went off he's doing everything right so he's like if you can walk come with me like getting the people who are okay out of the way so that anyone else can like get help quickly um and he's just being a hero like he you know got people away from there he helped people who needed help he had all this information that he had remembered from when he

scanned the perimeter you know all those things and everything that he does is very helpful. And, you know, everything that you should do, what you would expect an officer or a security guard to do. He did all those things. But then people start thinking, maybe he's helping too much. Maybe he knows a little too much, you know, and that starts the whole thing. So the two people who deserve blame for this for this debacle are reporter Kathy Scruggs and FBI agent Don Johnson. So Kathy was like a reporter for the Atlanta journal constitution she was like a cute female reporter who would like always be at the bar with the police trying to like get there get them to give her information and tell her things she was the first person to report that richard was a suspect and um was it true it was but she's going to be in court later um when this is all it kind of over and they try to get her to tell her source because someone involved in the case told her at a bar that Richard Jewell, the hero, was the main suspect.

And it finds out later that the person who told her this was Don Johnson, the FBI agent in charge. So Don Johnson thinks that Richard Jewell did it and he will not give that up. He won't even look at anybody else, you know. Johnson had, you know, had some like kind of bad moves in, when he was in the FBI in New York and ended up in Georgia and Kathy her career is going to be destroyed by this

she eventually is going to die by suicide in early September 2001 and Don Johnson is going to die of lung disease and they both die before this case is closed. Don Johnson dies thinking that Richard Joel did it even after he was let go.

What was he even the woman again? Kathy Scruggs, S-C-R-U-G-G-S. I mean it's sad. yeah it ruined her life essentially but it probably shouldn't have because she was taking the advice of an agent or an investigating officer yeah he sounds like a real piece of work this guy yeah it sounds like it was mostly his fault yeah so but richard was like on good morning america he was on katie kirk he was like a hero like in the news in america all over the world and but once he becomes a suspect, they make his life like a living hell. The FBI goes to his house.

They take all of his things. It takes them 10 hours to go through his house and like take all this evidence out. It takes them four minutes later to return it. They just give it back to them in boxes. His poor mother, Bobby, she's not just like a dumb woman. Like she's very smart. She has a career, all these things. She had a Tupperware collection that she'd been like working on for like 30 years and they ruined it. They like wrote on it with the Sharpies. Isn't that terrible? So mean. So mean. And so she ended up suing them and got $2,000 in the end.

But Bobby is, you know, a great mother to Richard and he's there to help her and, you know, she's going to be with him during this whole thing. So after they do this raid on his apartment, he lives with his mom, they do this raid. They bring him in. And Don Johnson, the FBI agent, is the one that interviews Richard for the first time. And he does something weird. he does the Miranda rights in the middle of it, which you can't do, you know, he like does it at the wrong time. And at first, Richard is like, I'm here to help. Look, I'm super excited to be with fellow law enforcement and help you find this person. And then he realizes that they are interrogating

him thinking that he did it. And then they do the Miranda rights. And then it's just like, that's going to be part of the reason that Don Johnson's career gets destroyed, as it should be, because he did this in absolutely the wrong way. He will, Richard, we'll call his lawyer Watson Bryant who's like a person who he had known at a previous job like an older man who he had a friendship with and Watson's going to be in over his head

he's not really a criminal lawyer but he's his first lawyer and he's like stop talking to the FBI right now you know as a lawyer would tell you to do right when he gets home after his first interrogation by the FBI Richard Jules' mom Bobby asks him if he did it he said no mom I didn't do it and she never

asked him again she believed him you know the whole time I'd be pissed when I'm mom even asked me that but what are you talking i mean i know she's like can i like she's i think she's like how can i help you you know from here on yeah yeah it's a tough situation and she believed him you know um they are like 100% sure that it's him and the media loves it at one point there's a reporter on tv kind of yelling about it like this woman um in in in Atlanta yelling about it and the assistant u.s attorney calls the attorney general in Atlanta and says get this woman off the air now she's making this into a scandal that it like

she's like way going overboard um and guess who that woman was no clue nancy grace oh yeah yeah okay that was her first her first big thing and by the end of the year she'll have her job on court tv and become you know be the yeller that she is so annoying yeah um so now people are interviewing richard jules friends as well and they are saying things like yeah It's weird they talk about being a police officer so much, you know? Like, he does want to be a hero. That is true. So things like that, I think, make it more suspicious, especially because the guy who did it in L.A., you know?

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He kind of set the precedent. Yeah. So he gets a new lawyer named Jack Martin, who's more of a criminal lawyer to help him. They're making him do things, like, pretend to make the phone call. Like, there's a bomb in the park. You have 30 minutes.

But, like, it doesn't match his voice. when he does meet with his new lawyer his lawyer does the thing where he's like is there anything that you want to tell me before we go off and do this like at the end and Richard Jules says yes I haven't done my taxes in two years which is

poor guy. The FBI is constantly trailing him they are at his house they're listening to his phone calls like he has a friend who's in the GBI and he wants his friend to come over because he's like hey I made a lasagna we come over so we can had about this and his friend is like okay he comes over but his friend is wired you know so he can't even

trust anyone and they like you know he orders pizza and they brad the delivery guy to hold the door open so that he could like they can get pictures of him they're just like camped outside out of his apartment they're making it he can't also he doesn't have a job you know he's like he doesn't have a job he's like really trying to figure out like how he's going to live his life now um there's jailhouse informants who were saying that they know that he did it but elbows didn't obviously he didn't pan out. And then he also passes a lie detector test. There's just no evidence that Richard Jewell did this.

You know, like there's nothing. No, it's just, it's just, if you're kind of like an annoying pain in the ass, yeah. You're just an easy target. Yeah. Don't be an annoying pain in the ass. Yeah, exactly. He's definitely an easy target on this.

So also just to note, he has a best friend named Dave Duchess, and he's often there to help him. Dave Duchess died in 2021 of COVID, but I just want to bring up. that he was a good friend to Richard Jewell, like, during all of this. So this is only a few months. So the bomb goes off in July. By October, the U.S. Attorney General in Atlanta sends him a letter saying that he is no longer a suspect. If they don't apologize, they don't like, you know, they just say you're not, you're not a suspect anymore.

In 1997, Janet Reno did apologize. She said, quote, I'm very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology. I regret the leak. the leak being the leak that like he was a suspect at all so he didn't he's jaronino didn't no no no but like the fbi i did right okay she's apologizing for the fbi i got it yeah exactly um so richard tries to get his life back he does get a job offer in pendergrass Georgia which is like a very very small town he becomes a police officer there eventually he'll be deputy sheriff

in maryweather county georgia um he gets to be on saturday night live um norm mcdonner Donald interviews him during a weekend update and asks him if he also killed Lady Teresa and Princess Diana or brother Teresa and Princess Diana because they just died as well. It's a joke. He does sue the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is the newspaper because they were comparing him to Wayne Williams, like the guy who killed a bunch of children. They were doing all this stuff like Jay Leno apologized to him. Tom Broca had to apologize. He did make some money from those things. things. But he had a hard time, you know, meeting women. And like one time he met a woman on a plane and they went on a date and she turned out to be a reporter who just wanted to write an article about him, which is shitty, you know. He does meet a social worker named Dana and they get married in 1998. They moved to a farm. He's deputy sheriff. He's doing great. He's actually feeling

healthier. He lost a bunch of weight, but he still has diabetes. And on August 29, 2007, his wife called him a couple of times and he didn't answer and she rushed home and found that he was dead in their bedroom he had died of a heart attack he had heart disease and he richard jule died at the age of 44 i mean kind of a sad life overall i would say very happy that he met dana it sounds like they had a lot of fun he was very sweet to her um richard would bring a rose to the spot where alice hawthorne was killed by the bomb every year and dana continues to do that um the years since richard passed that's very sweet yeah so I mean he sounds like I mean he was in the right place of the right time to help

but there he was like the kind of guy that was easy to pick on and obviously they wanted to like get this solved really fast and all of that so they just like focused in on him and really just like ruined his life for the rest of it I mean he probably wasn't going to last that long anyways yeah I mean pictures of him he does not look like he's doing good he looks good to the end he looks thinner when he doesn't have his mustache on he looks he's a little bit healthier but it like wasn't enough you know he's just like a guy

he's just like Farva you know he lost 40 pounds yeah but Fars what are you thinking right now at the end of the story who actually did it who actually did it

that's a great question this isn't like oh god there there's a murderer out there that murders children and killed Kese Anthony's daughter, you know, like, she did it. Like, it's not like O.J. Simpson where you're like, there's a murderer out there if you didn't do it, dude. But of course there isn't, you know. But in this case, like, there is someone out there who planted this bomb? And guess who it is? Uh, it's going to be one of those white nationalist groups, right? A thousand percent. It's a dude. It's one dude, but he is a white nationalist

dude. Um, his name is Eric Robert Rudolph. So Eric Robert Rudolph is mad about. about everything in his life. He joins the army, but he gets kicked out. While he's there, he just says a bunch of racist shit. You know, he's just like a piece of shit guy. He is mad at the Olympics. Later, he says this, because of global socialism. He also hates the official Olympic song was imagined by John Lennon, and he hates that song so much.

I mean, I kind of get it. And he wanted them to cancel the games, but they did not cancel the games for the bombing. they just amped up security and people were okay with that. So the FBI in trying to find this person actually did some like funny things. One thing that I thought was hilarious is so he had, he was kind of on the run for a while. He, Eric Rudolph, like, lives in the forest. He only has a driver's license. He has no other identifying, you know, information.

Like, he's very, like, as off the grid as you possibly can be literally like starving to death in the woods for a big part of the story. but when he snuck into or like walked into Centennial Park to plant the bomb he has a goatee and he has like a hat on and the FBI has like pictures where they think that they might see someone dropping off the backpack and they send them to NASA to enhance them and NASA can't isn't hilarious I mean yeah I mean what I don't think their technology is going to help in but I just like imagine it's like yeah they do it in supertubers where he's like enhance enhance enhance enhance in hands. This is like a pixel. Yeah. That's right they did do it in Super Chimbers, you're right? Yeah.

So he would do a couple other things. So he's just like basically a white supremacist, nationalist piece of shit who like, you know, wants to make this global statement. He sets out this bomb. He also will do two other bombs in the next couple of years because they don't find him for years. he bombs a lesbian nightclub he bombs an abortion clinic killing a security guard which is the first murder at an abortion clinic in America and then but he like really really is on the run so he like camps in the in the woods he first becomes a suspect in the abortion clinic bombing on February 14th 1998 so it's two years after the Atlanta bombing he's not a suspect there yet. But he is in Alabama for this one because

two witnesses, and these two are also heroes. So Jeffrey Tikal and Jermaine Hughes, they see him leaving this place where they're like a bomb wet off and they're like, that guy's weird and suspicious. So they follow him.

One of them follows him when they get his license plate and then they were able to find that the car was registered to him. And that's how they get his name for the first time, which is that they like went out and did that. Sorry, what year was that? 1998. Okay, so two years later.

Okay. Yeah, so two years later. He also does stuff where like he's planting bombs all over, but he remembers where they are. But when they do end up catching him, they have to like make deals with him for him to tell them where all this hidden dynamite is. Because he's like, oh, this is at like the FBI headquarters in Birmingham or this is like somewhere else. And, like, at one point, he gets scared and he has, like, a bunch of other bombs and he just, like, sets them off in a garbage can. So he, like, there was a chance that he has bombs, like, in parks and in forests and someone else could, like, accidentally set them off. Right.

Like, that's dangerous. So on May 5th, 1998, he becomes the 454th person on the 10 most wanted list. So he's, like, the 454th person to get on the list. He's on the 10 most wanted list. They're looking for him. They know he's dangerous. dangerous. And he spends five years in the wilderness. He does stuff like he kills animals to live. He has a friend who lives in like who owns like a food store and he like starts stealing stuff from him and then ends up like stealing his car and his friend calls the police and says like, you know, he's out here. He's out here in the woods. Eventually they, um, eventually they find him and. Um, um, eventually they find him and, um, um, when they find him he kind of like walks out of the woods and he's like behind a convenience store like dumpster diving and in the middle of the night a cop like sees him and finds him and you know and apprehends him and then they figure out who he is while they're trying to find him just as an aside like how we were saying how a lot of these you know people come from families that are fucked up his brother record his his his brother daniel recorded himself cutting off his

hand with a saw to send a message to the FBI. What was the message? I have no idea. Like, just to be like, I don't know, honestly. And then, like, his hand got reattached because someone went and found it and they put it back on and it was fine. But he was just like, like this doesn't come from a great background. Maybe the message. Maybe the message is if I'm going to do this to me, imagine what I'll do to you.

I guess, but it's not even the guy. It's his brother. So weird. you know what i mean so they end up you know they find him um he would do things like one thing he was like he was like eating salamanders and acorns and like stealing food from people's houses and dumpsters and things and eventually they catch him um and he goes to court and he is convicted and he is at the adx florence supermax in florence colorado which i think we've talked about before yeah it's like the crazy yeah and that that's where eric rudolph um i think that

he has been there since 2003 like a lot later you you might see of Tekazinsky yeah yeah very similar by like I'm living in the I'm living in the woods

you know he was caught on May 31st 2003 which is wildly late yeah he got seven years yeah to like but he like those were shitty seven years for him

because he really was starving to death in the woods. Just like Ted Kaczynski, though, also starving to death in the woods. Yeah, it's interesting how shitty these guys live and how much pride they take and how should they live. Yeah. Who are you doing this for? Yeah.

Losers. So, yeah, that's it. That's the story. That's the 1996 Olympics. And, you know, Richard Jewell, I'm glad we can remember him as a hero because he was, even though he's a dork you know he he he did he did save lives by moving people out of there and he was just a guy who wanted to pick up in like a i want to help people away uh tragic tragic tragic existence i mean yeah 44 years um and so young to die of a heart attack you know in a big

i mean a not insignificant chunk of that was spent being harangued 24 7 from all angles Oh, another thing I forgot to say is he did. There was, remember when in Japan, when the Amshirikio cults gassed that subway line in Tokyo, there was something else that they had gasped in like a suburb and a man had found it in like a weird way. And he was wrongly accused as well. And he reached out to Richard to be like, hey, like this happened to me in the media just like it happened to you. And Richard went to Japan and did spend some time there, some time with him. him too he hated the food nice wait you said he hated the food he did yeah yeah he looks like

a pizza hut kind of a guy exactly i think he found all the pizza huts in japan um but that was cool then he got to travel to japan you know and like meet another person who had the same thing happened to him so you know i think i don't know if i feel torn about it because he also then now we know about him you know wouldn't have if if this hadn't happened to him he would just be you know another guy but we know about him because of this story um which is you know kind of fun I mean it's it's yeah like it adds something to the lore of the Olympics you know yeah exactly exactly so um yeah wild so there's something wild I think every single time there's an Olympics um and I think because you know people want to make a statement you know people want to like you know

the world is watching it's it's not ever going to be like the dream of like a a lovely everyone gets a long sporting event it's always something else happening and they're at times very very tragic um but um i don't know hopefully everything goes smoothly this year we'll see what happens but we also live in turbulent time so i don't know it um it reminds me of those people who throw like soup or whatever or paint on yeah art it's just like they just need to get attention in whatever way they need it, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully there's some cool sporting things that are going to happen.

I'm excited for gymnastics. I'm excited for this break dancing to start. Yeah, I want to see. Hopefully it's easy to see. Also, I'll keep you posted on how I'm going to watch it. But I also have not received my Team USA sweatshirt yet from Old Navy. So that's a tragedy. We'll wait with beta breath.

Yeah, wait until I posted something on Instagram because it was someone who's like, how you judge people who wear like anything with the American flag on it but then during the Olympics you're like woohoo yeah which is me you gotta flex that pride yeah um exciting

well very very fun story tailor fun little series a four parter yeah I thought I learned I learned so much and I feel excited because I feel like I can take these little tidbits of things that I learned about the Olympics with me for the rest of my life yeah and the rest of us will as well

now that we have it and probably some really fun, exciting things that are going to be happening here a little bit with the Olympics starting up in Paris. When does it start? I think that's a good question. I think the 27th. So end of this month. Yes, at the end of July. Yeah. One wonder where the opening ceremony is. It is July 26th at 10.30 a.m. Pacific time.

So convenient to be watching TV. I mean, honestly, who knows? I hope I hopefully I can have it one of my monitors because I really, I do want to see it. And then, you know, stay tuned for 2028 when Fars and I will be broadcasting live from Los Angeles during the Olympics, and that will be very fun. We're going to be correspondents at that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes.

Mm-hmm. So that would be super exciting. We're going to get, wear blazers and American flag ties. And, yeah, it's going to be really fun. Totally. I'm so in. Can't wait for that. Mm-hmm.

Very in. Sweet. Well, Taylor, thanks for sure. sharing is there anything else you want to read off for the for the folks before we i have one note from a listener um nadine wanted me to tell you that uh she loved the operation uh postorius and likes the idea of like bumbling spy keepers so plus one for those there's actually quite a few of those yeah those are so they might have to be like mini episodes or like i just string a couple of them together to make it a full episode but there is there's a lot of content there yeah those are they are

really fun. So thank you, Nadine. I agree. That was a fun one. Cool. Yeah. So please find us on all the social media at Doom to FailPod. Email us, Doom DeFellopod at gmail.com. If you have any suggestions. And please, please, please tell your friends. Thank you to my friend Jen, who left us a review on Apple Podcasts. I really appreciate it. If you can do that for us, that'd be awesome. Great. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, Taylor. Thank you. Thanks, thanks for us. Yep. Bye. I'm going to be able to