Doomed to Fail - Re-Release: The Atlanta Olypmic Bombing

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

We're travelling this week so one more Olympics Episode for you! This one is wild - it's 1996, and the Atlanta Olympic Centennial Park is open late. Security guard Richard Jewel is on the lookout for shenanigans and finds himself the first responder to a horrible attack that leaves one dead and many shaken.   Jewell is a dork - he's the kind of guy who takes his security role super seriously. You kind of want to make fun of him, but then you get to know him and realize he was the best man for the job, and a really kind soul.   Learn more with us!  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] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for the 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 are the podcast that brings you history as most of, 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. just be different. That's it.

It's not going to hit you. It's going to rain. If you're like, it's going to rain. If you're in Houston, yeah, if you're like Houston Galveston area, like it's not going to be good.

I think that like, what we're going to experience is going to be a ton of rain, which is great. We need it. But, but yeah, hopefully it doesn't bear 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? Mm-hmm.

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.

When you're, 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. Palm Springs is just so hot. So bad. I'm like, I don't know how much longer

can we go on like this. It's, I mean, yeah. Yeah. You know, like what do you do? Yeah,

it'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.

Oh, what a bummer. But we'll see what happens. But yeah, I know it's bad. It looks like it's going to It looks like what Well it looks like it's going to rain for you tomorrow It's so dumb

Sorry everyone rain for you tomorrow But that's it It's only 65% chances of rain So Still can I claim to Be a victim of this hurricane or no Sure sure sure sure sure Go ahead

Thank you Okay and today So yeah We're going to get into part four of Olympics This is the last one you said right 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 are

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 carrigan um maybe in two years in twenty 26 when they're having the Olympics in Milan, I can come back to those. 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're going to talk about the Atlanta bombing in 1996 and Richard Jewel, 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 Coubertine 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 a 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. It's like old 80s short hair. That was a big deal. There is a woman named Madeline de Jesusus. 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. and kind of fun.

The opening ceremony for the LA Olympics was in the, what's called the Coliseum by UCLA? Yeah, that was, Muhammad Ali was the one who lit it. He lit it at the end. No, no, that was in Atlanta. Was it? Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he did it in 1996, but I don't know who did it in L.A. But there was a guy in a jetpack. I don't know if you ever seen this video, watch it later. just Google 1984 Olympics Jetpack 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 look it up now Jetpack guy 84 Olympics So I wanted to mention that like this in general Because obviously as you know The Olympics are coming to L.A. again Is it so this is not a jetpack So he's not actually being propelled by a jetpack

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, in 2028.

And I found a website called no Olympics, LA.com that goes over all the Olympic, 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 unhoused 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. 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 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 like in a movie. but it wasn't a real bomb.

He had planted it to be a hero. So. Oh, so there was some precedent for. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. Exactly. Yeah.

So 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 1984. In 1988, the Winter Olympics were in Calgary, Canada. This is the Cool Runnings Olympics and the Eddie the Eagle Olympics. So, like, silly comedy movie Olympics. happens then. In the Summer Olympics in 1988, they were in Seoul, South Korea, and Ben Johnson won the Ben'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 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 great 90s music on it. So that also happened during 1992. Not that that 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? God, yeah. How excited it was. She did the vault,

when 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. The dream team, if you look at the first of the dream team, if you look at that, of the scores that they racked up against other countries.

Was it just like dumb? It's so stupid. Yeah. So the one game June 28th, 19892, US points 136 to Cuba's 57. Oh my gosh. I mean. I'm shocked that they even got 57 actually.

Me too. So, yeah, like 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 or do you want Michael Jordan or do you want Carl Malone or do you want Patrick Ewing or do you want Scotty 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, completed the triple. He won the 100, 200, and 4x100-by-100 relay for the third Olympics in the row. Like, he's just insane.

He's so fast. Yeah. That's what he's doing for. Then they were in Pyongchang, 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 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, like, 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 breakdancing team. There's 16 men and 16 women. And Sunny Choi, I watched a little documentary on her. She was a global marketing director at Estee Lauder and quit to be on this breakdancing team, which is really fun for her. And I'm excited. She'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. 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 he he he Ruby Ridge was basically

the precursor and the setup to domestic terrorism as we know it. Like that was the tee up to the Olympic bomb, 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. In 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 17th, 1996, TWA flight 800 exploded 12 minutes after takeoff. Have you heard about this one? That's not Lockerbie, is it? No. So it was flying to Rome from JFK. via Paris. So it was headed to Paris for a layover. And it ended up 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 an explosion in the sky and the burning wreckage was on the ocean. Everyone died. Like almost 300 people died. In addition to the people on the plane, like one of the groups on the plane was a group of 16 students and five adult shows.

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 decisions fun. Because it's like a group of kids going to France. Yeah. And then they're at Plains Explodes. Great.

Those movies are awesome. Everybody should see them. They're so good. They're great. I love all of them. The first time I saw them, I was so scared. I didn't know what to do. But then I was like, I need to face my fear and watch them.

And they're great. When they tied the last one back to the first one. Exactly. They pinned it all together. Oh, my God. 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. Sorry. No. It's a tragedy. I think Andy Warhol's boyfriend was on the flight. A couple other higher profile people were on it. So definitely 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 as 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 of 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, one, 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 the 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 in 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 a bomb in the airport. So everybody was like really ready. Lots of famous people from the 90s were there. The Brian Setser Orchestra played. That's fun. It's very 90s. I know who that is. It's like 90s swing.

Remember when I really swing in the 90s? Everybody was swinging. It's all we were known for. 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 gave 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.

it. He took the kids money and signed it. Oh, he took. I thought he made he took money out of his own. No. No, no, no. The kids. That's funny. That is funny. That's very, it makes sense. So all that's happening, everyone's excited. Atlanta is excited. And so is a security guard named Richard Jule. And if you have seen this man or heard any of the story, for better or worse, Richard Jule is Rod Farfa. essentially. 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 LaLouche, 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. 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 Jule, which is why he changed his name because he adopted ended up adopting Richard. Things are going well until one day John Jewell, 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 an impersonating 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 for like the dweeb at this point he kind of sounds like that Zimmerman guy

like who Zimmerman whatever was the guy was like just a fake police officer and he shot Trayvon Martin remember yes but like minus the racism Um, yeah. Right. Yeah. I wasn't going with that.

I was just being like, he's a renta 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, like, and your first day, you can't be. You be a fat detective. That's true. They don't run after 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 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 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 he's a dweeb but he's like not a bad guy he's just a dweeb you know um so on july 27th nineteen ninety six 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 be suspicious later because he never took breaks but he had food poisoning um he would remember everything

in like such intense detail because that was his like i'm going to 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're so he remember that there were some drunks and he was trying to get them to move um it was like one o'clock in the morning and there was a band called jack mac 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, you know, like they do,

like 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, so 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. And so Richard Jule and another guard are trying to get people to move. but the bomb explodes at 1.20 a.m. and it is a shrapnel bomb. So like 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.

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 Melier-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 any of else can get help quickly. 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, 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 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 was it true? It was.

But she's going to be in court later when this is all 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 Jule, 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 Jule 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 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 Jule did it even after he was let go. What was the woman again? Kathy Scruggs, S-C-R-U-G-G-S. I mean, it's sad. Yeah, it ruined her life, essentially. Which 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 Couric. 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 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. And so she ended up suing them and got $2,000 in the end. But Bobby is. 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. 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 will 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 the 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 to my mom even asked me that. But what are you talking about? I know. She's like, can I, like, 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, 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, this woman 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. 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. 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 a thing where he's like, is there anything that you want to tell me before we go off, you know, and do this at the end? And Richard Jules says, yes, I haven't done my taxes in two years.

Poor guy. Yeah. 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 chat 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 brought the delivery guy to hold the door open so that he can 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 didn't pan out um and then he also passes passes a lie detector test there's just no evidence that richard jule 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. Just don't be an annoying pain in the ass. Yeah, 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, 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. Janet Reno didn't leak yet. No, no, no, no. But like the FBI. I did. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

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 Meriwether County, Georgia. He gets to be on Saturday Night Live. Nora McDonald interviews him during a weekend update and asks him if he also killed Lady Teresa and Princess Diana or brother Teresa and Princess 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 like doing all this stuff. Like Jay Leno apologized to him. Tom Broca had to apologize. Like he did make some money from those things. But he had a hard time, you know, meeting women.

And like one time he met a woman on a plane. and then 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. But 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 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 Richard Jewell 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. Richard would bring a rose to the spot where Alice Hawthorne was killed by the bomb every year. And Dana continues to do that 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 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 where 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 um but farz 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's a

murder out there that murders children and killed kisi anthony's daughter you know like she did it like it's not like oj 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 everything in his life he joins the army but he gets kicked out um while he's there he just says a bunch of racist shit But 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 lives in the forest. He only has a driver's license. He has no other identifying

information. 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 he 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 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

yeah they do it in Supertubers where he's like enhance enhance enhanced enhanced and like that's like a pixel yeah that's why they did do it in Super Troopers 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 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 Tical and Jermaine Hughes, they see him leaving this place where they like a bomb went off.

And they're like, that guy's weird and suspicious. So they follow him. Like one of them follows him when they get his license plate and 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 fun 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. were 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 you know like that's 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 but looking for him they know he's dangerous um and he spends five years in the wilderness he does stuff like he kills animals to live he has a friend who

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 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 um you know and apprehends them 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 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's just like like this doesn't come from a great background maybe the message weird maybe the messages 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 you know what I mean so they end up you know they find him he would do things like one thing he was like he was like eating salamanders and acorns like stealing food from people's houses and dumpsters and things. And eventually they catch him 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 prison. And that that's where Eric Rudolph. I think that he has been there since 2003, like a lot later. You might see of Teghizinski. Yeah. Yeah, very similar vibe. 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 had seven years. Yeah. But he like, those were shitty seven years for him because he really was starving to death in the woods. Yeah. Just like Ted Kaczynski, though, also starving to death in the woods. Yeah, it's, it's interesting how shitty these guys live and how much pride they take and how how shitty they live. Yeah.

Who are you doing this for? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Losers. So, yeah. That's it. That's the story.

That's the 1996 Olympics. And, you know, Richard Jule, I'm glad we can remember him as a hero because he was, even though he's a dork. You know, he did, he did save lives by moving people out of there. And he was just a guy who wanted to be a cop in like a, I want to help people away. tragic tragic existence I mean 44 years

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 number one in Japan

when the Amshariqo cults gas to that subway line in Tokyo there was something else else that they had gas 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 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. but that was cool that he got to travel to Japan and like meet another person who had the same thing happened to him so you know I think I feel like I don't know 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 another guy

but we know about him because of this story which is you know kind of fun I mean it's it's yeah like it adds something to the lore of the Olympics. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, wild.

So there's something wild, I think, every single time there's an Olympics. 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 not ever going to be like the dream of like a lovely, everyone gets a long sporting event. It's always something else happening. And they're at times very, very tragic. But I don't know. 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 didn't 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 um 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 baited 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 got to flex that pride. Yeah. Exciting.

Well, very, very fun story. Taylor fun little series four-parter. Yeah, 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? Oh, that's a good question. I think the 27th. So end of this month. Yes, at the end of July. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder when 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 on 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 correspondence at that

I believe. Yes. 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. Very in. Sweet. Well, Taylor, thanks for sharing. Is there anything else you want to read off

for the folks before we? I have one note from a listener. Nadine wanted me to tell you that she loved the operation. Pistorius 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 fun.

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 a lot of content there. Yeah. 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 FillPod. Email us, Doom to Fillupod at Gmail.com. If you have any suggestions. and please, 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. Sweet. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, Taylor. Thank you. Thanks, Fais. Yep. Bye.