Murder at the Olympics

Ten years ago today, in the very early morning hours of July 27, 1996, 14-year-old Fallon Stubbs was taking a picture of her mother, Alice Hawthorne. Both had gone to Atlanta from their home in Albany, Georgia, to see the Olympic Games, which had just finished their eighth day. That night they were celebrating Fallon’s birthday in Centennial Olympic Park, a spacious new plaza with a huge fountain and live open-air dance music. The park was crowded with fans from around the world.

Just as Fallon snapped the shutter, a bomb exploded. The blast shot a nail through her mother’s eye, killing her. Fallon herself was lacerated. Others lay bleeding and screaming around her.

Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation bungled the immediate investigation, focusing their attention on an innocent man. The Bureau then conducted one of the longest and least successful manhunts in its history, allowing the actual bomber to remain at large for almost seven years, and to kill again.

That summer Americans had been heartened to watch Muhammad Ali light the Olympic torch in spite of his debilitating illness. They saw Carl Lewis pick up his record-tying ninth gold medal when he won at the long jump. The Atlanta games, which marked the centennial of the revival of the modern Olympics, had attracted athletes from 197 nations.

Security was high everywhere at the games, and hundreds of police officers and private guards kept watch over the jubilant crowd at Centennial Park. Just after one o’clock in the morning, one of those security guards, Richard Jewell, noticed an unattended backpack under a bench. He notified a supervisor. Bomb evaluation personnel arrived and saw pipes and wires in the bag. Jewell and others began to urge the crowd away from the area.

None of the officers on the scene knew that a man had called 911 at 12:58 to say, “There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes.” The bomb went off at 1:18, shaking three city blocks and sending shrapnel into the fifth stories of buildings across the street. The 40-pound pipe bomb used a steel plate to direct the blast and hundreds of masonry nails to kill and maim. It injured 111 people. Miraculously, Alice Hawthorne was the only person killed, except for a 40-year-old Turkish cameraman who died of a heart attack while rushing to cover the incident.

Richard Jewell was hailed as the hero who had forestalled many additional casualties. House Speaker Newt Gingrich shook his hand. But lionized one day, Jewell found himself demonized the next. FBI agents, without ever officially naming him as a suspect, made him the focal point of their investigation. NBC’s Tom Brokaw reported that “they probably have enough to arrest him right now.”

Jewell was finally cleared of all suspicion 88 days later. Meanwhile the actual bomber had vanished. But not for long.

In January 1997 a bomb exploded outside Northside Family Planning Services in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. No one was hurt in the initial blast, but a second, larger explosion, presumably aimed at responding police officers, injured seven. Five weeks later, a bomb sent nails flying into an Atlanta nightclub that catered to gays and lesbians. Five patrons were injured. Again a second bomb lay in wait for those responding to the first. This time it failed to detonate.

After this latest bombing, newspapers and TV stations received letters from “The Army of God.” The documents revealed details about the bombings and included a rant against “agents of the so-called federal government,” “sodomites,” and abortion providers. They ended with the motto “Death to the New World Order.”

Almost a year later, in January 1998, an off-duty police officer working as a guard at New Woman All Women Health Care, a clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, discovered a suspicious package by the building. This time the perpetrator, waiting nearby, pushed the button of a remote control as the guard, Robert Sanderson, and a nurse, Emily Lyons, stood close to the bomb. The explosion killed Sanderson and critically injured Lyons, leaving her disfigured and blinded in one eye.

The incident planted the seed of the bomber’s undoing. A witness followed him as he walked away. Someone jotted down the license-plate number on his pickup truck. The information focused suspicion on Eric Robert Rudolph, a young Army veteran and freelance carpenter. Authorities released his name prematurely, and when they arrived at his house in Murphy, North Carolina, to arrest him, he had disappeared. Later in 1998 he was linked to the three Atlanta bombings.

The FBI put Rudolph on their Ten Most Wanted list and offered a million-dollar reward. Agents were convinced that he had gone into hiding in the mountains near his home, but months of searching failed to flush him from the rugged terrain.

Some North Carolinians chose to stand up for one of their own, whatever his crimes. The slogan “Run Rudolph Run” appeared on T-shirts and bumper stickers. A country-music song celebrated the murderer. Rumors held that in addition to relying on prearranged hideouts and the occasional burglary, he was receiving material aid from local residents.

Without leads, authorities watched the case grow cold and scaled back the search. Years passed. The attacks of September 11, 2001, gave Americans a more bitter taste of terrorism.

Finally at 3 a.m. on the morning of May 31, 2003, a rookie police officer in Murphy spotted a man lurking around a grocery store dumpster. He arrested the suspect on suspicion of burglary and within hours knew that he had bagged an important fugitive—Eric Rudolph. To avoid the death penalty, Rudolph pleaded guilty. He received four life sentences with no possibility of parole.

Why did Eric Rudolph bomb the Olympics? In a rambling statement issued before his sentencing, he said that the games promoted the “despicable ideals” of “global socialism.“ His act of violence was intended “to confound . . . anger . . . and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world.”

Some saw him acting out of principle, though there was evidence that he had adopted his antiabortion posture merely to elicit the sympathy of an organized movement. All agreed that Eric Rudolph was a man filled with hatred—of blacks, Jews, homosexuals, the federal government.

At the sentencing hearing, John Hawthorne summed up his feelings for the person who had murdered his wife. “You,” he said to Rudolph, “are a very small man.”

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).