Please keep a safe distance,
nothing to see.
I was only 18 yards from the backpack.
This was the largest pipe bomb
in US history.
NASA contacted us.
This might be the break we needed.
The description
matches the NASA analysis.
Right then...
boom!
I see people screaming,
people in pain.
Get out now.
You shoot at one cop, you've shot at all of us.
And we're going to stop you.
In the summer of 1996
Atlanta was hosting not only the Olympics,
but the Centennial Olympics.
It was a time that we set out to make America proud.
You've got nations from all over the world
coming together in one location.
Tens of thousands of people every day
Party of the century, baby.
Yeah, yeah.
So, there's always the potential
of terrorist activity.
My job was working in an under-cover capacity.
I was making my last pass through the park.
And I was approached by a security guard...
- Hey, Richard. - Richard Jewell.
Richard pointed to a green backpack
underneath a bench.
We had dealt with a number of suspicious packages.
What the hell is that?
And none of these situations turned out to be anything.
There is a bomb in Centennial Park.
You have 30 minutes.
What I didn't know,
there was a call made to the 911 center.
I think we better call it in.
I wish we had had that information.
We've got a suspect package
underneath the tower near a bench.
When they arrived,
one of them cracked the end of the bag,
just a very very small area.
They backed away from the bag,
and asked me to use my cell phone.
At that point in my mind, I'm thinking,
"Well, there's a little more to this."
We were in the process of clearing people out.
Nothing to see here!
Move back.
I was only 18 yards from the backpack...
when, all of a sudden...
All I see is chaos.
I see people screaming,
people in pain.
People severely injured.
I was a supervisor of our Anti-Terrorist Unit.
I hear radio traffic...
there had been an explosion in Centennial Olympic Park
and we had multiple officers down.
I'm hoping nobody I knew has gotten killed.
Believe me it was a bomb!
Let's go please.
We get there, there's trauma everywhere.
It was the largest thing I'd ever seen.
We had over a hundred people injured.
One lady, kneeled down
and felt to see if I could feel a pulse.
I didn't feel a pulse.
Alice Hawthorne, she was killed instantaneously.
I was very angry that someone
would come in there and disrupt the games.
I thought that was the most cowardly thing
that I've ever seen.
This was a terrible tragedy.
Whoever this was, put a bomb down in the park,
he ended up wounding a hundred people
and killing Alice Hawthorne.
I was employed by ATF as a forensic chemist.
Within 30 minutes I got a call and I was at Centennial Park.
I was actually assigned
to work the immediate explosive area.
We tried to collect all of the evidence that's possible.
The smallest piece you find
might have a mark on it
that's readily identifiable
that you didn't find on anything else.
My role at the Olympics at that time
is as an advisor should something happen.
We were concerned about the rain coming in
and washing away valuable evidence,
some residues.
So, we put a tent over the crater area.
Everything is given its own number and own location
and at a later time,
we're able to know exactly where the pieces were found.
So you just never know what piece of evidence
is actually gonna solve the case.
We collected over 500 bags of evidence.
And then it was flown to FBI laboratory
in Washington DC.
People couldn't believe that it actually happened.
And wanted to see whoever was responsible
caught very quickly.
The bombing at Centennial Olympic Park
was an evil act of terror.
We will spare no effort
to find out who was responsible for this murderous act.
We will track them down.
We will bring them to justice.
We will see that they are punished.
Discussions began on who the bomber might be,
what cause he could be representing,
what country he might be from.
There were so many targets,
it could have been somebody
that just didn't like the Olympics.
It could have been an international group
that wanted to free a prisoner.
It could have been somebody
that was targeting law enforcement.
We had a warning call from the bomber
saying there was a bomb in the park,
and he had 30 minutes.
There is a bomb in Centennial Park.
You have 30 minutes.
We did a timeline
and the bomb detonated around 21 minutes.
You have 30 minutes.
He might have been using that
to *er law enforcement
and first responders into the scene.
We had tens of thousands of witnesses
that were in the park.
We made an appeal for cameras
and were hoping people might get a picture
of somebody carrying the bomb.
Thousands of pictures and videotape came in.
Special Agent Stone,
we've picked something up you might find of interest.
One of the video tapes we received
actually showed a person
sitting on the end of the bench where the bomb detonated.
It was a shadowy figure,
you could make out no detail,
looked like he was wearing a hoodie,
and had a pack between his legs.
Because we couldn't identify,
he became known as "Blob Man".
No amount of enhancement could change it,
it was just a "Blob Man".
We needed a way to increase clarity.
So, the decision was made to contact NASA.
Can you give me the number of the photo enhancement Division.
They had more expertise than anybody
to enhance the photographs.
Five, four, three, two, one.
We have ignition.
We have lift-off.
In 1996 I was a solar astronomer
at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre.
The FBI was aware
that we had launched the Hubble Space Craft
to observe the night sky.
Those images were blurry.
We had techniques for de-blurring those images.
The FBI thought we might be able
to help them identify who the bomber might be.
See if you can enhance that.
The one key video they had,
it was very noisy, very dark,
difficult to see anything.
We made it clear to them
we're going to have to develop new things
to clean up these videos.
This was going to take weeks, if not longer.
Probably too long.
We were hoping it would take a shorter period of time
because we had a lot of pressure
to identify who the bomber was.
Our lab director told us, you know,
drop everything, and help these guys.
And we were perfectly willing to do it.
We realized, you know,
this was a thing of national importance
and we were ready, willing and able
to do whatever we could.
After the Olympic Park bombing,
there were frequent meetings
and briefings at a very high level.
Teams of ATF, FBI and GBI agents.
There was nothing that we would not have done
that was legal in trying to solve that crime.
We used every potential resource that was out there
to apply technology,
to provide forensic techniques
to solve that crime.
The intent of gathering the evidence
was to try to reconstruct the bomb.
The way it was constructed was in effect
a signature of who that bomber was.
We had a few grains of the powder from the crime scene
to help us decide what kind of explosive
was actually used.
The explosive used was a mixture
of number nine and number seven.
Accurate Arms Smokeless Ball Powder.
Smokeless powder
is the propellant that is used in bullets.
Smokeless powder isn't controlled in the United States.
And you can go to any hunting supply house
and buy the smokeless powder.
We also had a Westclock timer.
An Eveready 12-volt lantern battery.
Dual conductor wire.
A Radioshack product.
6008D cut nails.
Three pipes, 12 inches in length,
two inches in diameter.
When we complete our forensic examinations
and we're comfortable
that we know all of the components
that are in that particular device,
we will build a mock up device.
You know where certain components are placed
based on where they go when the bomb goes off.
Whatever's over here on a certain point,
it takes off in that direction
instead of going in the other direction.
So that helps you place it in the right area.
We built a mock up as best as we can.
It was determined this was the largest pipe bomb
in US history.
We had a lot of forensics,
none of them were unique identifiers to an individual.
With the exception of the steel plate.
The bomb is mounted on a steel plate,
which was used as a directional device,
very similar to
a Claymore mine that the military uses.
That's not your average thing
that you would find with a pipe bomb.
The plate sends the shrapnel
in the direction the bomber wants it to go.
It was designed to kill and maim
as many people as it could.
We were possibly looking for a military suspect
or a suspect who had a military background.
Someone called in and recommended,
look at Richard Jewell.
Richard Jewell was the security guard
who actually found the bomb.
He had made statements to the effect
that if something was going to happen at the Olympics,
he wanted to be involved in it.
What did the FBI ask you?
Can you categorically say that you did not do this?
I did not do it.
Where were you at one o'clock on that morning?
I was out there just like all the other officers.
Did you do it?
No sir, I didn't do it.
I did not think that he could possibly
have been the guy that made that device.
If he had enough sense to build that device,
he's going to have two or three skyscrapers
between him and this device when it blows up.
He's not going to be right there close by
where he could have got caught with nails and shrapnel.
Following an intensive investigation by the FBI,
Richard was cleared.
He was no longer a suspect.
We still had to find a viable suspect.
You've got a mad bomber out there,
it was just a matter of time before there'd be another bombing.
On January 16th in 1997
that would have been my first day
as the special agent in charge for ATF in Atlanta.
I was looking for a peaceful transition.
Excited,
interested to meet my counterparts
and begin the work of the highest-ranking position
I was gonna hold in my law enforcement career.
But one of them said, "Welcome aboard!
We've just had a bombing
in an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs."
An explosion blew out the windows
at a North Atlanta family planning clinic.
News had come over...
I was sitting there with my supervisor
and he said "Well, you need to, uh,
roll out there and see what's going on."
No one has claimed credit for these explosions.
Fire-fighters and local police
were already on the scene.
Okay, we've got some nut set a bomb off,
let's see if we can figure out who did this.
At this point, responding people had been told to meet
on the other side of the building
away from the crime scene.
So, I walked back around.
And I got on the phone, "John, this is Mike,"
and right then... boom.
Get back! Get back!
Let's go.
My god.
What the hell was that?
Hey, Control, we've just had another explosion down here at the center.
We've had two bombs detonated
in an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs.
When we examined the placement of the two devices,
those of us who had served in the military
recognized it as a classic I shaped ambush.
It appeared that the bomber
had some kind of exposure or training
on how to set an effective ambush.
The bomber knew that the first bomb
would draw in law enforcement responders.
That they would not position themselves
on top of the evidence.
And so, 90 degrees around the back of the building,
which would seem a nice secure area
that's where he buried
the second device by the dumpster.
So, we knew now that someone was gunning for us.
And his intention by putting shrapnel in that device
was to kill, injure and maim those law enforcement
and public safety responders.
It was real hard,
because this guy was trying to kill us.
Believe me it's like when you get shot at,
it makes it a real personal experience.
I went into a rage.
How dare they...
You shoot at me, you have shot at everybody.
You shoot at one cop, you've shot at all of us.
And we're gonna stop you, whatever it takes.
When I arrived at the scene,
just the crater alone told me
it was a high explosive.
It went through four inches of concrete.
You don't get that with a pipe bomb with low explosive in it.
I started getting a headache,
which kind of indicated to me
it was probably going to be dynamite
because dynamite tends to give you a headache.
I took all the evidence to the lab.
We had an instrument,
a thing called an EGIS machine.
Conventional analysis in the lab 15 minutes.
Analysis on the EGIS, nine seconds.
It come out as ethylene glycol dinitrate
which is the common ingredient of dynamite.
It's only used in dynamite.
Because we were aware of the Olympics bombing
and we were waiting for NASA
to see if they would be helpful
with that photograph,
now we're starting to make a mental comparison.
We have an alarm clock device...
and we have cut nails although of different size.
On the other side, we have different explosives,
different packaging, different deployment.
But it's not iron clad that we had a common bomber.
So, we have to investigate further.
Shortly after AFT
had the evidence back in their laboratory...
Lloyd Erwin did call me.
We have a metal plate in this device.
This metal plate was a similar type,
same thickness as the one used in Centennial Park.
The FBI metallurgist
did extensive amount of work on the two metal plates.
He travelled to different steel manufacturing plants.
He gathered hundreds and hundreds pages of data.
It was decided to do a atomic-level test on the steel.
If you have two pieces of metal
that came from the same production or manufacturing company
those would have a very unique chemical profile,
and so if you analyze those
you could actually pin point,
what time, where and when they were produced,
and if they came from the same batch.
The metal plate from the Sandy Springs device,
and the metal plate from the Olympic Park bomb,
was determined to be
analytically indistinguishable from each other.
There's no doubt in my mind at this point
that we're dealing with a serial bomber.
We believe there is enough similarity
between the devices
that at this point
we believe they're very likely to be linked together.
We have a bomber on the loose.
We didn't know where he might strike next.
I get a call that there's been a bombing
at a * nightclub in Atlanta, The Otherside Lounge.
There was an explosion.
And all of a sudden, you hear... bam!
One lady had a nail stuck in her right arm.
There had been some injuries,
but there were no fatalities.
Good news.
The explosive was quickly identified
as being dynamite.
It was the same type of dynamite
that was used in the Sandy Springs bombing.
The mood is of great concern.
Not only do we clearly have a serial bomber,
but they're on a very high-frequency of attack.
So, we had a truly unknown subject
about whom we knew nothing
other than their bomb making and ambush skills.
Various media outlets received letters
claiming credit for the abortion clinic
and the * bar, the Otherside Lounge.
We knew immediately the letters were genuine
because the letters were mailed
before the bombing of the Other Side Lounge.
It was obvious that he wanted to taunt us.
That we couldn't catch him
and the next abortion clinic might not be empty.
He signs it with the date 4/19/93.
Four 19 is like a magic date.
It's when Waco, Texas happened.
Four 19 is the date Timothy McVeigh chose.
That was a rallying date for the militia.
That tells us a great deal
about the motivations of this person.
The letters were signed Army of God,
a term that had come out
in the anti-abortion movement.
The Army of God investigations
never turned up an army
but did turn up individuals.
We were convinced we were dealing with
a lone wolf bomber, not a group.
In the investigation, we had several long shots.
The Blob Man photograph and NASA
was one of them.
NASA contacted us...
said that they had developed a software
for enhancement and clarification.
This might be the break we needed.
Story, we got a great view of you
from the elbow camera.
Really nice.
Roger that Story.
The Hubble technology
that initially led the FBI to come to NASA
ultimately we didn't use.
We had been working for months
developing the technology to help us,
stabilize and ultimately clean up these videos.
You have to remember this was 20 years ago
when video wasn't digital,
video was on videotape.
There were no smartphones, there wasn't digital,
there wasn't high def.
This was VHS tape, we had a lot to deal with.
Blurring the speckly noise, the image motion.
When we first started trying to stabilize these images
we did it basically by hand.
We would say take the second image,
move it over two pixels, move it up one...
'Yeah, that's...' and we'd blink,
'Yeah, that's a little better fit.'
And it was like an eye test, you know,
was A better than B?
And after doing this
and going nearly blind for weeks
we decided, no,
we have to have the computer do this.
We invented the process,
we called it VISR
video image stabilization and registration,
that compares one image to another
and figures out, how the second one,
has to be transformed,
to match up with the first one.
Exactly what angle do we need to rotate it?
Exactly how much bigger do we have to make it?
Exactly how much do we have to shift it?
We need to figure out to a small fraction of a pixel,
how much do you have to move this image,
to make it match as best as possible to the other one?
Once it's stabilized
you can add those images together,
because they all match.
Get rid of that fuzzy noise,
and you've got a clean clear image.
The backpack video
by adding together 400 images,
went from where you really
can't even tell it's a backpack,
to you can make out details in the backpack.
We cleaned up the image of the Blob Man,
it's not a lot of images,
probably only one or two seconds.
But it was enough
that we brought out details about him.
You could make out his height and weight,
5' 11" and 185 pounds or so.
He was wearing thigh length khaki shorts,
ankle high boots, with light colored socks.
A dark shirt,
and it looked like he had something on his head,
a hood or a beret,
and it becomes very apparent then,
and only then, that he's a white male.
They created for us a cutout that said
you must be this tall
and just that shoe size
and just that pair of boots.
We knew everything about "Blob Man"
except who he was.
And once we knew who he was
we stood ready to convict him
but couldn't do it 'til we knew who he was.
I'm informed that there's been another bombing
in Birmingham, Alabama
of an abortion clinic, two hours away.
All the way back.
We do have one confirmed fatality.
A police officer has been killed.
A nurse has been severely injured.
This bombing is probably
connected to our bombings.
It's the fulfilment of the promise.
The next abortion clinic might not be empty.
As everyone is running toward the explosion
to see what happened,
we find something, very, very important.
An alert medical student sees a person
almost nonchalantly walking the other way.
And somehow intuits that this person
must be involved in the bombing in some way.
Sees him get into a grey Nissan pickup,
he writes down the license plate,
the person goes in the wind.
The description that he gives
matches the NASA analysis of the Blob Man photograph.
The plate comes back...
Thank you.
To an Eric Robert Rudolph.
That's a eureka moment.
For the first time,
I allow myself to say something out loud.
I went, 'Yes!'
Now the game had changed.
He was no longer a "blob man."
No longer was some unknown subject hunting us.
We were now on a path to hunting them.
Whoa.
Having been involved with the bombing investigations
exclusively for 18 months...
I was elated.
Now we know who he is,
we can get him located
and get him arrested.
His registration came back
to an apartment in Asheville, North Carolina.
So when we arrived at the apartment complex,
we quickly learned that Eric Rudolph
did not live at the apartment any more.
But we got a picture of Eric...
wearing clothing that resembled
certain clothing that had been observed
in one of the previous bombings in Atlanta.
He's the right size,
the right shape, the right color.
We have someone that was followed
from a bomb site...
to North Carolina.
That area was a known hotbed
for anti-government sentiment.
Eric had circled in that orbit.
He's been in the military,
trained in ambush techniques.
A lone wolf, keeps to himself.
And you can feel the pieces starting to drop together.
We ran him through
multiple governmental sources.
He doesn't have charge accounts.
He didn't use credit cards.
He has no police record.
He didn't worry about social security, taxes.
This man is off the grid.
Unseeable and unseen.
Eric Robert Rudolph -
police say his pickup truck
was seen driving away from the Birmingham clinic
just after the bomb went off.
The decision had been made
that we would go public with Eric Rudolph's name.
An old friend of Eric's contacted us
and said that Eric's primary occupation
was he was a pot grower.
Naturally, in 1996,
it's a cash-only business.
Eric had survival skills,
ranging from gathering food, to weapons,
to establishing hiding places.
The last he knew, Eric was living
in the Murphy, North Carolina area.
We get to Murphy
and there's an excitement,
we think we have him now.
It was about 8:30 in the evening.
Dark.
And we were hoping that we would certainly
have the element of surprise.
There were lights on inside the trailer.
So, we had the benefit of the cover of darkness.
The one thing that we found strange
was being that it was a cold January night,
the front door was open.
It was a serious tactical situation.
He could have been lying in wait with firearms.
He could have had the place rigged with explosives.
So we decided to
put the property under surveillance
and sit and wait.
So night passed and no one came, no one left.
He had fled.
Once agents entered the trailer,
they could tell that he had packed hastily.
We find his Bible,
we find some of his notes.
But there's a moment of deep disappointment.
Because somehow once again,
he slips out of our grasp.
And then, we received a phone call
that Eric Rudolph's truck had been found.
Not far from his trailer.
The investigators step back from the truck
and they look around them.
Eric had gone to ground in the Nantahal National Forest.
It's a double growth, triple growth forest,
in which the mountain laurels
grow underneath the dogwoods,
which grow underneath the pine trees.
It's almost impenetrable.
Throw a doll in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
and then go find it.
That's how hard it was.
After it was determined the trailer was safe,
evidence recovery teams went through the trailer
looking for anything that could be related
to the bombings in Atlanta.
We take the dog in.
The first place he hit on was an area of a carpet.
We cut out a piece of carpet,
did a quick vapor test with our EGIS machine,
and every one of them gave us a positive reading
for ethylene glycol dinitrate,
which shocked me because, man,
that's what we're looking for.
That means that we got dynamite residues in his house.
I went out on the search of the storage building he had rented.
We found a VHS tape,
one-year anniversary of the Olympic Park bombing.
Cut masonry nails from Ace Hardware.
Agents went to that
and discovered Eric bought a lot of components in the bombs.
Everything we find is drawing the web of evidence
tighter and tighter around Eric Rudolph.
The steel plates...
the explosives.
We're able to link everything to him.
Charges are filed,
charging him with three bombings in Atlanta
and the bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.
Today the federal government
is charging Eric Robert Rudolph
with the bombings in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
We had a case that when confronted
by the forensic evidence,
he would have no option but to plead guilty.
All we need is somebody to come in and stand trial.
A massive manhunt is underway to find Rudolph.
Eric knew the area we were searching
like the back of his hand.
I spent countless hours
working on this investigation
and hundreds of other FBI, ATF agents,
GBI agents, North Carolina SBI agents,
Sheriff's Department deputies,
we all spent so many hours on this man hunt.
This was a major effort by
all the agencies to find him.
The hunt went on for over five years.
We had unlimited resources
and yet we couldn't catch him.
Over time, there were no sightings,
there was no fresh information.
There was no contact.
All of our patrols gave us nothing.
He had won in that we couldn't catch him.
We had won from the standpoint
no more bombs went off.
It's like playing to a draw.
We knew he did it,
we could prove he did it but we can't capture him.
He could hide for the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, 9/11 occurred,
Eric fell by the wayside.
The task force was disbanded
but I still felt he was up there.
The FBI case agent felt he was still up there.
But again, we just couldn't find him.
On the night of May 31st 2003,
I was a rookie police officer
for the Murphy, North Carolina Police Department.
I was the only patrol officer on duty after 2 AM.
Typically, at those hours,
I began checking my businesses and shopping centers.
And as I began coming around the side of the building,
I could see an individual's silhouette.
It looked like he was carrying some type of a long weapon.
I had no idea who I had just rolled up on.
Sir!
Sir...!
I immediately got on the radio
and called for back-up.
Sir? Sir!
Hands where I can see them, sir!
It was scary because you don't know
what this individual's intent was.
Sir!
Get out!
Sir!
Get out here now!
The individual emerged.
Get on the ground now!
He got down on the ground face first.
One of the responding officers
shined his flashlight in his face
and he says, he has a really uncanny resemblance
to Eric Rudolph.
I'd been on the force for 10 months
and Eric Rudolph's name
had been brought up several times.
He was still on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted.
What went through my mind was,
what if this is really him?
Tell me your name, sir.
Sir, tell me your name.
Tell us who you really are.
And he says in the coldest,
darkest look possible,
"I'm Eric Robert Rudolph and you've got me."
I called them and said, you know, what's happened?
"Got him? Is it confirmed?"
"Yes, we have him."
And I was elated by that,
all those people from all those agencies
worked so hard to gather all that evidence
and now it would come into play...
and he would answer for his crimes.
The US Attorney, Dave Nahmias called me
and he said, we can seek the death penalty for him.
You are a victim.
And it's Federal law that you will contact the victims
and ask their opinion about that.
And I said Dave, I don't feel like I'm a victim,
I was just doing my job.
Every unit in the lab
spent a tremendous amount of time working on this particular case.
Everyone did an excellent job.
It's a great feeling to know
that a serial bomber was captured.
I mean, was he capable of doing another bomb?
Absolutely.
It was fun at times.
It was heartbreaking at times.
But I think I helped keep the guy
from killing other people,
so that's always a good feeling.