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Jed Lipinski
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Jed Lipinski
In 1996, the Summer Olympics came to Atlanta. It was the seventh time the United States had hosted the Olympic Games, but the first time they'd been held in the South. While the main events were in Atlanta, the preliminary rounds were spread out across other cities in the Southeast and beyond. A group stage of the soccer tournament took place in Birmingham, Alabama. Reporter John Archibald covered it for the Birmingham News.
John Archibald
It was just sort of this magical moment. It seemed like to me and to everybody that, you know, the world was coming to the south and we were going to get to show them something other than, you know, bare feet and institutional racism, right? So it was a big moment and people were excited about it. And I'll never forget how there's a big mystery who was going to light the Olympic torch. And everybody was watching and Muhammad Ali stepped out from behind a curtain and, you know, he could barely walk because of Parkinson's and he was shaking. He was trying to light the torch and he finally did it. And it was just like this one of these. I'm getting chills thinking about it, honestly, and he lit the torch. And it was a moment. The whole world just stopped. And I think Sports Illustrated would end up naming it, I think the 68th biggest sports moment of all time. Just the lighting of the torch.
Jed Lipinski
The soccer matches were held in Legion Field, the longtime home of Alabama's Crimson Tide and known as the football capital of the South. The field's turf, which had been installed decades earlier, was converted back to Bermuda grass for the event. John covered the opener between US and Argentina. The match drew nearly 84,000 people, the stadium's all time record for any event. Argentina won 3 to 1.
John Archibald
All of a sudden, you know, I woke up one morning and there had been a bomb in Centennial Park. As Hundreds celebrated the 96 Olympics at Atlanta's Centennial Park, a powerful pipe bomb expl. A woman was killed and more than
Jed Lipinski
100 injured in the blast that stunned
John Archibald
the nation and the world.
Jed Lipinski
Two people died in the blast. A 44 year old woman from Georgia and a Turkish cameraman who died of a heart attack while rushing to cover the scene. More than a hundred others were injured. The bomb had been placed in a backpack and tucked under a bench on the north end of the park where a free concert was underway. Investigators later determined it was a pipe bomb packed with masonry nails.
John Archibald
It was the Olympic Games, you know, and the President would give a comment and, you know, it was huge. And they identified very quickly that they had a suspect. And that suspect was Richard Jewell, who had spotted the bomb. He was a security guard.
Jed Lipinski
Prior to the explosion, Jewell, a former cop, had spotted the suspicious looking backpack and reported it to police. He'd helped clear the area before the bomb went off, which almost certainly saved lives. He was hailed as a hero. But a few days later, the narrative flipped. The Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a front page story titled FBI Suspects Hero Guard May have Planted Bomb. The reporter had received a tip from a federal source claiming Jewell was the bomber and that he'd staged the incident to make himself look like a hero. The whole thing hearkened back to a similar, if less deadly episode at the 1984 Summer Games in LA.
John Archibald
There'd been a real similar sort of case and a bomb had been placed on a bus carrying athletes and it had been discovered by an off duty cop. And they ultimately found out that he had placed the bomb there. It didn't go off. So, I mean, there's sort of a history for this. And they were looking for this sort of pattern and they automatically decided that this is probably the guy who did it.
Jed Lipinski
National news crews Captured the feds hauling juul out of his apartment. The FBI turned his home upside down, Questioned his colleagues, ran background checks, and kept him under 24 hour surveillance. But they found nothing connecting juul to the crime beyond his proximity to the blast that day. The best they had was a tip from a former employer that juul could be, quote, overly zealous. After 88 days of public scrutiny, Atlanta's U.S. attorney announced that jewell was no longer a target of the investigation. Attorney general Janet reno apologized to him, and three FBI agents on the case were disciplined. Jewell later sued a handful of media outlets for defamation.
John Archibald
So the police were so convinced he did this that for, you know, weeks this went on that they thought it was him, which sucked for him. But it also sucked because they weren't really looking for the guy who did it. So by the time they had determined that Richard jewell was not the guy, they had no clue who was.
Jed Lipinski
The bomber's identity would remain a mystery for the remainder of 1996. He would later be suspected of planting other bombs in the Atlanta area. John archibald followed these incidents from afar, never suspecting that the bomber would soon come to Birmingham. I'm Jed lipinski. This is gone south. In 1996, practically no one had a cell phone. Video surveillance existed, but not like it does today. So in the wake of the olympic bombing, authorities had asked the public to send them photos they'd taken of centennial park on the day of the attack.
John Archibald
And they saw one guy who was sitting on this bench where the backpack was found that contained the bomb. And it was so very blurry that you couldn't identify him. You could kind of tell what he was wearing, Kind of shorts with hiking boots and t shirt, white guy. And they estimated a height and weight, but you couldn't identify him at all. So they thought about sending it out, but it wouldn't do any good. And within the FBI, they put together a wanted poster with this thing on it, never sent it out that said wanted the blob man.
Jed Lipinski
After the initial suspect, Richard jewell, was exonerated, this was all the FBI had. A blurry photo of a guy on the bench where the bomb had been planted. Then, nearly six months after the centennial park bombing, the bomber appeared to strike again. On January 16, 1997, a pair of bombs went off at an abortion clinic just outside Atlanta. The first exploded at the back of the building, followed by a second blast in the parking lot as first responders rushed to the scene.
John Archibald
One of those things where you call in a bomb, it Explodes. Paramedics come, cops come. 20 minutes later, another bomb explodes.
Jed Lipinski
Shrapnel injured four people, and 50 others suffered blast effects. Then a month later, a bomber targeted a gay nightclub in Atlanta called the Other side Lounge. It followed the same pattern as the previous attack. The first bomb was planted on the back patio, and the second was intended to maim first responders. The second bomb was found and disarmed before it detonated. The first one exploded, but no one was injured. A woman in the club had decided to stand up and tuck in her shirt when shrapnel whizzed by where her body had been just seconds earlier. John Archibald saw the woman's escape as part of a pattern of lucky breaks, without which the death toll from all three bombings would have been far higher. During the Centennial park bombing, for instance, the bomb had been placed near some tents that abutted the stage.
John Archibald
They had all these tents, you know, sponsored by different people, and they had a speedo tent, and there's some young people who are working in the speedo tent. They came over and saw this bag, and then I thought maybe, hey, well, maybe somebody's got some booze or whatever in there. And they look and turn over the backpack, which had been facing toward the pit in front of the stage, which would have been a huge crowd. You know, they turn it over so that it falls on its back, so that when it explodes, the shrapnel goes largely straight up in the air rather than straight at the crowd as it was intended.
Jed Lipinski
The similarities between the attacks implied that the same person was behind them. And yet the bombs themselves changed over time, growing in intensity and sophistication. John surmised that the bomber had grown frustrated by the lack of mass casualties.
John Archibald
He was very clearly trying to make things more deadly, making the bombs bigger, putting in a steel plate to essentially make it a claymore mine, directing the shrapnel toward the biggest crowds. One of the guys who was running the investigation said, you know, they were basically looking for a white guy who was angry at the government, had a height and weight and description, and they started looking for people who fit that bill. And they said, this is crazy, because, you know, in Georgia alone, you know, we've got thousands of people who fit the bill on this.
Jed Lipinski
John followed the Atlanta bombings closely. But then in 1998, the story came
John Archibald
to him, and I'm in Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm driving to work. I'll remember it forever. I got a page saying, go to Southside, which is south side of Birmingham. If you've Ever been to Birmingham? Right beneath the statue of Vulcan, the largest cast iron statue in the world, there's been a bomb.
Jed Lipinski
Looming over the south side of Birmingham is a 56 foot cast iron statue of Vulcan, the Roman God of fire and the forge. Built for the 1904 World's Fair to promote the city's steel industry, it was brought back and installed atop the city's red mountain. An abortion clinic called New Woman, all women, sat just down the street. It was here that someone had planted the bomb.
John Archibald
And I get over there and people are running everywhere. It's crazy. A police officer named Sandy Sanderson, who was working as a security guard, had been killed. And a nurse, Emily Lyons, was seriously injured. I mean, seriously injured. They didn't think she would live.
Jed Lipinski
Investigators later determined that the bomb was composed of dynamite surrounded by close packed nails matching the shrapnel signature from the three Atlanta bombs. The bomber had hidden it inside a FedEx box near the clinic's entrance.
John Archibald
What happened was they were opening for business and the nurse had arrived and walked into the building. The security guard saw nurse Emily Lyons walking into the building and walked up to escort her in to make sure nothing happened. And they saw this green box in the shrubbery.
Jed Lipinski
The security guard poked at the package with a stick to see what it was, and as he did this, it exploded, killing him and severely injuring the nurse he'd been escorting inside. Members of the Southeast bomb task force who'd been working the three previous bombings in Atlanta descended on Birmingham. They were almost certain the same person was to blame. Having failed to cause mass casualties with timed devices, it seemed this time the bomber had decided to trigger the bomb himself with a remote control device. It worked, but it meant he had to be in the general area when the bomb went off. And this time, someone saw him. We all have that one business idea we've been sitting on, waiting for the perfect moment. Well, Shopify is here to take away every excuse you have for not starting. Launching a business is a big deal, but Shopify makes it simpler by giving you all the tools you need right from day one. Want your brand to look sleek, modern and high end? Shopify's templates and AI tools let you build a stunning site fast without touching a single line of code. Even better, you don't have to worry about the tech side of selling. Shopify. Checkout is completely optimized the moment you launch, letting returning customers buy with a single click. If you ever feel stuck or have a question you're too afraid to ask, Shopify's built in AI Assistant Sidekick is ready to help you troubleshoot so you can focus on growing. You'll be using the exact same powerful platform that trusted global brands like Gymshark rely on. All you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial@shopify.com GoneSouth
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Jed Lipinski
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John Archibald
Birmingham was the last city in America that had racial zoning, where black people could live here but not here. White people could live here, but not here. And when the courts ruled that that was illegal. Black people started moving in some of those neighborhoods, and people in the hoods responded with dynamite they'd stolen from the mines that proliferate around here.
Jed Lipinski
Bombs were also set at churches, synagogues, the houses of lawyers and accountants. In 1965, the Klan was suspected of trying to bomb the homes of the mayor and a city council member. Bombings were so common in birmingham that the city earned the nickname bombingham. John covered his first bombing in 1989. That year, a package delivered to the home of an alabama appeals court judge exploded in his kitchen, killing him and injuring his wife. The perpetrator was a man from atlanta named Walter leroy moody. Moody had set the bomb because he was angry that the 11th Circuit had refused to expunge a previous conviction he'd gotten for, of all things, possessing a pipe bomb. John spent weeks reporting the story, shadowing bomb technicians as they pieced together evidence.
John Archibald
I sort of learned the process of how they go about examining every tiny piece of equipment to the twine that wraps the package, to the paper that wrapped the package, to the typewriter keys. They dragged a lake to find the typewriter they thought he had used to write letters to the judge.
Jed Lipinski
When the bomb exploded outside the Birmingham abortion clinic, John was assigned to cover it. And one of the first things he learned was that someone had spotted the bomber.
John Archibald
There was a young black man named Jeraine Hughes, who was a uab student at the time. And he was doing his laundry in a dorm across the street from the clinic. And he heard the explosion, and he looked up, and what he saw was a whole bunch of people looking to see what had happened and going toward the smoke and the sound of the explosion. But he also saw a man walking away who didn't bother to look back to see what had happened. And to this kid, that just seemed weird. And so, rather than wonder about that and then go about his business, he decided he would follow this man.
Jed Lipinski
Hughes jumped in his car and followed the man through Birmingham's south side. He watched him dart behind an apartment building, then re emerge in a different set of clothes with a wig in his hand. After following the man for another few blocks, Hughes Hugh lost the trail and pulled into a McDonald's parking lot to call the cops. The police didn't seem to believe him, but they told him to wait where he was and a police officer would meet him there.
John Archibald
There's this moment in that 911 tape where you can just hear the despair of not being believed. He was just frustrated. And then all of a sudden, he goes There he is. I got him. I got him. I got him. And the man he's been following is walking in front of the McDonald's.
Jed Lipinski
At that point, an Opelika attorney who'd stopped at the McDonald's for some coffee joined in the hunt. He and Hughes watched as the man got into a gray Nissan pickup truck with North Carolina plates and drove off. Both men managed to scribble down his license plate number.
John Archibald
The tag number goes out on police radio. And I think it's our cop reporter, Carol Robinson, who's still around, just like me. Got that. Identified as Eric Robert Rudolph from Murphy,
Jed Lipinski
North Carolina, in the two years since the Centennial park bombing, this was the first time anyone had mentioned the name Eric Rudolph. The feds had yet to publicly identify him, but John in his newsroom, figured that's who they were looking for. Today, a local paper might run a quick dispatch and leave the out of state reporting to the wires, but this was 1998, and this was a day
John Archibald
when news budgets were different than they are now. And my editor turned to me immediately and said, go.
Jed Lipinski
Hours after the bomb went off, John made the four hour drive from Birmingham to Murphy, North Carolina. He stopped at the local post office and asked where he could find Eric Robert Rudolph. An employee directed him to Rudolph's trailer on the other side of town. When John pulled up to the trailer, there were no cops or news cameras in sight. He decided to knock on the door.
John Archibald
Whether I had to call somebody in those situations or knock on the door, it's always, you know, it's nervous. I gotta get my Zen. So I count down from 10 to 1 and knock on the door, you know, not knowing what I was gonna get. And he doesn't answer. So I knock on the door, he doesn't answer. And, you know, I'm both disappointed and relieved at the same time.
Jed Lipinski
For years afterward, John would retell the story of beating the FBI to the door of a notorious bomber's home and bravely waiting for him to answer. But when he revisited the case for a recent podcast, American Shrapnel, he reviewed some surveillance footage the FBI had taken of Rudolph's trailer, and he realized he'd made a mistake.
John Archibald
They sent a robot into his house. When they finally got there, and. And I was sitting there watching this with my colleague Becca Andrews, and I was like, oh. And she's like, what? And I was like, I was at the wrong damn house.
Jed Lipinski
Around the same time, John knocked on the wrong door, federal prosecutors back in Birmingham went on television and named their suspect as Eric Robert Rudolph, as John would later learn, Rudolph was watching.
John Archibald
As we would come to find out, Eric Rudolph had been home. He left Birmingham, went home, had gone to the video store, picked up a video, had come back and cooked himself some spaghetti, things like that. But then had gone to. I'm still not sure why he went to Burger King after cooking spaghetti. But he saw the press conference on the TV at the Burger King and decided it was time to go.
Jed Lipinski
As the investigation later revealed, Rudolph had been preparing for months in case he needed to flee into the mountains that surrounded Murphy, North Carolina. He knew the terrain well, having grown up in the area. According to John, Rudolph had a thriving marijuana growing business and sold what some described as the best dope in the southern part of the state.
John Archibald
So he disappears into the mountains and he drives his truck up to this trail and gets stuck. So days later, they find the truck, but he's nowhere to be found. And it becomes the largest manhunt in American history. They bring in FBI, atf, local cops from all over the south and begin searching for him. You know, they're tromping the trails looking for this guy and they're not finding him. And all this time, you know, people in Murphy and surrounding areas are putting up signs that say, run, Rudolph, run. And writing songs about the ballad of Eric Rudolph, you know, that say, you know, he didn't mean to hurt nobody, you know, and, you know, they're indicating that we agree with this guy, you know, we want him to get away. Which was shocking to me at the time because maybe it's because I was naive and didn't understand that that sort of anger and sentiment runs a lot deeper than, you know, we always realized.
Jed Lipinski
The search for Rudolph dragged on for weeks and then months. The FBI and ATF set up a base camp in an old armory building in downtown Murphy. In the meantime, John and reporters from around the country dug into the suspected bomber's background. Everyone wanted to know, who is this guy? This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Every true crime story has money somewhere in the mix. Growing up, I blew years worth of paychecks on stuff I didn't need because nobody taught me how to manage it. Without financial literacy, kids and teens can easily become targets for scammers. But Greenlight helps keep your family's safety from becoming another cautionary tale. Greenlight is an award winning money app and debit card for kids and teens that helps parents raise financially smart kids. Instead of handing over cash and losing visibility, Greenlight lets you set flexible spending controls and send money quickly to your child's wallet. Parents and kids invest together and you get real time notifications to guide their choices. Plus, Greenlight includes SOS alerts, crash detection and identity monitoring to protect your family from real world risks. Join the millions of parents and kids using Greenlight to build real money confidence. Every day they're handling money without guidance is a missed opportunity. Start your risk free greenlight trial today@greenlight.com GoneSouth don't wait to teach your kids real world money skills. That's greenlight.com gonesouth to get started greenlight.com gonesouth I love how easy summer feels, especially when the days get relaxed and I can just reach for the same comfortable go anywhere clothing over and over. That's why I'm always turning to quints. They focus on well made essentials that naturally become those everyday staples you actually live in all season, season long. For me, the piece that changed how I get dressed this summer is their 100% European linen shirt. It's so breathable and effortless, making it a total wardrobe upgrade starting at just $34. Their T shirts are soft enough to live in all day, and I've been wearing their lightweight cotton sweaters when the summer nights cool down. Because they partner directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, Quint's prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They also do amazing home and travel gear make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.comonesouth for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com gonesouth for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com gonesouth. After seeing himself named on national television, Eric Rudolph had vanished into the Nantahala National Forest, a particularly rugged region of western North Carolina, a half million acre expanse about 20 miles south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The forest sits in a rural corner of the state where North Carolina meets Georgia and Tennessee. The Cherokee word for the place means land of the noonday sun. Its gorges are so steep and deep, the sun only reaches the valley floor at midday. The town of Murphy sits on the forest's edge. For weeks after Rudolph disappeared, John and a pack of other reporters holed up there trying to figure out what drove him to plant four bombs in two southern cities.
John Archibald
In that frenzy, we were trying desperately to find out everything we knew about that guy. And that meant every VCR he's ever gotten, every book he's ever read, he had Timothy McVeigh's book on the bedside table, the Oklahoma City bomber. And we would learn that he was getting essentially white supremacist or Christian nationalist kind of literature and the male. And you could piece together these sort of little bits to find out who he was. But he was always sort of enigmatic.
Jed Lipinski
As John learned, Rudolph's father had died of cancer when Rudolph was 15. The family blamed the government. They believed he could have been saved by a treatment the FDA had banned. Three years later, his mom took him and two siblings to Shell city, Missouri, where they spent four months at a compound run by Dan Gaiman, the leader of the church of Israel and a central figure in the Christian identity movement. Christian identity holds that white Europeans are the true lost tribes of Israel, that Jews and black people are spiritually corrupt, and that a race war is both inevitable and mandated by scripture. According to people who knew him, Rudolph saw Gaiman as a surrogate father figure. He enlisted in the army in 1987, but was later discharged for what most people agree was his marijuana use. He spent the early 90s drifting through the North Carolina mountains, growing weed on army Corps of engineers land and selling it through contacts in Nashville. His sister described him as more of a stoner than an ideological warrior. Over time, though, Rudolph's politics shifted. He came to believe that the federal government had lost its moral authority the moment it legalized abortion. When Atlanta won the bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics, he saw an opportunity. To him, the games were the federal government on display, and he wanted to humiliate it in front of the world. The search for Eric rudolph continued through 1998 and then through the following year and the year after that. At its peak, the manhunt had involved hundreds of federal agents. By the early 2000s, that number had dwindled down to three. While many assumed Rudolf was either dead or long gone, those agents were convinced he was still in the mountains.
John Archibald
They really believed that the only way Eric Rudolph could survive as long as he did in the woods was if he had help. And one of the biggest questions we have is, did he have help? And how? And, you know, from my perspective, I don't really see any evidence that he had help in the bombings, but he certainly had to have some help in survival.
Jed Lipinski
John would later learn from investigators and from Rudolph's own statements to the feds exactly how he'd managed to survive all those years in the woods. It turned out that Rudolf had set up two camps, One far away in the mountains and one, amazingly, just a few Hundred yards from the armory where the federal agents were stationed. Once the task force had shrunk down, he'd rigged a bomb at the armory's entrance and spent days watching a pair of agents come and go.
John Archibald
And for some reason, he decided not to do it, he said later, because he had watched those two agents go back and forth so much that he began to think about their family and didn't do it. But he was that close to setting off a bomb, which is mind blowing.
Jed Lipinski
Rudolph would later tell authorities that while still a fugitive, he tried to set off another bomb in Asheville, but his car had broken down while stranded on the side of the road. Some local cops had picked him up and given him a ride without asking who he was. John never confirmed that this actually happened, But Rudolph insisted it had the end for Eric. Rudolph finally came on the night of May 31, 2003. By then, he'd been on the run for just over five years and four months.
John Archibald
So Eric Rudolph waits until the middle of the night in murphy, north carolina, and he sneaks over to the save a lot grocery store there in Murphy, to the back, where they have a dumpster where they dispose of rotting food they can't sell. And he's watched them enough to know that this particular night is old banana night, right? So he comes over, dumpster diving in the save a lot dumpster.
Jed Lipinski
Around that same time, a rookie cop named Jeff Postel spotted him. He had no idea the dumpster diver was actually Eric Rudolph. But being new to the force, he followed police protocol to a tee.
John Archibald
So he comes and drives around, turns his lights off before he goes around the edge of the building. He does the things a lot of older cops wouldn't have done, frankly. He flips on his lights, and he sees a guy standing there looking suspicious, holding what he thought was a gun at that time. And he gets out of his car and draws his weapon and says, freeze. And he froze.
Jed Lipinski
Postel put Rudolph in cuffs and radioed for backup. When they brought him back to the station, some of the cops on duty suspected he might be Eric Rudolph. But Rudolph wasn't talking, and he'd been on the run so long, no one recognized him.
John Archibald
So finally, somebody finds a copy of the wanted poster. And they come and, you know, they have this long conversation with him. They're holding up the wanted poster next to his face, looking. And finally, at some point, Rudolph says, you got me. I'm Eric Robert Rudolph.
Jed Lipinski
The capture of Eric Rudolph after five years made national news. It also made rookie cop Jeff Postel something of a minor celebrity.
John Archibald
The next month, People magazine named him one of the sexiest men alive, along with, you know, like, Prince whoever. But he's not one of the sexiest men alive. I'm just going to go out on that limb. But gave him a moment of fame.
Jed Lipinski
Rather than go to trial and risk the death penalty, Erich Rudolph pleaded guilty and received four consecutive life sentences. He would later be sent to the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, the so called Alcatraz of the Rockies. Timothy McVeigh did time there before his execution. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, spent years there before he died. Today it's home to Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade center in 1993, and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. Rudolph is one of them. Now,
John Archibald
my sort of favorite story in the way to maybe draw this to a close is Emily Lyons, who was the nurse who was so gravely wounded in the Birmingham bombing and has been through more than 50 surgeries because of it, was maimed and mauled and scarred and still has bits of shrapnel that she has to pick out of her body. Went to the sentencing hearing, got up and gave a powerful speech and faced him directly and said, I've got more guts in my finger than you've got in your whole body and I want to show it to you. And so she flipped him a bird in court with both hands, you know, the double barrel, and sat down and the judge did not like it, but everybody else did.
Jed Lipinski
If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us@gonesouthpodcastmail.com that's gonesouthpodcastmail.com for bonus content, you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram at Gone Southpodcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Leah Rees, Dennis, Maddy Sprung Keyser and Lloyd Lockridge. Our story editor is Katie Mingle. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Schuff. Thank you for listening to Gone South.
Podcast Advertiser/Host
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Podcast by Audacy Podcasts | Host: Jed Lipinski | July 29, 2026
In this episode, host Jed Lipinski and reporter John Archibald deliver a gripping, deeply reported narrative on Eric Rudolph, the man behind the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing and a string of other domestic terrorist attacks. The episode explores the catastrophic events, the misidentification of Richard Jewell, the largest manhunt in American history, and Rudolph’s radicalization and years as a fugitive. Through first-hand accounts and reflection, the episode places these crimes within the South’s troubled history of violence and myth-making.
Atlanta Attacks:
Birmingham Attack:
January 1998: Bomb at the New Woman All Women clinic kills a police officer and maims nurse Emily Lyons.
The bomb was triggered by remote control, suggesting the bomber was nearby, and for the first time, there’s a reliable eyewitness.
“One of those things where you call in a bomb, it explodes. Paramedics come, cops come. 20 minutes later, another bomb explodes.” – John Archibald (08:42)
Muhammad Ali’s Torch Lighting:
“…he lit the torch. And it was just like this one of these. I'm getting chills thinking about it, honestly, and he lit the torch. And it was a moment. The whole world just stopped.” (02:12)
On Richard Jewell:
“…they were looking for this sort of pattern and they automatically decided that this is probably the guy who did it.” – John Archibald (05:18)
On Local Sympathy for Rudolph:
“...they're indicating that we agree with this guy, you know, we want him to get away. Which was shocking to me at the time...” – John Archibald (23:48)
Emily Lyons at Sentencing:
“I’ve got more guts in my finger than you’ve got in your whole body and I want to show it to you.” (35:54)
Comic Relief:
“People magazine named [Postel] one of the sexiest men alive… But he's not one of the sexiest men alive. I'm just going to go out on that limb.” – John Archibald (34:57)
This episode of Gone South re-examines the infamous Centennial Olympic Park bombing through the lens of history, local memory, and investigative journalism. It uncovers the way the bombing, suspicion, media hysteria, and a protracted manhunt exposed deeper truths about the American South—its violence, its communities, and its enduring legacies.
The episode’s blend of narrative, archival reporting, and character insights provides both suspense and context, making plain why understanding these events and the forces behind them remains urgent today.