Speaker 1: So I decided to become a cop, something I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to do, and applied with the Atlanta Police Department
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four, went through the police academy the
Speaker 1: latter part of ninety five into ninety six, and we
Speaker 1: graduated just in time for the Olympics. We were considered
Speaker 1: the Olympic class, so they were trying to rush classes
Speaker 1: through because they wanted to get as many police officers
Speaker 1: on the street during that time as possible.
Speaker 2: Vince Velasquez was a twenty nine year old rookie cop
Speaker 2: during the tumultuous nineteen ninety six Atlanta Olympics. You heard
Speaker 2: part of Historian episode one, but there's a lot more
Speaker 2: to it. Sure he was a rookie cop that summer,
Speaker 2: but just the year before he had also become a dad.
Speaker 2: Vince's personal experience of the bombings was something we felt
Speaker 2: compelled to share with you in full.
Speaker 3: Be quite honest with you.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was the coolest job, and then
Speaker 1: in the later years realized that that, you know, this
Speaker 1: is one not as easy as I thought it would be, two,
Speaker 1: way more dangerous than I ever thought it could or
Speaker 1: would be, and then, most importantly, more impactful than ever
Speaker 1: thought it would be. So I had just got out
Speaker 1: of field training and I fell into this cadence of
Speaker 1: the entire department working in the Olympics, fourteen hour shifts,
Speaker 1: six days a week, one.
Speaker 3: Day off of a week.
Speaker 1: We were providing security along with the FBI and federal
Speaker 1: agencies and state agencies. So it is policing, but it's
Speaker 1: not in a true sense of policing. You're assigned a post,
Speaker 1: you have very strict instructions of what to do with
Speaker 1: that post, Like your job is sit here, stand here,
Speaker 1: don't let cars through unless they have this proper identification,
Speaker 1: be alert, report what you see. I started on a
Speaker 1: fixed post and that was the controlled section. General traffic
Speaker 1: was not allowed on that street. So that was my
Speaker 1: point that particular day in July of nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: I don't recall how far we were into the Olympics,
Speaker 1: but it seemed to me a ways because I remember
Speaker 1: being worn out for the long days and I was relieved.
Speaker 1: They're like, you have like four hours. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I could just walk around do what I want. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: remember I'm a Brookie cop. I don't know shit about shit, right,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, sir, I'm out.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So I had purchased a brick for my son. When
Speaker 1: they were pre construction of OLYMPS Nintennia Olympic Park in
Speaker 1: preparation for the Olympics, they had a campaign where you
Speaker 1: can purchase a brick, help fund the park, and you
Speaker 1: can have an inscription on a brick.
Speaker 4: For just thirty five dollars, you can adopt an inscribed
Speaker 4: your brick to be placed in Atlanta's new Centennial Olympic Park.
Speaker 4: Do it for yourself, well for a friend. To adopt
Speaker 4: your Olympic brick, stop by the home depot or call
Speaker 4: one eight six Brick. You know, this could be the
Speaker 4: best thing.
Speaker 1: So I bought one fifty bucks. My son was born
Speaker 1: March first, nineteen ninety five, so I bought a brick
Speaker 1: and I inscribed it with my son's name is Jonathan
Speaker 1: Taylor Velasquez. I call him JT T JT from Dad
Speaker 1: with love his birthday three to one ninety five. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I thought, in the middle of the Olympics,
Speaker 1: with this four hour break, with literally thousands of people
Speaker 1: walking around Centennial Park, I was gonna find his brick
Speaker 1: I'm in uniform. I've got a orange traffic vest on
Speaker 1: because that's what we required to wear. They wanted you
Speaker 1: to stand out and want people to know that you
Speaker 1: were police. And here I am. I'm walking down Centennial
Speaker 1: Park thousands of people. It was hot, it's July. I
Speaker 1: remember that, and you know we bulletproof vests under your
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just sweating bullets with a towel on
Speaker 1: my neck. I remember getting near Lucky Street and I
Speaker 1: was going to turn right. There's where the main entrance
Speaker 1: for law enforcement to come through, and it was not
Speaker 1: far from the sound stage. And I recall as I'm
Speaker 1: walking and I start to turn right, I probably took
Speaker 1: four five steps into the park and the bomb went off.
Speaker 1: And the pressure from the bomb knocked me on my ass,
Speaker 1: like literally pushed me backwards. It's like it rattles your brain.
Speaker 1: But I'm the cops. I'm supposed to know what's going on.
Speaker 1: But I felt for a moment helpless, like what happened?
Speaker 3: Like what was that?
Speaker 1: Until I smelled what smelled to me like a million
Speaker 1: matches burning. And if you've ever smelled the matches, the sulfur,
Speaker 1: Now I don't know if that was the ingredient of
Speaker 1: the bomb, but it smelled like that to me, and
Speaker 1: I realized, I'm like, that was not good.
Speaker 3: That was a bomb. Something that's happened.
Speaker 1: But what was interesting The bomb went off and it
Speaker 1: was silence. It seemed like forever, but it couldn't have
Speaker 1: been long. And then I hear screaming and people just
Speaker 1: screaming and running. So I run into the park because
Speaker 1: I'm figuring that's what I have to do. I'm a cop,
Speaker 1: try to figure out what's going on. Georgia State Patrol
Speaker 1: I believe was the heavy police presence from my recollection
Speaker 1: at that checkpoint. I remember seeing a lot of them
Speaker 1: because they wear light blue shirts running around. I saw
Speaker 1: people running into the park, I saw people running out
Speaker 1: of the park, and then when I looked to my left,
Speaker 1: I recall a grassy hill just as I walked into
Speaker 1: the park to the left, and I saw a few
Speaker 1: people laid out on that hill, and I thought, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: those are victims. But then I later found out that
Speaker 1: I think one of them may have been someone who
Speaker 1: had some shrapnel. But what I found out later was
Speaker 1: journalists cameramen who were rushing into the park were trying
Speaker 1: to capture this footage, and Georgia State Patrol was telling
Speaker 1: them to get out. And if my recollection serves me
Speaker 1: from what I was told from a very reliable source,
Speaker 1: that at least to the people on that hill were
Speaker 1: cameramen who got knocked out by George's stay control because
Speaker 1: they wouldn't listen to him. And I do recall seeing
Speaker 1: some camera equipment next to him, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Right away, I understood that there was
Speaker 1: mass casualties. I think over one hundred people got injured
Speaker 1: in that bombing. I wasn't aware right away that someone
Speaker 1: had died. I think I found out an hour or
Speaker 1: so later. And so basically, you know, at this point,
Speaker 1: I can't even get on my radio. A lot of
Speaker 1: us are on the same frequency, and you can only
Speaker 1: imagine the radio traffic was just all over the place.
Speaker 1: So I found it best for me to stay off
Speaker 1: the radio. There's really nothing for me to contribute at
Speaker 1: this point. So I just helped where I could, pushing
Speaker 1: people out towards the ambulances and things. I had the requis,
Speaker 1: the training to at least help people. You know, I
Speaker 1: may not know how to write a hell of a report,
Speaker 1: but I know what to do when people are injured,
Speaker 1: and I found myself just doing that. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I tell you, the chaos was indescribable.
Speaker 3: It was literally.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell who was who, although I knew my
Speaker 1: gut told me something bad happened, something intentional happened. It's
Speaker 1: a bad person. I don't know who that bad person is.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they did it, but it happened.
Speaker 1: So now I'm in defense mode and I'm thinking, well, shit,
Speaker 1: could it be one of these people running out of
Speaker 1: the park. But there's thousands of people running. It made
Speaker 1: no sense for me to try to figure that out.
Speaker 1: So I'm literally going through these and just an analytical person.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, you know, not domestic terrorism. I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, this is international terrorism, because what better place
Speaker 1: to do it than the world stage of the Olympics.
Speaker 3: So I didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 1: This is probably a foreign government or a foreign entity
Speaker 1: who are making a statement. Going through these steps in
Speaker 1: my mind and I'm like, Okay, the only thing I
Speaker 1: can do right now is help people who are injured.
Speaker 1: That's it, and let the powers that be try to
Speaker 1: figure this out. So I stayed for about an hour
Speaker 1: and I just went back to my post. But I
Speaker 1: have a newspaper article. I saw it later.
Speaker 3: They took a.
Speaker 1: Photo from inside the park, out towards the entrance, and
Speaker 1: it's me with my back turn. I can see my
Speaker 1: orange vest. I think my hands are on my hips,
Speaker 1: like I'm probably thinking, like, what the fuck is going
Speaker 1: on here? You know, this is crazy? And then you
Speaker 1: know we're just everybody's in lockdown. So back to my posts.
Speaker 1: You know, we weren't sure if the Olympics were going
Speaker 1: to continue, and we soon found out that yes, they
Speaker 1: are going to continue, and we're going to press on
Speaker 1: with a regular schedule. I think I ended up working
Speaker 1: about eighteen nineteen hours that night before I was relieved
Speaker 1: and I had to be right back the next day.
Speaker 2: If you've heard episode one, you know how the rest
Speaker 2: of the story goes. In less than twenty four hours,
Speaker 2: the Olympics would pick back up, racing to the finish
Speaker 2: line without any further issues. Unfortunately, the following January, the
Speaker 2: bomber would also pick things back up, carrying out his
Speaker 2: own demented game.
Speaker 1: So now fast forward. I was living in Sandy Springs,
Speaker 1: my son was born March of ninety five. His mother
Speaker 1: and I were not married at the time, so anytime
Speaker 1: I was not working, i'd go pick him up. He'd
Speaker 1: spend three or four nights with me, and I picked
Speaker 1: them up the night before you know I'm going to
Speaker 1: wake up. I got all day with him before I
Speaker 1: got to go back to work. At this point, my
Speaker 1: son is almost two years old, so that particular morning
Speaker 1: I had woken up early. He's fussy six or seven am.
Speaker 1: I laid back on my bed with him, just to
Speaker 1: calm him down. He finally falls back asleep, and then
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, it felt like the windows in my.
Speaker 3: Bedroom were about to break. Like it was.
Speaker 1: I can't even describe how loud this felt. It just
Speaker 1: like my whole apartment shook. In fact, I had a
Speaker 1: clock on the wall that fell off the wall. And
Speaker 1: then my first thought was down, we had an earthquake.
Speaker 1: We don't have earthquakes in Georgia. I don't think you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that was. It wasn't a boom
Speaker 1: I heard. It was just my entire building just shook,
Speaker 1: and my instinct was to jump on top of my son,
Speaker 1: so I literally just flipped over got ontipe my son
Speaker 1: to shield him. I'm thinking the roof is going to
Speaker 1: fall in, and everything just kind of settles down. Well,
Speaker 1: of course, I turned on the news and I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe what I'm seeing. It was like, Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: bombing right down the street at an abortion clinic. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, damn, that's right down the street. And
Speaker 1: in fact, that's where my attorney, that's her office right there.
Speaker 1: So I called her.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get her on the phone.
Speaker 2: If you remember Rob Stadler from episode two, Vince is
Speaker 2: talking about Rob's wife's law firm, the same law firm
Speaker 2: where Rob picked up his twin girls, the one housed
Speaker 2: two stories above the abortion clinic in the Sandy Springs
Speaker 2: Professional Building.
Speaker 1: And again I'm watching the news. So later in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: I decided to go to work earlier. I took my
Speaker 1: son to daycare earlier, and then I'm at the precinct
Speaker 1: because I don't know why, I felt I just needed
Speaker 1: to go in earlier, and we're watching the news, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea at the time that a second
Speaker 1: device went off. Now, to be honest with you, I
Speaker 1: don't know if the first or the second device that
Speaker 1: went off is what caused my apartment to shake. I
Speaker 1: obviously missed one of them.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking gas line. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But then we're talking about secondary device. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: here we go again. This is not natural. It's not
Speaker 1: gas this is bad. It's not us. It's a bad guy.
Speaker 1: But I'm still not putting those two things together. It's
Speaker 1: a rundown office building and the Olympics. That doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to me at this time. Remember, we don't know
Speaker 1: who did the Olympic Park bombing. I'm already in the
Speaker 1: mindset that the Olympic Park bombing is a terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: Why would a terrorists want to blow up an office building?
Speaker 1: Makes no sense. Those two lines didn't converge in my mind.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, it's unfortunate that this happened. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even an exercise of me trying to disprove why they're
Speaker 1: not connected. The thought never even entered my mind, Like
Speaker 1: I never even had that thought process like these two
Speaker 1: things could be related because they were so different. I
Speaker 1: didn't connect the dots at first with the Olympic bombing
Speaker 1: and the abortion clinic until the other side lounge was bombed.
Speaker 1: So when that bomb happened, I start connecting the office
Speaker 1: bombing with the other side lounge bombing. But then I
Speaker 1: start thinking this is just two coincidental to have three
Speaker 1: bombings in a city, right, They're all intentional.
Speaker 3: Then I'm thinking, well, shit, these have to be related, you.
Speaker 1: Know, cause I'm thinking a gay lounge is bomb unabortion
Speaker 1: clinic is bombed, the Olympics are bombed. These three things
Speaker 1: have to be related. This is beyond coincidental. And then
Speaker 1: the Alabama abortion clinic bombing happens, and as we know,
Speaker 1: a police officer is killed. So we really are paying
Speaker 1: attention to this. Now, who is this guy is he's
Speaker 1: targeting police officers. Obviously he's got a problem with abortion.
Speaker 1: It's two abortion clinics if it is connected with the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Now we have three deaths, and who knows how many
Speaker 1: other people were like permanently injured in the Olympic bombing.
Speaker 1: So I started really looking at you know, I'm talking
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 3: Like AOL days, right, like dial up.
Speaker 1: Internet, and I'm just like reading and at the same time,
Speaker 1: I'm like Richard Jewel, like this makes no fucking sense, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm amateur sleuthing this whole thing, right, and not
Speaker 1: that I have great investigative skills in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: but this doesn't make sense to me. On one hand,
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is all connected. It's not Richard Jewel, right,
Speaker 1: Alabama three in Atlanta. This guy's got a problem with abortion,
Speaker 1: this guy's got a problem with gay people. And whoever
Speaker 1: knows what his statement was for the Olympics. But this
Speaker 1: is political. This is someone who has some ideological problem
Speaker 1: with certain groups of people and he's trying to make
Speaker 1: a statement and people are dying, and it's not Richard Jewel.
Speaker 1: And remember I'm talking to you now from someone who's
Speaker 1: spent twenty two years as a cop, seventeen years in homicide.
Speaker 3: It's easier for me to digest this.
Speaker 1: And my perception now is they made a ton of
Speaker 1: mistakes looking back at it, you know, hindsight being twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the FBI, the ATF, and APDE, it seemed to be
Speaker 1: a strained relationship federal agencies. The ATF taking control because
Speaker 1: it isn't bombing, the FBI having a terrorism aspect of
Speaker 1: this thing if it indeed is not domestic, and then
Speaker 1: APD it's in our city. So at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, this is a homicide. This goes on the
Speaker 1: books in the city of Atlanta as a homicide. Two
Speaker 1: homicides to be exact Alice Hawthorne and the journalists, which
Speaker 1: means a homicide detective gets a sign that case.
Speaker 3: I didn't know all that then I know that now.
Speaker 3: So while a.
Speaker 1: Detective is working that case, he or she has to
Speaker 1: work with whatever federal agency is now taking charge of
Speaker 1: this because of the nature of how it happened, it
Speaker 1: was all fucked up. Nobody knew what the other agency
Speaker 1: was doing, and that's always problematic.
Speaker 3: The Richard Jewel stories is sad.
Speaker 1: It's it's a sad testimony to not you know, this
Speaker 1: is a guy that really tried to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: But it's a testimony like some shitty police work. That's
Speaker 1: some bullshit what they put this guy through. And I
Speaker 1: can tell you as a detective, it's easy when you
Speaker 1: have a piece of information that comes your way, it
Speaker 1: lands in your lap and it helps you right. The
Speaker 1: problem is when you have another piece of information that
Speaker 1: contradicts that, it completely throws you off. It doesn't fit
Speaker 1: with what's going on in the way you want things
Speaker 1: to go because this guy has to be it because
Speaker 1: everything's lining up. And the truth of the matter is,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. The truth is the truth. It's like
Speaker 1: a compass, no matter how you turn it, it's always
Speaker 1: going to point north.
Speaker 3: That's the truth, period.
Speaker 1: And when I look back at this case, to me,
Speaker 1: it seems like they had laser vision on Richard Jewel.
Speaker 1: And the sad part is when you have laser vision,
Speaker 1: something you miss so much else that it's probably evidence
Speaker 1: that you need to be collecting or looking at, because
Speaker 1: that's what tunnel vision is. You can't see past these blinders.
Speaker 1: Not criticizing the FBI, I don't really know. I wasn't
Speaker 1: in the know. I don't know the particulars, but it
Speaker 1: just we know he wasn't the guy, but he was
Speaker 1: the guy for a while. If you look back at
Speaker 1: these news clippings, you look at history, you know, in
Speaker 1: a civil jury decided y'all made him the guy because
Speaker 1: they awarded him a shitload of money for that. I mean,
Speaker 1: they ruined this guy's reputation. He'd a point.
Speaker 3: Guy died. I think he died of a heart attack.
Speaker 2: The intersectional moments in our lives when things are scary
Speaker 2: or difficult, or unjust or overwhelming. They mark us in
Speaker 2: ways that surface unexpectedly. Sometimes it's a slow burn, other
Speaker 2: times we become prisoners to the trauma. Vince's story represents
Speaker 2: the struggle well. So I asked him, out of all
Speaker 2: your memories surrounding these bombings, what sticks with you the most.
Speaker 1: The moment I had to jump on top of my
Speaker 1: son instinctfully, like just knowing that I have to just
Speaker 1: cover him. I don't know what's coming next, you know,
Speaker 1: put me to the point of thinking that I literally
Speaker 1: was close to this guy that killed people, Like here
Speaker 1: we are again. You know you almost got me in
Speaker 1: ninety six, and now you almost got me and my son.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I could feel my windows shaken and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking the roof is coming down that moment, I mean.
Speaker 3: It was it was fight or flight, right, So I
Speaker 3: couldn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: I had to discover my son and hold hope that
Speaker 1: nothing happened. So that was a wake up call for me,
Speaker 1: like this shit is real, Like this guy's really trying
Speaker 1: to hurt people, you know. I mean, thankfully I was
Speaker 1: far enough away from it that we weren't injured, but
Speaker 1: it did put into perspective like I could have been.
Speaker 1: I could have had an appointment that morning with Christine,
Speaker 1: Like Christine could have been an off. I could have
Speaker 1: been like, I'm on my way to daycare, let me
Speaker 1: just pop in with my son, and we could have
Speaker 1: been sitting in her office right where that ceiling caved in,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
Speaker 2: You're a natural storyteller, so all these questions I had
Speaker 2: laid out, you were hitting on your own.
Speaker 3: Oh cool, Thank you, love cool, glad I could help man.
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