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Speaker 1: They argue that you stop for a second, please. For months,
Speaker 1: Richard Jewel, the security guard who was initially hailed a
Speaker 1: hero for discovering the bomb, was investigated by law enforcement
Speaker 1: and bombarded by the press, who framed him as the
Speaker 1: prime suspect. They speculated that he was a villainous attention seeker,
Speaker 1: one suffering from hero syndrome.
Speaker 3: It's also called the Messiah complex, a person who wants.
Speaker 1: To be godlike.
Speaker 3: It's again that power thing they want to feel superior
Speaker 3: to all others.
Speaker 1: Then six months later, those accusations quietly faded after he
Speaker 1: was cleared by the US government.
Speaker 4: With regard to Richard Jewel, I deeply regret that his
Speaker 4: name was linked to the media. This not only damaged
Speaker 4: mister Jewell and his reputation, but it caused the FBI
Speaker 4: substantial damage to its investigation.
Speaker 5: Richard answered a lot of questions the FDI and other
Speaker 5: long enforces who followed up, and at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, there certainly wasn't substantial evidence. It looked like
Speaker 5: he didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Retired US attorney Kent Alexander remembers the man hunt for
Speaker 1: the Centennial Park bomber well. He showed up to our
Speaker 1: interview in the nineteen ninety six at Leant Olympics Polo
Speaker 1: with a framed letter that he sent to Richard Jewel
Speaker 1: during the investigation. Can you can you read the letter?
Speaker 5: Sure? It's addressed to Jack Martin, who's one of several
Speaker 5: attorneys for Richard Jewel. Says, Dear Jack, this to advise
Speaker 5: you that, based on the evidence developed to date, your client,
Speaker 5: Richard Jewel, is not considered a target of the federal
Speaker 5: criminal investigation at the bombing on July twenty seven, nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety six, at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. Barring any
Speaker 5: newly discovered evidence, the status will not change. I'm hopeful
Speaker 5: that mister Jewel will provide further cooperation as a witness
Speaker 5: in the investigation. Sincerely, Kent be Alexander, US Attorney.
Speaker 1: After clearing Richard Jewel, the FBI, atf and GBI, collectively
Speaker 1: known as the Scent Bomb Task Force, we're left with
Speaker 1: really no leads.
Speaker 5: We had no shortage of potential bombers. The more you
Speaker 5: dig into things, you realize there are just a lot
Speaker 5: of crazy people out there, so there wasn't one particular suspect.
Speaker 5: In fact, at that point, there was still poster that
Speaker 5: some agent had drawn up. It was a squiggly figure
Speaker 5: of a guy sitting on a bench and something under
Speaker 5: the bench, and then written in black marker was wanted
Speaker 5: by the FBI. We called him Blobman because there was
Speaker 5: a picture of the actual bomber, but it was so
Speaker 5: grainy that we could make out no facial features at all,
Speaker 5: So you just basically had this guy who looked like
Speaker 5: kind of a blob sitting on the bench. So that
Speaker 5: Blobman pretty much captured the investigation. There were plenty of
Speaker 5: people we kept looking at, but nobody really jumped a
Speaker 5: four as the likely bomber, much less the primary.
Speaker 1: Suspect episode two. Twin bomb.
Speaker 3: My wife at the time, and we had twins arrive
Speaker 3: about eight months previous, so it was kind of a
Speaker 3: crazy household when you get invaded with kids all of
Speaker 3: a sudden. So my day started at four am, and
Speaker 3: it was a regular work day.
Speaker 1: It's January sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven, six months after the
Speaker 1: bombing at the Olympics, and Rob Stadler is the news
Speaker 1: director at Star ninety four, a popular radio station in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: And because we have the twins, I was able to
Speaker 3: get away after the show ended at nine and go
Speaker 3: to my wife's law office was located on the third
Speaker 3: floor of the Sandy Springs Profes Building.
Speaker 1: Just off Roswell Road. The Sandy Springs Professional Building was
Speaker 1: a three story complex that housed a handful of different offices.
Speaker 1: On the top floor was Rob's wife's law firm. On
Speaker 1: the first was Atlanta North Side Planning Services, an abortion clinic.
Speaker 1: Rob's wife was a few counties north that morning for
Speaker 1: a trial.
Speaker 3: We'd set up a kind of a nursery inside the office,
Speaker 3: so I would stop by and scoop them up and
Speaker 3: take them home. And it was dad duty the rest
Speaker 3: of the day, and I called the office up on
Speaker 3: my cell phone and it was probably the most important
Speaker 3: call I made in my life. I told them the
Speaker 3: folks at the office, I said, I'm kind of a rush.
Speaker 3: I won't really want to get home, so if you
Speaker 3: could take the girls out of the crib and have
Speaker 3: them ready to go in their carry all chairs, that
Speaker 3: would be great. And I went up to the third
Speaker 3: floor and walked into the office there the girls were
Speaker 3: right there in the lobby part of the law office,
Speaker 3: and I sat down just for a second to hold
Speaker 3: one of them and noticed a blue light, bright flash
Speaker 3: in the window, and then a tremendous, tremendous blast, and
Speaker 3: it just the shaking was unbelievable. Ceiling tiles started coming down,
Speaker 3: things were happening in the office is collapsing and one
Speaker 3: of the people in the office said that was a bomb.
Speaker 1: Rob and his twin girls made it out of the
Speaker 1: building safely with many of the staff. Immediately, yellow tape
Speaker 1: was rolled out and the area was labeled a crime scene.
Speaker 3: We put the girls, my daughters in my mini pickup,
Speaker 3: and the office staff, one of them, drove them to
Speaker 3: our house in Sandy Springs, away from the site. That
Speaker 3: gave me a chance then to do my job being
Speaker 3: the news guy on Star ninety four. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is a news story. I got as close as
Speaker 3: I could to where the smoke was coming out from
Speaker 3: the first floor window where the abortion clinic was located.
Speaker 3: So then I dialed up my cell phone and then
Speaker 3: called the radio station and jumped on Live.
Speaker 1: E three Industrial Boulevards, darn ninty four.
Speaker 6: It's nine thirty five and we go to Rob Standler,
Speaker 6: our news director, with a breaking news story.
Speaker 7: Steve, I am at two seventy five Carpenter Drive. This
Speaker 7: is a three story building that parallels Roswell Road. It's
Speaker 7: right behind Good Old Days in Sandy Springs where a
Speaker 7: suspected bomb has gone off in this building. I was
Speaker 7: on the third floor of this building at the time
Speaker 7: when we were rocked by a flash and a loud boom,
Speaker 7: and it shattered windows on the southeastern part of the building.
Speaker 8: I was in the car with a couple of my
Speaker 8: friends and we were listening to radio.
Speaker 7: You can hear the sirens coming. Fire and Cruise are
Speaker 7: just now arriving. I can tell you what happened as
Speaker 7: best as I can.
Speaker 9: I was on the third floor of.
Speaker 8: The facility so and I think it was in the morning,
Speaker 8: and they said there had been an explosion at an
Speaker 8: abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, and my stomach dropped and
Speaker 8: I couldn't speak. I mean, all I could think was
Speaker 8: holy shit, Like, what am I going to do? Now?
Speaker 1: I'm talking again with Leah. You probably remember her from
Speaker 1: the last episode. Leah also grew up in Atlanta, lived
Speaker 1: here all her life, and she remembers of the Olympic
Speaker 1: Park bombing well, but at the time, she couldn't know
Speaker 1: that the bombing was just the first in a series
Speaker 1: of events that would forever change her life in the
Speaker 1: lives of her entire family.
Speaker 8: I was born knowing what I want to do from
Speaker 8: day one, knowing what I want to be, where I
Speaker 8: want to go to college. I didn't want to get married,
Speaker 8: didn't want kids. I've always known.
Speaker 1: Among the many stories connected to the Olympic Park bombing,
Speaker 1: Leah's was unexpected and powerful, also complicated. It began the
Speaker 1: year before the Centennial Olympics.
Speaker 8: I met Bo when I was fifteen. I was a sophomore.
Speaker 8: Bo was three years older. He had gotten involved with
Speaker 8: a group of guys that were stealing cars. He was
Speaker 8: awaiting trial for a series of felonies.
Speaker 1: Leah and Bow began dating, but the way you do
Speaker 1: in high school, and you don't know much yet, and
Speaker 1: there's not much to a relationship except the fact that
Speaker 1: you're just together. It wasn't too long before Bow would
Speaker 1: be convicted it would have to serve time in prison.
Speaker 1: After six months behind bars, he took a deal which
Speaker 1: required him to serve six additional months of boot camp,
Speaker 1: followed by house arrest.
Speaker 8: And for me, the absence and the time away made
Speaker 8: me realize, this is a lot to wrap my head around.
Speaker 8: I mean, I didn't get into a relationship with someone to.
Speaker 9: Settle down at fifteen.
Speaker 8: I wasn't choosing a lifelong partner. And Bo wrote me constantly.
Speaker 8: I don't know if I would say that he was needy,
Speaker 8: but he was more talking about long term. I love you,
Speaker 8: I want to marry you. I remember he would always
Speaker 8: put at the bottom of the letter, relax and hang
Speaker 8: in there, baby. To this day, if somebody tells me
Speaker 8: to relax, it makes my skin crawl, just assuming that
Speaker 8: I belonged to him.
Speaker 9: That's the most selfish thing. That's not loving somebody.
Speaker 1: While Bou was in boot camp, Leah was living her
Speaker 1: high school life. Bo was less and less on her radar,
Speaker 1: but she was still very much on his. Their time
Speaker 1: apart made her realize that their relationship was over.
Speaker 8: It was more one of those things where I just
Speaker 8: decided to wait to discuss it until he was out.
Speaker 8: So Bo was released from boot camp and my best
Speaker 8: friend and I drove down to pick him up, and
Speaker 8: he's super excited to see me, want to ride in
Speaker 8: the backseat with me, and was overly affectionate. All he
Speaker 8: could focus on was the fact that he was going
Speaker 8: to spend the next several months in house arrest, and
Speaker 8: that I was going to spend it with him. It
Speaker 8: was the longest car I feel like I've ever had.
Speaker 8: I did eventually muster up the courage to tell him,
Speaker 8: and it went as terribly as you could imagine, and
Speaker 8: it became a dynamic where it felt more territorial, and
Speaker 8: he wanted me to come over every night because he
Speaker 8: couldn't leave the house. There were times that if I
Speaker 8: didn't go to Bow's house and I didn't go stay
Speaker 8: with him, Bou would show up.
Speaker 9: He would break house arrest and come to find me.
Speaker 8: I didn't know how to get out of what I
Speaker 8: was in with bo. I remember, he was upset and
Speaker 8: he called me and called me and called me repeatedly,
Speaker 8: and so I went to his place and I staying
Speaker 8: in the night with him. We had sex that night,
Speaker 8: which I don't know why, but we did. I overslept
Speaker 8: the next morning for work. I left his house in
Speaker 8: a panic, and I ended up getting in a wreck
Speaker 8: and totaling my car, not knowing that I had just
Speaker 8: conceived a child.
Speaker 1: Leah was pregnant at age seventeen. She spoke in confidence
Speaker 1: to a teacher at her school about it, and her
Speaker 1: teacher told her that she should tell her mom. Leah
Speaker 1: decided not to.
Speaker 8: It wasn't real to me, but in my mind there
Speaker 8: was no choice. I knew I was having an abortion,
Speaker 8: and that's it. It was just very, you know, matter
Speaker 8: of fact, like okay, well you just do it.
Speaker 9: I mean, I didn't have an option in my mind.
Speaker 8: My mom didn't believe an abortion, so I knew there
Speaker 8: was no discussion to be had, and I knew I
Speaker 8: didn't want kids.
Speaker 9: So I don't think.
Speaker 8: I don't think I felt anything at the time, or
Speaker 8: I didn't let myself think about it.
Speaker 9: It didn't feel real to me.
Speaker 1: Leah did, however, break the news to Bo. They scoured
Speaker 1: the Yellow Pages for an abortion clinic in Atlanta. They'd
Speaker 1: eventually land on an office in Sandy Springs, but since
Speaker 1: she was under eighteen to legally have the procedures, she
Speaker 1: needed parental permission or a parent with her. But Bo
Speaker 1: had a solution to that.
Speaker 8: So given his skill sets, he made an id for
Speaker 8: me and we scheduled an appointment. Yeah, and I thought
Speaker 8: at the time that that was it, that's what was happening.
Speaker 8: There'd be nothing more to it.
Speaker 1: Leah scheduled the appointment January seventeenth, nineteen ninety seven. She
Speaker 1: wasn't scared. She decided it needed to be done. But
Speaker 1: the day which would forever take root in her memory
Speaker 1: was the day before January sixteenth, the day the clinic
Speaker 1: was bombed.
Speaker 10: I'm sitting at my desk and my boss, Jim Tapman,
Speaker 10: came out and he goes, Mike, she's been a bomb
Speaker 10: went off an abortion clinic up in Sandy Springs. Here's
Speaker 10: the address, Get on up there.
Speaker 1: Mike Rising as a cold case homicide investigator in Walton County,
Speaker 1: which is about forty minutes outside Atlanta, but back in
Speaker 1: ninety seven. He was a supervisory special agent with the FBI.
Speaker 10: So I drive up to the location and when I
Speaker 10: arrived at her ems people, some fire trucks, a lot
Speaker 10: of government cars. An FBI agent came up to me.
Speaker 10: I didn't know him, but he knew me and identified
Speaker 10: himself and took me over to where the door of
Speaker 10: the abortion clinic was and they had just taped it off.
Speaker 10: My role was find out the lay of the land.
Speaker 10: So who had responded to take a look at the site,
Speaker 10: and I walked around to the northwest corner. I had
Speaker 10: gotten my phone out. This was an old, antique, huge
Speaker 10: Miami vice looking goofy old phone with an antenna that
Speaker 10: you would pull out, and then I typically answered directly
Speaker 10: to the number two guy in the US Attorney's office,
Speaker 10: John Davis. Called John Davis and let him know what
Speaker 10: was going on. At that point, I want to say
Speaker 10: there were two or three other attorneys in the office
Speaker 10: because they had me on a speakerphone. When the second
Speaker 10: device went off, it goes off and I just remember
Speaker 10: going fuck. I had this immediate deja vu flashback to
Speaker 10: September fifteenth.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 10: I was hit with a rocket propel grenade in Vietnam,
Speaker 10: and when it hit, it came from the left side.
Speaker 10: I was actually holding a radio set and in this
Speaker 10: case I'm holding a cell phone and a force of
Speaker 10: the blast just shoved me a couple of feet, and
Speaker 10: I'm thinking, I don't think I said it, but I'm
Speaker 10: going not again.
Speaker 8: Where were you in the building and where was the explosion.
Speaker 3: This second explosion, about an hour later, injured a television photographer,
Speaker 3: an ATF agent, and at least four others.
Speaker 1: Rob Stadler's wife rushed back from trial to her law firm,
Speaker 1: which was housed just two stories above the abortion clinic
Speaker 1: in the same building. Both she and Rob were standing
Speaker 1: at the top of the hill overlooking the crime scene
Speaker 1: when the second bomb exploded.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like when you're too close to
Speaker 3: a firework and you feel it in your chest if
Speaker 3: it goes off way too close. It was like that,
Speaker 3: except the shockwave from the bomb enters the front part
Speaker 3: of your brain, goes through your brain and exits the back.
Speaker 3: It's the weirdest feeling in the world. Split second, but
Speaker 3: it seemed like it lasted forever. Shrapnel was buzzing by
Speaker 3: our heads, so at that point it was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: they're going to be a third boone, and that's a
Speaker 3: really frightening thing.
Speaker 5: No one has claimed credit for these explosions.
Speaker 6: Police say there were no calls to nine one one beforehand,
Speaker 6: and clinic workers received no threats.
Speaker 3: I was in a funk for about six to nine months,
Speaker 3: definitely a PTSD. That weekend, we have remote broadcasts that
Speaker 3: we go out to a store or something and we
Speaker 3: bring our radio truck and all that stuff, and we
Speaker 3: always have helium balloons that we blow up and give
Speaker 3: the kids or whatever. One of the balloons popped, and
Speaker 3: I swear I jumped about five feet because again that's
Speaker 3: just that PTSD, and it kind of gave me a
Speaker 3: feeling of impending doom, and it really caused me. I
Speaker 3: just wanted to stay at home a lot, so many
Speaker 3: sleepless nights and thinking about how come we managed to
Speaker 3: survive this. I really felt that I was a chest
Speaker 3: piece being moved around that day. It's weird, bizarre feeling.
Speaker 3: I mean. That was the thing is we came within
Speaker 3: so close of losing my twin daughters. I said earlier
Speaker 3: that it was the most important phone call I made
Speaker 3: their playpen was directly two floors above where that bomb
Speaker 3: went off. When the bomb went off, the first bomb,
Speaker 3: it brought down the entire ceiling and the broken glass
Speaker 3: and the debris that had piled up in the crib.
Speaker 3: If I hadn't made that phone call, they probably still
Speaker 3: would have been there. I can't tell you how many
Speaker 3: times that my wife and I would go into their
Speaker 3: bedroom and you know, we start crying because we came
Speaker 3: so close to losing them, and now they're healthy and
Speaker 3: twenty five years old, and you know, tearing up the world.
Speaker 3: But I think that was what weighed especially heavy on us.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that the timing and placement at the
Speaker 1: second bomb is a well known military tactic used by
Speaker 1: the US and by foreign terrorists. But what's new here
Speaker 1: is that this was a Domestically, it may have been
Speaker 1: the first such incident on home soil, so to speak.
Speaker 1: In light of this, law enforcement was scrambling, just trying
Speaker 1: to get their ducks in a row. But at this
Speaker 1: point it didn't help that there were so many cooks
Speaker 1: in the kitchen.
Speaker 5: I remember that bombing situation especially well because we were
Speaker 5: all standing in this command center. Woody Johnson was head
Speaker 5: of the FBI, and a guy Jack Calaurin, whose first
Speaker 5: day on the jobs, head of the Atlanta ATF, were there.
Speaker 5: They were each on the phone with their respective bosses,
Speaker 5: and Woody's case it was Louis Free and each of
Speaker 5: the directors of the FBI and ATF were saying, fine,
Speaker 5: glad you're working together, as long as we're in charge.
Speaker 5: So there was no decision on the ground who was
Speaker 5: going to actually run the investigation for the Sandy Springs
Speaker 5: clinic case. Unbelievably, they decided to call it twin bomb,
Speaker 5: which is unfortunate for an abortion clinic, but it was
Speaker 5: because the twin bombs. So the status was he still
Speaker 5: had sent bomb the task force. He had the separate
Speaker 5: bombing task force for TWM bomb the abortion clinic bombing,
Speaker 5: so they were going on parallel courses, sharing information here
Speaker 5: and there.
Speaker 1: The Sandy Springs bombings came six months after the bomb
Speaker 1: at the Olympics. There were serious injuries this time, but
Speaker 1: no one was killed. There had now been three bombings
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, but no streamlined, cohesive plan of action from
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Not yet. All they had to run on
Speaker 1: were theories that didn't quite connect.
Speaker 6: As far as a motive. I know a lot of
Speaker 6: you are assuming this is related to abortion clinic violence.
Speaker 6: That is definitely a possibility, but we are not ruling
Speaker 6: out the possibility of domestic terrorism unrelated to clinic violence.
Speaker 5: We took a look at what the purpose could possibly
Speaker 5: be of the second bomb. It was put in a
Speaker 5: location where law enforcement would gather, So there was a
Speaker 5: working theory almost right off the bat that whoever did this,
Speaker 5: they might have been after abortion clinics to make a statement,
Speaker 5: but there was a good chance they were after something else,
Speaker 5: and the theory was it was law enforcement. Going forward,
Speaker 5: the protocol became always checked the perimeter for a second bomb.
Speaker 1: The various task forces may not have been in lockstep yet,
Speaker 1: but they were starting to put the pieces together.
Speaker 5: One of the things that we focused on from the
Speaker 5: Olympic bomb there was a directional plate, a steel plate
Speaker 5: that backed the bomb.
Speaker 1: This directional plate was the first big clue.
Speaker 5: Fast forward to January the Sandy Springs clinic bombing, there
Speaker 5: was directional plate in that bomb as well, so they
Speaker 5: took samples from there and started comparing it. Not too
Speaker 5: long after that, it was clear that these plates came
Speaker 5: from the same basically piece of large metal, same production.
Speaker 5: It looked like it was either unbelievable happenstance or these
Speaker 5: bombs might be connected.
Speaker 1: While the motivation behind these three bombs was still unclear,
Speaker 1: what was clear is that these bombs were related. Three bombs,
Speaker 1: two locations, one with a warning called a nine to
Speaker 1: one one, the others no warning. The pieces were beginning
Speaker 1: to come together, but the bomber was still on the loose,
Speaker 1: standing by, ready to strike again, just waiting for the
Speaker 1: right time.
Speaker 9: Holy crap, what am I going to do? That was
Speaker 9: my initial thought.
Speaker 1: With an appointment set for the following day at the
Speaker 1: clinic that was just bombed, Leah's seventeen year old mind
Speaker 1: was racing.
Speaker 8: This is like, maybe I'm not supposed to just make
Speaker 8: another appointment. Maybe I need to tell my mom. Like
Speaker 8: That's where I think it became an actual reality. I
Speaker 8: was actually pregnant. I was actually about to just go
Speaker 8: have an abortion without even saying anything. I think in
Speaker 8: the back of my mind I thought that by saying
Speaker 8: something to my mom, deep down, it meant I was
Speaker 8: going to have to keep the baby, because I knew
Speaker 8: if I told her, she wouldn't allow me to have
Speaker 8: an abortion.
Speaker 9: That's what I thought.
Speaker 8: My stepdad was out of town, so I thought it
Speaker 8: was a good opportunity. We were talking one night and
Speaker 8: she it was the worst. It was the worst setup
Speaker 8: ever because she said to me how proud she is
Speaker 8: of me and all my accomplishments and how well I'm
Speaker 8: doing in school and this and that, and I'm thinking, oh,
Speaker 8: dear god, ladies, stop talking because I'm about to drop
Speaker 8: the biggest bomb on you. And so I kind of
Speaker 8: turned it around and I said, Mom, how do you
Speaker 8: always know the right thing to do? And she said, well,
Speaker 8: what do you mean? I said, well, it just seems
Speaker 8: like you have all the answers. How do you know?
Speaker 8: How do you know what the right decision is? And
Speaker 8: I don't know how. But she looked at me and
Speaker 8: she said, are you pregnant? And the relief I felt
Speaker 8: because I didn't have to say it, but I said yes.
Speaker 9: She said, well, we'll deal with it, but you're having
Speaker 9: an abortion. That was the first thing she said. And
Speaker 9: I was like what.
Speaker 8: I thought, maybe I mishard her and I thought, she
Speaker 8: said you're not and she said, yes, you are having
Speaker 8: an abortion.
Speaker 9: This will ruin your life.
Speaker 8: I mean, I can hear it. I can hear her
Speaker 8: saying it, this will ruin your life. I mean that
Speaker 8: is how she's her cadence. That just exactly how she
Speaker 8: would say it. And the following day she called the
Speaker 8: pediatrician to get a referral to an obstetrician and she
Speaker 8: went in with me. And I was not the typical
Speaker 8: patient in the way room. I mean I was very young, obviously,
Speaker 8: I certainly was the only one there with my mommy,
Speaker 8: you know, And at that appointment when they did an ultrasound,
Speaker 8: I remember sitting laying there in the room and deciding
Speaker 8: that I was keeping the baby. And if there is
Speaker 8: one thing about me that hasn't changed, when I decide something,
Speaker 8: I'm pretty firm.
Speaker 1: Have you ever talked with mom about this?
Speaker 9: No? Not, well, not until we started talking about it.
Speaker 1: And you never considered having an abortion after that moment.
Speaker 8: No. I was a very headstrong person, and once my
Speaker 8: mind was made up on something, it was made up.
Speaker 8: And I mean I knew from the second sitting in
Speaker 8: that doctor's office that I just knew it wasn't something
Speaker 8: that I could do, wasn't a choice that I could make.
Speaker 9: I knew I was keeping you.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's my mom. The circumstances that led to
Speaker 1: my birth, they're pretty complicated. I'm not okay with any
Speaker 1: of the bomber's actions. That part isn't complicated to me.
Speaker 1: But in a fucked up kind of way, you could
Speaker 1: say that bomb saved my life. There's a Jason isbel
Speaker 1: song I always come back to. It's called Children of Children,
Speaker 1: and there's a line in there that says, all the
Speaker 1: years you took from her just by being born. My
Speaker 1: mom's my best friend, So for her, I wish she
Speaker 1: could have had those years back. But I also wish,
Speaker 1: in this ridiculous alternative multiverse way, that I could have
Speaker 1: been around to see what her life would have become
Speaker 1: and what she would have done if she had the abortion.
Speaker 1: None of this is logical, it's emotional. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: I'm here, but I wonder for her what her life
Speaker 1: could have become without a baby at seventeen. I wish
Speaker 1: she'd had a chance to find out what she could do.
Speaker 1: So obviously, this particular bomb that exploded my mom's life
Speaker 1: has marked me, and over the years, I've become obsessed
Speaker 1: with a paradox, this bomber, with this demented sense of
Speaker 1: righteousness is responsible for the birth of a child me,
Speaker 1: but also for the death of a mother, Alice Hawthorne
Speaker 1: at the Olympics. This story has me holding two contradictory
Speaker 1: truths at once. My life was saved and so many
Speaker 1: others were destroyed. I'm going to take you through all
Speaker 1: of it. I'm going to tell you about the ripples.
Speaker 1: But back in ninety seven, all around Atlanta people were scared,
Speaker 1: and the terror, the violence, all that was still far
Speaker 1: from over. Once again, a bomb in the night.
Speaker 3: It happened outside a lesbian club called The Other Side.
Speaker 1: Because there's nails everywhere, and that's I bled on the
Speaker 1: dance floor and.
Speaker 10: All we will be searching out the possibility that we
Speaker 10: have a cereal bomber.
Speaker 7: At latimay Er Bill Campbell.
Speaker 4: We clearly believe that we are dealing with a deranged killer,
Speaker 4: but one who is very clever as well.
Speaker 1: Flashpoint is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: I'm Your Host, Cola Cassio, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
Speaker 1: executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV. Flashpoint was created, written,
Speaker 1: and executive produced by Doug Mattica and myself on behalf
Speaker 1: of seven nine ninety seven. Lead producer is Alex Espastad,
Speaker 1: along with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stadman. Our Associate
Speaker 1: producer is witt Lukassio. Editing by Alex Espastad with additional
Speaker 1: editing by Liam Luxon and Sidney Evans. Supervising producer is
Speaker 1: Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station sixteen, original music by Jay
Speaker 1: Ragsdale mixed by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Orrin Rosenbaum
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Speaker 1: Nord Group. Special thanks to Angela q, Tyleie Revied, Mattica
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