ATLANTA — Shortly after the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996, security guard Richard Jewell found himself at the center of a media frenzy, with many thinking he could have been involved.
Jewell, who helped evacuate people before the blast, was eventually found to have not been involved in the bombing.
Channel 2’s Karyn Greer sat down with his widow, Dana Jewell, about the impact the bombing had on her late husband.
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Dana Jewell says the bombing and its aftermath took a huge toll on him emotionally and physically.
"It blew him down, it left him hard of hearing. He said it was just so loud and so surreal and it was like, it was loud but then it was complete silence and he looked around and there was just people laying around," she described.
They met and married two years after the bombing. She said that like many others, she thought he was guilty. Once she met him, though, she changed her mind.
“He was just a good a good guy and he just was like a big teddy bear and he was goofy,” she said. “I don’t know how anybody who knew him before could think that he would do that.”
Richard Jewell was first hailed as a hero for helping save lives, but days later fell under intense scrutiny as the focus of the investigation. Dana Jewell says the humiliation and suspicion followed him for the rest of his life.
“People would come up to him and say, ‘I think you did it. You should be put to death. You should rot in Hell,’” she said.
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He struggled to cope, his widow said, even after he was cleared. She says the damage was already done and he had to carry the emotional weight of being publicly branded a suspect.
“It killed him. I think he’d still be here if he hadn’t gone through that,” Dana Jewell said.
He died in August 2007, his widow says of a broken heart.
Eric Rudolph confessed to the Olympic Park bombing as well as attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub.
“You have to be careful about what you believe and make sure that you make decisions for yourself and not what somebody else is telling you to believe because everybody believed that Richard was guilty,” she said.
She has remarried, but says she still has wonderful memories of her late husband and wants people to know he truly was a hero.
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