IN MEMORY OF ...
Richard Allensworth Jewell
Towers High School Class of 1982
"1996 ATLANTA OLYMPIC GAMES HERO"
HERO
A movie depicting the life and events of Richard Jewell is in the works. Click link below for more details.
Richard Jewell - The Tragic True Story Behind Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill’s Next Movie.
Richard Jewell was an innocent man and a hero. Tragically, the media ruined his life. Read the news' articles below for the complete story.
Richard Jewell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard A. Jewell (December 17, 1962 – August 29, 2007) was an American police officer who, while working as a security guard for Piedmont College, became known in connection with the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Discovering a pipe bomb on the park grounds, Jewell alerted police and helped to evacuate the area before the bomb exploded, saving many people from injury or potential death. Initially hailed by the media as a hero, Jewell later was considered a suspect.
Despite having never been charged, he underwent what was considered by many to be a "trial by media" with great toll on his personal and professional life. Eventually he was exonerated completely: Eric Robert Rudolph was later found to have been the bomber. In 2006, Governor Sonny Perdue publicly thanked Jewell on behalf of the state of Georgia for saving the lives of those at the Olympics.
Richard Jewell found dead in home
Olympic security guard suspected but cleared in bombing
By MIKE MORRIS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/29/07
Richard Jewell, the Centennial Olympic Park security guard once suspected — but later cleared — in the bombing of the park during the 1996 Summer Games, was found dead Wednesday in his home in Meriwether County. He was 44.
County coroner Johnny Worley said Jewell's wife discovered him dead in their Woodbury home at about 10:30 a.m., and he was pronounced dead by Worley about 45 minutes later.
Jewell died, but added there was "no suspicion of foul play.
"He had been having some pretty serious medical problems," Worley said.
He said Jewell had been diagnosed with diabetes in February and had a couple of toes amputated.
"He had been going downhill ever since," Worley said.
Jewell returned to his job as a deputy with the Meriwether County Sheriff's Office over the summer, "but only for a couple of days," according to Worley.
Jewell was initially lauded as a hero after a bomb went off at the July 27, 1996, Olympic celebration. He called attention to the suspicious knapsack that held a bomb and helped evacuate the area.
But days later he became the FBI's chief suspect, as The AJC and other media outlets reported.
The FBI later cleared Jewell of any wrongdoing. He was never charged with a crime.
Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombing in 2005 and is serving life in prison for it and other attacks.
After he was cleared, Jewell sued the Journal-Constitution and other media outlets for libel, arguing that their reports defamed him. Several news organizations settled, including NBC and CNN.
The Journal-Constitution did not settle. The newspaper has contended that at the time it published its reports, Jewell was a suspect, so the articles were accurate. The newspaper also has asserted that it was not reckless or malicious in its reports regarding Jewell. Much of Jewell's case was dismissed last year. One claim, based on reports about a 911 call, is pending trial.
After the Olympics, Jewell worked as a law officer in a handful of small Georgia cities, including Luthersville, Senoia and Pendergrass.
A year ago this month, Jewell was commended by Gov. Sonny Perdue at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the bombing.
"The bottom line is this: His actions saved lives that day," said Perdue. "Mr. Jewell, on behalf of Georgia, we want to thank you for keeping Georgians safe and doing your job during the course of those Games."
Jewell, his voice choked with emotion, responded:
"I never sought to be a hero. I have always viewed myself as just one of the many trained professionals who simply did his or her job that tragic night. I wish I could have done more."
60 Minutes II: Falsely Accused
By David Kohn
February 11, 2009
In any high-profile federal investigation into a terrorist act, like the Sept. 11 attack on America, there are bound to be successes and failures.
Some promising leads will pan out, but also some innocent people may be swept up in the dragnet.
One American who knows all about that is Richard Jewell, who in 1996 was falsely accused of a terrorist act - setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics.
In a very public investigation by the FBI and the Atlanta police, Jewell was branded "the chief suspect in the bombing."
Correpsondent Mike Wallace got to know Richard Jewell back in 1996, but it wasn't until recently that he realized how deeply affected Jewell was by his ordeal and why it's been so difficult for him to recover from what happened then.
It all began when the bomb exploded in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park just after 1 a.m.on July 27, 1996. Richard Jewell was working as a private security guard there and helped escort many of the spectators to safety. He was called a hero. Then everything changed.
Jewell says a headline in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that afternoon "pretty much started the whirlwind." The headline read: FBI suspects hero guard may have planted bomb.
It was read to the world verbatim as breaking news on CNN and the AP picked it up, sending it to news organizations around the world.
The story leaked to the media was that Jewell wasn't a hero at all, but was himself the bomber who perversely sought publicity for saving people from the explosion.
"Everybody then assumed that this bizarre character, as he was being portrayed, had decided that this was gonna be his 15 minutes of fame, that he was going to set up this situation where he would literally bomb a park and then claim to be a hero," says Lin Wood, Jewell's lawyer.
The FBI put Jewell under round-the-clock surveillance and conducted a very public search of his apartment. All of it was broadcast on live television. It was not until many weeks later that the FBI finally acknowledged Jewell was not a suspect in the bombing.
In five years, the FBI has never apologized for the leak. "Nobody's ever called me, written me a letter, sent me an Email, called any of my attorneys," Jewell tells Wallace.
Jewell in fact saved over 100 innocent peoples' lives that night. And no one has ever bothered to even say thanks - not the city of Atlanta, not the state of Georgia, not the Olympic Committee in Atlanta, not the International Committee.
"He's so tainted that even when he was exonerated, no one still wanted to really be identified with him," lawyer Wood says.
Even Wood once thought Jewell was guilty. "I actually believed what I saw on television and what I read in the newspapers and I thought that the FBI had their man and the man was Richard Jewell," Wood says.
When Wallace first met Jewell a few weeks after the bombing, Jewell was till a suspect. Wallace says he though Jewell might indeed be the bomber until Jewell described what had happened that night when he noticed a suspicious-looking package under a park bench and pointed it out to a federal ATF agent.
"He ( the ATF agent) was laying flat on his stomach and he was undoing the top of the bag with his hand and he was doing his flashlight like this and all of a sudden, he just froze," Jewell told Wallace. "What really made me think this is, 'oh, oh, this is bad', is there was like a little line in training that they taught you that would instill in you, and it was, 'if you see an ATF agent running, you better be in front of him.'"
But instead of running, Jewell stayed within 10 yards of where the package was. "We were just concerned with getting the people as far away as we could, as quickly as we could," he says.
That summer, Jewell was besieged by the media wherever he went. And the FBI kept following him, too. When he went out for a drive, they were always there. Not just one agent in a Jeep, but a whole FBI convoy - a total of five or six FBI vehicles- which chased him on and off the Interstate The FBI also searched the home of Jewell's mother, Bobbi.
Out of her apartment they took Jewell's guns - he hunts deer - all the Tupperware and a collection of 22 Walt Disney tapes.
Through it all, TV cameras rolled. "I felt like it was a movie production," Mrs. Jewell says. "Every night, there must have been 20 satellite trucks in our parking lot."
As the weeks went by, the torment by the media turned to ridicule.
Jay Leno called Jewell a "Una-doofus." A federal agent was quoted as saying Jewell was a "Una-bubba." His mother was called the "Una-Momma."
In late October of 1996, the U.S. Attorney finally wrote a letter saying Jewell was not considered a target of the federal criminal investigation - a statement delivered to one of Jewell's lawyers at an out-of-the-way coffee shop, far away from the TV cameras. And unlike the very public FBI investigation of Jewell, there was no FBI press conference. Jewell and his attorney, Lin Wood, say the FBI was simply too embarrassed.
"We know a lot more than we knew at the time, when we sat down and talked with you initially," Wood tells Wallace. "We know, for example, that the FBI was interested in Richard, but had really not decided whether Richard Jewell was a possible suspect or a potentially valuable witness. But before they could execute their plan, the banner headline gets published, and now all of a sudden, the FBI's got to come to grips with Richard Jewell in a public investigation, and that changed, I think, the whole approach that the FBI took."
Jewell had planned to sue the FBI, but eventually decided it would be futile. He didsue a number of media organizations, and several settled for a otal believed to be in excess of $2 million dollars. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, though, has refused to settle with Jewell, and five years after the bombing, the paper is still fighting the case in court. Attorney Peter Canfield is defending the newspaper.
"The plaintiff has consistently complained that he should never have been a suspect of the FBI in the bombing," he says. "But he has never sued the FBI. Instead he has asserted that the Journal Constitution is to blame for all his troubles by being the first to accurately report that he had in fact become the investigation's focus."
Wood responds, " Look, call him a suspect. Put it in your newspaper. You will not be sued for calling Richard Jewell a suspect. You will be sued when you publish in your newspaper that he's a villain, a bad man. He fits the profile of the lone bomber of the park. He sought publicity. And he's like Wayne Williams, a convicted murderer of children. Put that in your newspaper and you will be sued. That's what the Atlanta Journal and Constitution said about this man."
For the last five years, Jewell has been trying to put his life back together. He did manage to find a job as a police officer in a small community. He lost 65 pounds and got married last September - a private affair with no TV cameras. Jewell is still just as angered at what the media did to him as he was back in 1996.
Wood says suspicion remains. "You'd be surprised," he says, "to know how many people come up to me and will still nudge me and say, 'Hey, so tell me, did he really do it ?' That question is still asked."
When he goes to a grocery store, Jewell says, people still stare, point and whisper his name.
"Driving home from work," Jewell says, "you're always looking in your rearview mirror. If you see a car there, the same car for a long time, you turn off, even though it's not your turn, to see if that car follows you. You drive different, drive a different way home every night.
"When you come out to get in your, your car in the morning, you walk around it and look under it. And you look around the parking lot to see if somebody's sitting in a car."
While it turns out Jewell was a hero, not the bomber, he's never been treated like a hero.
"I don't know what a hero's treated like," he says, "but my mother and I have never been treated like that."
Richard Jewell timeline
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/29/07
June 1996: Richard Allensworth Jewell begins his job as an Olympics security guard.
July 27, 1996: During a concert by the band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack at Olympic Centennial Park, a pipe bomb explodes, killing Alice Hawthorn and injuring 100 others. Before the blast, Jewell calls attention to a suspicious knapsack holding the bomb. He later helps evacuate the area and is credited with saving lives.
July 30: News of the investigation of Jewell breaks. FBI agents interview Jewell about the bombing until he asks for an attorney. Jewell categorically denies any involvement in the bombing
Sept. 22: CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" broadcasts Jewell's first interview in two months.
Oct. 23: U.S. District Judge Owen Forrester, ruling on a request for FBI documents, says he believes Jewell is no longer a suspect in the bombing.
Oct. 26: U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander notifies Jewell that based on the evidence developed to date he is not a target of the investigation.
January 1997: Jewell sues the AJC and Piedmont College in Demorest, Ga., for libel. He previously obtained settlements for unspecified amounts from CNN and NBC-TV.
November 1999: Jewell settles, for $5,000, his libel suit against the American Broadcasting Co. stemming from comments made by a radio talk show host after the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
October 2002: The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Jewell's appeal challenging the finding that he is a "public figure" required to meet a high standard of proof in his libel case against the AJC. The decision returns the case to Fulton County Superior Court, where the newspaper filed a motion to dismiss the case.
April 2005: Eric Rudolph pleads guilty to setting the Olympic bomb and three others.
August 2006: Gov. Sonny Perdue honors Jewell, a deputy sheriff in Meriwether County, with an award commending his service during the 1996 Atlanta Games.
October 2006: The Fulton County Superior Court issues an order dismissing much of Jewell's case, but one claim, based on reports about a 911 call, is allowed to proceed to trial.
—Compiled by Joni Zeccola
Richard Jewell found dead at 44
By Jeffry Scott, Mike Morris
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/30/07
Greenville —- Richard Jewell, the former security guard once suspected of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing —- then cleared —- died at his home Wednesday morning in Woodbury.
For the past three years, Jewell, 44, worked as a deputy sheriff for the Meriwether County Sheriff's department, said Sheriff Steve Whitlock. He said Jewell had been out on medical leave.
Meriwether County coroner Johnny Worley said Jewell's wife, Dana, discovered him unconscious at about 10:30 a.m. Worley said an autopsy would be performed by the Georgia Bureau of Investiation to determine how Jewell died, but there was "no suspicion of foul play."
"He had been having some pretty serious medical problems," Worley said.
He said Jewell had been diagnosed with diabetes in February and had a couple of toes amputated. "He had been going downhill ever since," Worley said.
Whitlock described Jewell as "a good officer. A go-getter."
"You know how they say people live their work. Richard ate and drank his job. He loved it," Whitlock said.
Jewell was initially lauded as a hero after a bomb went off on July 27, 1996, during an Olympic celebration in Atlanta. He called attention to the suspicious knapsack that held a bomb and helped evacuate the area.
Days later, he became the FBI's chief suspect, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other media outlets reported. The FBI cleared Jewell of any wrongdoing. He was never charged with a crime.
"The fact that he was such a Boy Scout —- a by-the-book cop —- turned out to be the reason they were suspicious of him," said attorney Jack Martin, who represented Jewell at that time.
Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombing in 2005 and is serving life in prison for it and other attacks.
After he was cleared, Jewell sued the AJC and other media outlets for libel, arguing that their reports defamed him. Several news organizations settled, including NBC and CNN.
The Journal-Constitution did not settle. The newspaper has contended that at the time it published its reports Jewell was a suspect, so the articles were accurate. The newspaper also has asserted that it was not reckless or malicious in its reports regarding Jewell. Much of Jewell's case was dismissed last year. One claim, based on reports about a 911 call, is pending trial.
However, Jewell's death Wednesday "is not a day to consider lawsuits, rather a day to pay respect," said John Mellott, AJC publisher.
"Richard Jewell was a real hero, as we all came to learn," Mellott said. "The story of how Mr. Jewell moved from hero to suspect and back in the Olympic Park bombing investigation is one the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported fully, even as it defended itself in a libel case brought by him."
After the initial furor settled down, Jewell worked his way through one small police department after another —- Pendergrass, Luthersville and Senoia. Jewell joined the Meriwether County Sheriff's Office three years ago.
"He was all about police work. He was a good man," said Butts County Sheriff's Office Investigator Thomas Middleton, who worked with Jewell at the Luthersville Police Department. "He loved police work."
A year ago this month, Jewell was commended by Gov. Sonny Perdue at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the bombing.
"The bottom line is this: His actions saved lives that day," said Perdue. "Mr. Jewell, on behalf of Georgia, we want to thank you for keeping Georgians safe and doing your job during the course of those Games."
Jewell, his voice choked with emotion, responded:
"I never sought to be a hero. I have always viewed myself as just one of the many trained professionals who simply did his or her job that tragic night. I wish I could have done more."
Coworkers and friends said Jewell rarely, if ever, talked about that time in his life, at least not without prompting.
Judy McDaniel, a clerk at the Phillips 66 station and snack bar on Roosevelt Highway, said Jewell came in every morning for a sausage biscuit. She described Jewell as a happy man who always loved to laugh and talk, and his favorite topic was fishing. He also told McDaniel he was writing a book about his life.
As for the drama he left behind, he "never mentioned it," said Doris Smith, the clerk of court and the assistant city clerk in Luthersville. "He was just a down-to-earth country boy," she said. "He was just a special person. And not everybody is going to tell you that because he did do his job and he did it right."
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday in Atlanta at Brookhaven Baptist Church at 1294 North Druid Hills Road N.E.
Reporter Rhonda Cook contributed to this article.
Richard Jewell, 44, security guard wrongly linked to 1996 Olympic bombing
Published on: 08/30/07
ATLANTA (AP) — Security guard Richard Jewell was initially hailed as a hero for spotting a suspicious backpack and moving people out of harm's way just before a bomb exploded, killing one and injuring 111 others. But within days, he was named as a suspect in the blast.
Though eventually cleared in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, Jewell, who was found dead Wednesday at 44, never recovered from the shame of being wrongly linked to the bombing in the news media. Finally, a year ago, he was again hailed as a hero.
Gov. Sonny Perdue commended Jewell at a bombing anniversary event. "This is what I think is the right thing to do," Perdue declared as he handed a certificate to Jewell.
Jewell said: "I never expected this day to ever happen. I'm just glad that it did."
It was one of his last good days. Jewell, who had diabetes and kidney problems and was recently on dialysis, was found dead in his west Georgia home. An autopsy was scheduled for Thursday, though officials said foul play was not suspected.
After the Olympics, Jewell worked in various law enforcement jobs, including as a police officer in Pendergrass, Ga., where his partner was fatally shot in 2004 during the pursuit of a suspect.
As recently as last year, Jewell was working as a sheriff's deputy in west Georgia. He also gave speeches to college journalism classes about his experience.
For two days after the July 27, 1996, bombing, Jewel was hailed as a hero for shepherding people away from the suspicious backpack.
But on the third day, an unattributed report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described him as "the focus" of the investigation.
Other media, to varying degrees, also linked Jewell to the investigation and portrayed him as a loser and law-enforcement wannabe who may have planted the bomb so he would look like a hero when he discovered it later.
The AP, citing an anonymous federal law enforcement source, said after the Journal-Constitution report that Jewell was "a focus" of investigators, but that others had "not yet been ruled out as potential suspects."
Reporters camped outside Jewell's mother's apartment in the Atlanta area, and his life was dissected for weeks by the media. He was never arrested or charged, although he was questioned and was a subject of search warrants.
Eighty-eight days after the initial news report, U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander issued a statement saying Jewell "is not a target" of the bombing investigation and that the "unusual and intense publicity" surrounding him was "neither designed nor desired by the FBI, and in fact interfered with the investigation."
The episode led to soul-searching among news organizations about the use of unattributed or anonymously sourced information. Jewell's name became shorthand for a person accused of wrongdoing in the media based on scanty information.
In 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expressed regret over the leak regarding Jewell. "I'm very sorry it happened," she told reporters. "I think we owe him an apology."
Eventually, the bomber turned out to be anti-government extremist Eric Rudolph, who also planted three other bombs in the Atlanta area and in Birmingham, Ala. Those explosives killed a police officer, maimed a nurse and injured several other people.
Rudolph was captured after spending five years hiding out in the mountains of western North Carolina. He pleaded guilty to all four bombings in 2005 and is serving life in prison.
Jewell sued several media organizations, including NBC, CNN and the New York Post, and settled for undisclosed amounts. According to Wood, Jewell also settled a lawsuit against Piedmont College, a former employer. That amount was also confidential.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution never settled a lawsuit Jewell filed against it. Lin Wood, Jewell's longtime attorney, said Wednesday that the case is set for trial in January.
"I expect to pursue it for Richard and his estate," Wood said. "But that is a decision for a less sad day."
A lawyer for the newspaper, Peter Canfield, has said that the newspaper stands by its coverage of Jewell. Publisher John Mellott declined to comment about the lawsuit on Wednesday but said that Jewell was a hero "as we all came to learn."
"The story of how Mr. Jewell moved from hero to suspect and back in the Olympic Park bombing investigation is one The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported fully even as it defended itself in a libel case brought by him," Mellott said.
Jewell, in an interview with the AP last year around the 10th anniversary of the bombing, insisted the lawsuits were not about making money. He bought his mother a place to live and gave 73 percent of the settlement money to his attorneys and to the government in taxes. He said the cases were about ensuring the truth was told.
"I'm not rich by any means monetarily," he said at the time. "I'm rich because of my family. If I never get there, I don't care. I'm going to get my say in court."
Jewell told the AP last year that Rudolph's conviction helped clear his name, but he believed some people still remember him as a suspect rather than for the two days in which he was praised as a hero.
"For that two days, my mother had a great deal of pride in me — that I had done something good and that she was my mother, and that was taken away from her," Jewell said. "She'll never get that back, and there's no way I can give that back to her."
Medical officials: Jewell, diabetic, died of a heart attack
Security guard who sounded the alarm at the Olympics in Atlanta suffered from heart disease related to aggressive diabetes.
By Jeffry Scott
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/31/07
Olympic Park bombing figure Richard Jewell died of a heart attack brought on by heart disease aggravated by an aggressive case of diabetes, medical officials said Thursday.
The news of Jewell's death Wednesday at his home in Woodbury was reported widely in the U.S. and overseas.
Jewell, 44, became famous as the security guard who sounded the alarm the night of July 27, 1996, before a bomb went off during the Olympics in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park. One person was killed and more than 100 were injured. Only two days after Jewell was lauded as a hero, he became the FBI's chief suspect, then the object of an international media frenzy before the FBI cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombing in 2005 and is serving life in prison for it and other attacks.
Dr. Kris Sperry, chief medical examiner for Georgia, performed an autopsy Thursday morning at the state crime lab. Sperry said Thursday that, because of Jewell's fame, the state will perform toxicology tests on samples collected during the autopsy.
"That's not standard procedure," Sperry said. "But we decided to do it because of his notoriety. We want to answer any questions surrounding his death."
Jewell was diagnosed with diabetes in February, according to Meriwether County coroner Johnny Worley. He was out on medical leave when he collapsed and died Wednesday morning, said Sheriff Steve Whitlock of Meriwether County, where Jewell worked. His wife, Dana, found him unconscious about 10:30 a.m.
A memorial service is scheduled today at 2 p.m. in Atlanta at Brookhaven Baptist Church at 1294 North Druid Hills Road., N.E.
Richard Jewell - Security guard made a scapegoat for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomb
By Michael Carlson
The Guardian, Thursday 25 October 2007
The signature moment of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was not a ceremony, nor a competitive event, but a pipe bomb packed with nails that exploded in Centennial park just after 1am. That the bomb killed only one person, while injuring another 111, was due to a minimum-wage private security guard who spotted it in an abandoned gym bag, alerted police and cleared visitors from the area.
For his efforts, Richard Jewell, who has died aged 44, found himself vilified in the media as the FBI, eager for a quick arrest, leaked to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he was the focus of their investigation. Although he was never even arrested, television and newspapers portrayed him as a glory-seeking wannabe cop who had planted the bomb so he could become a hero by discovering it. Pictures of the heavily set Jewell reinforced this image of a loner, a southern bubba who lived with his mother, Barbara, and did a series of dead-end jobs on the fringes of law enforcement.
Of course, the FBI had no evidence against him, nor did his voice match the emergency call made by the supposed bomber. They attempted a clumsy sting where, under the guise of participating in a training video, they tried to lure Jewell into incriminating statements. Three months later, they gave up the charade and he was publicly cleared, a fact reported with far less fanfare by the media that had trumpeted his guilt. Jewell later likened himself to a bleeding cow being set upon by piranhas.
In 1998, the FBI identified a new suspect, a born-again Christian named Eric Rudolph. Finally captured in 2003, he confessed to bombing abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, as well as Centennial park. He is now serving a life sentence.
Born Richard White, Jewell took the surname of his stepfather. After technical school, he worked in a number of nondescript jobs, including store detective, college security officer and, briefly, a sheriff's deputy. In 1990, he was charged with impersonating a police officer, an action that became the linchpin of his characterisation as a Walter Mitty fantastist.
In 1997, after the then US attorney general Janet Reno offered him an apology, Jewell sued a number of media outlets. NBC, whose Tom Brokaw had told audiences that the FBI "probably have enough evidence to arrest"; CNN, which had used a psychologist to announce that Jewell fitted the profile of a "lone bomber"; and the New York Post, which called him a "fat, failed former sheriff's deputy", all settled out of court. The Journal-Constitution fought back, claiming they had merely reported what the FBI was investigating. Although much of Jewell's action has been dismissed, a portion relating to the reporting of him as the emergency telephone caller remains in court.
The settlement money he won bought houses for Jewell and his mother, and eventually he found work as a deputy sheriff in Meriwether county, Georgia, where sheriff Steve Whitlock described him as a "go-getter" who "ate and drank his job".
Last year, on the 10th anniversary of the bombing, Jewell remarked: "I never sought to be a hero ... [I was] just one of many trained professionals who did their jobs that night."
He was struck with severe diabetes earlier this year and suffered from heart and kidney disease. He was found dead on his bedroom floor by his wife, Dana. She and his mother survive him.
· Richard Allensworth Jewell, law enforcement officer, born December 17 1962; died August 28 2007
The Ballad of Richard Jewell by Vanity Fair... the complete story...
American Nightmare - The Ballad of Richard Jewell
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