Eric Rudolph is charged with six bombings including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Centennial Olympic Park bombing was a domestic terrorist pipe bombing attack on Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 27, 1996, during the Summer Olympics. The blast directly killed one person and injured 111 others; another person later died of a heart attack. It was the first of four bombings committed by Eric Rudolph. Security guard Richard Jewell discovered the bomb before detonation and began clearing spectators out of the park.
After the bombing, Jewell was initially investigated as a suspect by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and news media aggressively focused on him as the presumed culprit when he was actually innocent. In October 1996, the FBI declared Jewell was no longer a person of interest. Following three more bombings in 1997 and 1998, Rudolph was identified by the FBI as the suspect. In 2003, Rudolph was arrested, and in 2005 he agreed to plead guilty to avoid a potential death sentence. Rudolph was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for his crimes.
Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American domestic terrorist convicted for a series of bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured over 100 others, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. For five years, Rudolph was listed as one of the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives until he was caught in 2003.
In 2005, as part of a plea bargain, Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous state and federal homicide charges and accepted four consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and a potential death sentence. He remains incarcerated at the ADX Florence Supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.