At age 29 , Rudolph was the perpetrator of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta , which occurred on July 27 , 1996 , during the 1996 Summer Olympics . He called the police , warning about the bomb before it detonated . The blast killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others . Melih Uzunyol , a Turkish cameraman , who ran to the scene following the blast , died of a heart attack . Rudolph 's motive for the bombings , according to his April 13 , 2005 statement , was political : In the summer of 1996 , the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games . Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism . Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars , and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best of all games . Even though the conception and the purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism as perfectly expressed in the song " Imagine " by John Lennon , which was the theme of the 1996 Games — even though the purpose of the Olympics is to promote these ideals , the purpose of the attack on July 27 was to confound , anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand
Centennial Olympic Park bombing
Centennial Olympic Park bombing
Eric Rudolph