Word - He is still here

Once upon a terrible time, federal agents came to this town to deal with another suspect who lived with his mother. Like this one, that suspect was drawn to the blue lights and sirens of police work. Like this one, he became famous in the aftermath of murder. His name was Wayne Williams. This one is Richard Jewell.

- Dave Kindred, former AJC columnist, writing in the AJC on Aug. 1, 1996 about Jewell’s allged role in the centiennial olympic park bombing.

“I climbed out of my hide brushing off the icy dirt and remembered the Psalmist who wrote about seeing his enemies ‘spreading his branches and roots like a large tree,’ but after a little while his enemies were ‘nowhere to be found.’ In defiance I looked toward the ridge into which the chopper had just gone and said, ‘I am still here.’ And now after the talking heads opine that I am ‘finished,’ I say to you people that by the by the grace of God I am still here - a little bloodied, but emphatically unbowed.”

- Excerpts from a statement made by Eric Rudolph after pleading guilty in federal court April 13 to the bombing.

“I’m glad that now everybody in the whole world knows that he did this.”

- Richard Jewell, to reporters, outside the federal courtroom on April 13.