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What Happened To The Mother Of Richard Jewell, The Man Once Eyed As The Olympic Bomber?
Bobi Jewell stuck by her son Richard Jewell when he was accused of bombing the 1996 Summer Olympics.
When a man was wrongly accused of setting off a bomb at an Olympics event, it didn’t just impact him, but his mother, too.
Clint Eastwood’s new movie “Richard Jewell," based on the true events surrounding the 1996 bombing at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, shows how the hero security guard who actually discovered the explosive at the event was soon falsely accused of planting the bomb himself.
While the movie depicts how the accusations negatively impacted Richard Jewell’s life, they also show how deeply they hurt his mother, Bobi Jewell, played by Kathy Bates in the movie.
“I don’t know how to protect you,” her character sobs in the movie after an onslaught of unfavorable media coverage regarding her son and their home getting torn up by the FBI.
88 days after the bombing, her son was cleared. But before that in the film, every time she turns on the television set, someone is talking about how her son may be guilty. When she peeks through the blinds of their home, she sees crowds of media waiting to bombard her son.
The FBI even takes away her beloved Tupperware and Disney movie VHS tapes for awhile.
“My son saved people’s lives,” Bates' character says before crying during a press conference in which she pleads for the public to see her son as a hero.
The presser was actually a recreation of a real press conference held after Jewell was cleared as a suspect in the bombing.
“For 88 days, my mother lived a nightmare,” Richard Jewell said, as shown in archived Associated Press video. He went on to thank his mom for standing by him.
Where is Bobi now?
While Richard died in 2007 from heart failure, his mother is still alive. She even attended the premiere for “Richard Jewell” in Los Angeles in November and was photographed holding hands with Bates, UPI reported.
Paul Walter Hauser, who played Richard in the film, said he bonded with Bobi while playing her son, noting she is just as sweet as she appears to be in the film.
“What was really cute was Bobi Jewell brought treats,” he told the Hollywood Reporter, adding that “she made homemade treats and brought them to the craft service table, which I thought was adorable."
"Richard Jewell" hits theaters nationwide on Friday.
