Richard A. Jewell; Wrongly Linked to Olympic Bombing

In 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said Mr. Jewell deserved an apology for government leaks to the media.

Mr. Jewell threatened to sue media organizations for defamation. NBC, CNN and the New York Post reached undisclosed settlements with him, reportedly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Atlanta newspaper continued to fight lawsuits, maintaining that its articles describing Mr. Jewell as a suspect had been neither malicious nor inaccurate at the time of publication.

Richard Allensworth Jewell was born Richard White in Danville, Va., on Dec. 17, 1962. He was adopted by his stepfather and grew up in suburban Atlanta.

After attending a technical school, he was an auto mechanic, a manager of a frozen yogurt store, a store detective and a hotel house detective. News reports subsequently described him as a "frustrated police wannabe" and "an overzealous officer" during his law enforcement assignments as a sheriff's deputy and college security guard in rural Georgia.

In the early 1990s, he was charged with impersonating an officer at an Atlanta apartment complex. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct.

After the Olympics, Mr. Jewell found periodic law enforcement work in small Georgia towns. Last year, Mr. Jewell said he spent most of the money he won from lawsuits on legal fees and a new home for his mother.

He married in recent years, and his wife is among his survivors.