Agents Seek Bearded Witness To Explosion Man Seen At Nightclub Bombing May Have Been At Clinic Blast

A federal task force is trying to identify a bearded man seen at a gay nightclub before a bomb exploded there in February.

The man, who is wanted as a witness and not as a suspect, may or may not be the same person seen near an abortion clinic bombed five weeks earlier, agents said.

“We have no information that it’s the same person. He was seen the night of the bombing in the club. He’s a person that was recalled that we have not otherwise been able to identify,” Jack Killorin, head of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Atlanta, said Thursday.

The men are similar in appearance, including full, gray beards.

The task force is investigating the nightclub and abortion clinic bombings and the July 1996 bombing at Centennial Olympic Park that killed one person and injured more than 100 during the Atlanta Games. A dozen people were injured in the other two bombings.

In June, the task force released two computer-generated sketches: one of a hood-wearing man with a dark complexion and another man with a full, gray beard, both of whom were seen in the abortion clinic’s parking lot before the Jan. 16 bombing there.

The new sketch also shows a man with a full, gray beard. It was based on descriptions from witnesses at the club, ATF spokesman Bill King said.

“We don’t know if they’re the same guy,” he said today. “What we do know is different people gave us both those sketches. … They certainly are similar.”

Investigators have said they are almost sure the two latest bombings are linked and are increasingly confident the same person or group is responsible for the Olympic Park explosion.