![]() Jones said freeing Blanton would both compound the “insurmountable pain” endured by the girls’ families and set a bad precedent. attorney who prosecuted Blanton on the state charge, said Blanton shouldn’t be released since he has neither accepted responsibility for the bombing nor expressed any remorse. The blast killed the 11-year-old McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley.ĭoug Jones, a former U.S. The automatic review was the first for Blanton.īlanton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Sept. Clair prison, will again be eligible for parole consideration in five years, the board said. Lisa McNair, a sister of bombing victim Denise McNair, was relieved by the decision.īlanton, who lives in a one-person cell and rarely has contact with other inmates at St. The board rejected parole for Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 78, who has served 15 years of a life term for being part of a group of Klansmen who planted a bomb outside Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church during the civil rights movement. (AP) – The lone surviving Ku Klux Klansman imprisoned for killing four black girls in a church bombing in 1963 will remain behind bars after Alabama’s parole board heeded the victims’ families Wednesday and refused an early release. A fourth suspect in the bombing, Herman Cash, died in 1994 without ever being charged in the case.MONTGOMERY, Ala. Frank Cherry, convicted the year after Blanton, died in 2004. He was incarcerated at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County at the time of his death, according to DOC.Ĭhambliss, who was convicted in the bombing in 1977, died in prison in 1985. Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss was convicted in 1977 by then Alabama Attorney General Robert Baxley.īlanton was sentenced to serve four consecutive life sentences. "The fact that after the bombing, he went on to remain a free man for nearly four decades speaks to a broader systemic failure to hold him and his accomplices accountable," the statement said. "That he died at this moment, when the country is trying to reconcile the multi-generational failure to end systemic racism, seems fitting."Īttempts to reach 16th Street Baptist Church on Friday were not immediately successful. Jones said in a statement Friday that Blanton was responsible for "one of the darkest days in Alabama's history" and said he died "without ever having atoned for his actions or apologizing to the countless people he hurt." The jury did not buy the story and convicted Blanton after two and a half hours of deliberation. senator, presented evidence from a tape recording made off an FBI tap in 1964 that included Blanton saying “They ain’t going to catch me when I bomb my next church.” A former girlfriend on Blanton's also testified that he tried to run down a Black pedestrian, saying “All I want is a chance to kill one of those Black bastards.”īlanton's attorneys challenged the fidelity of the tape and argued he never explicitly said he bombed the church. But Blanton was not put on trial until 2001. ![]() The FBI reopened the case after meeting with Black clergy in 1993. Department of Justice's civil rights division on evidence in the case. ![]() Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI at the time, also blocked attempts to brief local prosecutors and members of the U.S. But the FBI did not pursue prosecutions in the 1960s in 2007, the bureau said "witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking," and that recorded evidence at the time was inadmissable. The FBI identified Blanton as a suspect in a 1965 memo as a suspect in the bombing. Kay Ivey said in a statement on Friday. "Although his passing will never fully take away the pain or restore the loss of life, I pray on behalf of the loved ones of all involved that our entire state can continue taking steps forward to create a better Alabama for future generations." "That was a dark day that will never be forgotten in both Alabama’s history and that of our nation," Gov. The blast killed Collins, McNair, Robertson and Wesley and injured at least 14 other people, including Addie Mae Collins' sister Sarah, 12, who was blinded in one eye. ![]()
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