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[music playing] Back in here. NARRATOR: In December of 1989,
Federal Court Judge Robert
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Vance and his wife
were preparing for the busy Christmas holiday. Who sent the box?
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I don't know. Doesn't say. NARRATOR: It was a
delivery he never expected.
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[explosion] [music playing] Robert and Helen Vance
lived with their family in an affluent suburb
of Birmingham, Alabama.
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For more than a
decade, Robert Vance had been a federal court
judge for the 11th District,
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presiding over cases from
Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. MARK WINNE: He was very bright.
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Not only the book
smart kind of bright, but he had just amazing
common sense, street smarts.
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NARRATOR: Judge
Vance undoubtedly had his share of enemies, but
had never received any threats,
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which explains why he wasn't
suspicious of the package mailed to him a few
days before Christmas.
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[explosion] The package
contained a pipe bomb with nails wrapped around the
pipe which acted like shrapnel.
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The blast killed
Judge Vance instantly. His body was thrown
clear across the kitchen.
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Miraculously, Helen Vance
survived the explosion and she was able to get to
a neighbor's home for help.
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ROBERT VANCE: Mom suffered
some severe injuries from the explosion. She had several cuts in the
flesh from the nails that had--
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the bomb had been bound with. And she had had several internal
injuries from nails actually
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penetrating the body,
including one that had done some damage to her liver. NARRATOR: US Marshals
warned all members
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of the judiciary to be on the
alert for any suspicious mail packages. Two days later, a security
guard at the 11th Circuit Court
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in Atlanta noticed something
unusual in a routine x-ray of packages entering the building.
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Inside the package
was an 8-inch tube attached to a pair of flashlight
batteries, the telltale sign
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of a pipe bomb. Investigators did not
want to detonate the bomb. They wanted it
dismantled in order
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to study its construction. When they did,
experts determined that this bomb was
identical to the one
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that killed Judge Robert Vance. The bombs told
us we were dealing with a very angry guy
because of the nature
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of their construction. And the nature of
that construction also told us that we were
dealing with a very purposeful
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individual, someone who had not
just idly gotten mad and done this, but someone who really
did a good deal of work
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in putting this together. NARRATOR: The bomb had
two unique characteristics which investigators
had never seen before.
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The bomb and the
inside of the box had been covered with
black enamel paint. It had square end caps,
which were bolted and welded
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onto the ends, which
delayed the explosion and increased its force. Unfortunately, scientists
could find no trace evidence
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inside the bomb package, no
hair, fibers, or fingerprints. The bomb was similar to a
tear gas bomb which exploded
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four months earlier in the
Atlanta office of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, or NAACP.
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Along with that bomb was a
letter, a declaration of war against the 11th Circuit Court.
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ACTOR AS BOMBER: The
attacks will continue until widespread
terror forces the court
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to adopt the impartial
and equitable treatment of all as its highest priority. NARRATOR: No one knew why a
threat against the 11th Circuit
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Court had been sent to the
NAACP, which was involved in civil rights issues. Investigators suspected that
the tear gas bomb was mailed
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as a test to see if it could
be sent through the mail without exploding. When that test was
successful, the bomber
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started on his path of murder. Two days after the
bomb explosion, which killed Judge Robert Vance,
Robert Robinson, a civil rights
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attorney, went to work
as usual at his office in Savannah, Georgia. Waiting for him on his desk
was a package that had been
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sent to him through the mail. When he opened it, it exploded. His friend Dr. Brown,
was across the street
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and rushed to his aid. I'm just holding
him at this point, looking around the
room, surveying,
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of course, the damage
and seeing the wounds that he had suffered. Throughout that
process, you see,
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having my arm under his
armpit, could feel, actually, his pulse as it waned. NARRATOR: Three hours
later, Robert Robinson died.
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The bomb was set
to detonate when the string wrapped around
the outside of the package
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was pulled. The string was attached to
a battery-powered charge, triggering the explosion.
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All of the bombs were
identical, and the bomber was meticulous in every
detail of their construction.
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Once the bombs were completed,
the bomber sprayed black paint over the inside
of the box, which
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covered up possible evidence,
such as fingerprints or fibers. And the bomber was careful not
to leave any genetic material,
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such as hair or saliva,
on the mailing labels or on the backs of the stamps. MARK WINNE: These were very
meticulously built bombs.
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So meticulous that some of
the finest forensic machinery in the world failed to find one
speck of DNA, one fingerprint,
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so much as a trace of
powder under a fingernail. NARRATOR: On the same day that
Robert Robinson was murdered,
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Willye Dennis received an
identical package in the mail. At the time, Willye Dennis was
president of the NAACP office
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in Jacksonville, Florida. But Miss Dennis was
late for a meeting, so she left her office
before opening the package.
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That night, at
home, she received a phone call from a friend. WILLYE DENNIS: She
says, [inaudible],,
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I don't know whether
you heard the news, but Bobby Robinson in Savannah,
Georgia, has received a bomb,
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and and he was killed instantly. He said, and if you
receive any funny packages,
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funny looking packages,
make sure that you notify the sheriff's office. NARRATOR: Which is what she did.
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Inside was a pipe bomb. I saw a common hand, which
was the bomber's signature,
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on all four bombs that
led me to conclude that not only the same
person or persons,
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but the same person
constructed these four bombs to the exclusion
of anybody else.
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NARRATOR: There were four
letters inside the package. One took responsibility
for the murders of Judge
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Vance and Robert Robinson. Another made reference to the
tear gas bomb sent a few months
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earlier to the NAACP. ACTOR AS BOMBER: To the officer
who opened our smoke bomb,
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the officers of the
NAACP have become targets for assassination. NARRATOR: The letters and
mailing labels had all
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been typed with the
same typewriter, which had a signature flaw. The number one on the
keypad did not match
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the typeface of the other keys. It was a replacement. There was a broken
key which was replaced
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with a different type key. So that was fairly unique. I mean, the odds of
finding another one
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with that same letter replaced
with another typewriter was-- was a fairly unique
characteristic.
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NARRATOR: The FBI searched the
files of the 11th Circuit Court looking for any documents
which might have been
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typed with the same typewriter. More than one million
documents were examined. The FBI found one letter typed
with the same typewriter.
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It had the same flaw, the number
one was a different typeface. The letter dealt with an obscure
life insurance case from 1987.
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And the sender was alive
and well in the small town of Enterprise, Alabama. The investigation
into these bombings
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became the largest and most
exhaustive in the history of federal law enforcement.
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Investigators used every
method at their disposal to find the typewriter used to
type the letters and mailing
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labels on the bomb packages. Their investigation revealed
that the same typewriter had
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been used by a man in
Enterprise, Alabama, Robert Wayne O'Ferrell,
to type a letter
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about an insurance dispute. My sense of the typewriter
match that led them to Enterprise was that this was
believed by agents to be almost
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tantamount to a fingerprint. I mean, a solid forensic link. NARRATOR: O'Ferrell
was a junk dealer,
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and investigators searched
every inch of his home, garage, and warehouse. They even excavated
his septic system.
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But they couldn't
find the typewriter. O'Ferrell recalled typing
the insurance letter,
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but couldn't remember what
happened to the typewriter. His daughter had a vague
recollection of selling it
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to a young woman
about a year earlier, but could provide no
description of the buyer,
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and she had no receipt of sale. With the typewriter
now a dead end, investigators were
left with the bombs
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as their main
source of evidence. Pictures of the bombs
were distributed to bomb
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experts throughout the country. No one had ever seen
a bomb constructed quite like this before.
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I got a call from a very good
friend of mine, Lloyd Erwin, was a chemist analyst
of ATF's up in Atlanta.
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And Lloyd called and
asked, what did I have? And I said something to the
effect, the damnedest pipe
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bomb I've ever seen. It's got a threaded rod that ran
right through the middle of it.
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And I went on to say
something to the effect that I'd never seen or
heard of such a design
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feature in a pipe bomb before. And his response
was, well, I have. I said, oh, tell me about it.
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NARRATOR: Lloyd Erwin recalled
a similar bomb many years earlier, one with a
rod through the center
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and the same distinctive
square end caps. There's only one that
we'd ever had like that.
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We have lots of pipe bombs and
different kinds, even remote controlled, but
when you have one
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that's the only one
you've ever seen like it, I mean, and it sticks. NARRATOR: Erwin searched
through the thousands of cases
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in his file all the
way back to 1972 and learned that
the bomb he recalled had accidentally maimed
a woman who came across
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it unexpectedly in her home. Authorities suspected
that the bomb had been constructed by her
husband, Walter Leroy Moody.
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Although he denied it,
Moody was convicted of constructive
possession of that bomb
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and sentenced to six years
in the state penitentiary. Walter Leroy Moody was
furious about that conviction,
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and after he was
released from prison, spent the next 10 years
trying to have his conviction
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overturned. Mark Winne described
Moody's legal battles in his book, "Priority Mail."
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I think those who have come
to know Moody in various spheres would say that Moody could
be charming, he could be,
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in some respects,
enormously bright. I think one psychologist
called him a genius.
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But on the other hand, he could
become blinded by obsession. NARRATOR: That obsession may
have included the case of Julie
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Love, a young White woman
who was murdered and raped by a group of Black
defendants in one
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of the most highly publicized
cases in Atlanta history, a case tried at the
11th Circuit Court.
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This was the case mentioned in
one of the bomber's letters. ACTOR AS BOMBER: Any
time a Black man rapes
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a White woman in Alabama,
Florida, or Georgia in a future, Americans for
a competent federal judicial
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system shall assassinate one
federal judge, one attorney, and one officer of the NAACP.
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It's not
happenchance that he's mad with the 11th Court of
Appeals where he sent a bomb.
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And the 11th Court
of Appeals is made up of the states of Alabama,
Florida, and Georgia.
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So all three of those
states got a bomb. NARRATOR: But if Walter
Leroy Moody was the bomber,
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authorities couldn't prove it. They had no forensic
evidence linking him to any of the bombings.
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[music playing] After interviewing
more than 6,000 people, poring over a million documents,
and examining the case files
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of every bombing in
the United States, federal authorities were
convinced that Walter Leroy
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Moody was the serial bomber. Federal agents searched
the home Moody shared with his second wife, Susan.
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The search was so complete
that even the floorboards were removed and the entire
residence vacuumed for gunpowder
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and other trace evidence. But authorities could not find
one single piece of evidence
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in their search. I'm not concerned
about anybody finding any connections
regarding those
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or any other bombings ever. NARRATOR: Although
investigators found nothing inside Moody's home,
it was what they
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didn't find that was revealing. The first search of the
house appeared in the house
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have been sterilized, meaning
that normal things that would be found in a house that could
be used to fabricate a bomb
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device, wire, nails,
pliers, even pieces of pipe, things that you probably
have around your house,
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they were totally lacking,
absent in this house. NARRATOR: But the pressure
of a federal investigation
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was too great for Susan Moody. She was 20 years
younger than her husband and told authorities that
Moody was emotionally
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and physically abusive. When she was questioned
separately without her husband, she provided some
interesting information.
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Just do it the
same way as always. NARRATOR: Susan Moody said
that her husband often
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took her shopping at stores
throughout the southeastern part of the United States.
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He told her to buy steel
pipe, acrylic tubing, raincoats, rubber gloves,
shower caps, and safety glasses.
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She was also told to
buy black enamel paint. [music playing] CLERK: Hi, how you doing?
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Fine. NARRATOR: And she
said to her husband once shoplifted some nails
from a store in Georgia,
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nails similar to those which
were used in the pipe bombs. Investigators believe that
Moody used the cap, gloves,
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and safety glasses to dress
himself like a surgeon while making the
bombs so that he
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wouldn't leave genetic
material in the package. Moody sprayed the inside of
the package with black enamel
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paint to mask any fingerprints,
hairs, or fibers that may have been left inadvertently.
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Prosecutors believe
that moody removed all of the materials he
used to make the bombs
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before his home was searched. Susan Moody also confirmed
that she had purchased a used typewriter for
her husband, which
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had later been thrown away. There was one more
piece of evidence that investigators had
almost given up on,
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the fingerprint found on
one of the bomber's letters. Susan Moody told the
FBI that she had copied
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the letters for her
husband in a small shop in Florence, Kentucky. Excuse me? I think the copier
is out of paper.
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NARRATOR: When the copy
machine ran out of paper, one of the employees
put more in.
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When he did, his fingers
touched the top piece of paper. CLERK: You're all set.
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NARRATOR: The
employee's fingerprint matched the one found on the
threatening letter, which
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confirmed Susan Moody's story. It was the link
investigators needed to tie Moody to the bombs.
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And that's where
they bought the boxes that contained the
bombs, and it's
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where they did some Xeroxing. And to prove that
they did the Xeroxing, the fingerprint was there.
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The fingerprint did not change. The pattern on the Xerox machine
changes over a period of time,
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so forensically, that
fingerprint, to the exclusion of everything else in the whole
world, put them at the place
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that she said they were
where they bought the boxes. If you look at Susan
Moody's testimony by itself,
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there could have been the
potential for the defense to say, this is the
ex-wife who has a motive
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to want to stay out of jail. But key is that much of what
Susan Moody testified to
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could be corroborated
by forensic science. NARRATOR: Susan Moody
was granted immunity
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and testified for
the prosecution. Walter Leroy Moody was found
guilty of the murders of Judge
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Robert Vance and Robert
Robinson and was sentenced to death by electrocution. I think if we had
not identified Moody
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as a potential
suspect very quickly, I think there would
have been more bombs. I don't think he was through.
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I really don't think
he was through. I don't think he would
have ever been through
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as long as he was out there. The evidence suggests that the
bomber's obsession with making
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his devices just that much
deadlier, that much more vicious and destructive
is ultimately what
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became Roy Moody's undoing. Some people would
call that irony. I think some people
would call it justice.
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[music playing]