![]() However, “the FBI under Hoover sealed those files away, because J. Edgar Hoover, knew the attackers’ names, and had even made secret recordings to prove it. Brasher, a history professor at the University of Alabama, the FBI determined that four KKK members had planted the bomb. 15, 1963: Denise McNair, 11 Carole Robertson, 14 Addie Mae Collins, 14 and Cynthia Wesley, 14. The Associated Press contributed to this report.Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing on Sept. A fourth suspect in the bombing, Herman Cash, died in 1994 without ever being charged in the case. Frank Cherry, convicted the year after Blanton, died in 2004. ![]() Robert Chambliss, who was convicted in the bombing in 1977, died in prison in 1985. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville. and that’s why I’m here,” Blanton told the television station from St. “I think I was cleverly set up by the government. In a 2006 interview with Birmingham station WBRC-TV, he claimed the government used trumped-up evidence and lies to gain his conviction. He was incarcerated at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County at the time of his death, according to DOC.īlanton proclaimed his innocence years after being sent to prison. The jury did not buy the story and convicted Blanton after two and a half hours of deliberation.īlanton was sentenced to serve four consecutive life sentences. 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 of 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 the case was cold until 1993 when Black clergy in Birmingham met with the FBI and the FBI reopened the case. 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. The FBI identified Blanton as a suspect in a 1965 memo as a suspect in the bombing. “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. Blanton, a member of the United Klans of America, was one of four men who planted dynamite below the church on the morning of Sept. The church had been used as a meeting place for civil rights activists during the 1963 Birmingham campaign. An autopsy is planned, but DOC said “no foul play is suspected.”īlanton was one of three men sent to prison over the September 1963 bombing, which killed Addie Mae Collins, 14 Denise McNair, 11 Carole Robertson, 14 and Cynthia Wesley, 14. The Alabama Department of Corrections said in a statement that Blanton died Friday. ![]() Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., convicted in 2001 of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four girls, has Friday. ![]()
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