One December From Murder

This story begins right in the thick of the holiday season, just like it is, right now. It’s December 16, 1989 and federal court judge, Robert Vance and his wife are busy preparing for Christmas. They get home to their home in an affluent neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama and find a box had been delivered to their doorstep. Certainly, nothing unusual, especially so close to Christmas. Robert thinks that maybe it’s full of magazine he’s been waiting for, so he’s interested in opening it. When Robert unties the string tied neatly around the unassuming box, he’s blown back by the sheer force of an explosion. The box had contained a deadly pipe bomb embedded with nails to act as lethal shrapnel. The judge was killed instantly, his body having been thrown across the kitchen. His wife, Helen was sliced up all over along with injuries from nail penetration, but well enough or badass enough to be able to run to a neighbor’s house for help. The emergency crew is trying to ask Helen questions, but she’d been temporarily deafened from the blast and she was so in shock, that she couldn’t speak either. When entering the Judge’s house, the walls and ceilings all over are embedded with nails and shards of steel pipe. The shrapnel had been blasted at over 3600 miles per hour. Just 2 days after this incident, 150 miles away in Atlanta, a security guard at the 11th circuit court notices something strange during a routine screening of incoming packages arriving at the building. The x-ray of the package showed and 8 inch tube attached to flashlight batteries which the guard knew was a telltale sign of a pipe bomb. The screening system is super similar to that at the airport – a conveyor belt pushes items into the xray and pushes them back out. The guards are studying the xray so intently that they don’t notice the box moving toward the end of the conveyor belt and fail to grab it before it tumbles off the conveyor belt and onto the floor. Luckily, the box stays intact and they don’t get blown to bits. Authorities are notified and the building is evacuated.. The bomb investigators are determined not to detonate the bomb, wanting it to remain intact so they could study it. After judge Vance had been killed by the first bomb, an alert had been released around the country to warn judges of possible targeting by mail bombs. Though Vance’s bomb was rigged to explode when the box was opened, bomb techs at this scene had to assume that this wasn’t the same bomber and that this bomb could go off at any second. The drop from the conveyor belt and the usual shipping company box kicking games could have left this device unstable. Techs xray the box further and it’s photographed from every angle possible in case it were to go off and destroyed. The xrays revealed that the box wasn’t rigged with a timing device which was great news for the techs. If a box isn’t rigged to a timer or strapped to a victim, techs can take their time and bomb removal takes hours. I learned through this research that bomb technicians, though they wear the full Kevlar suits and gear, keep their hands exposed to ensure a good grip when working with explosives. So if anything blows, their hands are sacrificed. When the techs decided that the bomb was stable, they bring it outside and lower it carefully into an armored bin which is then loaded onto a special trailer. Then the bomb goes to the bomb range at the city landfill. They diligently worked to extract it and were successful. When they looked at it closely, they found it was identical to the one that had killed Judge Vance just a couple of days prior. Because of the targets that these bombs have been sent to, a high profile judge and a busy regional courthouse, ATF is worried, if not certain, that they have a serial bomber on their hands. It had 2 unique characteristics to it that analysts hadn’t seen before. The bomb itself and the inside of the box were covered with black enamel paint. It also had square endcaps that were bolted and welded onto the ends of the pipe which served to delay the explosion while also increasing the force of the blast. Going through every centimeter of the package, no hair, fibers or even fingerprints could be found in the box or on the bomb itself. However, the bombs resembled a device that had exploded 4 months earlier an a NAACP office in atlanta. That bomb had only held teargas which had exploded, engulfing employees in clouds of the choking gas, but didn’t result in any deaths. Within the teargas bomb box was a letter writing of the unfairness of the 11th circuit court. Letters had also been sent to each judge of the court, a news anchor, an editor of the ABA journal and others threatening assassinations in the name of a fake anti-black organization called, “Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System. Feds suspected the teargas bomb had been mailed as a kind of test to see if the bomb could be mailed without exploding in transit. When it worked, the bomber knew they could attempt the real thing. On the same day the bomb was discovered by X-ray at the courthouse, Dec. 18 of 1989, A civil rights lawyer in Savannah Georgia found a package that had been delivered sitting on his desk at work. His name was Robert Robinson, but he went by Robby Robinson. Like Judge Vance, Robby didn’t find it weird to be getting a package in the busy gifting season. The bomb inside the package was set to detonate when the string wrapped around the outside of the package was pulled. Robby cuts the string and pulls it off, opens the package and is struck with a massive blast. He dies within 3 hours after the explosion. Investigators collect every shred of evidence they could find from the scene. They find that this device was also a pipe bomb which had been inside of a carboard box. The nails in Robby’s body matched those from Judge Vance’s bomb as well as the one found at the courthouse. The assailant would construct the bomb, probably wearing what was basically a surgeon’s garments and gloves so that no hairs or fibers were cast into the box. Then he’d spray paint the insides of the boxes to cover up any evidence that did accidentally get shed into it. He was careful to never lick stamps either. The bombings seemed like somewhat random attacks against the legal system to places pretty far apart and sent to people who really didn’t work together. There was no way to begin to anticipate where the next bomb would be sent. The US Marshall Service goes on to spend nearly $5 million on 24 hour bodyguards to protect the wife of Judge Vance and federal judges in the district. They also upgraded the courthouses video and x-ray equipment. Unfortunately, that next bomb was already circulating in the mail system. On the same day of Robby Robinson’s bombing, another bomb is delivered to a desk in Jacksonville Florida. The president of the Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP, Willye Dennis was to be the recipient of this box. Fortunately, she was too busy that day to go through her mail before heading out to meetings. After her meetings, she caught wind of Robby Robinson’s death and got word from agencies to be wary of unmarked packages. She thought back to the box sitting on her desk and called her secretary to warn him not to open it. When she got back to the office to look at the package, she saw there wasn’t a return address and she called the police to report it. Bomb techs descend on her office and note that it did look very similar and wrapped in what looked like the same paper as the other packages. It was x-rayed and revealed another pipe bomb. Now knowing what they were dealing with, techs defuse the bomb and examine the package for any trace evidence left behind. The nails and black paint were just like the other boxes and like most mail bombers do, more than enough postage was applied to the box to make sure the bomb reached it’s destination. But this box contained something the others hadn’t – a roll of paper that when unrolled, equated to what was essentially hate mail. It included 4 typewritten letters that had been sent to a Jacksonville news station as well. The letters claimed responsibility for the Judge Vance bombing and that of Robby Robinson. It also referenced the tear gas bomb that had been sent to the NAACP prior. They were also indicative of extreme right wing hate groups. With this information, a task force was formed to look at hate groups like the KKK, the Aryan nation, Christian Identity Movement church members and skinheads. The ATF had informants embedded in each of these groups, but there had been no chatter within any about the bombings. The motive as the letters indicated that it was revenge for a case of the rape and murder of a preschool teacher named Julie Love back in 1988. A quote from the letters read, “Anytime a black man rapes a white woman in Alabama, Florida, or Georgia, Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System shall assassinate one federal judge, one attorney, and one officer of the NAACP.” The letters and mailing labels had all been typed using the same typewriter that had a signature flaw. The number 1 didn’t match the typeface of the other keys and had been replaced at one time with a 1 from a different typewriter. Knowing this tidbit, investigators go through more than 1 million documents filed at the 11th district court, looking for anything that had been typed with that same flawed typewriter. One letter was found. It dealt with an obscure life insurance case from 1987 from a person who lived in Enterprise, Alabama. Trying to track down the typewriter, that life insurance case led them to Robert Offeral. They searched his belongings, even his septic tank looking for the typewriter, but couldn’t find a shred of it. Now, Robert Offeral dealt in junk. He was a junk collector and seller. He recalled typing the insurance letter years earlier but couldn’t remember what happened to the typewriter. His daughter who was there during all of this and I believe helped with his junk business, had a vague recollection of selling a typewriter about a year earlier, but couldn’t remember anything about the buyer and had no bill of sale. Now at a dead end, they switch their focus back to the bombs. During an initial meeting between bomb experts and ATF agents, a description of the unique bomb characteristics like the square endcaps and the black enamel spray paint is given. None of the experts had seen a bomb quite like this, except for one. Lloyd Irwin, one of the ATF bomb experts, recognized the bomb characteristics from a case he’d worked in 1972. It was the first he’d seen of a bomb like that and hadn’t seen one since. This guy was no bomb newbie. He had seen and examined over 3000 bombs in his career but this one stood out to him. Though the design had evolved some from the 1972 version, it was the same technique and signature details. Bombers tend to keep things the same when they find what works. In 1972, one man had been convicted of a crime resulting from that initial device. His name was Walter Leroy Moody; he went by Roy. He had built that bomb back then to send to the man who had repossessed his car. However, it never made it that far. The victim of the explosive was Roy’s own wife, Hazel. She saw a package sitting out and had opened it. It had blown away part of her finger and thigh, injured an eye and severely burned her face and shoulder. She needed six operations to repair the damage. Roy went to prison for the incident and Hazel was granted a divorce, though I read that Roy tried to fight it. He denied that he had built the bomb, claiming instead it was George Wallace. Wallace was a controversial figure known for basically his racism. Roy had claimed at trial that Wallace had been attempting to assist him in regaining possession of his car and was responsible for the bomb. He claimed that someone else had planted the bomb in his house to make him their scapegoat. He had even bribed a handicapped and destitute woman to claim the same thing in court on his behalf. The claims had no foundation and one of the women later told the truth to authorities. Roy was furious about that conviction and had spent the next 10 years trying to get his conviction overturned to no avail. He was let out of prison after only 2 years and he started a boat equipment company, then allegedly tried to drown 3 of his employees. He’d taken out life insurance policies totaling 2.2 million on the men, whom he took out in a boat saying they were there to take underwater photos. One of the men claimed that Roy had stomped on his hand while he was desperately trying to climb the ladder back on the boat. The men went to trial over the incident but the jury couldn’t reach a decision and the case was dropped by prosecutors. I didn’t have time to research more about this case but I plan to for a minisode for our patreon members. So, they think they’ve found their guy, but at this point, most of the evidence linking Roy to the bombs was circumstantial. They needed more to get a conviction. So, they decide to analyze the chemical composition of the primers and detonators to determine who manufactured them, hoping to be able to trace who bought the parts. Fortunately, they got enough information from the materials that they found the manufacturer. This company in particular had very limited distribution in the southeast. Investigators get a list of the stores that sold these parts. One such business they tracked down was the Shootin’ Iron gun store in Griffin, Georgia. An employee there remembered selling a 4lb keg of smokeless powder and 4000 hand gun primers to a man in December of 1989. The purchase was so large that it stuck in his mind. When shown a photo lineup, he chose Roy Moody as the man who had made the purchase. Now able to obtain a search warrant, authorities comb over everything in Roy’s house. Because of his prior conviction and experience, Roy had gotten much smarter about hiding evidence, though. It wasn’t what they found, but what they didn’t that raised their suspicions even more. They knew Roy had gone to school for chemistry and physics and had studied law. Though he didn’t graduate, it seemed he had kept all of his textbooks. Except there was no trace of the chemisty ones. The search was so thorough of his house, that they even removed floorboards, hoping for a shred of evidence. The house seemed like it had been sterilized and even normal things you’d find in a home weren’t there. Things like wire, nails, pliers – there weren’t any of these normal items. They also didn’t come across any guns, though they knew Roy had some since they had found ammunition in the front seat of his pickup truck. Then they got a lead that he had a storage space in Chamblee, Georgia. In that storage space, they found a pipe with an endcap screwed on; one of the ends had a nut secured in it, ready for a rod to be screwed into it. It was an obvious pipe bomb in the making to agents. The pipe was scraped for explosive residue, but all that came back was rust. It could have been a prototype, but without residue, they had no way to prove that the intent was to make it explode. Still, Roy Moody is arrested and held without bail. His wife, Susan was also arrested as a probable accomplice, but she was allowed to bond out. Susan, 20 years younger than Roy, had been physically and mentally abused for Roy from the beginning of their relationship. In her questioning, she told investigators how Roy would take her on shopping trips throughout the south eastern US. These were lame shopping trips where Roy would have Susan buy steel pipes, tubing, rain coats, rubber gloves, shower caps, safety glasses and black enamel spray paint. She also told them that at one point she had bought a used typewriter for him which had since been thrown out. For her testimony and statements, Susan is allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy. She also provided an important name to the police, that of Roy’s former cellmate. Agents search the former cellmate’s house and find foot lockers with Roy’s name on them. Inside of the foot lockers are the missing guns and chemistry books, but that’s not all. There’s also a bomb making book and an arc welding unit. Possibly the biggest secret of Roy’s that Susan exposed was his motive. Roy had wanted badly to become a lawyer to fix the system that he felt had ruined his life. But, he had been denied the ability to take the bar exam because of his 1972 felony conviction. At court, Roy took the stand as his only witness for 4 days of story-telling. He had all these fanciful claims, starting with the George Wallace one. He also said his home workshops were attempts to replicate a cold fusion experiment and that the device found in his storage unit was part of a homemade assembly of a painst spray gun. He claimed his former attorney had claimed his own involvement in the mail bombings. His rantings were also interspersed with details of his sex life. 15 witnesses against Roy were brought forward. The attorney in no way had anything to do with the bombings. A physics professor said that the cold fusion claim had no merit and frankly made no sense. A paint shop operator said the device from the storage unit was nothing used in a paint spray gun. On June 28, 1991, the jury found Roy guilty of 70 charges. He was sentenced to 7 life terms plus 400 years which was later changed to the death penalty. From things I read, I got the impression that Roy even tried to claim innocence because of a quote that from his (these are his actual words, not mine) saying he couldn’t be executed because he’s retarded. This dude had a very high IQ so that was easily dismissed. In the end, Roy was given the lethal injection on April 19 of 2018 at the age of 83. He became the oldest death row inmate to be executed in modern United States history. forensicfilesnow.com, department of justice office of the inspector general, cbsnews.com, murderpedia.org, the new detectives, the man who mailed explosives, justia law