Onthis day, Dec. 16, in 1989, the first of a series of deadly package bombs killed a federal judge in Alabama. Judge Robert Vance opened the parcel in his kitchen, setting off an explosion that killed himself and seriously injured his wife. Two days later, a pipe bomb was used to kill Georgia civil rights lawyer Robert E. Robinson. The FBI got a break when an investigator remembered that Walter LeRoy Moody Jr. had been convicted in 1972 for setting off a pipe bomb that had a similar design. Bomb experts determined that Moody had made them all.
Moody was convicted of killing Vance and Robinson, and of sending pipe bombs to 17 other federal judges and to National Association for the Advancement of Colored People offices in the South.
Moody, now 75, remains on death row.
Scott McCabe
