Junk Dealer’s Kin Probed in Bombings

Federal authorities are investigating two brothers in connection with the series of mail bombings that killed two people last month, the father of the two men said Wednesday as authorities combed a warehouse here for evidence for the third straight day.

J. C. O’Ferrell, 74, of Hobo Bend, Ala., said that FBI agents took blood and hair samples from a number of family members and questioned them Monday about Robert Wayne O’Ferrell, 46, and James (Buddy) O’Ferrell, 49.

“They talked (to us), but it don’t amount to nothing,” the elder O’Ferrell said. “What I mean is, them boys ain’t done nothing.”

Robert O’Ferrell, a junk dealer and lay minister, was questioned extensively by authorities Monday and Tuesday, and a search of his property for bombing evidence has even included pumping out the contents of two septic tanks.

His brother, James, is an independent trucker who lives about 80 miles east of Enterprise and reportedly is out of the state.

A source close to the investigation said that Robert showed deception when asked about the bombings during a polygraph examination administered by FBI agents Monday.

“He knows something” about the bombing, “they’re certain about that,” said the source, referring to investigators in the case.

O’Ferrell has publicly proclaimed his innocence. He said Wednesday he hoped that the FBI would soon leave him alone.

“They ain’t found nothing. You can’t keep looking when you ain’t found nothing,” he told reporters outside his home. “It costs the government a lot of money when they ain’t found nothing.”

FBI agents and agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Wednesday removed material from the warehouse where O’Ferrell operates a surplus store.

Before loading a small moving van, agents positioned a refrigerator on the porch so that it would partly hide what was being put into the truck. Then, they tied green tarpaulins to the porch to further block the view.

Sources earlier confirmed that agents have been looking for an old manual typewriter thought to have been used to type letters signed “Americans for a Competent Federal Judiciary” and asserting responsibility for the fatal bombings.

The sources said that the FBI apparently is looking for similarities between the type in those letters and the type in documents and letters known to have been written by O’Ferrell.

Richard Nichols, chief of police in New Brockton, the nearby town where O’Ferrell lives, said the FBI had asked him to search his files for a letter O’Ferrell was believed to have written to the police within the last several years.

Nichols, who said he could not find the letter, called O’Ferrell “an average sort of individual.”

“I still can’t believe he was involved in this,” he said.

Authorities have also reviewed documents that O’Ferrell submitted in an appeal of a case to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. After O’Ferrell lost a lawsuit against Gulf Life Insurance Co., his former employer, the 11th Circuit in April upheld the lower court ruling in a decision written by Judge Robert Vance. Vance was killed on Dec. 16 at his home in suburban Birmingham in the first mail-bombing.

Robert Robinson, a black civil rights lawyer and NAACP officer in Savannah, Ga., was killed two days later by another exploding package, and similar mail bombs were defused after being found at the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta and at the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People office in Jacksonville, Fla.

O’Ferrell’s father said FBI agents questioned him Monday night about his two sons, but mostly about Robert. He said the authorities did not explain why they took blood and hair samples from family members.

“It ain’t nothing but a mess,” he said.

When asked if the authorities gave any indication as to why his sons were suspects, O’Ferrell said: “They’re just suspicious that, them being brothers, they might know how to build a bomb.”

He said neither of his sons had any experience with explosives. He said the FBI asked him if he had ever heard his sons threaten harm to judges or if they had ever been involved in anti-desegregation efforts.

“I told them that my children were raised up where there were colored folks and worked on farms with them and their children went to school with them, and they never had no trouble.”