FBI’s Bombing Probe Creates a ‘Folk Hero’

At the cavernous, tin-sided warehouse, customers are once again idly browsing through the statues of Jesus, painted urns, clothes, dishes and other assorted surplus items for sale.

Robert Wayne O’Ferrell, the owner, oversees the scene, relieved that life is once again so simple. A month ago FBI agents by the score descended on this little south Alabama town, seizing material from the warehouse, digging up O’Ferrell’s yard at home and even exploring his septic tanks.

They questioned O’Ferrell, 46, time and time again. They asked about an old manual typewriter he used to write a complaint letter to a federal court, which apparently was the same machine someone used to write a letter claiming responsibility for mailing the package bombs that killed an Alabama federal judge and a Georgia lawyer in December. Samples of hair, blood and saliva were taken from him and family members.

Reporters arrived, and so did worldwide publicity.

Time and time again, O’Ferrell denied any involvement. For two days he said it to the FBI, without even hiring a lawyer, and to the hordes of cameramen and reporters out on the sidewalk.

“There ain’t no words to describe what it’s been like,” O’Ferrell told a visitor the other day. “Some things you just can’t describe, and that’s one of them.”

The FBI never found the typewriter, at least as far as anyone knows, and now the investigation into the Southern mail bombings is focusing on other people, other places.

Lately, federal officials have searched the home of Walter Moody in Rex, Ga., and, in Ford City, Pa., authorities stopped a car driven by a Georgia man, Dean Hileman, and found seven homemade bombs, along with other illegal weapons. Neither man has been charged in connection with the bombings, however.

Back here, O’Ferrell’s reputation is in a kind of limbo. Never really identified as a suspect in the crimes, he now suffers from not being able to completely clear his name, although there’s not much doubt among folks in Enterprise that the FBI misfired when it zeroed in on him.

A new country song (“A Tribute to Robert Wayne O’Ferrell”) sums up the sentiment: “With blond hair, a sweet smile and warm ways that I see,/He looks more like an angel than a bomber to me.”

From his command post in the center of the warehouse, O’Ferrell often talks passionately about his love of God, his fear of having his family attacked, his innocence, his lack of malice, his desire for an FBI apology.

He also sells the tapes of his song for $10 apiece. Then there’s the autographed T-shirt, design and price to come. And the movie offer, and the book offer. Television producers continue to telephone. If times aren’t good, they sure are better.

“They always say if God shuts one door, he’ll open another,” O’Ferrell said. Slipping a tape of his song into a tape player, he added: “Maybe this is His way of doing that.”

The first shipment of 1,000 cassette tapes arrived by Greyhound on Friday, and O’Ferrell said he expects them to sell quickly.

Meanwhile, many others in town are sorry to see the hoopla end.

Officials said the heavy federal presence put a dent in local crime. Now, bucks brought in by the media blitz are down to a trickle. But it was good while it lasted. And if O’Ferrell again becomes a hot subject of the investigation, well, the good times will be back.

Whatever happens, Mayor Jacquelyn Thompson, in an interview, likened the episode to the town’s history of overcoming adversity. Fears that the investigation might damage the city’s image were unfounded: Local people “enjoyed the opportunity” to meet the temporary residents, she said.

“People in Enterprise have a knack for turning a bad situation into a positive situation,” the mayor declared. “That’s the story of the boll weevil.”

The boll weevil? Yes, the Enterprise Chamber of Commerce boasts of being the home of the Boll Weevil Monument, which straddles Main Street downtown.

“It is the only memorial in the world that glorifies a pest,” chamber literature brags, noting that when the bug devastated the area’s cotton crop in 1915 and 1916, it forced farmers to diversify crops, enriching the area. The monument, the figure of a woman holding the boll weevil over her head, was erected in 1919.

O’Ferrell’s continuing enterprise is, to be sure, a good metaphor for the city’s reputed knack for taking lemons and turning them into lemonade.

Customers, he said, are itching for him to design a T-shirt, which he plans to do soon, although he has not decided how much he will sell them for. (One local business already has produced T-shirts celebrating the FBI’s probe of septic tanks, but many who buy them want O’Ferrell to autograph them. So, reasons O’Ferrell, why not sell his own?)

And the song, a country ballad written by Nanci Lee Fox of Hiawassee, Ga., can only enhance O’Ferrell’s celebrity status, not to mention his pocketbook.

In case anyone accuses him of cashing in unfairly on the situation, O’Ferrell said that “we’ve all agreed that the top 10% of it (profit from the song sales) goes to God.”

O’Ferrell, who says he is a licensed Southern Baptist minister, talks a lot about God. At one point he said God prevented him from being angry at the FBI. He said that “in a way I wish I could have gotten bitter with them. I think I’d have felt better.”

Nevertheless, he said, “I just don’t like the way they done it,” asserting that federal agents not only hassled him unjustifiably but also reneged on a promise to leave alone his relatives, including his mother, who is believed to have Alzheimer’s disease.

O’Ferrell said agents told him “that they’d just follow me or whatever, until they find it (the typewriter). I said: ‘Sir, you can follow me 20 years, you ain’t going to find nothing.’

“Within three hours after they got here,” FBI agents must have “realized they had the wrong place,” O’Ferrell said. “I’ve been told they just don’t admit they’re wrong.”

FBI officials and other law enforcement officials disagree that they treated O’Ferrell shabbily. Also, they assert that they never labeled him a “suspect,” although news reports widely made that claim. Some news reports also cited sources claiming that O’Ferrell showed deception on a polygraph test.

“We’ve interviewed him. That’s all we’re claiming,” said Nestor Michnyak, an FBI spokesman in Washington.

One source close to the investigation maintained that O’Ferrell did own the missing typewriter, “but we just can’t prove it.” O’Ferrell has acknowledged that he may have owned the old manual typewriter, but probably sold it.

Enterprise Police Chief Tim Byrd said that investigators “afforded O’Ferrell all his constitutional rights. He was treated like any other citizen.”

Over at Dottie’s Country Kitchen, Dottie Mitchell, the proprietress, told a visitor that the bad part of the episode is that, for now, it’s over. Drawing on a cigarette, she said the reporters and feds are gone and “I’m sorry to see ‘em go, because my business was good.” Puff, puff. “I hope somethin’ else’ll happen.”

At the Chamber of Commerce, where a big blue boll weevil doll greets visitors in the lobby, Sherilyn Britt, office manager, said many of the 400 businesses in the town of 21,000 people have profited from the influx of newcomers.

And Chief Byrd said the FBI, with its massive technology and personnel, has helped his force fight crime. With federal assistance such as fingerprinting, he said, 14 burglaries have been solved, netting four suspects.

The FBI is still operating out of a building next to the Boll Weevil Inn. Once abuzz with activity, it was quiet last week. No one answered a knock at the door, which, like the windows, was covered. Two whip antennas remain atop the roof.

O’Ferrell complained that the investigation has “put us in a lot of danger,” referring to his wife and two daughters. Gesturing toward the huge entrance to the building, he said: “How do I know that bomber ain’t going to walk in that door right now and shoot me or go catch one of my kids and kidnap them or catch my wife off somewhere and kidnap or shoot her?”

But O’Ferrell gleefully recites the encouragement he has received from around the country. Telephone calls, he said, have come from almost every state. A Fresno, Calif., man called to say he and others “believed in me,” O’Ferrell recalled. “Said that they thought I was the coolest cat they’d ever seen.”

Such stories irk some FBI agents, leading one to complain that O’Ferrell is becoming a “folk hero.” Sneered the agent: “The big bad government didn’t arrest him, and now we’re bad guys.”

O’Ferrell thinks no one ought to begrudge his good fortune, “ ‘cause there’s not enough money in the world to pay me for what they put me through in the last four weeks.”

Edith Stanley, staff researcher in Atlanta, contributed to this story.