Woman Testifies Bomb Suspect Paid Witnesses to Lie : Crime: Tapes played showing defendant giving instructions on how to answer questions by grand jury.

Two years before he allegedly mailed pipe bombs that killed a federal judge and a civil rights attorney in 1989, Walter Leroy Moody Jr. paid two Georgia women to lie in his behalf in court proceedings involving a previous pipe bomb incident, a witness in his federal trial contended Wednesday.

On the second day of Moody’s trial, prosecutors portrayed the 57-year-old Georgia man as being so obsessed with clearing his record of a 1972 conviction for illegally possessing a pipe bomb that he hatched elaborate schemes and manufactured bogus witnesses. When his efforts failed, they contend, he declared war on the judicial system.

A series of letters sent to television stations during the 1989 bombing spree suggested a racial hate group was behind the attacks. Prosecutors say Moody acted alone, however. In the trial so far, they have portrayed Moody as a complicated man who meticulously plotted and maneuvered for years to clear the conviction from his record--all so that he could be admitted to the Georgia bar and become an attorney.

On Wednesday, prosecutors played videotapes and audiotapes of Moody instructing Julie Linn West how to respond to questioning by federal agents and before a grand jury in 1990 when Moody was simultaneously under investigation for mailing the 1989 pipe bombs and obstructing justice during an appeal of the 1972 case.

West, at this point, had agreed to cooperate with federal authorities.

According to West, who testified Wednesday, Moody paid her $2,000 to claim that a pipe bomb that accidentally exploded in Moody’s home in 1972, injuring his first wife, had been surreptitiously left in the home by a friend of hers.

She also said that Moody paid her mother to lie for him and, once, to pose as a private investigator to gain information from a law enforcement official.

On Tuesday, an expert for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms testified that the 1972 explosive was similar to the four pipe bombs that killed U.S. 11th Circuit Court Appeals Judge Robert S. Vance of Mountain Brook, Ala., and Robert E. Robinson, a Savannah Ga., alderman and civil rights lawyer.

The trial, which is expected to last three weeks, was moved to St. Paul because the case had received so much publicity in the Southeast that defense attorneys contended Moody could not get a fair trial. In addition, the judges of the Northern District of the U.S. 11th Circuit voluntarily removed themselves from presiding in the case.