Mail Bomber Sentenced to Electric Chair

A man convicted of murdering a federal judge during a string of mail bombings that terrorized the South was sentenced Monday to die in Alabama’s electric chair.

Walter Leroy Moody already is serving seven life sentences without parole on his federal convictions in the bombings. The death sentence handed down in state court pleased the family of U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Vance, who was killed when he opened a package in his kitchen in 1989. Vance’s wife, Helen, was seriously injured but recovered and testified at Moody’s trial.

“It’s nice to have this measure of finality to it,” said Robert Vance Jr., adding that he plans to witness the execution.

Moody, 61, of Rex, Ga., claimed the evidence was fabricated and said he would begin his appeals immediately.

Prosecutors claimed Moody killed out of frustration over being unable to overturn a 1972 conviction for possessing a pipe bomb.

But Moody contends he was framed by federal agents and was denied counsel at his death penalty trial. He filed papers minutes before sentencing that claim a bombing expert retained to help in his defense is actually an FBI informant.

Prosecutors contended that in addition to killing Vance, who is white, and black civil rights lawyer Robert Robinson of Savannah, Ga., Moody threatened to kill 17 judges in letters declaring war on the judicial system.

One of the bombs that was intercepted was sent to the 11th Circuit’s headquarters in Atlanta. The other was meant for the NAACP office in Jacksonville, Fla.

Prosecutor Bob Morrow said the bomb sent to Robinson was intended to make it appear that a group such as the Ku Klux Klan was behind the judge’s murder.

Moody, a self-styled literary consultant, became a suspect after investigators found similarities between the devices used to kill Robinson and Vance and the pipe bomb that exploded at Moody’s home in 1972.