Word: blanton
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...voice was that of Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., secretly recorded in the mid-1960s by a Ku Klux Klan buddy turned informant for the FBI, and the tapes helped convince jurors after just three hours of deliberation to convict Blanton, now 62, of the 1963 bombing that killed four young girls at the city's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church...
...that was irrelevant: "It's never too late for the truth to be told, it's never to late for wounds to heal, it's never too late for a man to be held accountable for his crimes." In his closing arguments, Jones showed jurors videos of taped statements Blanton made in 1964 and 1965. Blanton has always denied knowledge of the bombing, but had been evasive when the FBI asked him about his whereabouts on the night of Sept. 14, 1963, when agents believe the bomb was placed at the church...
...remembers everything about that day," Jones said. "But when it comes to that night, he gets fuzzy." Blanton's alibis shifted from his being in various restaurants to simply driving around Birmingham. The state contended that Blanton met with other Klansmen Sept. 13 under a bridge on the Cahaba River and made the bomb that detonated at the church. The jury, composed of eight white women, three black women and one black man, agreed, and gave Blanton four life sentences...
...glasses and a crusty sense of humor. In 1964 he let the FBI plant a tape recorder in his 1956 Chevrolet after an agent showed him a picture of the dead girls. "It was the most horrible thing I ever seen," he said, voice quivering. He later referred to Blanton as "a punk...
...Birmingham ready to deal with Blanton's trial? Are things in the city tense these days...