Church Bombing Case
As attorney general, Baxley was made famous for his most prestigious case against the Ku Klux Klan, his 1977 prosecution of Robert Chambliss for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in September 1963.
"We know who did it," Alabama Attorney General Baxley said Wednesday as he confirmed that he has reopened the investigation of a church bombing that killed four young black girls in Birmingham in 1963. Baxley said in an interview with Birmingham radio station that the list of suspects had been narrowed down, but he declined to predict if or when arrests would be made. He said premature published reports about the investigation might have hurt. "There are some people in Jefferson County who ought to be pretty nervous right now," Baxley said in an earlier telephone interview. The Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church occurred during the time of racial demonstrations led by the late Martin Luther King. Twenty-three other people in the church were hurt and debris was scattered for blocks. Baxley later confirmed that he had talked to Rowe, and he was cooperative, "But we were working on this thing long before that. We had a lot of stuff already. Rowe was just another person we interviewed." He said Rowe didn't give him a list of names as such, "but nine is too many."
Baxley succeeded in convicting Chambliss with minimal evidence (as the FBI refused to relinquish tapes necessary to the case). The victory eased the minds of the parents of Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair.
Read more about this topic: Bill Baxley
Famous quotes containing the words church, bombing and/or case:
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.”
—Ivan Illich (b. 1926)
“Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)