Murder With My Husband - 219. The Deadly Package

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into a string of mysterious mail bombing targeting people working in the Justice System.   Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources: The FBI - https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/judge-vance-murder  Justia US Law - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/977/1425/305286/  The US Department of Justice - https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9704a/03amnewv.htm  https://ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/examination-typewritten-document  State of Alabama Office of the Attorney General - https://www.alabamaag.gov/attorney-general-steve-marshall-statement-on-execution-of-walter-leroy-moody-jr/  State of Alabama Office of the Governor - https://governor.alabama.gov/newsroom/2018/04/governor-iveys-statement-on-walter-moody-execution/  NPR - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/19/603883731/alabama-serial-bomber-walter-leroy-moody-83-to-be-executed-thursday Advance Local - https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2018/04/circuit_judge_bob_vance_talks.html United States Attorney’s Office - https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/alabama-executes-man-1989-mail-bomb-murder-us-appeals-court-judge-robert-s-vance-0 S House California Law Group - https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/can-a-felon-become-a-lawyer/ WTOC 11 - https://www.wtoc.com/2023/06/21/robert-robbie-robinson-historical-marker-unveiled/ Savannah Now - https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2018/04/20/alabama-man-executed-for-1989-mail-bomb-slaying-of-savannahs-robbie-robinson/12648212007/ FindLaw - https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/al-court-of-criminal-appeals/1401686.html WJBF ABC 6 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgPoh5lT0L0 UPI - https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/01/25/A-lawyer-Thursday-advised-junk-dealer-Robert-Wayne-OFerrell/9021633243600/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/01/22/Federal-agents-and-Army-bomb-experts-with-dogs-searched/6460632984400/  Deseret News - https://www.deseret.com/1990/1/23/18842786/fbi-questions-suspect-in-bomb-probe/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You're listening to an Ono media podcast Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is murder with my husband I'm Peyton Morland and I'm Garrett more than and he's the husband. I'm the husband Thank you guys so much for your continued support. We love you. We love you. We love you And I just felt the need to say that this episode. All right, Gare, are you ready for your 10 seconds? Well, officially racking up the years. Had my birthday two days ago. I don't know, I guess I'm getting older.

The big 3-0, which is a little strange. I don't feel 30. I feel like I'm like 20, 25. Really? Yeah. That's kind of what I feel like I'm like 20, 25. Really? Yeah. That's kind of what I feel like internally. But I'm 30, 30 years old. I'm an adult now.

It means I have to start acting like an adult. There's no more jokes on the podcast. Gotta be serious at all times. No more hot takes. No more hot takes. I'm officially an adult. Kind of what I got for my 10 seconds. I'm stopping my 10 seconds

now that I'm 32. Sorry everybody. No, but yeah, had my birthday. It was good. It was great. Peyton and I have a lot of guest work stuff and traveling coming up. So the next few weeks are going to be pretty crazy. We're going to kind of be all over the place. And we are actually recording really early in the morning, which is something we've never done before. So it feels a little weird in here, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh, I recorded into the dark before this and it was scary.

It's just weird. It's like, it was dark outside when we first got here and it's just weird to record early in the morning because we don't do that. Usually we record in the afternoon and I don't know the vibes are different I feel like we're camping like I don't know I don't know I just it's weird yeah that's what I got going let's hop into today's case our sources for this episode are the FBI just a US law the US Department of Justice State of

Alabama Office of the Attorney General State of Alabama Office of the Attorney General, State of Alabama Office of the Governor, NPR, Advance Local United States Attorneys Office, S House California Law Group, WTOC 11, Savannah Now Fine Law, WJBF, ABC 6, UPI, and Desert News. All right, I'm sure this is already fairly obvious to anyone who enjoys true crime, but the criminal justice system is sacred. It's so deeply important

that we have working courts, appeals processes, rules around how evidence is gathered, and so much more. If the criminal justice system breaks down, say you have a corrupt official or someone who bribes or intimidates someone into doing the wrong thing. It's dangerous for all of society. Put another way, of course it's bad when someone commits a violent crime and harms another person, but if someone attacks the criminal justice system itself to see that justice isn't done, then that's a threat to us all. So let's go back to August 21st 1989. On that day an ordinary looking package was delivered to Atlanta's regional office for the NAACP. It was wrapped up in brown paper and it had string tied around it. The address label

was black and red and the stamp had artwork for Yosemite National Park with an American flag waving over it. Fun fact real quick I climbed half dome like 13 years ago 15 years ago something like that just wanted to spit that out. Thank you. Welcome. This sort of typical ordinary package you've probably seen a thousand times and you would never give a second thought to. Well that Monday, again 1989, without warning this package exploded in the NAACP office and then tear gas began pouring out of the box or rather what had used to be the bomb. This was a bomb. As the gas spread through the office building, the employees rushed to evacuate, and luckily nobody was killed,

but everyone knew they might not be so lucky next time, and they were worried that there would be a next time. And this is because the same day that the tear gas bomb exploded, an anonymous person sent countless letters all over the United States. So this bomb shows up at the NAACP and on the same day, all of these letters go out all over the United States. And the recipients were reporters, judges, lawyers, all kinds of important people.

And when they opened these envelopes, they found letters that were labeled as quote, declaration of war. Okay. And when they opened these envelopes, they found letters that were labeled as quote Declaration of war okay, and the reason apparently America's courts were unfair and corrupt and the sender was going to keep bombing people until something changed That's it. That's a lot. I mean, I've had this question before, but I don't bomb people. So unfortunately, the police didn't have any way of figuring out

who sent these letters or the bomb. And as frightening as that declaration of war was, there was no way to move forward in the investigation without more information. So a few months go by without any major breaks. Jumping ahead to December 16th, 1989, 58-year-old Judge Robert Vance of Mountain Brook, Alabama received a plain package in the mail. And once again, it was wrapped in brown paper, tied up with a string, and had a red and white return label

and a stamp showing an American flag at Yosemite National Park. And Garrett still climbed Half Dome. Now as you can probably guess from the date, it was right before Christmas. So any other time of the year he might have found it strange for an unexpected package to be delivered to his house. But understandably, Judge Vance figured this was a gift. In fact, he thought he knew who it was from. He was good friends with another judge, and Vance figured that judge had probably sent him something special for the holiday. Not that there was any shortage of people who'd want to do something nice for Vance. He had a great record professionally

and personally. When Vance had first been getting started in his career, he'd been a big supporter of civil rights. This was especially controversial in Alabama in the early 1960s and Vance had clashed with a lot of politicians when he fought for what he believed was right. And eventually his advocacy paid off. Among other things, Vance had become personal friends with Jimmy Carter, who'd appointed him into a higher profile position during his presidency. And since then, Vance had basically been a rising star in his sector.

He was a judge in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and worked hard to make sure his rulings were always fair. So again, it wasn't that hard to imagine that one of Vance's friends or coworkers was just sending him a Christmas package to his house. So he carried the package into the kitchen, he set it on the table, and his wife Helen was excited to see what was inside.

So she sat across from Vance to watch him open it. And as Vance unwrapped the package, it exploded instantly. Holy, that's... Now, unlike the bomb that had gone off at the NAACP headquarters, this one didn't have tear gas in it. Instead, this bomb- Had shrapnel in it?

Had 80 nails crammed inside of it. Oh my gosh. When the bomb blew up, they flew outward at incredible speeds, skewering Vance's body. He died on the spot and his wife, Helen, who was still sitting across the table was also badly injured, but thankfully she survived. So just two days later, it was like history was repeating itself when a 41 year old attorney named Robert Robinson

got a package in the mail. It looked just like the other two, a Yosemite stamp, a red and white address label, a brown paper tied up in string. The moment Robinson opened his package, it blew up and killed him too. Now there were a few key differences with this bombing. Robert Robinson was obviously an attorney not a judge and he was based in Georgia not Alabama. The package wasn't delivered to his home he received it and opened it at his office. But otherwise his story was eerily similar to Robert Vance's. I mean first you have this bomb go off and then all these letters go out saying hey I'm

gonna start killing people until something changes. Then a judge dies and now an attorney dies. And the way they died wasn't the only thing that Robinson and Vance did have in common. Robinson had also been a civil rights attorney. He spent his career fighting for equality, just like Vance had, and how the people at the NAACP had. So I assume they think it's racially motivated. Well, even before he became a lawyer, Robinson had been an activist.

He was black and one of the very first students of color to enroll in a formerly whites-only school when it was desegregated. So people threatened him, they harassed him, they bullied him, but he kept showing up every day. And as an adult, he focused on representing low income defendants who couldn't afford a good lawyer otherwise. So a few weeks after Robinson's death, another round of letters went out to local TV stations, just like what had happened with the tear gas bomb at the NAACP. The sender said they were part of a group called, quote,

Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System, and they'd killed Vance and Robinson because they disagreed with the way the judge and the attorney had handled previous cases that came their way. Specifically, the killer thought that they'd given preferential treatment to black defendants. So 100 percent they're coming out and saying, yeah, it is racially motivated. So the people who received these letters shared them with the police and they sent the evidence up the chain to the FBI who had stepped in to help investigate this case of bombings. And right away, the Bureau figured one key detail. There was no such group

as the Americans for a competent federal judicial system. The assumption was that one person was behind these attacks and that they'd invented this group to kind of try to distract the authorities. But the investigators were confident that all three of the bombs had come from the same individual. They'd all been delivered in southern states, Alabama and Georgia, in the past five months. All of the packages looked the same and all of the targets had ties to the civil rights movement. When explosives experts looked at the way these bombs had been put together, they also found even more similarities. They were all held together with the same kind of two inch wide Tan tape and they'd all been placed inside of cardboard boxes that had been painted black on the inside

Does anybody work at the postal service or postal office? I've always wondered how it works with packages because they don't go through like metal detectors, do they? I don't think so. I don't think they do. I think they just start sending them off, which is just kind of crazy to think of. Could be wrong. Someone correct me if I'm wrong,

girl, let us know in the comments below, because I don't know, I've never been backstage or behind the scenes of a postal office. And each explosive device worked the same way, even the one that released gas instead of nails. It all came down to little details like the way everything was wired together or the fact that the person who built them used the casing from a ballpoint pen. There are a lot of ways to make bombs so

it felt statistically unlikely that these three bombs would have so many things in common if these attacks weren't related. So the police figured, okay, they have a serial bomber on their hands, someone who might be willing to strike yet again. The good news was that now that the police were on the alert, they managed to intercept

the next crop of mail bombs before they could go off and hurt anyone. One had been sent to an Atlanta courthouse, but postal workers thought it was suspicious, so they never delivered it. They handed it over to authorities instead. Another made its way to another NAACP office. This one was in Jacksonville, Florida, but luckily someone realized it was dangerous before it could be opened and they handed it over to the police. Because once the officials diffused these two bombs, they were able to learn more about how they'd been put together and from there they could use the evidence to identify the

sender. But the investigators got their real breakthrough when they looked at something that wasn't in the bombs, but on them. It was the red and white address labels on the packages. These labels were typed, not handwritten. But remember, this was 1989. People didn't have personal computers and home printers the way they do today. Okay, interesting. So the sender must have typed those labels using a typewriter. Now if you didn't know this, typewriters are a lot like snowflakes.

Each one has a unique signature or fingerprint. Individual typewriters can space letters out differently or a specific character might always come out a little crooked, maybe slightly higher or lower than the others. If you have a long enough writing sample, in theory, it's possible to identify what typewriter produced it. And I don't just mean in terms of make and model, but you can actually determine which individual machine made a specific printed document. So with this typed label and the letters that went out to the news stations, FBI typewriter experts were able to figure out what typewriter the sender had used.

And they traced it to a man named Robert Wayne O'Farrell. Whoa, wait, that's pretty crazy that they were able to do that, because if you print it out like a Microsoft Word, you type something up and print that out. I don't think you can figure that out like that. I, you type something up and print that out, I don't think you can figure that out like that. I mean, no, there's no way you can. Not without, well, and I mean, they had typewriter experts at the FBI, so this must've been a thing back then.

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to call him O'Farrell just to keep it clear. So he was a Baptist preacher who also sold antiques on the side to make ends meet. He'd also been fired from a job at an insurance company several years earlier and O'Farrell had sued his formal employers over that firing. The paperwork he sent for that lawsuit matched the typeface from those address stickers on the mail bombs. And not only that, but O'Farrell had lost the suit and he'd appealed it and lost again. So needless to say O'Farrell's probably not too happy with the justice system. And the judge who ruled against O'Farrell in the appeal was none other than Judge Robert Vance,

the first victim to be killed by a male bomb. So by early 1990, O'Farrell was considered the top suspect in this serial bombing case. Police questioned his children, asking about O'Farrell's political beliefs, specifically in terms of race relations, and they got him to agree to an interrogation as well. The problem was that when the FBI investigators got a warrant to search his property, they could not find any evidence connecting him to the bombs,

and they also didn't find the typewriter. 100 agents spent four entire days looking for clues. They went through his home and business with a fine-toothed comb. They even had professional divers scour the pond that sat on his property. And all the while O'Farrell was very cooperative. He insisted he was innocent and that he was confident further investigation would help him clear his name. But once the search had lasted for nearly a week and the FBI still didn't seem to buy his story. O'Farrell hired a lawyer and became a lot less communicative.

But this, I mean. That's, I mean, it's normal. Right, like it's been a week and they're still not believing you, probably it's time to get a lawyer. Yeah. They still did not. I was gonna say, I'm actually surprised

this doesn't happen more. Like I'm surprised judges and attorneys aren't killed more. I know, I know. I don't want them to be what I'm, it just, it surprises me this day and age because so many people are just committed for different things. It's right people don't get mad more often and do something. Except I'm sure all of you saw that one video where that guy,

remember, attacked that judge. But also if you attack a judge. Yeah, bad idea. But you're going away. That video was nuts. Right. So police still didn't have any hard evidence against him. And based on the statements he'd given during his interrogation, it sounded like O'Farrell might actually have been innocent.

When the police asked him about the typewriter, he said that he'd sold it months ago. And like I said, he did sell antiques. He didn't remember who'd bought the typewriter. It hadn't seemed like a big deal at the time. Plus O'Farrell had never been very organized when it came to that kind of record keeping. So there was no way to say who he'd sold the typewriter to, but also no evidence that O'Farrell

had actually done anything wrong. And it's kind of crazy, because like what are the chances that this guy is convicted by the judge who's murdered and then also happens to be innocent and has just sold the typewriter. Yeah, chances are super low. Well, I guess possible. Eventually the investigators concluded that he had nothing to do with the bombings. And the typewriter lead was actually a dead end.

But the police found another potential clue. It was a fingerprint that was inside the police found another potential clue. It was a fingerprint that was inside the package that had been delivered to the Jacksonville NAACP office. Now as a reminder, the police got that explosive and diffused it before it could go off. If it had exploded, the fingerprint would have been destroyed. But instead, they ran it and found a match. have been destroyed, but instead they ran it and found a match. Specifically, it belonged to a teenage boy who lived in Kentucky. And when the police finally closed in on this teenager, they found that he was working in a commercial print shop, which was a big problem. It seems the paper that had his fingerprint on it had been repurposed. The shop the teenager worked in had

printed some documents for a customer and those documents had made their way into the bomb later on. So he actually had nothing to do with the deadly explosions. He was just unlucky enough to have touched a piece of paper that the bomb maker would later use. So once again, the police are at a dead end. They knew where the killer had bought this typewriter and where the pages had been printed, but that didn't put them much closer to actually figuring out who the killer was. Now the next lead that the police generated

was honestly a stroke of luck. One day, an investigator got a call from someone who worked on a bomb squad. Specifically, this person had diffused one of those two male bombs that were intercepted before they could explode. And it's not clear which one it was, but the bomb squad expert had personally handled the device and he knew how it was put together and how it worked. Being a bomb diffuser would be one of the craziest jobs ever. I always see them in movies,

and it's weird to think there's actually people who for their job, they diffuse bombs. Well, you know what I always think about? That's nuts. It's like if I was in a situation with a bomb and I was able to call and the bomb squad showed up, immediately it'd be like, okay, I'm safe, but that's not actually true No, just because the bomb squad arrives does not mean that that's what I mean

Could you imagine they're sitting there in the suits? I mean, yeah, they have these suits on but I mean if it's a if it's a big bomb those aren't doing anything Right, you know, yeah, and they're just sweating just trying to defuse those things I actually would that's crazy. I would be interested to hear a story about someone who has diffused a bomb that's blown up. If... Oh. Oh, they'd be dead. Well, maybe not. Oh.

Or if they have passed, I would still be interested to hear about the story. Yeah, if anyone is on the bomb squad and has diffused some bombs... Not the vlog squad, the bomb squad. The bomb squad. Reach out to us, I'm interested. Now, remember what I said before about how there's a lot of different ways to make an explosive device, and it would be very unlikely for two bomb makers

to put their weapons together in the exact same way? Well, as this Bomb Squad employee was taking apart the package, he actually realized that the bomb looked familiar to him. In fact, it reminded him of another bomb that he'd handled 17 years earlier, way back in 1972. And the man who'd made that older bomb was named Walter Leroy Moody.

Now, if you're like, okay, this doesn't make sense. It makes sense. I have heard that bombs are like signatures. you're like, okay, this doesn't make sense. It makes sense. I have heard that bombs are Like signatures they're like fingerprints. Well, also how many bombs are you really diffusing in your entire career? So you're probably gonna remember every single one, right? right and interestingly enough this moody guy and his wife were customers of Robert O'Farrell's they'd even bought a typewriter from him recently. And not too long ago, his wife had ordered a print job from that shop where the teenager worked. So this bomb diffuser

comes forward, said, Hey, this bomb looks eerily familiar to another bomb I've diffused that was made by this same guy. And then police look into him and realize this guy is now connected to the two other leads that had originally been dead ends. So there was circumstantial evidence connecting Moody to the bombs, but now they just needed their proof. So after securing their warrants, the detective searched Moody's home and some previous addresses where he'd lived. And they found red and white mailing labels, string, and brown paper. All ordinary office supplies, but they all matched the packaging on the bombs exactly.

And the investigators read his personal journals and found references to making weapons. And then in February of 1990, the police found another explosive device at one of those previous residences. And it had some traits in common with the one from 1972. and another explosive device at one of those previous residences. And it had some traits in common with the one from 1972. This was the one the bomb squad expert remembered and other traits in common with the more recent bombing spree. So the police thought it was evidence that Moody had been experimenting and perfecting his craft.

And you have to think how scary it would be to go search these houses knowing that this guy is probably making bombs. Finding ways to make explosives that were deadlier and more effective is probably what he was doing. And you'd think that this would all be enough to justify an arrest, but the police weren't ready to move forward. They wanted more evidence. So next they bugged Moody's house and listened to the conversations he had with his wife and with himself because Moody had a bad habit of muttering to himself out loud All right, Moody and when he was all alone with no one in the room

He actually talked about how he'd killed people by sending them mail bombs. So he confesses to himself to himself He's confessing a little weirdo The police couldn't have asked for more perfect evidence if they tried and it was all enough for them to arrest Moody in late 1990 does that count like can you Yeah, if you're talking to yourself for sure, can you say yeah, I don't know. It's interesting Oh when they took him in for interrogation, Moody obviously denied everything. He insisted that he didn't know anything about the mail bombs. He'd had nothing to do with the murders and the police had the wrong man. But the investigators aren't buying it.

There was plenty of evidence tying Moody to the crimes and there was just one detail that they hadn't figured out yet, one they wouldn't figure out with a confession. They needed a motive. Like they're like, why would this guy even do this in the first place? Moody was a little bit moody. He was a little emotionally dysregulated. What if we told you you're already off to a great start with so many ways to squeeze the most out of summer right here? From our largest shrimp skewers ever to a Vietnamese-inspired

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Visit Miele.ca to learn more. And since Moody wouldn't tell them why he had done what he'd done, the officials decided to try and make an educated guess. Here's what they thought happened. As I mentioned before, Moody was tied to a different bombing incident from 17 years before, back in 1972. Basically, Moody had bought a car that he couldn't afford and it had got repossessed. In May of that year, Moody handed his wife a package,

which was addressed to the dealership that had taken the car away from him. And he asked her to mail the box for him. Now it's safe to say his wife did not know what was in the box. Maybe she suspected something, maybe she was curious, but she climbed into the car one day and opened the package to see what her husband was mailing.

As you can probably guess, it was a bomb and it exploded in her hands. I wish I had pictures in front of me because I was curious to see how these are made to where they're exploding when people are opening them. Opening them? Yeah. So the good news is this explosive wasn't nearly as powerful

or as deadly as the ones he would go on to make in 1989. And while Moody's wife was hurt in the blast, she survived. And when the police came to investigate the explosion, it wasn't too hard to guess what had happened. When Moody lost his car, he blamed the dealership and he wanted to get revenge by blowing them up. That's crazy. This guy's just sending bombs to everybody. And then accidentally blowing up his wife. Yeah. It was only good luck on the dealership's part

that Moody's wife had decided to be curious and open the box before she sent it. The problem was the courts at the time couldn't prove that Moody had built the bomb himself. In theory, he could have got it from someone else. So they could only charge him with possession of a bomb, not with building it. And it's odd because he still obviously wanted to send it to the dealership and hurt or even kill someone. But because they couldn't charge Moody with actually building the

bomb, his sentence was really light. He only served three years for that. Now, after he got out of prison, Moody really seemed to commit to living a better life, at least for a little while. Before his arrest, he'd gotten part of the way through law school and now he wanted to finish his studies and become an attorney. But one thing was standing in his way and that was his criminal record. To become a lawyer, a person needs to do two things, pass the bar exam and prove they have good moral character. It's very difficult to come across as moral when

you've been convicted of a serious violent crime. It's not impossible, but it's difficult. So beginning in the 1980s, Moody began filing appeals trying to get his conviction overturned, and the court rejected his appeal without even letting it go to trial. They weren't willing to even hear him out before they shut him down. And the specific court that made that ruling was the 11th circuit where Judge Robert Vance worked. So maybe it wasn't racially motivated then. Well, Moody just had a reason to want to hurt Vance. He might've seen Vance as the one person standing in the way of his new career path.

So the motive in that bombing may have been revenge. And as for the other explosives, the smoke bomb at the NAACP offices standing in the way of his new career path. So the motive in that bombing may have been revenge. And as for the other explosives, the smoke bomb at the NAACP offices, the one that killed Robert Robinson and the two other male bombs that were intercepted, the best guess the police could make was that they were red herrings.

Moody may have been pretending to be violently opposed to civil rights just to throw investigators off his track. If you, it's kind of like instead of killing one person, kill three so you don't know who the real target was. Of course, this is all speculation since Moody still wasn't confessing and he wasn't telling him a motive. He still maintained his innocence through his trial, but it didn't do him much. The evidence the prosecution presented was overwhelming.

They even played the recordings they'd secretly made of Moody and at one point he was talking to himself and he said, now that you've killed two you can't pull another bomb in. Plus Moody had confessed to the bombings to his wife, at least kind of. At one point after Vance and Robinson's deaths a Maryland judge was injured by a mail bomb and when Moody and his wife saw the news coverage, he turned to her and said something. And it's not clear what the exact wording was, but the gist was that this bomb wasn't one of his, but the earlier one that had hurt her was. Now ultimately, Walter Leroy Moody was found guilty of 71 separate charges, including capital

murder. 71. And he was sentenced to death. Now this sentence brought up a lot of mixed feelings for Robert Vance's family members. Before his murder, Vance had been openly opposed to the death penalty. This is our judge, the judge that died.

He was actually in a difficult position as a judge. He believed it was very important to follow the rule of law even when he didn't agree with it. So there were times that he condemned people to death, even though personally, he didn't think it was the right call. Still, it was kind of ironic that Moody was now also going to be executed for Vance's murder. It was like the pathway to justice involved ignoring the victim's own wishes.

So that said, Vance's wife, who was also anti-death penalty, once told someone she might quote, "'make an exception in this instance.'" Which is what you always say when you say, what if it was your family member? How would you feel? Uh-huh. Yeah, cause it's always different, right?

It's always, you talk about this, I mean, with anything, when someone in your family is sick or someone in your family has cancer or something tragic happens, it's just always different when it's someone that you are emotionally connected to than someone with an outside perspective. Right. So after sitting on death row for 27 years, Moody was actually executed in 2018. Oh, recently. Yeah. He refused to say any last words before he received a lethal injection at 8 42 PM on April 19th. Moody was 83 years old, making him the oldest person to be executed

in recent U S history. This is, I guess this is kind of opened up another can of worms and doesn't talk a ton about the case But it is interesting to me that the people who do get death penalties, right say they're convicted at 30 years old I feel like this always happens. It's like 40 years later or whatever or 50 years later They've already lived their whole life and then they get the death penalty at that point why even Why even do it?

Different kind of words, just interesting. Also can I say 8.42 PM, evil. Why? They made him, like not saying they made him as in he's a victim, but like to wait an entire day to get executed is kind of crazy. I mean, he killed a bunch of people, so. I'm not saying he's a victim, I'm just saying like that's crazy.

And he died without ever confessing to the crime. And to this day, we'll never know his real motives, or if the police were right to assume that it was all just a revenge plot against Robert Vance. Now, Walter Leroy Moody's crimes were very alarming for a lot of people, not only because his motives were so confusing but because of what? The bombings represented he allegedly wasn't just trying to punish the judge who hurt him or get personal revenge He may have wanted to attack the foundations of the criminal justice system itself

punish attorneys and judges for upholding the law in a way that he just didn't like. And that's one reason that his sentence was so harsh, not only because of all of the lives he'd taken, but because it was important to send a message that government officials would not be intimidated. They would not tolerate threats to the ways they handled crime and punishment. The criminal justice system is not perfect by any means, but it's better than alternatives. And in the end, it was necessary to defend the institution against people like Moody, not just for Robert Vance or Robert Robinson or any of the other victims, but for all of us.

And that is the case of Judge Robert Vance and Robert Robinson. Yeah, I've never heard of this one. Surprising, because it was bombings and I feel like I usually know about that type of stuff in a weird way, but. I think probably because a lot of the more infamous bombings are kind of about like,

terrorism or groups or things like that. It's not just like a one person. Yeah, I've heard of postal bombings before. I feel like it isn't... I remember like a few years ago, you guys, and like 10 years ago, I felt like there was something else with postal bombings, but I can't remember. Are you thinking of the Unabomber?

I might be. When was that? That's probably what you're thinking of. That might be what I'm thinking of maybe we can recover that next Okay, all right you like bomb you you not like bombings, but Are you are you intrigued by bombings? No, no, like I would say I really I would say of Murders that we cover cases that we cover bombings are not necessarily one that like is super fascinating to me Yeah, I think oh, I think I like them more than like true regular true crime episodes okay so yes that's just because I don't love true

crime so well it is still crime yeah it's still murder they bought it's like action crime like you you would rather hear I don't I don't know if rather yeah rather is the wrong word. But you... More intrigued? Are more intrigued by a bombing case than a stabbing case? Sure. Okay. All right you guys, that is our case for this week and we will see you next time with another episode.

I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.