Blanton was convicted 15 years ago of bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls.
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August 3, 2016 – Thomas Blanton, the last living convicted bomber, is denied parole.
Lisa McNair, a sister of bombing victim Denise McNair, was relieved by the decision.
Of all the violence and bloodshed during America’s civil rights movement, the murder of four little girls at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963 ranks among that period’s most heinous acts. The dynamite blast killed Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins and seriously wounded Addie Mae’s sister Sarah.
DOUG JONES: He killed four children on a Sunday morning – innocent kids – you know, trying to achieve a political goal of maintaining a basically immoral way of life – the segregated South.
“We were at that church learning about love and forgiveness when someone was outside doing hateful things”, Rudolph, 65, told the board. Prosecutors who opposed parole for Blanton were present at the hearing as well, the news site reports. In Alabama, inmates do not attend such hearings. No one showed up on behalf of the former Klansman either. Blanton, who is serving his time at the St. Clair Correctional Facility, will be eligible for parole again in five years.
While the board normally consists of three people, one seat is vacant and only members Eddie Cook Jr. and Cliff Walker heard the case.
Hezekiah Jackson, president of the Birmingham Metro NAACP, said he was elated for the community and for relatives of the girls who were killed. They’re strong and proud, and wonderful people, who waited patiently for 30-some-odd years for justice to be served, and justice was finally served in 2001 in the case of Thomas Blanton.
Family members of the slain girls spoke at Wednesday’s hearing, pleading with the parole board to keep Blanton behind bars.
“It took (38) years for him to be brought to justice to begin with”, Jones said.
Douglas Jones, a former USA attorney for Alabama’s Northern District who led the prosecution team against Blanton, strongly opposed the elderly inmate’s release from prison because he’s never expressed remorse or taken responsibility for the crime that ended the lives of four young girls.
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Three former Ku Klux Klan members are eventually convicted of murder for the bombing. Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, and Bobby Frank Cherry, who was convicted over the bombing in 2002, have both died in prison.
