Robert Edward Chambliss
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Robert Edward Chambliss (aka: Dynamite Bob) (January 14, 1904–October 29, 1985) was a truck driver for an auto parts company who joined the Ku Klux Klan at age 20 and firebombed the houses of black families throughout the 1940s to the 1960s, culminating in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963.
A May 13th 1965 memo to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover identified Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr..
Chambliss was initially acquitted of the murder charges, but years later it was found that the FBI had accumulated evidence against the bombers that had not been revealed to the prosecutors, by order of Hoover. But in 1977 Chambliss was convicted for the murders by prosecutor Bill Baxley, and sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1985, still claiming he was innocent.
