Investigators of Alabama church bombing reflect on the big break that helped them solve the case
On the 50th anniversary of the horrific bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls and helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, two retired investigators look back on the events the lead to more arrests.
BY DAVID KNOWLES / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2013, 10:00 PM
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Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Cynthia Dianne Wesley, 14, were killed on Sept. 19, 1963 when a bomb was thrown into the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
Though the horrific 1963 bombing of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th St. Baptist Church proved to be a turning point in the Civil Rights movement, justice was anything but swift for the men who planted the dynamite that killed four African American girls.
Now, 50 years later, the retired FBI agent and Birmingham police segeant who helped convict two of the bombers are sharing their memories of the break in the case.
TOM SELF/THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS VIA AP
Investigators determined that 19 sticks of dynamite were used in the bombing attack in the basement of the church.
“You feel like you have done the job,” retired police Sgt. Ben Herren, who still resides in Birmingham, said. “Even though it looked like a tremendous uphill battle, we finally got justice for the little girls.”
More than three decades after the horrific crime that took the lives Addie Mae Collins, 14, Denice McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, Herren and senior FBI agent Bill Flemming were tasked with re-opening the case.
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Ambulance attendants load the body of one of the four African American girls killed in the bombing.
Though Robert “Dynamite” Chambliss was convicted for his role in the bombing in 1977, the evidence that the FBI had compiled strongly suggested that others were involved who had never been arrested or tried. That evidence lay in a mountain of documents that took the two agents 15 months to go through.
“I didn’t read anything else about it,” Herren said. “I wanted the files to lead me through the investigation instead of me trying to lead the investigation.”
BURTON MCNEELY/TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES
Robert Chambliss is taken into custody in 1963 in Birmingham, Ala., for planting 19 sticks of dynamite in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The blast killed four little girls and injured dozens more.
By the late summer of 1963, Birmingham, had become a hot spot in the Civil Rights Movement, and 16th St. Baptist Church served as a central meeting place for organizers like Dr. King who had lead efforts to desegregate public businesses in the city.
At 10:22 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 19, 1963, as families arrived to attend services at the church, a thunderous explosion rang out from the basement, where several girls had gone to use the
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