Alabama man wrongfully accused in bombing that killed Mountain Brook judge dies

DOTHAN, Ala. (WDHN) — A New Brockton man who was once accused of sending package bombs that killed a federal judge in Alabama and a Georgia civil rights lawyer but was later proven to be innocent has died.

Robert Wayne O’Ferrell died on Friday, in Coffee County at the age of 81, an obituary from Sorrells Funeral Home revealed.

O’Ferrell was wrongfully accused in the 1989 bombing deaths of Judge Robert Vance and Georgia attorney Robert Robertson.

Vance was killed on December 16, 1989, when a package bomb delivered to his home in Mountain Brook exploded. The blast seriously injured Vance’s wife, Helen.

Robertson was killed by a similar explosion just a few days later in Savannah. Other bombs were sent to locations in Atlanta and Jacksonville, but government agents intentionally detonated those, and no one was reportedly injured.

“It was the largest story in the country at the time,” said William Gill, O’Ferrell’s attorney.

WDHN spoke with O’Ferrell in January 2020 after he filed a lawsuit against the FBI.

According to previous reports, a little over a month after the bombings, FBI agents arrived at O’Ferrell’s shop in Enterprise to tell him they believed he was the main suspect in the bombing.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies stayed around Enterprise to keep surveillance on O’Ferrell and his family. O’Ferrell’s attorney told WDHN that when the FBI was prepping for the raid on O’Ferrell’s home and business, they alerted media from around the country to gather in Enterprise.

“The sad thing is that Mr. O’Ferrell loved America and was a real patriotic man – but he never received an apology or compensation from the federal government for what the FBI and other federal law enforcement put him and his family through,” said Gill in an email to WDHN. “He should not have left this world without that happening.”

Court records and past reports claim O’Ferrell was named a suspect because a letter allegedly typed by him matched the typewriter used to write the death letter threats and bomb package labels. The typewriter used to type the bombing letters had a misplaced A key. O’Ferrell sold typewriters out of his store.

Despite the FBI’s raids, surveillance, and investigation revolving around the Enterprise businessman, a new suspect, Walter Leroy Moody, would later be arrested. Moody would be convicted of the killings and executed in 2018.

O’Ferrell and Gill later filed their lawsuit against the federal government.

“They fingered printed me. They took pictures of me,” O’ Ferrell told WDHN in 2018. “I had to empty my billfold — everything in my billfold. They went through everything in my pocket and all this kind of stuff, and it was ridiculous.”

During his 2020 interview with WDHN, O’Ferrell said he had written letters to government officials and received two responses, including from President Donald Trump.