Speaking of the use of the US Mail to commit crimes, I meant to note this the other day, but it got past me:
Walter Leroy Moody Jr. descended into Hell Thursday night.
Some of you may recall the crime, but not the name. Mr. Moody was a crank who had a grudge against the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. So he sent a bomb to the home of one of the judges, Robert Vance Sr. The bomb killed Vance and seriously injured his wife. To cover his tracks, Mr. Moody sent out more bombs: one of them killed Robert E. Robinson, a lawyer. Others directed at the NAACP and the offices of the 11th Circuit were intercepted.
Law enforcement eventually tracked the bombs back to Mr. Moody, who was convicted of a whole host of federal charges. He was sentenced federally to seven life terms, plus 400 years. However, the state of Alabama prosecuted Mr. Moody for the murder of judge Vance: he was convicted at that level, resulting in his death sentence.
There are two books about the case, neither of which I’ve read: I used to see Priority Mail regularly at Half-Price, but I haven’t seen a copy in a while. Blind Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders is the one I wasn’t aware of, but stumbled across while trying to find Priority Mail. Blind Vengence seems to have been published by a university press (which probably explains its obscurity), and both are available used from Amazon relatively cheap. I may have to bend my “one true-crime book per case” policy.