Finding Forgiveness in a Church Bombing

B I R M I N G H A M, Ala., April 16 -- Prosecutors hope the trial of Thomas Blanton Jr., accused in the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing that killed four black girls 38 years ago, will help close the book on one of the most infamous crimes of the Civil Rights era.

But today, two of the people emotionally scarred by the blast that ripped through the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963, took a step of their own toward closure.

One, Teresa Stacy, is the granddaughter of Bobby Frank Cherry, Blanton's 71-year-old co-defendant whose trial was postponed as psychiatrists continue to determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial. The other is Junie Collins Peavy, the sister of bombing victim Addie Mae Collins.

Stacy apologized to Peavy today for her family's role in the bombing.

"I wish there were something I could give back," Stacy said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "I'm very ashamed and sorry."

Apology Accepted

Peavy accepted the apology. "Our family has forgiven," she said. "Our family will forgive, and I know my mother and father, if they would have been alive today, this would be what they would want, too."

She said that she was not surprised a relative of the accused man would make such an offer "because I had prayed and I was believing that if someone was out there, the Lord would bring them forth."

She was also referring to Stacy's role in bringing about the eventual filing of murder charges in the case, which lingered through several investigations over the decades, even though the FBI quickly identified Blanton, Cherry and two other men as suspects in 1963.

State investigators reopened the case in the 1970s, resulting in the murder conviction of suspect Robert Edward Chambliss, who died in prison.

The case was reopened again in 1980 and 1988, resulting in no additional charges, and the fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994.

No Regrets

The case was reopened yet again in 1997 at the urging of religious leaders. That time, prosecutors won indictments, in part because of testimony from Stacy, who told prosecutors that she overheard her grandfather, Cherry, talking about the bombing.