was originally supposed to be tried at the same time as (though not jointly with) fellow defendant Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. Cherry was able to successfully delay his trial by claiming that vascular dementia had impaired his mind and that his health would prevent him from assisting in his own defense. Blanton was convicted and Cherry was eventually found mentally competent to stand trial. At his trial, he denied his involvement in the bombing as well as his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, but he was ultimately found guilty. Testimony and recordings Cherry's son, Thomas Frank Cherry, testified that Bobby Cherry was a member of the United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, and relatives and friends testified that he "bragged" about having played a role in the bombing. Ex-wife Willadean Brogdon testified, "He said he lit the fuse." Michael Wayne Goings, a house painter who worked with Cherry in Dallas in 1982, said he also heard him boast about the crime, even saying "You know, I bombed that church." A third man, Mitchell Burns, had been an associate of Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Cherry at the time of the bombing and was recruited by Federal Bureau of Investigation investigators to act as an informant. Burns testified on the stand at Cherry's trial that Burns' involvement with the Ku Klux Klan was more socially than politically based, something that was plausible during the era of the crime, and that the agents approached him and asked for his help. He initially declined but was shown postmortem photos of the young girls killed by the bomb. Deeply disturbed by what he had seen, he vomited. He agreed to work with the FBI. Burns testified that he was primarily a friend of Blanton, but that Blanton was a good friend of Cherry, so Cherry would sometimes join them when they went out. Burns' assistance came in the form of going to numerous honky tonks with the two men with a very large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the car trunk recording the group's conversations. Burns took thorough notes after these meetings, and additionally when the three met and spoke outside of his car. The tapes were collected by the FBI during its immediate investigation. They were subsequently misplaced or archived and were rediscovered in 1997; the rediscovery of the tapes ultimately led to the prosecution of Blanton and Cherry.