LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) – A Louisiana man who admitted to burning down three predominantly African American churches to promote himself as a "black metal" musician was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay the churches $2.6 million.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., the last of three one-time Ku Klux Klansmen convicted in a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four Black girls and was the deadliest single attack of the civil rights movement, died Friday in prison, officials said. He was 82. Gov. Kay Ivey's office said Blanton died of natural causes. He was being held at Donaldson prison near Birmingham, prison officials said.