Posted on 01/06/2005 6:49:14 PM PST by WKB
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - Reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was arrested late Thursday on murder charges in the 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, officials said.
Neshoba County Sheriff Larry Myers told The Associated Press that Killen, a 79-year-old preacher, was arrested at home without incident.
The arrest came after a daylong grand jury meeting Thursday that apparently included testimony from people believed to have knowledge about the killings.
"We've got several more to arrest, but we went ahead and got him because he was high-profile and we knew where he was," Myers said.
Myers said Killen was being held on three counts of murder. Calls to Killen's home late Thursday were answered by a recording.
Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan said during the grand jury hearing that arraignments would be held Friday morning.
The grand jury considered whether sufficient evidence existed after 40 years to bring charges in the crimes that were dramatized in the movie "Mississippi Burning." Killen was identified in testimony in earlier federal court proceedings as having a role in the killings.
Mississippi has had some success reopening old civil rights murder cases, including a 1994 conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 assassination in Jackson of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.
But until recently there has been little progress in building murder cases against those involved in the Ku Klux Klan slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
Seven Klansmen were convicted of federal conspiracy charges in the killings and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years to 10 years. None served more than six years. But the state never brought murder charges.
"After 40 years to come back and do something like this is ridiculous ... like a nightmare," said Billy Wayne Posey, one of the men convicted. The graying Posey, supported by a cane, refused to say what he expected to be asked by the grand jury.
Goodman's mother, Carolyn Goodman, said she "knew that in the end the right thing was going to happen."
"As I have said many times before, I'm not looking for revenge. I'm looking for justice," Goodman, 89, said from her home in New York.
Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were among hundreds of Freedom Summer volunteers, mostly white college students, who came to Mississippi in 1964 to educate blacks and help them to vote. The three were beaten and shot to death. Their bodies were found later in an earthen dam.
Chaney, a 21-year-old black man, was from Meridian, Miss. Goodman, 20, and Schwerner, 24, were from New York.
Jackson attorney James D. McIntyre, who declined to identify his client but said he was on the defense team during the 1967 trial, was critical of prosecutors.
"It appears to be a sad day for the state of Mississippi," McIntyre said. "The investigation that has being brought forth - the prosecutors, news media - I just hate to see it happen."
McIntyre said all he new of the reopened case is "what I read in the newspaper and it appears there has been a lot of judgment made concerning the guilt or innocence of a lot of these people."
Ben Chaney, the younger brother of James Chaney, called the latest investigation a sham that may target one or two unrepentant Klansmen but spare wealthy and influential whites who he said had a hand in the murders.
He said he and others had asked Hood early last year to turn the case over to the FBI with the goal of having a special prosecutor named to take up the investigation.
Why do I have a feeling that it would have beenpointed out if the good preacher was a Republican? Does anyone else notice the glaring silence in the matter of his political affiliation in this article?
The KKK was started by democrats and the dems have a long standing affiliation with the klan. The KKK hosted the democrat national convention in New Jersey in the 1920s. So, I am curious about what party this man belongs to.
Probably a democrat!
He is of the right age to still be a yellow dog democrat.
I will keep an eye out for that bit of info as I follow this case.
It's safe enough for them if they stay south of I-10.
Hopefully he doesn't belong to either party. I have a sneaking suspicion that today's ultra-left Dem party probably revolted him. Having said that, there are plenty of old timer Democrats (in the Senate ...) who still more than likely believe what they believed in their "youth"..
May he get his day in court and if guilty may he get what he deserves.
Is it just me, but don't a lot of these KKK guys named Ray or Edgar?
I was just about to ask when the special election would be held to replace Byrd.
What a shame that a murderer could walk the streets fro 40 years without being arrested.
Most of these clowns can't spell Ray or Edgar.
DANGER, DANGER!! It is sad to see that fellow conservatives have no institutional memory -- or that any of you appear aware of the real meaning of this.
The 3 men killed were NOT "civil rights workers". They were communist agitators. Notice the article doesn't give their names, only the mother's name. She is the mother of Andrew Goodman. Goodman's father was the owener of Pacificia Radio in New York City. He was a communist. Check out Pacificia Radio's own web site and see how they (transparently) dissemble the truth. Go to:
http://www.kpfa.org/2m_hist.htm
(Look at the chronology circa 1962. I don't know why they got the date wrong.)
What's the real meaning here? The Justice Department's crypto communist lawyers have now got sufficient control of the apparatus that they are going after their old adversaries. Just like Pinochet in Chile. Be warned -- the Department of Justice is honeycombed with crypto communists in their legal ranks. WAKE UP TO THE REAL THREAT!!!
Bump for Justice. Even at 79 years, if this man is guilty of that horrible murder, he deserves to die before his time.
I do not condone what this man is said to have done, but how in the name of tarnation all these years later, can he get a fair hearing?.
Are you Klan?
And, the article does name them:
But until recently there has been little progress in building murder cases against those involved in the Ku Klux Klan slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
A black and two Jews. The worst kind of people in Mississippi in the 60s, outside of those nasty Papists.
"Commie agitators" was code in the segregationist south for anybody who thought blacks should be equal. And oh how those ole boys hated anybody who thought separate drinking fountains were an abomination.
Do you guys still call the FBI "Hoover boys"?
When somebody starts telling me, a 54 year old white male who grew up in Texas, that I don't "know what it was like back then" when the "negras" wanted the vote, that I don't have the "institutional memory", I start looking for the sheets.
How you could justify the beatings, murders and burial in an earthen dam by the Klan is beyond me--unless you think the Klan's role as judge, jury and executioner is appropriate.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. The Mississippi AG is behind this investigation. This guy was arrested on STATE charges, after the AG convened a grand jury in Philadelphia. There is no "federal interference" here, period.
This is Mississippi taking care of its own problems (however belatedly). At least, give us credit for that.
Somtimes God takes His time... imagine how many years the man had to live with himself only to get caught in his dottage and live the rest of his years in jail. Justice comes even if it is slow.
I see the "old south" still gasps for air at the edge of the swamp.
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