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.
It's legal to kill communists?
..........................................................
Apparrently so.
Democrats here we come........
I did not say there were excuses......i told you I doubted Killen was very remorseful and that Mississippians aren't crazy about outsiders telling them what to do and that has not changed nor were Jim Crow the only time that happened.
There was violence over unionization attempts at Laurel in the 60s as well...and about other things involving outsiders on missions.
Now there is talk of unionizing Nissan near Jackson.
As an example of my obvious jadedness. I recall doing an "oral report" on this incident in 1970 for my 8th grade class at Mt Salus Presbyterian from Reader's Digest which was of course sympathetic to the dead men. I remember having to struggle to get through the more harsh parts like "well, at least I got me a ni$$er" allegedly uttered by one of the younger perps. I recall as well being called a Ni$$er Lover by some of my less enlightened classmates but they were selling wolf tickets and didn't really want trouble.
It was all so clear back then....the good guys and the bad. But yes....now even though it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that murderers should be prosecuted...I'm not as worked up over the end game anymore. I think anyone here who knows me knows that.
There is politics behind this which doesn't negate the crime but the politics is there none the less. I am tired of seeing my state as the whipping boy. I see the national media amping up attacks on the South to charactiture W's base...it's one of the few weapons thet have. I am not at all happpy with how how race relations have turned out. Blacks and whites in Mississippi are still polarized but now less civil and it's a helluva lot more dangerous and in some place incredibly corrupt and decaying.
Like I said....I don't have any more answers...I really do not but the post Jim Crow era is very very mixed. Blacks are free and arguably have more power than ever before but they are angry and their culture has eroded markedly. Whites have fled to the suburbs. It's a mess.
So everyone is happpy some 80 year old murderer gets his just desserts but Rome is still burning. And it's not just Mississippi. This whole disaffected underclass has spread and is being fed by La Migra as we speak. Mississippi just happens to be ground zero for black-white seismic plate shifting.
Where we go from here I have no clue. There are some black conservative bright spots treading water down there but it's dangerous for them.
Btw...Memphis is basically the same thing magnified.
Everyone talked about colorblind but that's not what they really wanted. They wanted preference and redress and victim status and that has been exploited far beyond my tolerance. I don't think those who preach colorblind on this forum truly want it. Few can stomach candid talk.....not you but others.
Executing Killen is a windowdressing....justice nontheless but just a gesture of justice. The dynamics remain ominous.
I am sorry for my home.
ping
You are correct dear.
I am honest with you. Rural Mississippi would not have been ideal for you in Jim Crow. I don't think you would have been shot on sight but were you a freedom riders you could have suffered the same fate as these three. There were 1000s of freedom riders across the South. I know today several. One is a prominant psychologist here in Nashville...a very sweet lady (for a lefty)
It is very very ...peculiar. I knew several somewhat mixed race folks who passed through white society...some at high levels due to oil money.
It would be much easier today. The division of class weighs much more importantly.
In Nashville, which unlike Memphis did not have much Jim Crow struggling but which also has a small black population, it is just about all over economic rather than racial segregation.
If you encountered any raised eyebrows here, it would be rare.
My point was originally that while it was at one time dangerous for black activists in the South. It is now dangerous for white motorists period in parts of the country simply for being white at the wrong place. I have myself been through this. In Jackson it's taken very seriously by residents.
I have to apologize for that post. It wasn't clear at all and only trolls deserve to read my decaffeinated ramblings.
Having said that, I wish it wasn't just FReepers reading what you say. It's almost like preaching to the converted. I'm saving your post for personal reference for elsewhere in real life discussion with people.
I appreciate the honesty. Unfortunately the revenge mentality amongst many lower income INNERCITY black people doesn't shock me. I am now officially convinced that big cities are defacto plantations and the democrat libs are the masters. I've never EVER met this mentality amongst country people and city folks who truly know God.
twisted...
According to this interview ( http://www.nationalist.org/docs/ideology/killen.html#1 ), Killen believed he was fighting communism by doing what he did in '64.
Famous natives...
some decidedly un-famous Phildelphia natives...
My father, his brother, his mother.. her mother...
My granddaddy operated Phildelphia's first radio station. Greatgranddaddy Grubbs sold Insurance there.
Bobby Gordon and wife Melissa and daughter Pat were my related cousins.
Bobby Gordon's mom and my paternal grandma were sisters and came from Decauter-Stratton.
Bobby died of cancer from ciggies early on and had worked for the phone company. Melissa is an invalid at her daughter Pat's home in Jackson area where Pat is a nurse and a very fine caregiver.
I remember going to the fair there and the horse race....around the same time as the killings or shortly thereafter.
Aren't there some Molphus folks from there who were political later...I recall a girl from Ole Miss much later and a ski trip. I think she married a Delta boy...Dorothy was her name. Handsome gal.
Most but not all of my kin came from somewhat South of Neshoba...mostly Scott, Simpson, Smith, Newton, Wayne....Piney Woods folk.
Yes, as a matter of fact Dick Molphus. Their fair cabin was next door to ours. We were #19, at the entry to the midway and theirs was yellow and white on the opposite corner to ours.
Small world.
"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?"
Sadly, it probably isn't until now that he has any chance at all of getting a fair hearing.
Hi and Thanks for the ping.
Do you have any idea of what church Killen is the preacher?
Has he been a resident of Nashoba county all this time?
Interesting last name for a murderer.
For others though Please: NO personal attacks. Wonder where I read that?
Your point is well taken by me We can all follow the events and hope for the power of an uncorrupted jury system. The last bastion of justice in many cases.
The old Enquirer was the home paper for the late Charlie Black, whose observations on the Vietnam fighting were probably the best reporting on that conflict to be found, and some of the best military and war reportage ever.
Charlie was certainly in the same class as WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle, and I really, really hope that in some other existance, those two have a quiet place where they've met and are swapping stories.
If you've not read any of his work, there's a treat for you *here*.
Having been a Memphis and Memphis-area resident for more than half of the previous decade, I concur completely.
Killen was a Baptist minister at the time of the murders; I'm not at all certain of which particular church. I'd expect he's a retired or *guest pastor* by now.
Oh please- How about linking Bush to Herbert Hoover- LOL. I dont think KKK preacher has ties with either national party.
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