Free Republic

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Edgar Ray Killen, the reputed Klansman accused of killing three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964, says he knew nothing about the deaths until he heard media reports about the case. Killen was interviewed by Jackson television station W-J-T-V, which began airing brief segments of the interview early this week in advance of running the full interview beginning tonight. Killen told W-J-T-V he wasn't shocked by his indictment after so many years. Killen also said he was at a funeral home when the murders occurred. Quoting here from the W-J-T-V interview: "It looks like they...

tonight i heard on NPR that prosecutors (i dont know if they are state or federal, i assume the latter) have arrested and a grand jury has indicted an 80-year-old dude in the deaths of those 3 civil rights workers in the mid-60s. i don't know if this guy, like others in other cases, has been tried previously and found not guilty or if this is his first indictment, but i strongly suspect he has faced a courtroom once before and been found not guilty. i know, its true, that most of the white juries in ms at the time...

FOUR decades on, an alleged Ku Klux Klansman known as The Preacher yesterday became the first person to be charged with murder in the “Mississippi Burning” killings that rocked 1960s America. Edgar Ray Killen Edgar Ray Killen, now 79, a former sawmill owner and Baptist minister, appeared in court accused of leading the mob of white supremacists who chased down three young civil rights workers in the racially divided Southern state 40 years ago. Dressed in an ill-fitting orange prison uniform, Mr Killen boomed “not guilty” three times as he entered his pleas. Shortly after he was remanded the courthouse...

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...