RACESTRUT: cop/Klansman arrested for 1964 murder
Guzzo
8,611 Posts
I'm glad they are bringing this fuckhead to trial but, being that this guy lived as a free man for 40+ years after the crime it still feels like he got away wth it. 
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/01/25/mississippi.case.ap/index.htmlEx-cop denies role in 1964 racial slayings[/b]3:54 p.m. EST, January 25, 2007JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- A reputed Ku Klux Klansman and former sheriff's deputy pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges in the deaths of two black hitchhikers, four decades after their decomposed remains were found in the Mississippi River.James Ford Seale, 71, was one of two white suspects initially arrested in 1964, but the FBI -- consumed by the search for three civil rights workers -- turned the case over to local authorities. A justice of the peace promptly threw out all charges.Seale was arrested again Wednesday, seven years after the Justice Department reopened the case. He was charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.Prosecutors did not say why Seale was not charged with murder.Seale -- previously believed to be dead -- will spend the next several days in the Madison County jail outside Jackson. A bond hearing is set for Monday; his court-appointed public defenders say Seale is suffering from cancer.The indictment alleges Klansmen took Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, to the Homochitto National Forest in southwest Mississippi and Seale held a sawed-off shotgun on the men while other Klan members beat them with switches and tree branches. (Watch the FBI's top agent describe 'a dark chapter' in history )The teenagers were still alive when they were weighted down and dumped into the Mississippi River, the indictment said.The second suspect, church deacon and reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, now 72, was not charged. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to say whether Edwards had agreed to testify against Seale. Sources close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity have said Edwards was cooperating with authorities."Forty years ago, the system failed," said FBI Director Robert Mueller, who joined Gonzales and siblings of the victims at a news conference in Washington. "We in the FBI have a responsibility to investigate these cold case, civil rights-era murders where evidence still exists to bring both closure and justice to these cases that for many, remain unhealed wounds to this day."The break in the 43-year-old case was largely the result of the dogged efforts of Moore's older brother. (Watch how a 43-year-old cold case heated up )"I've been crying. First time I've cried in about 50 years," Thomas Moore, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, said after the arrest."It's not going to bring his life back," Moore added. "But some way or another, I think he would be satisfied." (Watch Moore savor the day he's been waiting for)Dee's sister, Thelma Collins, said through grateful sobs: "I never thought I would live to see it, no sir, I never did. I always prayed that justice would be done -- somehow, some way."The arrest marks the latest attempt by prosecutors in the South to close the books on crimes from the civil rights era that went unpunished.In recent years, authorities in Mississippi and Alabama won convictions in the 1963 assassination of NAACP activist Medgar Evers; the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing that killed four black girls; and the 1964 Philadelphia, Mississippi, slayings of the three civil rights workers -- the case that led to the discovery of Moore's and Dee's bodies.Seale and Edwards are suspected of kidnapping the pair on May 2, 1964, in a Klan crackdown prompted by rumors that black Muslims were planning an armed "insurrection" in rural Franklin County.For years, Seale's family told reporters that he had died. But in 2005, Thomas Moore and a Canadian documentary filmmaker, David Ridgen, found Seale living a few miles from where the kidnapping took place.According to FBI interrogators, Edwards admitted he and Seale took the two into the woods for a whipping. Edwards said both men were alive when he left them.An informant told the FBI that Seale's brother and another Klansman took the unconscious men to the river, lashed their bodies to an engine block and some old railroad tracks, and dumped them from a boat. The other Klansmen and the informant have since died.The remains of Dee and Moore were discovered two months later near Tallulah, Louisiana, during a search of the eastern Louisiana swamps for three civil rights workers who had disappeared from Philadelphia, Mississippi.The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were found in Mississippi a short time later.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/01/25/mississippi.case.ap/index.htmlEx-cop denies role in 1964 racial slayings[/b]3:54 p.m. EST, January 25, 2007JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- A reputed Ku Klux Klansman and former sheriff's deputy pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges in the deaths of two black hitchhikers, four decades after their decomposed remains were found in the Mississippi River.James Ford Seale, 71, was one of two white suspects initially arrested in 1964, but the FBI -- consumed by the search for three civil rights workers -- turned the case over to local authorities. A justice of the peace promptly threw out all charges.Seale was arrested again Wednesday, seven years after the Justice Department reopened the case. He was charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.Prosecutors did not say why Seale was not charged with murder.Seale -- previously believed to be dead -- will spend the next several days in the Madison County jail outside Jackson. A bond hearing is set for Monday; his court-appointed public defenders say Seale is suffering from cancer.The indictment alleges Klansmen took Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, to the Homochitto National Forest in southwest Mississippi and Seale held a sawed-off shotgun on the men while other Klan members beat them with switches and tree branches. (Watch the FBI's top agent describe 'a dark chapter' in history )The teenagers were still alive when they were weighted down and dumped into the Mississippi River, the indictment said.The second suspect, church deacon and reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, now 72, was not charged. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to say whether Edwards had agreed to testify against Seale. Sources close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity have said Edwards was cooperating with authorities."Forty years ago, the system failed," said FBI Director Robert Mueller, who joined Gonzales and siblings of the victims at a news conference in Washington. "We in the FBI have a responsibility to investigate these cold case, civil rights-era murders where evidence still exists to bring both closure and justice to these cases that for many, remain unhealed wounds to this day."The break in the 43-year-old case was largely the result of the dogged efforts of Moore's older brother. (Watch how a 43-year-old cold case heated up )"I've been crying. First time I've cried in about 50 years," Thomas Moore, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, said after the arrest."It's not going to bring his life back," Moore added. "But some way or another, I think he would be satisfied." (Watch Moore savor the day he's been waiting for)Dee's sister, Thelma Collins, said through grateful sobs: "I never thought I would live to see it, no sir, I never did. I always prayed that justice would be done -- somehow, some way."The arrest marks the latest attempt by prosecutors in the South to close the books on crimes from the civil rights era that went unpunished.In recent years, authorities in Mississippi and Alabama won convictions in the 1963 assassination of NAACP activist Medgar Evers; the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing that killed four black girls; and the 1964 Philadelphia, Mississippi, slayings of the three civil rights workers -- the case that led to the discovery of Moore's and Dee's bodies.Seale and Edwards are suspected of kidnapping the pair on May 2, 1964, in a Klan crackdown prompted by rumors that black Muslims were planning an armed "insurrection" in rural Franklin County.For years, Seale's family told reporters that he had died. But in 2005, Thomas Moore and a Canadian documentary filmmaker, David Ridgen, found Seale living a few miles from where the kidnapping took place.According to FBI interrogators, Edwards admitted he and Seale took the two into the woods for a whipping. Edwards said both men were alive when he left them.An informant told the FBI that Seale's brother and another Klansman took the unconscious men to the river, lashed their bodies to an engine block and some old railroad tracks, and dumped them from a boat. The other Klansmen and the informant have since died.The remains of Dee and Moore were discovered two months later near Tallulah, Louisiana, during a search of the eastern Louisiana swamps for three civil rights workers who had disappeared from Philadelphia, Mississippi.The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were found in Mississippi a short time later.
Comments
Thought you'd jump on that 5-pager for sure.
pretty cut and dry.
Besides I am working on a show that is heavy on TMZ/ paparazzi style clips. I need some non-Hollywood racial injustice to get excited nowadays
Here's two to get you started....
Yosef Lifsh-The death of Gavin Cato
Miami Police officers Alex Marrero, Bill Hanlon, Ira Diggs and Michael 'not 5000' Watts-The death of Arthur McDuffie.
I will beginthe knowledge hunt
PS (slightly related) I'm up for a job on the BET series "American Gangster" I want to pitch a few stories dealing with Florida crime/ crime syndacates, if anyone has any good ideas hit me on the PM
Oh, the irony.
you think you know, but you have no idea
one day me and you will sit together at the table of brotherhood and smoke some cali green
MARK MY WORDS
I don't think he was referring to whether or not the heart of a true American Gangster beats within your eighty pound frame, so much as to the way you're constantly decrying the supposed fetishization of gangsterism in popular Black media.
He started a empire that even though he passed away.... still thrives today.
There is a kid down there making noise right now....some kid from Haiti. cant remember his name at the moment.
I got that
but thank you for thinking it was too highbrow to pick up on.
to be more concise I have a problem with rich whiteboy scum like you getting your jollies off on the fetishization of gangsterism in black pop culture while looking down your nose at any other facet of the culture not dealling with dysfunction.
American Gangster is a show I personally like, Love the way it tells stories not usually heard on television. Shows like AG, and A&E's cold Case Files are really up my alley.
I actually feel this show does a service in the fact that it puts these stories out in a way that is both entertaining and informative
This is too rich!
not really
The latter three paragraphs of that post weren't really what I would call more "concise" than the first two lines, but thank you for at least attempting brevity.
And while my smooth skin and lithe figure might lead an L.A. television type blinded by lust to believe otherwise, I fear that at 30 I can no longer validly claim to be a "boy".
Yeah, but it never hurts to try!