Klansman who orchestrated 'Mississippi Burning' killings dies in prison

CLOSE

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood says he and the FBI have closed their investigation into the Ku Klux Klan’s 1964 killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

A Klansman who orchestrated one of the nation’s most notorious mass killings, the slayings of three civil-rights workers in 1964 in Mississippi, has died in prison.

In 2005, a jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of manslaughter in the June 21, 1964, deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who had been killed while organizing a voter-registration drive for blacks in Jessup County, Miss. Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

The murder of the three men inspired the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning.

Mississippi corrections officials told Goodman’s brother, David, that Edgar Ray Killen had died at 9 p.m. CT Thursday, David Killen said Friday.

Edgar Ray Killen, less than a week from his 93rd birthday, was the last living Klansman in a Mississippi prison for a civil-rights cold case.

Thomas Blanton, who turns 80 this year, remains at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Alabama. He was convicted for his role in the Ku Klux Klan’s 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls.

â–º June 21: Ku Klux Klan smaller, ‘fractured,’ still dangerous, report finds
â–º Feb. 7: Emmett Till’s accuser admits she lied. What now?
â–º June 2016: Unsolved ‘Mississippi Burning’ murder case closed 52 years later

In 1967, a federal jury convicted Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price and five others. The rest of the 18 who went on trial on conspiracy charges went free, including Killen.

The case was reopened in 1999, and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and then-District Attorney Mark Duncan led the prosecution, ending in Killen’s conviction.

Follow Jerry Mitchell on Twitter: @JMitchellNews

Post to Facebook

Posted!

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

FILE – In this Dec. 4, 1964 file photo civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King displays pictures of three civil rights workers, who were slain in Mississippi the summer before, from left Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, at a news conference in New York, where he commended the FBI for its arrests in Mississippi in connection with the slayings. As the burgeoning civil rights movement gathered force in the 1960s, demonstrators were brutalized and killed, sometimes at the hands of law officers. Many slayings remain unsolved. But in some cases where local authorities failed to go after the attackers or all-white juries refused to convict, the federal government moved in with civil rights charges. (AP Photo/JL, File) 
JL, AP
On June 29, 1964, the FBI began distributing these pictures of civil rights workers, from left, Michael Schwerner, 24, of New York, James Chaney, 21, from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, 20, of New York, who disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21, 1964. The three civil rights workers, part of the “Freedom Summer” program, were abducted, killed and buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County. (AP Photo/FBI) 
Anonymous, AP
Federal and state investigators probe the swampy area near Philadelphia, Miss., where the burned station wagon of the missing civil rights trio was found June 23, 1964. The civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, 24, Andrew Goodman, 21, both white and James Chaney, 21, black, were last seen in Philadelphia, Miss., Sunday night, June 21, 1964. (AP Photo) 
AP
Mrs. Caroline Goodman, center, with Mrs. Fannie Chaney, mother of James E. Chaney, slain civil rights worker, left, and Mrs. Nathan Schwerner, mother of slain Michael Schwerner, are escorted from Ethical Culture Society Hall August 9, 1964, after attending funeral services for her son Andrew Goodman, in New York. Man at right is unidentified. More than 1,200 mourners attended services for Goodman. About 450 persons were outside the hall behind police lines, and another 175 were seated in the hall’s basement. (AP Photo) 
AP
Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey, right, and deputy Cecil Price, center, pass a Meridian policeman en route to court on the third day of their conspiracy trial in the slaying of three civil rights workers in Meridian, Miss., Oct. 11, 1967. At left is Richard Andrew Willis, another of 18 people charged under an 1870 federal law of conspiring to deprive Freedom Summer activists Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney of their civil rights. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell) 
JACK THORNELL, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Investigators locked up the charred station wagon of a missing civil rights trio, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, after it was found in a swampy area near Philadelphia, Miss., June 6, 1964. Three civil rights workers, two white and one black, have been missing since Sunday night. They were last seen as they drove this vehicle from Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell) 
JACK THORNELL, AP
J.R. “Bud” and Beatrice Cole show the memorial marker in Neshoba County, Miss., January 6, 1989, to James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, civil rights workers murdered in 1964. They are flanked by the Mt. Zion Methodist Church, burned by the Ku Klux Klan five days before the murders. The night of the burning, Klansmen beat Cole as he left a meeting at the church, suspected of being a meeting place for civil rights workers. (AP Photo/Strat Douthat) 
STRAT DOUTHAT, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A historic marker outside Mt. Zion Church in rural Neshoba County, shown Wednesday, June 17, 1999, briefly tells of the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers, Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who were killed June 21, 1964, following the burning of the church, located, just outside Philadelphia, Miss. The facility was rebuilt in 1965. (AP Photo/Rogelio Solis) 
ROGELIO SOLIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Escorted by Neshoba County Sheriff’s Department deputy Grant Myers, left, reputed former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, right, charged with the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, walks into court, at the Neshoba County Courthouse in Philadelphia, Miss., Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005. A March 28 trial date and a $250,000 bond were ordered for Killen, charged with the 1964 murders of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black Mississippian, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24. (AP Photo/Neshoba Democrat, Kyle Carter, Pool) 
KYLE CARTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
FILE – In this June 15, 2014 file photograph, flowers top the memorial marker for Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, civil rights workers who were killed in the “Mississippi Burning” case of 1964, outside the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Miss., following a commemorative service in their honor. The men are going to be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, but the honor is not sitting well with some of their relatives. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) 
Rogelio V. Solis, AP

• 1 of 13
• 2 of 13
• 3 of 13
• 4 of 13
• 5 of 13
• 6 of 13
• 7 of 13
• 8 of 13
• 9 of 13
• 10 of 13
• 11 of 13
• 12 of 13
• 13 of 13

Last SlideNext Slide

 

 

Article source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~/517004558/0/usatodaycomwashington-topstories~Klansman-who-orchestrated-aposMississippi-Burningapos-killings-dies-in-prison/