“I pray to God that Edgar Ray repented and that he had peace with God,” she said. Perhaps even more troubling is that the racism which fueled the violence of many murders all those years ago presently remains a part of our nation’s discourse, and is encouraged at the highest levels of government.”Ĭhaney’s daughter, Angela Lewis, said she is praying for the Killen family and that she knows of the pain of death because of what she experienced with her mother. Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender, said, “It is tragic for the country that in all these years Preacher Killen could not bring himself to acknowledge his orchestration of these senseless murders. In 2014, each of the families of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner received the President Medal of Freedom. In a compromise verdict, the jury voted unanimously to convict Killen on three counts of manslaughter on Jthe anniversary of the killings. In 2004, a group of citizens known as the Philadelphia Coalition pushed for prosecution.Ī year later, a Neshoba County grand jury indicted Killen for murder in the slayings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.ĭistrict Attorney Mark Duncan, Attorney General Jim Hood, Special Assistant Attorney General Lee Martin and others prosecuted the case. Killen bragged to the Clarion Ledger that he wouldn’t be prosecuted, claimed Goodman and Schwerner were “communists” and said he wanted to shake hands with the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.
#MISSISSIPPI MURDER MOVIE FREE#
In 1999, Mississippi authorities reopened the case after the Clarion Ledger reported the contents of a secret interview Bowers had given in which he said he was “quite delighted to be convicted and have the main instigator walk out of the courtroom a free man.” That federal jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of his guilt, with one juror telling the rest that she could “never convict a preacher.”
#MISSISSIPPI MURDER MOVIE TRIAL#
The rest of the 18 who went on trial on those charges went free, including Killen. In 1967 in Mississippi, a federal jury convicted Price, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, Alton Wayne Roberts, Horace Doyle Barnette, Jimmy Arledge, Billy Wayne Posey and Jimmie Snowden of conspiracy. He was convicted for his role in the Ku Klux Klan’s 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls. Thomas Blanton, who turns 80 this year, remains at the St. Killen, who died less than a week from his 93rd birthday, worked much of his life cutting trees and on Sundays preached in so many rural Baptist churches that he became known as "Preacher" Killen." He was the last living Klansman in a Mississippi prison for a civil rights cold case. The killings were depicted in "Mississippi Burning," a fictional 1988 film based on the real-life FBI investigation into the case.
The only person tried was Edgar Ray Killen, who wasn’t even there." "It’s an American tragedy that law enforcement, the FBI and others knew the names of those who were involved in the killings, but none were ever tried for murder. "The 15 men who murdered Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney weren’t indicted, much less tried," David Goodman said. into the hands of waiting Klansmen, who shot them to death and buried their bodies in an earthen dam.įorty-four days later, FBI agents found the bodies. Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price jailed the trio and released them at about 10:30 p.m. The Ku Klux Klan had burned down the church. Zion Methodist Church, where Chaney and Schwerner had previously spoken. On June 21, 1964, the three young men went to investigate the burning of the Mount.
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