Lawsuit filed last week alleges civil rights violations
Jerry Mitchell and Ben Greenberg
The Clarion-Ledger
March 1, 2010
Convicted Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen says there wasn’t enough legal evidence to imprison him for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers and that God is going to get whoever helped put him away.
Those written remarks are among the most recent public stirrings from Killen, who also filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the FBI, alleging his civil rights were violated.
“Almighty God … is listening and is recording your acts, thoughts and deeds. One by one you will give account to him,” Killen wrote in a six-page letter obtained by The Clarion-Ledger from a Klansman. His lawyer confirmed the letter is indeed Killen’s.
District Attorney Mark Duncan, who along with Attorney General Jim Hood prosecuted Killen, responded, “I don’t have any trouble standing before God with my role in it.”
In 2005, a Neshoba County jury convicted Killen, now 85, on three counts of manslaughter for his role in the Klan’s June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, commonly known as the Mississippi Burning case.
The FBI is now reexamining the killings. Four suspects are still alive in the case.
In his letter, Killen lambasted prosecutors and Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon, who sentenced Killen to the maximum 60 years in prison. Killen, a former Union sawmill operator and part-time preacher, is serving his time in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County.
Killen blamed the press and the people of Neshoba County. “You had all the news media that helped indict me for murder on three counts, which you had no legal evidence,” he wrote. “All your grand jury heard was slick tongue talk from a couple of politicians.”
Sally Beam, one of those grand jurors, said that’s not correct.
All the evidence led back to Killen, she said. “We were not out to get him, but he was the one every order went out from. The fact he’s still trying to blame somebody else just tells me his heart is still not in the right place.
“He’s still trying to cover up what needs to be exposed. If I were Edgar Ray Killen, I’d be thinking about my maker and where I’m going to be when I die. He’s a preacher. He knows about heaven and hell.”
Killen says mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr., pistol whipped “testimony” from from Clayton Lewis, a defense attorney in the 1967 federal conspiracy trial of suspects in the civil rights workers’ slayings..
The nearly 40,000 pages of FBI files in the Mississippi Burning case obtained by The Clarion-Ledger do not appear to mention Scarpa or list his informant number. Some other FBI records refer to Scarpa being brought in to help crack the Klan’s 1966 killing of Vernon Dahmer.
Killen said the FBI paid Scarpa $30,000 in reward money — an allegation FBI agents have disputed.
Retired FBI agent Jay Cochran said the reward money was delivered to Mississippi Highway Patrolman Maynard King, who told the FBI where the bodies were buried. Cochran said King was passing the $30,000 on to the person who informed King.
Philip Dray, co-author of We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi, said he’s not surprised Killen invoked God’s name since the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi often did that.
Killen said God knows what he did and that he is at peace with God, but Dray noted Killen never actually said he was innocent. “Convicted Klansmen have a special problem with justice,” he said. “Their ‘crimes’ were, in their minds, righteous. They were aimed at specific targets — meddlesome Yankees.”
In Killen’s mind, he said, “It will always be 1865.”
In the letter, Killen says he read many hidden Justice Department files. “I only read those of interest, as I was not hired and I was not a pimp, but I had security clearance, so I read and obtained straight evidence,” he says. “I am not putting some names in this letter as some are still living and believe it or not I am not a betrayer of anyone, especially my friends.”
Exactly who he refuses to betray he didn’t say.
Larry Ellis, a former inmate who has been interviewed by the FBI, said some of what the letter says mirrors much of what Killen told him behind bars.
Ellis told the FBI that Killen said he had access to these files because of his relationship with then-U.S. Sen. Jim Eastland and “did jobs” for Eastland around the country.
Killen said in his letter he had traveled to “most major cities in America.”
On those trips, he said he bragged about his hometown, his home county and his home state. Now, he said, he wants to retrace those steps and apologize.
The Clarion-Ledger obtained the letter from Cole Thornton, Imperial Wizard of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who attended Killen’s 2005 trial. Thornton said Killen authorized him to release the letter and shared a note that expert Thomas Vastrick of Memphis identified as Killen’s handwriting.
Thornton, whose real name is Charles Denton, said he wants to see “the scoundrels who railroaded this fine man pay up for their deceit.”
In his lawsuit in which he seeks millions of dollars, Killen is demanding all of the federal files in the case.
Hood responded that his office has given Killen’s lawyer “every document we have in our files. The federal prosecutors assured me that they gave us all of the documents in the possession of the federal government.”
Killen remains filled with venom, Hood said. “Hate will eat up a person’s soul. As with all criminals I have had to prosecute, I still hold out hope that their souls will be redeemed.”
Killen has repeatedly referred to the three victims as communists — something the victims’ families say isn’t true.
Ben Chaney, whose brother James was among the victims, said after reading Killen’s letter, “I sort of feel bad for Mr. Killen because he’s losing. The fact is he refuses to look at reality.”
Killen needs to come clean, he said. “God knows what he did, and he knows he did something contrary to what God wants. The truth will set him free.”
Last weekend, on February 6, Catherine Walker and I were emailing back and forth about our plans to interview people familiar with the unsolved civil rights murder of her father Clifton Walker 46 years ago. Around mid-afternoon we had a breakthrough; Catherine wrote to tell me about her conversation with the son of a possible eyewitness to the planning of the murder:
I explained to him how important today is: “DADDY’S birthday” How I need his Dad’s # to speak with him to move forward with the Justice quest. He understood.
For months, Catherine Walker and I have wanted to speak with a black man who reportedly witnessed the planning of the murder at Nettles Truck Stop, about 6 miles north of Woodville, MS. The FBI documents say the man
left the vicinity of Woodville, Mississippi, immediately after the murder of Walker … he [said he] knew what would happen if he continued to hang around.
Some Woodville residents who know the possible eyewitness have told me they saw him about four years ago and that he told them he was at the truck stop on the night of the murder, February 28, 1964, and the planning of the murder was what he saw there.
I was pretty sure I’d located the possible eyewitness, and I was in Louisiana, so Catherine and I were making plans to go see him ourselves. Over the last year, both Catherine and I have been in touch with our subject’s son, who lives in Baton Rouge, LA. The son told us that his family is actually kin to the Walkers and that he knows some of Catherine’s cousins well. He has information about the murder that he’s heard from extended family currently living in Louisiana who were in Woodville in 1964. The son has been eager to help. He’s shared the information with us, but he hasn’t felt comfortable arranging a meeting with his father. We originally thought he was trying to protect his father, but he eventually revealed to Catherine that he and his father do not get along.
We wanted the son to tell us his father’s general location or phone number so I could verify that my information was correct. Finally, on Clifton Walker’s 83rd birthday, the son came through, and his information matched mine.
The man we were looking for was at church when we got to his place. His wife and a slew of grandkids were all hanging out in a shotgun shack in a working class black neighborhood outside of New Orleans.
We sat in Catherine’s car outside the house and waited.
A few weeks after his 37th birthday, on February 28, 1964, Clifton Walker was ambushed on the deserted, unpaved Poor House Road, outside Woodville, MS. He was on his way home from the 3-11 pm shift at the International Paper plant in Natchez, MS. Gunmen shot up his car, blew out all the windows, and shot Clifton Walker at close range, multiple times in the head. No arrests were ever made. Walker’s wife Ruby died in 1992 not knowing what really happened. Clifton and Ruby’s five children are still in the dark about the murder.
For the two years I’ve known Catherine, we’ve been gaining on the case, but the progress is slow. We have a collection of federal and state documents, but we haven’t obtained any new documents for over a year. Many of the people mentioned in the documents are dead. Few of them who are still living have been willing to talk. People with knowledge of the case are dying off.
But on Sunday we were feeling hopeful. Catherine made a good connection with the wife of the possible eyewitness when we went up to the house and found out he was at church. Afterwards, while we sat in the car waiting the man to return, Catherine said:
I’m glad he’s in church. That means he’s gonna come back with the spirit in him and he’s gonna be really nice to us. That’s what he’s gonna do. He’s gonna talk to us.
Even if he doesn’t, if he was afraid, he can just tell us what he heard, what he knows that made everyone else think he knew too much. That would help.
Our man came back from church in the late afternoon and we talked with him at length. Though he admitted knowing the people in Woodville that I talked to, he denied having any first hand knowledge of the murder.
But he had some other information we did not expect him to have. He recalled an encounter with the FBI in 1964.
The FBIs came up to my house. They had his picture and all that where he got shot. They had him naked, laying out on the table.
According to him, the photo showed that Walker was shot on his right side—twice in the shoulder, twice in thigh and twice in the lower leg. He also said that the right side of Walker’s face was shot off “on an angle,” as if he was leaning over to the right when he was taking it in the face.
The information our interviewee recalled from the FBI’s photo comports with first- and second-hand accounts of numerous bullet holes in at least one side of Walker’s car. It also potentially corroborates what Catherine’s mother Ruby told her—that she, Ruby, was told by FBI agents in 1964 that they found empty shotgun shells all along the banks of the road where Walker was shot. Our new information about the wounds on just the right side of Walker’s body could also help to establish with more certainty the sequence of events that occurred out on Poor House Road.
For three years we’ve had a 1964 Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol (MHSP) report that described the wounds to Walker’s head but made no indication of wounds to other parts of the body. In the report, highway patrolmen recount photographing Walker’s body at the funeral home at about 7:30 pm on February 29, before the pathologist had arrived to do the autopsy. The photo that the FBI reportedly showed our interview subject may have been one of the MHSP photos or it may have been from the autopsy which was performed later the same night. If this eyewitness report concerning the photo is correct, it raises questions about why such crucial details would have been left out of the MHSP report.
If there was a crowd of men firing on Walker’s car from the banks of Poor House Road road, that substantially increases the likelihood that there are still living perpetrators. And for each person directly involved, there are possible others with knowledge of the perpetrator’s actions.
If the FBI had the photo taken either by the MHSP or the coroner, then there were likely multiple copies and there is a better chance that the photo still exists somewhere. “I would like to even have those pictures,” Catherine said.
Over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend some attention turned to US Senator John Kerry’s (D-MA) renewed effort to open the FBI records of Dr. King. Civil Rights Cold Case reporter Jerry Mitchell reported:
U.S. Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce legislation next week that would pave the way for the release of thousands of FBI documents on the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kerry, D-Mass., said the bill, which failed in 2006, can pass this year in honor of King. “I want the world to know what he stood for,” Kerry said. “And I want his personal history preserved and examined by releasing all of his records.”
The bill calls for creating a Martin Luther King Records Collection at the National Archives that would include all government records related to King. The bill also would create a five-member independent review board that would identify and make public all documents from agencies including the FBI — just as a review board in 1992 made public documents related to the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination.
Mitchell spoke with Kerry and other prominent supporters of the legislation, including US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and pulitzer prize winning King biographer Taylor Branch. MItchell also spoke with others from the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, who believe Kerry should expand the focus of his important initiative.
Hank Klibanoff, managing editor of the Cold Case Truth and Justice Project, believe[s] Kerry’s idea should be expanded to include the release of documents involving not only King’s assassination, but also other racial slayings from the civil rights era….
Klibanoff met last summer with Attorney General Eric Holder and suggested creating an independent review board to make public “all files, documents and other historic materials related to the racial terror and hate crimes that occurred in the South during the modern civil rights era.”
In an Oct. 27 letter, Holder responded that the Justice Department was discussing the best ways to make “the most responsible public disclosure possible.”…
Ben Greenberg of Boston, whose father served as a special assistant to King in 1962 and 1963, praised Kerry’s legislation. “The murder of Martin Luther King Jr. was a trauma that our country will not recover from unless we can clear the air about what really happened,” he said.
Greenberg, who has spent recent years investigating a number of unsolved killings from the era, including the 1964 killing of Clifton Walker near Woodville, said documents on many other racial slayings from the 1950s and 1960s should be made public, too.
“The effects of these murders linger throughout the South,” he said.
Some FBI documents continue to conceal the name of suspects in these killings, he said. “The people named in the documents, the family members and the perpetrators are dying every day. It is time for the truth to be told and for justice to be done. We need the information while there is still time to use it.”…
Recently the FBI asked for the public’s help in solving 33 killings from the civil rights era — a third of them in Mississippi.
Journalist John Fleming, whose work for The Anniston Star led to an arrest in the 1965 killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Selma, Ala., questioned how the FBI can ask for the public’s help in solving killings but fail to make public the names of crucial witnesses who could shed light on these cases.
Since I first posted about The Civil Rights Cold Case Project, we’ve added the trailer for the documentary mini-series that we are currently developing in partnership with WNET.org and Paperny Films. I’m on there with the Clifton Walker Case a few times, starting at around 00:45.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on December 19, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Folks I've got them hungry blues
And nothin' in this to lose
People tellin' me to choose
Between dyin' and lyin' and
keep on cryin'
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain't you heard the news
There's another thing to choose
A brand new world
clean and fine
Where nobody's hungry
And there's no color line
A thing like that's worth
anybody dyin'
I ain't got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
BLOG POSTS
COMMENTS
PODCASTS