Reply
Thu 7 Jun, 2007 08:24 pm
June 7, 2007
KKK's ex-minister implicates him in deadly '64 attack
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. ?- A reputed Klansman on trial in the deadly attacks on two black teenagers went to his minister's home in 1963, sawed off a shotgun and grinned while saying it was to protect his own family, the retired minister testified today.
The Rev. Robert W. Middleton testified that defendant James Ford Seale also asked him that day: "'What do you think would happen if I just walked into a nigger juke joint and started shooting?'"
Middleton said he replied that Seale would probably end up in prison.
Seale, 71, is being tried on federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges tied to the attacks on the two 19-year-olds in May 1964 in southwest Mississippi.
Another witness testified this week that Seale pointed a sawed-off shotgun at Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore during the attacks in the Homochitto National Forest.
The decomposing partial corpses of Dee and Moore were pulled from a Mississippi River backwater more than two months later and more than 70 miles away.
Middleton testified today that in April 1963 he was a financially struggling young man and that Seale was a close friend who helped him get a job as minister of the church Seale attended in rural Franklin County.
Middleton, now 77, said that in 1963, people in the 60- to 70-member all-white congregation of Bunkley Baptist Church were upset because the federal government was talking about racially integrating the schools.
"Everybody was going crazy," he said as Seale stared, stone-faced, from across the courtroom.
Middleton testified that during an adult Sunday school class one weekend in 1963, white women talked about being followed by black people. One man, Archie Prather, volunteered to shoot at any blacks who caused trouble, Middleton said. At the time, Middleton said, he was living rent-free in a home owned by Prather, who has since died.
Middleton said that during the class and during his sermon that day, he spoke against what Prather had told the women.
"I said a church is no place to talk about killing people," testified Middleton, adding that he didn't support integration at the time but thought it was inevitable.
Prather quit the church, Middleton said, and sometime after that Sunday, Seale brought a letter from him saying the preacher would have to start paying $25 for monthly rent.
Seale had helped compose the letter because Prather couldn't read or write well, Middleton said.
Middleton said that he also was told to turn off floodlights he had installed so young people could play volleyball on the Prather land, and that he was told to ignore vehicles that would come and go for meetings of a "gun and rod club" that Seale and Prather were in.
"They didn't want me minding their business," Middleton said.
As he testified, jurors and spectators were shown a color photo of a man in a red Klan robe. Middleton identified the man as Seale's brother, Jack Seale.
Middleton ?- who moved to Arkansas about a decade ago after retiring from a 17-year career in Louisiana law enforcement ?- testified that he stayed at Bunkley Baptist until November 1963. Because of threats, he filed a restraining order against James Ford Seale in 1963 in nearby Adams County, he said.
Though Seale has denied involvement with the Klan, confessed Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards testified Monday that he and Seale belonged to the same chapter, or "klavern." Edwards ?- who was granted immunity from prosecution ?- testified that Prather also was in the klavern, led by Seale's father.
Edwards testified this week that Klansmen were chasing rumors about black people stockpiling guns for an uprising in May 1964. He said Seale abducted Dee and Moore and pointed the gun at them while other Klan members beat them.
Reputed Klansman convicted in '64 case
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. ?- A jury on Thursday convicted reputed Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi, grisly drownings that went unpunished before federal prosecutors re-examined the forgotten case.
Seale, 71, faces life in prison in the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The 19-year-olds disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964, and their bodies were found later in the Mississippi River.
"I thank the Lord that we got justice," Dee's older sister, Thelma Collins of Springfield, La., said outside the courthouse.
Seale sat stone-faced as the verdict was read and showed no emotion as marshals led him out of the courtroom. Seale was taken back to a county jail north of Jackson, where he has been held since he was arrested. A half dozen of his relatives, including his wife, ran out of the courthouse to a waiting Lexus sport utility vehicle, bumping some reporters in the scramble.
Federal prosecutors indicted Seale in January almost 43 years after the slayings. He is to be sentenced Aug. 24 on two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy.
The prosecution's star witness was Charles Marcus Edwards, a confessed Klansman. During closing arguments earlier in the day, prosecutors acknowledged they made "a deal with the devil" but said that offering immunity to Edwards to get his testimony against Seale was the only way to get justice.
Edwards testified that he and Seale belonged to the same Klan chapter, or "klavern," that was led by Seale's father. Seale has denied he belonged to the Klan.
Edwards testified that Dee and Moore were stuffed, alive, into the trunk of Seale's Volkswagen and driven to a farm. They were later tied up and driven across the Mississippi River into Louisiana, Edwards said, and Seale told him that Dee and Moore were attached to heavy weights and dumped alive into the river.
"Those two 19-year-old kids had to have been absolutely terrified," U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton told jurors, who sat quietly.
In its closing arguments, the defense asserted that Seale should be acquitted because the case was based on the word of an "admitted liar."
"This case all comes down to the word of one man, an admitted liar, a man out to save his own skin," federal public defender Kathy Nester said. "A case based on his word is no case at all."
Federal prosecutor Paige Fitzgerald disputed Nester's claims that Edwards could not be trusted.
"Let me tell you about one man's word. 'Yes. But I'm not going to admit it. You're going to have to prove it,'" Fitzgerald said. A retired FBI agent testified that he heard Seale say those after being arrested on a state murder charge in 1964. That charge was later dropped.
The defense claimed that the prosecution failed to prove key elements needed for conviction and didn't establish that Seale had crossed state lines while committing a crime, which is vital because that's what gives the federal government jurisdiction.
Lampton described for the jury how Dee and Moore were hitchhiking, stopped by Klansmen and taken to a forest where they were beaten. Klansmen were trying to find out if blacks were bringing firearms into Franklin County, Lampton said.
"Henry Dee and Charles Moore didn't know ... why they had been singled out and brought back in the forest," Lampton said.
The killings of Moore and Dee are among several decades-old civil rights cases reopened by federal investigators. In February federal officials announced they were reopening investigations into about a dozen such cases.
Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted last June of manslaughter in the killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.
In Alabama, Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002 of killing four black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. In 2001, Thomas Blanton was convicted.
Ah, I looked, but did not see. I just started another thread.
It's the thought that counts.
Better late than never..............................
YEA! for no statute of limitations!! Sometimes justice is a long time comin'
The ones that committed these type murders didn't reckon on public attitude changing so radically. Most of them spoke openly of their involvement, thinking no jury of their peers would ever convict them, no matter what was presented in court.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace