The murder of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore
Mims, Brevard County, Florida · 1951
Overview
Harry T. Moore founded the Brevard County NAACP in 1934, became its first statewide executive secretary in Florida, organized a league that registered more than a hundred thousand Black voters, and in 1946 he and his wife Harriette lost their teaching jobs for it. On the night of December 25, 1951, their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, a dynamite bomb under the bedroom floor of their house in Mims exploded minutes after they went to bed. Harry died that night. Harriette died nine days later at the hospital in Sanford, thirty miles away, the nearest that treated Black patients. FBI informants pointed to two violent central Florida Klansmen, Earl Brooklyn and Tillman Belvin, but both died within a year, and a third Klansman, Joseph Cox, shot himself the day after his second FBI interview. The file closed in 1955. In 1978 a dying former Klan officer, Edward Spivey, told Brevard County investigators that Cox had confessed to being paid $5,000 to plant the bomb; a grand jury presentment was being prepared when the state attorney lost his seat, and the case sat untouched. Attorney General Charlie Crist reopened it in December 2004. After a twenty-month reinvestigation that interviewed more than a hundred people, excavated the bomb site and ran title searches, Crist announced on August 16, 2006, at the park on the Moores' home site, that Brooklyn, Belvin, Cox and Spivey were responsible. All four were long dead. The Justice Department closed its own file in 2011.
How it was solved
Nobody was ever arrested, and the men finally named had been dead for decades. The 2004 to 2006 reinvestigation gathered four earlier investigations into one conclusion and added what paper records could still show. The Florida Attorney General's executive summary says Charlie Crist announced on December 21, 2004 that his Office of Civil Rights would reopen the case; he told Voice of America he did it after reading that the Moores' surviving daughter wanted his office to take it up. With the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, a team spent twenty months on it: more than a hundred interviews, including people the FBI had never reached, a review of the FBI's 1953 perjury cases against Klansmen, a $25,000 Crime Stoppers reward, and an archaeological excavation of the bomb site on December 2, 2005, which sent more than a hundred bags of debris to the FBI laboratory and produced nothing of significance. The 1951 physical evidence had long since been destroyed. The breakthrough, the FDLE's lead investigator told reporters, was the rediscovery of Edward Spivey's confessions to Brevard County sheriff's investigators from the 1970s, and an anonymous tipster who came forward during the reinvestigation to say Spivey had confessed to him as well. Spivey had met the sheriff's captain six to eight times in 1978 while dying of cancer and each time told the same story: his friend Joseph Cox came to him the day after his second FBI interview, said he had done something wrong, said he had been paid $5,000 to plant the bomb, then borrowed Spivey's shotgun and killed himself. Spivey knew the shades were down, that Cox had to crawl under the house, that Christmas music could be heard outside. Investigators concluded he had been there. Title searches showed that Tillman Belvin, one of the FBI's two original suspects, had satisfied a $5,000 mortgage on December 21, 1951, four days before the bombing. The summary called the evidence not conclusive but very strong, enough to take to a grand jury had any of the four been alive. The FBI reviewed the file in 2008 and reached the same four names; the Justice Department closed it in 2011 because no living subject existed and the statute of limitations had run.
Sources
- Harry T. Moore, Harriette V. Moore - Notice to Close File (July 13, 2011)
“On the evening of December 25, 1951, a bomb exploded under the house of Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Moore in Mims, Florida. The explosion killed Mr. Moore instantly. Mr. Moore's wife, Harriette V. Moore, died nine days later from injuries incurred during the explosion.”
- The Christmas 1951 Murders of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore: Results of the Attorney General's Investigation, Executive Summary (August 16, 2006)
“Available evidence, although not conclusive, links Belvin, Brooklyn, Cox and, to a lesser extent, Spivey, to the crimes. While the evidence is not conclusive, it is very strong. It is the opinion of those involved in this investigation that, were any of these suspects still alive, sufficient circumstantial evidence exists to present the case to a grand jury for possible indictments for the Moores' murders.”
- Conclusion: Klansmen killed two (August 17, 2006)
“Frank Beisler, lead investigator for the FDLE, said he rediscovered a confession Spivey gave Brevard County sheriff's investigators in 1970. He said Spivey was drunk, and all the information didn't come together at first, but Spivey related details about the house he couldn't know if he wasn't there the night of the bombing.”
- Florida AG implicates 4 in 1951 racial slayings (August 16, 2006)
“Investigators on Wednesday said four now-dead Klu Klux Klan members were behind the bombing. Implicated were Earl J. Brooklyn, Tillman H. Bevlin, Joseph N. Cox and Edward L. Spivey.”
- Florida attorney general identifies four suspects in 1951 civil rights murders, 55 years on (August 18, 2006)
“He told VOA he was moved to re-open the case in Christmas 2004, after reading a newspaper article indicating that Evangeline wanted his office to take up the case. He says investigators received no objections from the families of the suspects in the case.”
- Harry T. Moore, Un(re)solved
“The superintendent of the school district warned Harry to halt his political activities. When Harry did not, the district declined to renew both of the Moores' contracts, leaving them unemployed after more than 20 years of teaching.”
- The Road to Freedom Avenue: The Investigators
“In 2004, then-State Attorney General Charlie Crist reopened the case again, interviewing more than 100 people and conducting an excavation of the site of the Moore's home, according to Department of Justice records.”
- 'The Florida Terror' Culminated In A Murderous Bombing Of The Moores (April 30, 2018)
“At 10:20pm, not long after the couple turned in for the evening, the day's festivities turned deadly when a bomb exploded in their home. The blast blew off the front door and was heard four miles away.”
- Harry T. Moore (1905-1951), by Samuel Momodu (March 29, 2020)
“In 1941, Moore organized the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and in 1944, he organized the Progressive Voter League. His leadership of this organization led to the registration of 116,000 new black Florida registered voters.”
- Remembering the man who laid the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement, by Greg Allen (February 1, 2022)
“Moore was at home in Mims with his wife and oldest daughter on Christmas night when a bomb went off under his bedroom. He named four klansmen, all long dead, as the murderers.”
- Murders of Harry and Harriette Moore
“Harry died while being transported; his wife, Harriette, lived to see her husband buried before she died nine days later from her injuries.”