The murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner
Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi · 1964
Overview
On June 21, 1964, during Freedom Summer, three civil rights workers went to Neshoba County, Mississippi to look at a Black church outside Philadelphia that the Klan had burned the week before. James Chaney, 21, was a Black Mississippian from Meridian; Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, were white New Yorkers. Leaving the site, they were stopped for speeding and held for hours in the county jail. After their release, carloads of Klansmen intercepted them on an isolated road, beat them and shot them. Their bodies were found forty-four days later under an earthen dam. Mississippi never charged anyone with murder. In 1967 federal prosecutors tried eighteen men for conspiring to violate the victims' civil rights; seven were convicted and none served more than six years. The jury deadlocked eleven to one on Edgar Ray Killen, a sawmill operator, Baptist preacher and Klan organizer whom witnesses said had gathered the mob; the holdout would not convict a preacher. Decades later new witnesses surfaced, and on January 6, 2005, a Neshoba County grand jury indicted Killen, 79, for murder. On June 21, 2005, forty-one years to the day after the killings, a jury convicted him of three counts of manslaughter, and Judge Marcus Gordon gave him the maximum, sixty years. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2007; the state closed the wider investigation in 2016. Killen died at the state penitentiary at Parchman on January 11, 2018, a week short of his 93rd birthday.
How it was solved
There was never any mystery about who had killed the three men. The 1964 FBI investigation produced the bodies and eighteen federal defendants, and testimony at the 1967 federal trial described Edgar Ray Killen, a Klan kleagle, gathering carloads of men with the deputy sheriff to intercept the three on their release from jail, kill them and arrange a bulldozer to hide the bodies. The problem was the charge. Federal law could reach only a conspiracy to violate civil rights, and Mississippi, which alone could charge murder, declined for four decades. The state case came through reinvestigation and pressure. Mississippi Today reported that more than twenty years after the federal trial new evidence from new witnesses surfaced, and the Justice Department said state and federal prosecutors pursued new information from 2000. Early in 2004 Chaney's younger brother and others asked Attorney General Jim Hood to hand the case to the FBI and a special prosecutor. On January 6, 2005, a Neshoba County grand jury heard a day of testimony and indicted Killen on three counts of murder; deputies arrested him at home that night. At trial in June 2005 prosecutors had stand-ins read the 1967 testimony of Klan informants into the record to show Killen was the kleagle who planned the murders, and added two live voices: a former Meridian police officer who said Killen told him the day after the murders that 'we' had killed the men and buried them under a dam, and a prison inmate who said that at age ten he heard Killen tell his father he had helped kill them and was proud of it. Hood acknowledged Killen never fired a shot but argued that as organizer he was as guilty as the men who did. The jury of nine whites and three Blacks rejected murder and returned manslaughter on all three counts on its second day of deliberations. Hood called it a murder sanctioned not by God but by evil men. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Killen's argument that the 41-year delay had prejudiced him and affirmed the conviction on April 12, 2007. In June 2016 Hood, releasing a 48-page FBI report on the remaining suspects, closed the investigation, saying everything that could possibly be done had been done.
Sources
- Killen Found Guilty of Manslaughter (June 21, 2005)
“In 1967, federal conspiracy charges were brought against 18 suspects. Seven of the suspects were convicted on charges of violating the activists' civil rights. Eight suspects were acquitted, and three, including Killen, were released when their cases ended in mistrials after juries deadlocked.”
- Klansman convicted of 1964 killings (June 22, 2005)
“Seven co-defendants were convicted by the all-white jury and served up to six years in prison but Killen's trial ended in a hung jury after a lone holdout said she could never convict a preacher.”
- Arrest Made In 1964 Civil Rights Murders (January 6, 2005)
“Reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was arrested late Thursday on murder charges in the 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, officials said. Neshoba County Sheriff Larry Myers told The Associated Press that Killen, a 79-year-old preacher, was arrested at home without incident.”
- Reputed Klan leader arrested for 1964 civil-rights workers' deaths (January 2005)
“The state never charged anyone with the murders. He was tried on federal conspiracy charges in 1967, but the jury deadlocked by a 11-1 vote;”
- Trial Highlights (June 22, 2005)
“A number of "actors" read old Klan informant testimony into the record to establish that Killen was a "kleagle" who planned the murders.”
- Edgar Ray Killen, convicted in 1964 civil rights slayings, dies in prison (January 12, 2018)
“The three were leaving the site of a black church burning investigation outside of Philadelphia, MS when they were stopped and accused of speeding. All three were taken to the Neshoba County Jail and held for hours.”
- Edgar Ray Killen, klansman convicted in civil rights workers slaying, dies in prison (January 12, 2018)
“More than 20 years later, new evidence from new witnesses surfaced regarding the three murders and Killen was accused of state charges on Jan. 6, 2005. His jury of nine whites and three blacks rejected murder charges but found him guilty of recruiting the mob that carried out the killings.”
- Mississippi high court upholds conviction of former KKK organizer Killen (April 12, 2007)
“The court further rejected Killen's argument that the delay was intentionally used to gain a tactical advantage.”
- 'Mississippi Burning' Civil Rights Case Closed (June 20, 2016)
“"I think that everything has been done that could possibly be done," Hood said at a news conference. Hood said he talked to relatives of the three slain men — James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — and told them that new prosecutions are unlikely, barring any more developments.”
- Officials Close Investigation Into 1964 'Mississippi Burning' Killings, by Camila Domonoske (June 21, 2016)
“They'd been at a church that had been a target of Klan violence the week before.”
- Statement from Head of the Civil Rights Division Vanita Gupta on Mississippi's Decision to Close Investigation into Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (June 20, 2016)
“The Justice Department has investigated this case three times over 50 years and has helped convict nine individuals for their roles in this heinous crime. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was convicted by a state jury of three counts of manslaughter based on new information that state and federal prosecutors discovered and pursued in 2000.”
- Edgar Ray Killen
“He was sentenced on June 23, 2005, by Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon to the maximum sentence of 60 years in prison, 20 years for each count of manslaughter, to be served consecutively.”