The murder of Vernon Dahmer
Hattiesburg, Forrest County, Mississippi · 1966
Overview
Vernon Dahmer, 58, ran a farm, a sawmill and a grocery store north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and led the local NAACP. After the 1965 Voting Rights Act he offered publicly to collect poll taxes for his neighbors, and to pay them for anyone who could not afford it. Early on January 10, 1966, two carloads of White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan attacked his house with gasoline and shotguns. He fired back from the doorway while his family escaped, and he died of his injuries. The FBI investigation led to charges against fourteen Klansmen: one pleaded guilty to arson and three were sentenced to life for murder. But the White Knights' Imperial Wizard, Sam Bowers, whom prosecutors said gave the order, was freed by hung juries in four trials. The case was reopened in the 1990s. After published reports in March 1998 that Bowers had admitted tampering with a 1968 jury, state prosecutors brought new indictments, arrested him on May 28, 1998, and put a former Klansman who had taken part in the attack on the stand. On August 21, 1998, a multiracial jury in Hattiesburg convicted Bowers of murder and arson after deliberating just over two hours. He was sentenced to life, always denied it, and died in the Parchman prison hospital on November 5, 2006, at age 82.
How it was solved
Nobody had to find out who ordered the Dahmer firebombing. Klansmen who took part said it was Sam Bowers, and prosecutors in the 1960s tried him four times. What failed was the verdict. Every one of those trials ended in a deadlock, at least two of them before all-white juries, and one jury split eleven to one for conviction. Four Klansmen were convicted in the 1960s: one pleaded guilty to arson and three were convicted of murder. A further man who took part, Billy Roy Pitts, pleaded guilty and turned state's evidence, but he never served his life sentence and was released from a federal conspiracy sentence in 1971, according to the Civil Rights Digital Library. The case was reopened in August 1991, the Southern Poverty Law Center says, and again in 1998. CBS News and the Associated Press reported that authorities revived it after published reports in March of that year that Bowers had admitted tampering with a jury in 1968 to stay out of prison. The Clarion-Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell has said a witness phoned him to say he had overheard Bowers give the orders to kill Dahmer. CBS reported that state prosecutors, armed with fresh evidence and key witnesses, brought new indictments. On May 28, 1998, investigators from the attorney general's office arrested Bowers, then 73, on murder and arson charges. Mississippi has no statute of limitations on murder. At the August trial, Dahmer's widow and daughter described the attack, and Pitts testified against Bowers. Bowers's lawyers called the case politically motivated. A multiracial jury took just over two hours to convict him on August 21, 1998, and he received a life sentence. Sources date the reopening differently, to 1991 and to 1998, so both are given here.
Sources
- A Long Road To Justice (August 24, 1998)
“It wasn't until this year that state prosecutors, armed with fresh evidence and key witnesses, brought new indictments”
- Former KKK Leader Convicted (August 1998)
“The jury deliberated just over two hours before convicting Samuel H. Bowers, 73, of arson and murder”
- Ex-Klansman Charged With Murder (May 28, 1998)
“admitted tampering with a jury in 1968 to ensure he stayed out of prison for ordering the fatal firebombing.”
- KKK Victims Recall 1966 Murder (August 18, 1998)
“They told how they were awakened at 2 a.m., their home doused with gasoline and peppered with gunfire.”
- Vernon Dahmer
“In Klan code, Project 3 meant arson; Project 4 meant murder.”
- Pitts, Billy Roy
“Pitts pled to both murder and arson and turned states evidence.”
- Sam Bowers (Mississippi Burning Trial)
“Dahmer had earned the Klan's enmity by allowing his store to be used by blacks to pay the $2 poll tax”
- Dead Reckoning (interview with Jerry Mitchell)
“he called me and said he had overheard a conversation in which Bowers had given the orders to kill Vernon Dahmer”
- Ex-Klansman convicted in '66 bombing is dead (November 2006)
“He died of cardio-pulmonary arrest”
- Former KKK Imperial Wizard Dies in Parchman (November 6, 2006)
“Sam Bowers, a former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has died. He was serving a life sentence at Parchman.”
- Bob Helfrich, prosecutor in murder of Vernon Dahmer, dead at 72 (April 1, 2026)
“A jury convicted Bowers, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison, where he died in 2006.”