This Just In ! Preacher (Christian Terrorist ?) Arrested

First Murder Charge in 1964 Mississippi Civil Rights Slayings

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Mississippi officials announced the first murder charge in the 1964 adduction and killing of three voter-registration workers that helped focus the nation's attention on civil rights, the New York Times reported.

Edgar Ray Killen, 79, was arrested yesterday at his home in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Times said, citing Neshoba County Sheriff Larry Myers. A grand jury meeting where individuals familiar with the killings gave testimony led police to arrest the preacher and alleged Ku Klux Klan leader, the Associated Press said, without citing a source.

Andrew Goodman, 20, Michael Schwerner, 24, and James Chaney, 21, were volunteering in the Mississippi Summer Project to register black voters when they went to check on a firebombed church. Their bodies were found weeks later in the Olen Burrage dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

Seven Klansmen were convicted of charges related to the killings and sentenced to terms of as much as 10 years. Killen was released after there was a deadlock on the all-white jury, the Times said.

The case spawned several books and was dramatized in the 1988 film ``Mississippi Burning'' staring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe. The case is U.S. versus Cecil Price et al.

Myers wasn't immediately available for comment.

The Neshoba County Sheriff's office, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, said bail for Killen hasn't been set, AP reported. Shannon Winston, a dispatcher at the sheriff's office, declined to say whether Killen had retained a lawyer.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Amy Hellickson in Princeton at ahellickson@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Glenn Holdcraft at gholdcraft@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 7, 2005 08:07 EST

source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a62pWdt.lU_M&refer=top_world_news
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Prosecutor: Trial of preacher may be town's cure

By James Dao / New York Times News Service
January 8, 2005

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - For nearly all his life, Mark Duncan has lived under the cloud of one of the nation's most-infamous unresolved crimes, the brutal killing of three civil rights workers near this town 40 years ago.

But on Friday, Duncan, the district attorney for Neshoba and three other counties, took a long step toward lifting that cloud, charging a preacher, Edgar Ray Killen, 79, with the killings.

Standing before a packed courtroom, Duncan read the charges to the stooped, frail-looking defendant. Killen mumbled his answers in a brief interview with the judge - until he was asked how he would plead.

''Not guilty,'' Killen said in a suddenly forceful voice.

The deaths of the three civil rights workers - Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney - and the inability, or unwillingness, of prosecutors to bring charges in the case had left many here wondering whether the town's image would forever be tainted.

Outside court on Friday, Duncan, 45, said he did not push for an indictment because he wanted to heal the town's wound.

''But,'' he added, ''if that's what it does, I'm all for it.''

Killen, whom officials describe as a former Ku Klux Klan leader, runs a sawmill and owns a 20-acre farm outside town. He was being held without bail at the Neshoba County Jail.

Immediately after the arraignment, the courthouse was evacuated because of a bomb threat. As people poured onto the street, Killen's brother knocked down a television cameraman.

''Get all of your shots now,'' the brother, J.D. Killen, said. ''We're going to make sure you're not around for his funeral. My brother's innocent.''

Edgar Killen was among 18 people who were charged in 1967 with federal civil rights violations in the deaths. Seven were convicted, but Killen was released after an all-white jury became deadlocked.

The events were the basis for the 1988 movie ''Mississippi Burning.''

With a new, more integrated generation of residents, Philadelphia, a town of 7,000, is more likely to produce a jury that will convict Killen, some people said. But there were reservations.

At a barber shop near the courthouse, one of the proprietors, Stacy Adkins, called the crime abhorrent. But she wondered about the ethics of prosecuting an aged man with impaired hearing, and she worried that the trial might stir up old passions.

''The South already has a bad reputation,'' said Adkins, 30. ''This isn't going to help us live it down.''

source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_nation_world/article/0,1874,ABIL_7961_3455452,00.html
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Young reporter saw one side of Killen

Man arrested in civil rights workers' slayings seemed harmless talker

11:37 PM CST on Friday, January 7, 2005

By LOWERY METTS / The Dallas Morning News


I always thought of Edgar Ray Killen as nothing more than a long-winded good ol' boy, an itinerant rural Baptist preacher and a self-described private investigator.

I was young, naïve and, judging by action the state of Mississippi took against Mr. Killen this week, just about as wrong as a person can be.

The state says the man I knew for a few years in the early 1970s played a central role in the slayings of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Miss., in 1964.

AP
Edgar Ray Killen (in 1964, left, and in court Friday) never mentioned integration, race or the Klan to reporter Lowery Metts when they knew each other in the 1970s.

The crime, which inspired the film Mississippi Burning, is just about the most infamous incident in state history. Mr. Killen was arrested Thursday and charged with three counts of murder.

It's been long known that the Ku Klux Klan was behind the slayings; seven Klan members were convicted in federal court of civil rights violations, the only crime the FBI could pursue.

It also was known that several other men were suspected of the same crimes by the FBI, including Mr. Killen, but they were either acquitted or jurors were unable to reach a verdict in their cases.

In Edgar Ray Killen's case, the jury deadlocked. He was accused during the 1967 trial of being a recruiter for the Klan, and it was even hinted that he organized and gave instructions to the Klansmen who went to Neshoba County that night of June 21, 1964.

Ten years later, Mr. Killen appeared to be none of that, and I didn't know about his background as we got acquainted.

Basically, the man had the reputation among the people I knew as a lightweight to whom nobody paid much attention. He was just a mild-mannered, uneducated man who liked to talk but who never really said much important.

And he really liked to talk. He could talk for what seemed like hours. He talked so much, about anything, that eventually the listener stopped listening and went on with his business, nodding every now and then.

Most people who knew him in Meridian called him simply "Preacher." That's how he was often referred to by other witnesses in federal court. I always called him "Mr. Killen."

Every reporter has known people like that who bend their ears about any and everything. They tend to see conspiracies around every corner and can become real pests. But most reporters don't want to tell them to get lost on the off-chance that something important might come up some day.

I met Mr. Killen while working at The Meridian Star. I was researching a story about a former Meridian policeman who had disappeared on an 80-mile trip from Jackson. Mr. Killen was introduced to me as someone who was looking into the same case.

Mr. Killen thought the man had been murdered during a card game and his body dumped down a well or in a pond in an area northeast of Meridian. He wouldn't tell me how he knew that, but it appeared to me to be pretty specific information, so I thought he probably knew a witness.

Or maybe he was making it all up. He never found a body (no one else did, either), although he somehow persuaded several people to drain their ponds.

The only time I ever glimpsed another side to Mr. Killen was when we had gone together to a country store near where he said the killing took place.

There were several hard-faced men there, none of whom appeared to take any notice of me at first. Once, though, one glanced my way and I felt a chill. Maybe it was just my overactive imagination, but Edgar Ray Killen seemed right at home with these men, even badgering them for information. He never got any.

I wrote the story and moved on.

But Mr. Killen liked to talk, and he had found someone who would listen. He'd drop by every now and then to talk, mostly about local issues. He never mentioned integration, race, the Klan and certainly not the Neshoba County killings.

There was one time, however. I had since learned about his past and asked him about it. He just said he had been arrested because he knew some of the suspects. Guilt by association, he said. He never mentioned it again.

Seeing his 1970s persona, that was easy to believe.

It's been 30 years, and I still have two vivid impressions of Edgar Ray Killen.

I was talking to him about midnight once outside a theater where I had a part-time job. We had been talking inside the theater for hours, and as I walked outside and locked the doors, I noticed his wife sitting in the car, waiting patiently. I felt sorry for her.

She always seemed to be there on the periphery of his life, waiting. She never said anything.

And there was the fact that Mr. Killen always carried a gun. Legally, he said. It was a snub-nosed revolver, .38-caliber, I think, and he wore it in a holster on his belt. He said he carried it mostly for appearances: It helped, he said, in the sometimes-violent circles in which he moved. I thought he was exaggerating.

I forgot about Edgar Ray Killen until a couple of years ago, when I was back home and read that the state was reinvestigating the 1964 slayings and was taking a new look at "Preacher."

The story quoted a former state investigator who cited a source as saying Mr. Killen had gone to the crime scene the morning after the murders and cleaned up the area – shell casings and such.

The former investigator, who happened to be my cousin, confirmed the report. That was when I realized that my impression of Edgar Ray Killen might be wrong.

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Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/010805dnnatmetts.4bc22.html

This reminds me of modern day reporters who fail to see & document civil right abuses in the communities they serve. Brownwood Texas comes to mind !