Edgar Ray Killen

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Edgar Ray Killen (1964)

Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen (born January 17, 1925 in Philadelphia , Neshoba County , Mississippi ; † January 11, 2018 in the Mississippi State Penitentiary ) was an American part-time preacher and sawmill operator and a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan .

On 21 June 2005 it was a Geschworenen- jury of manslaughter on the three civil rights activists Michael Schwerner , Andrew Goodman and James Earl Chaney in Mississippi civil rights murder in 1964 guilty. On June 23, he was sentenced to three times 20 years in prison. At the first trial in 1967, the all-white jury acquitted Killen and found seven co-defendants guilty, but none of them served more than six years in prison. Regarding Killen, the jury had also voted 11: 1 for “guilty” in 1967, but the only person who voted for Killen had said that she could not convict a preacher.

Edgar Ray Killen was released from custody on August 12, 2005 on bail for health reasons. According to the judge, there was no risk of escape and no danger to the public. Less than a month later, Killen was arrested again: a judge in Philadelphia , Mississippi, found that he had made false statements about his health; the allegedly wheelchair-bound killing was caught by police officers driving and wandering around. In 2007 the sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of Mississippi . He was serving his sentence in Mississippi State Penitentiary , where he died in January 2018.

The murder of the three activists and the subsequent FBI investigation were the template for the TV docu-drama Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan (CBS, 1975) ( FBI - Kampf dem Terror 1980 on ZDF ) and the US-American film Mississippi Burning (1988).

Web links

  • James Stern (James Hart Stern): KKK Edgar Ray Killen, sign over all movie / book rights to James Stern, & confess to 32 murders . youtube.com, published December 28, 2011, accessed January 12, 2018 (video; 11:40 minutes). Accompanying text: "Edgar Ray Killen, Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the KKK, Confessed to a black man in 32 letters about all his murders he committed, including the famous Mississippi burning case from 1964, the murders are cold cases from the civil rights time. He also signed all his book and movie rights over to this same black man, James Hart Stern, The Klan has gone as far as to offer to make him the first Black Imperial Wizard of the KKK. "
  • James Hart Stern, Autumn K. Robinson; Michaiah Broadaway (Photos): Killen The KKK: How my false imprisonment with the former Imperial Grand Wizard Edgar Ray Killen became the catalyst to uncover unpublished secrets of (the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) along with) shocking truths about Mississippi Burning. 2nd Edition. November 8, 2017, ISBN 978-1948287005 .
  • James Hart star on Facebook

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edgar Ray Killen dies in prison. In: wtok.com . January 12, 2018, accessed January 13, 2019 .
  2. ^ Former Klansman found guilty of manslaughter. In: cnn.com . January 12, 2018, accessed January 13, 2019 .
  3. ↑ James Stern Killen the KKK. In: Amazon.com . Retrieved on June 21, 2019 (English, Book Description).
personal data
SURNAME Killen, Edgar Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Preacher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American criminal, member of the Ku Klux Klan
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Neshoba County , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 2018
Place of death Mississippi State Penitentiary