Murder of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore
Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were two young blacks who fell victim to the racist murders of the Ku Klux Klan in May 1964 . One of her killers, James Seale, was only tried and found guilty in 2007, aged 71.
Sequence of events
Charles Moore, 19, had been expelled from college for participating in the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign and other civil rights protests in the United States . He then worked in a timber company. When he was about to receive his wages on the morning of May 2, 1964, he was accompanied by his friend Henry Dee of the same age. On Highway 84 near Meadville , both were locked in the trunk of Seale's car and kidnapped by their future killer, then 28-year-old James Seale, and his cousin Charles Marcus Edwards. According to their own statement, the two Ku Klux Klan supporters wanted to “interrogate” the young people to determine whether and how strongly black young people were armed. In a forest, Seale threatened the youth with a sawed-off shotgun. He and his companion beat them with sticks and chains. To cover their tracks, they wrapped the two in plastic wrap, put them in the trunk, and drove them nearly 100 kilometers away to the Ole River near Tallulah ( Madison Parish ), Louisiana . There they chained Charles Moore to an engine block and Henry Dee to railroad tracks cut into pieces and threw them into the river, where they both drowned .
1964 investigation
After the three US in June 1964 civil rights activists James Earl Chaney , Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, the local police and met with FBI in their search for the three who classified officially as missing were on the bodies of the two young blacks. They then interrogated Seale and his cousin Charles Edwards. Edwards testified that he was not involved in the murders and that the blacks were alive when he left. Seale refused to testify. The case was covered up as the evidence allegedly was insufficient.
The retrial
The Canadian journalist David Ridgen took up the subject 42 years after the crime, where he had been brought on the trail of the crime by the film " Mississippi Burning - The Root of Hate ". He received support from Moore's older brother Thomas and the white US prosecutor Dunn Lampton, who had fought with Moore in the Vietnam War. Ridgen and Thomas Moore confronted Edwards, 72, in front of the church where Edwards was a deacon. Edwards later declared himself - plagued by remorse, he said - ready to testify against Seale. He appeared as the main witness in the new trial and, after being assured of impunity, testified that he belonged to the same Ku Klux Klan group as Seale.
The way to resume the case and the long lead time are the content of the documentation "Mississippi Cold Case", which David Ridgen put together over a year and a half at the side of Charles Eddie Moore's brother Thomas.
Individual evidence
Web links
- "Mississippi Burning" - atonement after 43 years. In 1964 the Ku Klux Klan killed two black people . The daily mirror of January 27, 2007.
- Ku Klux Klan member found guilty . Spiegel online from June 15, 2007.
- Murders of the Ku Klux Klan. Reconnaissance on the Mississippi . Süddeutsche Zeitung from March 5, 2007.