May 2, 1964 Klansmen kidnap Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, two African American teenagers in Meadville, Miss., beat them at gunpoint in a Mississippi national forest, and forcibly throw them into a back- water of the Mississippi River to die. July 12, 1964 A fisherman finds body parts in the Ole River and alerts authorities. The FBI believes they may be the bodies of three men killed June 21 by Klansmen in Neshoba County. But personal effects found in the pockets of the pants on the torsos—the second one was found July 13—indicate that the bodies were those of Dee and Moore. Oct. 30-31, 1964 Navy divers dredge up “a human skull, bones, two shirts, a Jeep engine block with a chain attached and two pieces of railroad rail and two small steel wheels tied together with a chain,” according to an FBI memo. Nov. 6, 1964 Mississippi highway patrolmen and FBI agents arrest reputed Klansmen James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards for the Dee-Moore murders. Franklin County Justice of the Peace Willie Bedford issued the arrest warrants. During the two-hour drive to Jackson, FBI special agent Lenard Wolf tells Seale, “We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it.” Seale replies: “Yes, but I’m not going to admit it; you are going to have to prove it.” Nov. 11, 1964 Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto notifies the FBI that the men had been re- leased on $5,000 bond each. Archie Prather (Edwards’ father), Rosa Davis and Gene Seale (Seale’s brother) paid the bond. Jan. 5, 1965 District Attorney Lenox Forman calls a meeting with Sheriff Hutto, Assistant Attorney General Garland Lyle, and Missis- sippi Highway Patrol investigators Charles Snodgrass and Gwyn Cole. He says he does not have “sufficient evidence” to give the case to the grand jury. Forman says the defen- dants “had put out the story” that they were “brutally mistreated”; therefore, he was sure a grand jury would not indict. Jan. 11, 1965 The district attorney files a “motion to dismiss affidavits” with Bedford, who signed the motion the same day. Jan. 14, 1966 Seale, along with 10 other reputed Klanmen, including his father and brother, appears before the House Com- mittee on Un-American Activities in Washington to be questioned about his alleged crimes, including the abduction and murders of Dee and Moore. He takes the 5th Amendment 41 times during questioning. July 9, 2005 A joint investigative effort in Meadville by Thomas Moore (the brother of Charles Moore), Canadian Broadcasting Corp. pro- ducer David Ridgen, and Donna Ladd and Kate Medley of the Jackson Free Press reveals that James Ford Seale is still alive. The Clari- on-Ledger and other media had reported that Seale was dead in 2001, presumably after his family told them so. The case had been con- sidered closed. July 13, 2005 Thomas Moore visits U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton in Jackson and tells him Seale was still alive and living in Roxie. Lampton agrees to jumpstart the investiga- tion, which would last until January 2007. July 20, 2005 The JFP publishes “I Want Justice, Too,” a detailed narrative about Moore’s visit to Mississippi that reveals Seale is still alive. The case, and the revelation about Seale, by Matt Saldaña May 24 - 30, 2007 14 Shuffling behind a young black woman in an identical orange jumpsuit, James Ford Seale entered the fourth- floor courtroom of the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson on Feb. 22 with shackles hanging loosely around his waist and ankles, and his hands cuffed in front of him. The 71-year-old retired crop- duster from Roxie, Miss., wore thin wire glasses, orange sandals and thick white socks. The words “Madison County Jail” were printed across his slight, but well- postured back. He stood no taller than 5’8” and looked to weigh about 125 pounds, but he showed traces of his muscular past with a thick neck that recalled his open- collared mug shot from 1964—the year he was arrested and released weeks later for the murders of two black teenagers in Franklin County. As a U.S. marshal led him to a seat next to his lawyers, Seale smiled at his wife, Jean Seale, who sat in the front row on the defense’s side of the court. One of his stepsons-in-law arrived late, scanning the half-empty room with his buzzed head held high as he placed his arm around Seale’s stepdaughter, a blonde woman in high heels who blew bubbles with her gum. Other than flashes of eye contact with his family, Seale sat upright and still. At one point, he turned to stare at a large security camera behind a glass plane, high in the back corner of the courtroom. When U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate—the court’s black-robed, baritone-pitched voice of author- ity—granted the defense a 15-minute recess to review case history, Seale sat still and looked at the ground. One month earlier, on Jan. 24, 2007, a federal jury had indicted Seale for two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy leading to the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, the 19-year-olds beat- en by members of the Ku Klux Klan in the Homochit- to National Forest and then drowned in a backwater of the Mississippi River in 1964. The prosecutors believe that Seale chose Dee and Moore because they thought Dee, who had just returned from living in Chicago, was involved in civil rights activity in the area. Five days later, in a packed courtroom on a lower level of the Eastland Building, U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson denied bond to Seale, stating, “Nei- ther the weight of the crime nor its circumstances have been diminished by the passage of time.” It had been 42 years and eight months since Dee and Moore died, the longest wait for a case to be suc- cessfully tried in a civil rights era killing. Dunn Lampton, the U.S. attorney who re-opened the case against Seale in 2005, now sat 50 feet from the defendant, along with his legal team from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice: Special Litigation Counsel Paige Fitzgerald and Trial Attorney Eric Gibson. One day after the grand jury indictments, Lampton stood alongside U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Bob Mueller in Washington, D.C., to announce the charges. As he did then, on Jan. 25, 2007, he let his colleagues do the talking in the courtroom. Fitzgerald, the quick-lipped, short-cropped lawyer of blonde hair and dark suits, emerged early as the voice of the prosecution. Sitting next to Seale in identical black leather chairs were his lawyers: Public Defender Kathy Nester and Federal Public Defender Dennis Joiner. They urged Wingate to reverse Anderson’s bond ruling and throw the case out due to the statute of limitations. Joiner, a stout, ruddy-faced veteran of the public defender’s office, stumbled when Wingate pressed him The Road to Justice: A Timeline MATT SALDAÑA Reputed Klansman James Ford Seale left his bond hearing on Jan. 29, 2007, in shackles.
Transcript
May 2, 1964 Klansmen kidnap Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, two African American teenagers in Meadville, Miss., beat them at gunpoint in a Mississippi national forest, and forcibly throw them into a back-water of the Mississippi River to die.
July 12, 1964 A fi sherman fi nds body parts in the Ole River and alerts authorities. The FBI believes they may be the bodies of three men killed June 21 by Klansmen in Neshoba County. But personal effects found in the pockets of the pants on the torsos—the second one was found July 13—indicate that the bodies were those of Dee and Moore.
Oct. 30-31, 1964Navy divers dredge up “a human skull,
bones, two shirts, a Jeep engine block with a chain attached and two pieces of railroad rail and two small steel wheels tied together with a chain,” according to an FBI memo.
Nov. 6, 1964 Mississippi highway patrolmen and FBI agents arrest reputed Klansmen James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards for the Dee-Moore murders. Franklin County Justice of the Peace Willie Bedford issued the arrest warrants. During the two-hour drive to Jackson, FBI special agent Lenard Wolf tells Seale, “We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it.” Seale replies: “Yes, but I’m not going to admit it; you are going to have to prove it.”
Nov. 11, 1964Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto
notifi es the FBI that the men had been re-leased on $5,000 bond each. Archie Prather (Edwards’ father), Rosa Davis and Gene Seale (Seale’s brother) paid the bond.
Jan. 5, 1965District Attorney Lenox Forman calls
a meeting with Sheriff Hutto, Assistant Attorney General Garland Lyle, and Missis-
sippi Highway Patrol investigators Charles Snodgrass and Gwyn Cole. He says he does not have “suffi cient evidence” to give the case to the grand jury. Forman says the defen-dants “had put out the story” that they were “brutally mistreated”; therefore, he was sure a grand jury would not indict.
Jan. 11, 1965The district attorney fi les a “motion to
dismiss affi davits” with Bedford, who signed the motion the same day.
Jan. 14, 1966Seale, along with 10 other reputed
Klanmen, including his father and brother, appears before the House Com-mittee on Un-American Activities in Washington to be questioned about his alleged crimes, including the abduction and murders of Dee and Moore. He takes the 5th Amendment 41 times during questioning.
July 9, 2005 A joint investigative effort in Meadville by Thomas Moore (the brother of Charles Moore), Canadian Broadcasting Corp. pro-ducer David Ridgen, and Donna Ladd and Kate Medley of the Jackson Free Press reveals that James Ford Seale is still alive. The Clari-on-Ledger and other media had reported that Seale was dead in 2001, presumably after his family told them so. The case had been con-sidered closed.
July 13, 2005Thomas Moore visits U.S. Attorney
Dunn Lampton in Jackson and tells him Seale was still alive and living in Roxie. Lampton agrees to jumpstart the investiga-tion, which would last until January 2007.
July 20, 2005The JFP publishes “I Want Justice,
Too,” a detailed narrative about Moore’s visit to Mississippi that reveals Seale is still alive. The case, and the revelation about Seale,
by Matt Saldaña
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Shuffl ing behind a young black woman in an identical orange jumpsuit, James Ford Seale entered the fourth-fl oor courtroom of the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson on Feb. 22 with shackles hanging loosely around his waist and ankles, and his hands cuffed in front of him. The 71-year-old retired crop-duster from Roxie, Miss., wore thin wire glasses, orange sandals and thick white socks. The words “Madison County Jail” were printed across his slight, but well-postured back. He stood no taller than 5’8” and looked to weigh about 125 pounds, but he showed traces of his muscular past with a thick neck that recalled his open-collared mug shot from 1964—the year he was arrested and released weeks later for the murders of two black teenagers in Franklin County.
As a U.S. marshal led him to a seat next to his lawyers, Seale smiled at his wife, Jean Seale, who sat in the front row on the defense’s side of the court. One of his stepsons-in-law arrived late, scanning the half-empty room with his buzzed head held high as he placed his arm around Seale’s stepdaughter, a blonde woman in high heels who blew bubbles with her gum. Other than fl ashes of eye contact with his family, Seale sat upright and still. At one point, he turned to stare at a large security camera behind a glass plane, high in the back corner of the courtroom.
When U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate—the court’s black-robed, baritone-pitched voice of author-ity—granted the defense a 15-minute recess to review case history, Seale sat still and looked at the ground.
One month earlier, on Jan. 24, 2007, a federal jury had indicted Seale for two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy leading to the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, the 19-year-olds beat-en by members of the Ku Klux Klan in the Homochit-to National Forest and then drowned in a backwater of the Mississippi River in 1964. The prosecutors believe that Seale chose Dee and Moore because they thought
Dee, who had just returned from living in Chicago, was involved in civil rights activity in the area.
Five days later, in a packed courtroom on a lower level of the Eastland Building, U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson denied bond to Seale, stating, “Nei-ther the weight of the crime nor its circumstances have been diminished by the passage of time.”
It had been 42 years and eight months since Dee and Moore died, the longest wait for a case to be suc-cessfully tried in a civil rights era killing.
Dunn Lampton, the U.S. attorney who re-opened the case against Seale in 2005, now sat 50 feet from the defendant, along with his legal team from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice: Special Litigation Counsel Paige Fitzgerald and Trial Attorney Eric Gibson. One day after the grand jury indictments, Lampton stood alongside U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Bob Mueller in Washington, D.C., to announce the charges. As he did then, on Jan. 25, 2007, he let his colleagues do the talking in the courtroom. Fitzgerald, the quick-lipped, short-cropped lawyer of blonde hair and dark suits, emerged early as the voice of the prosecution.
Sitting next to Seale in identical black leather chairs were his lawyers: Public Defender Kathy Nester and Federal Public Defender Dennis Joiner. They urged Wingate to reverse Anderson’s bond ruling and throw the case out due to the statute of limitations.
Joiner, a stout, ruddy-faced veteran of the public defender’s offi ce, stumbled when Wingate pressed him
The Road to Justice: A Timeline
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Reputed Klansman James Ford Seale left his bond hearing on Jan. 29, 2007, in shackles.
on the specifi cs of his motion to dis-miss. Citing U.S. v. Jackson, a 1968 ruling that removed the death pen-alty as a punishment for kidnapping, Joiner argued that kidnapping charges stemming from the 1964 Dee-Moore murders would have exceeded the statute of limitations in 1969. (Non-capital crimes must be tried within fi ve years.) However, Joiner could not prove that the removal of the death penalty as a kidnapping penalty in 1968 changed its status as a capital crime, or that the 1968 ruling would apply retroactively to 1964. “Kidnapping is typically recog-nized as a capital offense,” Wingate said. “I can’t argue with that,” Joiner replied. Wingate appeared annoyed that Joiner used “ex-trapolation” to argue his case—the public defender pro-duced only one case that applied directly, and he referred to cases not listed in the defense’s original briefi ng. “We continued to do research,” Joiner said in defense of the incomplete briefi ng, before Wingate cut him off. “Because of this, I will deny the motion to strike,” the judge said sternly. It would not be Wingate’s last admonishment of Joiner.
‘Race Has Nothing to Do with It’ One month later, in one of the more dramatic exchanges of the pretrial motion proceedings, Wingate denied a motion from the defense to recuse himself and U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson—apparently fi led, in part, because both judges are African Ameri-can. In the motion for recusal, Seale’s defense attorneys had complained about Wingate and Anderson’s prior employment—in Wingate’s case, 22 years ago—with the federal prosecutor’s offi ce. However, during the hearing, Joiner also seemed to hint that, as African
Americans, Wingate and Anderson might be biased against Seale. “Let’s just say that, if I were a pros-ecutor in this case, I would pick Your Honor even though you’ve served for 20 years without bias,” Joiner said. The public defender then said, in vague terms, that certain issues might affect Wingate in a certain way, and that these unique responses are the reason law schools need diversity. “Maybe you’re dancing around some issues,” Wingate replied. “Does the ‘diversity’ argument you made mean that you don’t want two judges of minority status?”
“Race has nothing to do with it,” Joiner answered. He said that by diversity he was referring to different areas of law. “Mr. Joiner, you’ve been in court for years, and you’ve never made this argument before,” Wingate said. “Your motion comes for the fi rst time in your fi ve years as a public defender, and it only comes because the magistrate judge is Africa American, and the district judge is African American.” “This is the fi rst time that an indictment was fi led in the Western Division (of the Southern District of Mississippi) and mysteriously moved to Jackson,” Joiner said, apparently abandoning the issue. “This court is not persuaded it should recuse itself,” Wingate said in denying the motion.
‘The Defendant ... Inserted Race’ During an April 12 hearing—two and a half months after Seale was incarcerated—Wingate heard arguments for and against a detailed jury question-naire. Defense lawyers had opposed detailed questions
to ask jury candidates, specifi cally queries that sought to profi le their racial opinions. During an earlier tele-conference, Nester had expressed disdain for “shocking questions related to race, interracial dating, interracial rape and white-power groups.” “It’s clear that the government wants to make this case about race (and) racial issues, when at the end of the day, it’s a criminal case. To allow the government to set the tone and create racial hysteria before the jurors even step into the room, is to deny (Seale) a fair trial,” Nester argued on April 12. “It was the defendant who inserted race into this case,” Fitzgerald replied. Fitzgerald argued that jury candidates would not respond honestly to the question, “Are you a racist?” Instead, questions about their positions on racial issues would illicit more candid responses, she said. The questionnaire, similar to one federal prosecu-tors have used in prosecuting seven other defendants, including Edgar Ray Killen, for racially motivated murders from the civil rights era, includes a question about school integration. In the 2003 trial of Ernest
Avants, for the 1966 murder of Ben Chester White in Natchez, 11 of 93 jury candidates disagreed with school integration, according to Fitzgerald, who helped prosecute that trial. “This court has an independent obligation to use the tools it has so that, if prejudice exists, it will be found out,” she said. Wingate agreed. “The process will take longer, but both parties will have the opportunity to inquire deeply into jurors’ minds and ensure a fair trial.”
‘You Are Going to Have to Prove It’ On April 30, Wingate began the fi nal round
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starts to attract international attention. The JFP subsequently publishes a series of stories, both about the Dee-Moore case and other civil-rights atrocities in the area, while CBC returns to Meadville a number of times with Moore to further investigate the case.
July 28, 2005 Mary Lou Webb, editor of the Franklin Advocate in Meadville and wife of the public-ity director of Americans for the Preservation of the White Race in 1964 (according to a document in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission fi les), publishes an editorial lambasting the re-opening of the case. She writes: “The editor sees no new evidence—no reason—to put a new generation through painful memories. … Halfway around the world our young people are dying because their young people were not allowed to for-give and forget. Let that not be the legacy we leave our children.” Webb refuses to print Thomas Moore’s response, which he then asks the JFP to
publish. He writes in part: “Mary Lou, I have the right to come to Franklin County, my home, and demand justice 41 years later for the brutal murders of my brother Charles Moore and my friend Henry Dee. I also have the right to ask the rest of Franklin County, blacks and whites alike, to join me in my quest for justice.”
Jan. 24, 2007 A federal grand jury delivers three indictments against Seale: two counts of kidnapping and one of conspiracy leading to Moore and Dee’s deaths.
Jan. 25, 2007 U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gon-zales, accompanied by U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton and FBI Director Bob Mueller, announces grand jury indictments in Wash-ington, D.C. “We would much prefer, of course, that justice had been served 40 years ago in this case,” Gonzales says. “But what we are doing today—bringing closure to this
horrible crime by trying this case through a public trial—should serve as notice to those who would violate the civil rights of their fel-low citizens: We will pursue you as long as it takes and as long as the law allows.”
Jan. 29, 2007 Seale appears in shackles and an orange jumpsuit for his bond hearing in Jackson. U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson denies bond, citing the “violent” and “hor-rifi c” nature of the alleged crime and Seale’s concealment of a brother in Louisiana.
Feb. 22, 2007 U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate denies two motions by Seale’s defense: one to dismiss the trial based on an exceeded statute of limitations and another to revoke Anderson’s order for detention.
March 22, 2007 Wingate denies defense’s motion to recuse himself and Anderson from the trial.
Federal Public Defender Dennis Joiner ap-pears to imply that two black judges would be unjustly biased against Seale.
April 5, 2007 Wingate denies defense motion for a change of venue due to “non-stop media attention.”
April 12, 2007 Wingate approves prosecution’s motion for use of a jury questionnaire. Public De-fender Kathy Nester argues against questions about race, saying, “To allow the government to set the tone and create racial hysteria before the jurors even step into the room, is to deny (Seale) a fair trial.” Fitzgerald responds: “It was the defendant who inserted race into this case.” Trial date is set for May 29.
April 18, 2007 Wingate hears fi nal objections on ques-tionnaire, fi nalizes version to mail April 19.
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April 30, 2007 Wingate hears witness testimony in the fi nal round of pretrial motions. Retired FBI Agent Edward Putz, who rode with Seale following his arrest on Nov. 6, 1964, and Jack Davis, former member of Americans for the Preservation of the White Race, testify regarding defense motion to suppress Seale’s statements. Retired FBI agent Billy Bob Wil-liams also takes the stand.
May 1, 2007 In the second day of witness testimony,
retired FBI agents and informant Ernest Gilbert’s widow take the stand to provide testimony about Gilbert, who died in 2003 and never testifi ed about his knowledge of the Dee-Moore murders in court. Former Mississippi Highway Patrolman Donald Butler adds testimony about KKK presence in 1960s Franklin County.
May 2, 2007 Wingate denies the government motion to allow Ernest Gilbert’s statements, noting that prosecutors failed to provide Gilbert
with a judicial forum to testify during the three years between outing himself as an in-formant on ABC’s “20/20” in 2000 and his death in 2003. Citing inconsistent testimony from Jack Davis and no evidence of coercion by FBI agents, Wingate rules that Seale’s comments on Nov. 6, 1964 are admissible. The judge also denies two fi nal motions from the defense to dismiss the trial, one for lack of a speedy trial and one for spoiled evidence. “Once (the government) found that they could prosecute, they did,” Wingate says.
May 10, 2007 Deadline passes for potential jurors to return questionnaires.
May 29, 2007 The criminal trial of James Ford Seale is scheduled to begin in the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson. The JFP will blog daily about the trial of Seale at roadtomeadville.com.
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of pretrial motion hearings. In three days, he settled all remaining motions and heard from all remaining witnesses. These wit-nesses, most elderly, testifi ed about the circumstances of Seale’s arrest on Nov. 6, 1964, the lifelong fear of a deceased FBI informant and the grip the Klan had on Franklin County in the 1960s. On the fi rst day of testimony, witnesses testifi ed regarding the defense’s motion to suppress statements Seale made during the two-hour ride from Seale’s home in Franklin County to Jackson following his arrest in 1964. Retired FBI Agent Edward Putz, who rode to Jackson with Seale following his arrest, took the stand April 30 to testify for the defense’s motion to suppress Seale’s statements. Tall, broad-shouldered and with a shock of white hair, Putz described the ar-rest by two highway patrolmen, a fellow FBI agent and himself. In a document he fi led the day of Seale’s arrest, Putz recorded a verbatim exchange between Seale and FBI special agent Lenard Wolf, in which Wolf, referring to the kidnapping and murder of Moore and Dee, said, “We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it.” “Yes, but I’m not going to admit it; you are going to have to prove it,” Seale said. In the motion to suppress, public de-fender Kathy Nester wrote that Seale was “subjected to physical abuse by the offi cers and agents questioning him”—the same argument that his defense attorneys used in 1965 to get District Attorney Lenox Forman to release Seale, and co-defendant Charles
Marcus Edwards, and not put the murder case before a grand jury. She also argued that Seale was not advised of his right to remain silent or his right to a lawyer. Putz denied any physical harm to Seale. “There was no struggle. The man was not as-saulted. I did not hear or see it,” he said. Arguing for the prosecution, Eric Gib-son noted that Miranda rights did not yet exist in 1964, and that Seale never asked for a lawyer. He argued that Seale’s confession was voluntary because it did not result from threats, rewards or extensive interrogation. “The very defi ance of his reply is evidence of its voluntary nature. (Seale)
is basically telling (the agents) to go pound sand,” Gibson said. The defense then called Jack Davis, a retired constable, construction worker, stevedore and bartender from Franklin County, to testify that he had witnessed bruising on several of Seale’s ribs after his arrest. Davis said that he lived “10 or 15 minutes” from Seale in Franklin County, where he had lived for “80 years or so.” A short man with a broad forehead and dark, sharply angled eyebrows, Davis wore a green fl annel shirt tucked into jeans and
used a courtroom hearing aid. Davis described receiving a call from Seale’s wife at 6:30 a.m. saying that her hus-band had been picked up in the middle of the night. She asked Davis to come over, and “see the condition the house was in.” “It looked like a storm had gone through it—things gone this way and another. I don’t know if it was any big damage or anything. It was just things tore up, turned around,” Davis said. In cross-examination, Davis acknowl-edged that the reason the house looked disheveled, Seale’s wife had told him, was because highway patrolmen and FBI agents were searching for a gun: Seale’s sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun. He then described seeing Seale after he had been released from pris-on—how many days later, Davis could not recall. Davis could not deny that his father, Roy Davis, received funds from the Ku Klux Klan in order to post Seale’s bond. “(Seale) pulled his shirt up, and it was two or three ribs there that were pretty red. I asked, ‘What happened to that?’ He told me, ‘They asked me a question I couldn’t answer, and they elbowed me.’ I asked him who, and he said, ‘The FBI,’” Davis said. In January 2007, Davis testifi ed before a grand jury that he had seen only one red mark, about the size of a silver dollar, in the week following Seale’s arrest. Under cross-examination by Fitzgerald, Davis admitted to being a member of Ameri-cans for the Preservation of the White Race in the 1960s—an organization active in Frank-
lin and Adams counties in the 1960s, holding meetings in City Hall, promoted by David Webb, the now-deceased editor of the Frank-lin Advocate newspaper and then-publicity director of APWR, according to documents in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission fi les. Davis also admitted to helping construct a private school that excluded blacks. “I knew the schools were being mixed up. That’s why we took an old school and built it up,” Davis said. “Did you participate in your goal of keeping the races segregated with members of the Seale family?” Fitzgerald continued. “I’m pretty sure some of the Seales did. Probably all of them,” Davis replied. As he left the stand, Davis walked toward Seale, but was blocked by defense lawyers from making eye contact with him. Seale watched as clerks escorted Davis out of the courtroom. Davis lingered in the doorway, peering through the circular window back at Seale. Two days later, Wingate denied the motion to suppress Seale’s statements, citing inconsistent testimony from Jack Davis.
‘The Leaders, the Dictators’ On April 30 and May 1, Wingate heard testimony from witnesses regarding the government’s motion to include the statements of Ernest Gilbert, a deceased FBI informant and former KKK leader who had information linking Seale to the Dee-Moore murders but never testifi ed in court before his
FACING JUSTICE, see p. 18
Seale was living in an RV next to his brother’s house when the CBC and the JFP learned he was alive. At Seale’s bond hearing, pros-ecutors argued that the vehicle indicated a fl ight risk. Roxie residents report that he and his wife briefl y left after Moore’s 2005 visit.
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Jean Seale leaving the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson after her husband was denied bond.
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death. Prosecutors argued that Seale forfeited his right to cross-examine Gilbert because he had prevented Gilbert from taking the stand out of fear and intimidation. Retired FBI agents Billy Bob Williams, Reesie Timmons and Clarence Prospere; for-mer Clinton, La., Police Chief Eddie Stewart, who befriended Gilbert late in his life; and Jimmie Gilbert, Ernest Gilbert’s widow, took the stand to provide testimony about Gilbert, who died in 2003. “It was common knowledge that if the identity of (Gilbert) was revealed, he would be killed,” said Timmons, a former FBI agent in McComb, Miss. Timmons, who slicked his gray hair back and wore a blue jacket and red tie, de-scribed James Seale, his brother Jack and his father Clyde as “killers” who were feared by fellow Klansmen. “I know from Klan members who talked to me on the street that (the Seales) were con-sidered the leaders, the dictators of the Klan in that part of the country. They were strong, and they were feared. (Informants) didn’t want them to know who they were. They were killers,” he said. Timmons described the time that he and a fellow FBI agent visited Gilbert at his house to offer protection. Gilbert, convinced that the agents were Klan members in dis-guise, told them that if they did not leave his property, he would shoot them. “He was scared to death. The man could hardly talk. He could hardly walk. He was absolutely expecting to be shot to death,” Timmons said. Timmons said that Gilbert later asked to be arrested to escape the Klan. One day earlier, Billy Bob Williams, a retired FBI agent stationed in Natchez, Miss., in 1964 and who now lives in Oregon, was asked if he was concerned for Gilbert’s safety. “Absolutely. (Gilbert) was aware that if he was exposed, with the information he had furnished (to the FBI), the least he could ex-pect was a bullet to the head,” Williams said. Eddie Stewart, former police chief of Clinton, La., and a friend of Gilbert late in his life, took the stand to testify about Gilbert’s fear of reprisal. Stewart, a middle-aged black man with long hair pulled back into a pony-tail, remained friends with Gilbert even after he confessed that he had founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.
“He said he needed to talk to me, that it was very important and that I was the only person he trusted,” Stewart said. “He called some names—Clyde, Jack and James Seale and Ernest Parker. They came to his house and told him that they picked up two black kids, took them out to Clyde Seale’s farm, beat them and threw them in the river.” Stewart advised Gilbert to tell his story to a Louisiana FBI agent, the transcript of which the government later sought to include in the trial. Stewart also advised Gilbert to reveal himself as an informant on “20/20” in 2000 because ABC producer Eric Phillips, who had contacted Gilbert, “had enough information on (Gilbert)” to reveal him as an informant even if he did not talk. However, Stewart said despite his urging, Gilbert never testifi ed in court because he was “deathly afraid for his family and himself. … (Gilbert) said, ‘I gave them everything they need. All they need to do is prosecute,’” Stewart said. In the most substantial blow to the pros-ecution, Wingate denied the motion to admit Gilbert’s statements, noting that prosecutors failed to provide Gilbert with a judicial forum to testify during the three years between out-ing himself as an FBI informant on ABC’s “20/20” in 2000 and his death, by natural causes, in 2003. “The court recognizes that (Gilbert) was assured he would never have to testify, and that the witness was fi lled with dread and fear—un-til he fi nally made statements on ‘20/20,’” Wingate said. Wingate also denied two motions from the defense to dismiss the trial, one for lack of a speedy trial and one for spoiled evidence. In both motions, the defense argued that Seale would receive an unfair trial because of the 42-year gap between Moore and Dee’s deaths in 1964 and Seale’s prosecution in 2007. “[T]he government attempted to pros-ecute this case, but was prevented from doing so by jurisdiction issues. Once they found they could prosecute, they did,” Wingate said. On May 29, pending any further delay, the prosecution of James Ford Seale will begin in earnest, 43 years and 27 days after the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee. See the JFP’s “Road to Meadville” blog on this case (www.roadtomeadville.com) for back-ground on this case, which a JFP team helped get re-opened in 2005. A JFP team will blog daily there during the trial.
Mary Byrd, the sister of Henry Dee, told the JFP and CBC in July 2005 that she was inspired by seeing Edgar Ray Killen taken to jail the month before.
FROM PAGE 17
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The last time Mazie Moore ever saw her boy, 19-year-old son Charles, he was standing in front of Dillon’s gas station on Main Street in Meadville, trying to thumb a ride with his
friend, Henry Dee, also 19. Mazie had gotten a ride to the doctor and fi gured she would pick them up when she came back by there. According to informants, when James Ford Seale, a 29-year-old truck driver from Meadville, drove by in his Volkswagen and saw the two boys, he got in his head that they were “part of the agitation that was going on in Mississippi, especially since one of them had recently come down from Chicago.” He told the man driving with him, reportedly Charles Marcus Edwards, who worked at International Paper in Natchez, to get out of the car and follow him in his pick-up; he went back to the boys, who did not thumb him for a ride. He pulled over anyway and told them to get into the car, that he was a Federal Revenue agent. As he started driving west on Highway 84, toward Natchez, the boys became sus-picious, and one asked him to pull over. Seale told them there were more agents waiting that he wanted them to talk to, according to the informant. Seale reportedly used his walkie-talkie to call the men in the pickup truck to tell them he had two Negroes he wanted them to talk to. He then turned off 84 into the Homochitto National Forest. When he stopped, Charles and Henry got out just as the pickup pulled up. Seale got out with his carbine in his hand “and got the drop on the two Negroes.” With Seale holding the shot-gun on them, the Klansmen—all reportedly members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—tied the two boys to a tree and began severely beating them both with long, skinny bean sticks. As they pounded the boys bloody, the Klansmen told Charles and Henry they knew they were Black Muslims trying to start an insurrection. They wanted to know who was leading the “Negro problems” in Frank-lin County. One of them fi nally told them the name of a black preacher in Roxie, Rev. Clyde Briggs, to get them to stop. When the Klansmen tired of swinging, the young men were hanging there by the waist, nearly lifeless, covered with blood. Prosecutors then believe they took them to the farm of Seale’s father Clyde,
of Meadville, then the Grand Cyclops of the White Knights. Clyde Seale called another son, Jack Seale, over in Natchez, informants say. “KIWU!” Clyde said. The word “Kiwu” stands for “Klansman, I want you” in the KKK handbook. Jack Seale reportedly responded to the cry for help by getting his buddy Ernest Parker, then a Natchez businessman, to bring his red Ford car to the forest and help load up the two men, who were nearly dead. They put Charles and Henry on a plastic tarp to keep bloodstains from getting into the trunk. They then drove some 100 miles to “Palmyra Ben” or the “Ole River”—near Parker’s boat landing. Ole River is the Mississippi backwater in Warren County near Tallulah, La., six miles from Vicksburg. There, the FBI said they tied Jeep engine parts to Dee’s body, and other engine parts to Moore, and sunk them into the water. Informants would later say that the men were still breathing when they were thrown overboard. The Klans-men talked about shooting them fi rst, being that they were still breathing, but “Seale replied that he did not want to shoot them because it would have got-ten blood all over the boat,” the informant said. When a fi sherman found the fi rst body parts on July 12, 1964, the FBI thought that they had found the burial spot for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, killed June 21 by White Knights (or “bed-sheets,” as the FBI called them) from Lauderdale and Neshoba counties, and still missing. But personal effects found in the pockets of the pants on the torsos—the second one was found July 13—indicated that the bod-ies were those of Dee and Moore. FBI records from the time show that the bureau, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, took the murders seriously, setting up a fi eld operation in Jackson to investigate the crimes. The FBI called in Navy divers who, on Oct. 30
and 31, dredged up “a human skull, bones, two shirts, a Jeep engine block with a chain attached and two pieces of railroad rail and two small steel wheels tied together with a chain.” The FBI memo added, “The chain on the other items each had a loop suffi ciently large enough to go around a body.” Meantime, the men involved started to get nervous because they worried that the bodies would fl oat to the surface somehow. James Seale, in particular, told buddies that he was scared because he had put the tape on the men’s wrists; he worried that his fi ngerprints would turn up, according to FBI reports. The FBI would soon turn over what seemed to be a wealth of evidence to then-District Attorney Lenox Forman in Natchez, who promised to put it before the grand jury. On Nov. 6, the FBI and local authorities arrested James Ford Seale, 29, and Charles Marcus Edwards, 31, both of Meadville, for “willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and with malice aforethought killing the two Negroes on or about May 2, 1964,” as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote in a letter to Bill Moyers, then special as-sistant to President Lyndon Johnson, the same day. Both men confessed to the crime, according to the FBI, with Edwards admitting that he had been to Klan meetings. Another informant told the FBI that Seale and his wife ran a “Rod and Gun Club” in Natchez in Meadville that was a front for the KKK. “The arrests of Edwards and Seale resulted from extensive FBI investi-gation,” Hoover concluded. “This is another example of the FBI’s close cooperation with Mississippi authorities in bringing to justice individuals responsible for racial violence in Mississippi.” The two men were released on a $5,000 bond each, with a hearing set for Jan. 11, 1965. Hoover’s declaration of justice was premature,
however. A Jan. 12, 1965, FBI memo stated that the D.A. had discussed the case with Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto, Assistant Attorney General Garland Lyle, and Mississippi Highway Patrol Investigators Charles Snodgrass and Gwyn Cole, and had then decided to drop the charges against Seale and Edwards. Forman said that the case was “greatly prejudiced” toward the defendants because they “put out the story” in Meadville that, after their arrest, they had been “brutally mistreated” and denied medication by the Mis-sissippi State Highway Patrol.
Forman called the stories “dilatory tactics,” but believed that such accusations would cause the charges to be dismissed at the initial hearing. He said that if more evidence were developed, he would present the case to the grand jury later, possibly as soon as August 1965. That never happened. No arrests would be made in the case for 42 years when federal authorities arrested James Ford Seale for federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges. Edwards is expected to testify against him in his trial, set to start May 29 in Jackson. Follow the trial of James Ford Seale online daily at roadtomeadville.com.
The Crime: May 2, 1964 by Donna Ladd
Reported Klansman James Ford Seale is about to be tried for kidnapping Charles Moore in 1964. Moore is pictured here with his brother Thomas (on the right) and in a school photo. No Henry Dee photo is available.
James Ford Seale’s mugshot, following his arrest on Nov. 6, 1964.
