S28 E4: Bunkley | "Someone Knows Something"

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm Gavin Crawford from the podcast Because News, a podcast for people who love to know what's going on but realize sometimes getting your news from comedians is just a little softer than the real thing.

Speaker 1 On this week's episode, Eric Peterson, Andrew Fung, and Carly Thorne are on the panel, each vying for a spot in the end-of-the-world defined bunker. What's that?

Speaker 1 Well, it's a rebranded luxury Cold War fallout shelter in Nova Scotia. Why get depressed alone when you can get depressed with us at Because News?

Speaker 1 Get Because News, wherever you get your podcast, which I'm presuming is here.

Speaker 2 This is a CBC podcast.

Speaker 3 Say something.

Speaker 3 Can you say something to me?

Speaker 5 Okay, now do you have the mic?

Speaker 5 Give it to me. I gotta stick it on.

Speaker 3 Hello, check, check, check. Hello, check.
Check, Mr. Edwards, check, check, check.
Mr. Edwards, check.

Speaker 6 How the hell am I gonna turn around?

Speaker 6 How are you, sir?

Speaker 3 I'm okay.

Speaker 1 I'm David.

Speaker 1 I'm down here

Speaker 3 working on a documentary.

Speaker 3 I'm here with the brother of Charles Moore.

Speaker 7 Oh, you can get through.

Speaker 7 Go get back in your car.

Speaker 3 He just wants to talk.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry, so he just wants to talk.

Speaker 8 You are listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Original Podcasts. In season three, David Ridgen revisits his 2007 documentary, Mississippi Cold Case.

Speaker 8 Teaming up with Thomas Moore to investigate the murders of his brother, Charles Moore, and Henry Dee, two 19-year-olds who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.

Speaker 8 This is episode 4,

Speaker 8 Bunkley.

Speaker 9 Now you talk about terror.

Speaker 9 I think you talk about terror.

Speaker 9 People have been terrorized

Speaker 9 all my days.

Speaker 9 All my days.

Speaker 2 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and area in August 2005. Thomas and I had already returned to our respective homes and continued to work on the D.
Moore case from afar.

Speaker 2 The catastrophe kept the news of Seal's existence out of play for a month, and over the next several, I was able to get through the entire set of FBI files Jerry Mitchell had given us and find many more documents, photos and media clips, in other U.S.

Speaker 2 archives.

Speaker 6 Where's that one that talks about Joe Lee Rollins?

Speaker 2 I made notes on most every page and created a comprehensive database of names and stories the FBI heard that I wanted to re-examine.

Speaker 6 Hey, David.

Speaker 2 Oh hey Thomas, how's it going?

Speaker 2 Thomas and I spoke every day on the phone, sometimes more than once, and we also both kept in close touch with U.S. Attorney Dunn Lambton and others.

Speaker 11 David. Hey David.

Speaker 12 Hi Mr. Lampton, how are you doing? Hi, what you got?

Speaker 2 Still, top of our minds were James Ford Seal and Charles Marcus Edwards.

Speaker 2 James Ford Seale was well known along with his family for violence in the region and was a suspect in several crimes, including the dynamiting of the Blue Flame Saloon in Bude, for assisting in the murder of a white man named Earl Hodges in summer of 65, and for running over and killing a black man named Bailey O'Dell with his truck on the Bunkley Road in the summer of 1966.

Speaker 2 Seal was also known for threatening people, including one of his neighbors, for having a black maid.

Speaker 2 Seal and his fellow Klansmen would come together often in the Bunkley community, meeting at a property owned by a man named Archie Prather.

Speaker 2 Their meetings were supposedly part of the Bunkley Hunting Club or a Rodden Gun Club, a euphemism for Clan Clavern.

Speaker 2 Charles Marcus Edwards was seemingly a workaday papermill employee with a short military career, a wife named Penny, and two young sons back in 1964.

Speaker 2 However, Edwards moved from his home in the Kirby community on May 3, 1964, the day after Dean Moore disappeared from Meadville.

Speaker 2 With new information in hand, we returned south again in March 2006, the next trip of many I would make south almost always with Thomas.

Speaker 2 This time we would try approaching Edwards at his home, deep in the backwoods of Franklin County, to see if he would talk to Thomas.

Speaker 2 Time for a drive down Bunkley Road.

Speaker 10 This place has deteriorated terribly in the last 40 years, so what you see is a

Speaker 10 measurement stick. How far have we really gone?

Speaker 2 Bunkley was the Klan stronghold in Franklin County at the time and many of the most violent members lived here.

Speaker 2 But times changed and the white community over the years had sold off or abandoned their former properties.

Speaker 2 As we drove the roughly 12 miles to Edwards' house, I saw barking dogs and shanty shacks, cleared grassy spaces where farms would have been, all covered in a drifting brimstone of smoke from controlled burns in the surrounding homachito pine woods.

Speaker 2 It had just started to rain as I drove up.

Speaker 2 I approached Edwards' house trying to calm his black and white dog.

Speaker 2 Hey there.

Speaker 2 Edwards himself rose from a swing chair under a porch.

Speaker 2 He was a robust-looking man in his 70s with a salt and pepper mustache and big glasses, dressed in a gray sweatsuit with a camouflage pattern hunting cap.

Speaker 4 He just just wants to talk of my place.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry, sir. He just wants to talk.

Speaker 4 I don't want to talk about that. I'm not guilty of that, and I've had enough of it.

Speaker 7 Get in your car and get away from me.

Speaker 2 He wasn't guilty of that, he says.

Speaker 3 I'm sure Mr. Moore would just like a few words.

Speaker 4 I'm not having nothing to do with him, and I want you to get off my land.

Speaker 3 Okay, sorry, sir. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 2 He had planned that Thomas, who was back in the van, would accompany me, but when I returned to the vehicle with Edwards' barky dog in fixed pursuit of my heels, I found Thomas crouching on the floor.

Speaker 2 The way the van was situated, I had to make a several-point turn at the end of Edwards' dead-end country road and drive past him again.

Speaker 2 As we went by, I noticed Edwards was holding a crowbar and hitting the side of an old shack at the foot of his property with it.

Speaker 14 Duck when we go by here.

Speaker 14 I'm not leaving here without seeing that guy, that's for sure.

Speaker 11 Couldn't have asked for better, he was sitting on his porch.

Speaker 2 I knew Thomas was angry with himself and I could barely bring myself to talk to him about it.

Speaker 2 Later, months later, Thomas would admit to me that he'd felt like a failure for not confronting Edwards.

Speaker 2 When the moment came, he was struck by an overwhelming anxiety that kept him down on the floor of the van.

Speaker 15 Do you think that you'll ever be able to talk to Charles Marcus Edwards or James Ford Seal?

Speaker 16 I'm not going to ever say I won't be able to, but you got to ask yourself how long

Speaker 16 time is running out.

Speaker 17 Do we ever have the time?

Speaker 16 Opportunity.

Speaker 7 I think this was the greatest opportunity to talk to Markham.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 14 I was kind of thinking that you were going to maybe reach your head out and say something. I was trying to figure out why you didn't, but

Speaker 2 it was a difficult time in the case, a point where Thomas and I were still gathering information and interviewing, and the southern authorities seemed to be waiting for us to give them more reasons to budge.

Speaker 18 There was an FBI agent

Speaker 19 by the name of Bill Dukes who questioned them.

Speaker 18 He's deceased.

Speaker 18 There was an FBI agent by the name of Curtis Perriman.

Speaker 18 He's deceased.

Speaker 2 Jim Ingram, a man who had a long history with Mississippi law enforcement and the FBI, was brought out of retirement by Dunn Lampton to help find aging witnesses for the Dean Moore case.

Speaker 2 And he wasn't having much luck.

Speaker 18 There's an FBI agent, Lenny. He is in an Alzheimer's home in California.

Speaker 18 He doesn't even know who he is. There's two

Speaker 18 highway patrol investigators. They were in on the interviews.
They are dead. So that's exactly where we are.

Speaker 2 Not a great place to be if we hope to build a case against Edwards and Seale. A fact not lost on Lambton.

Speaker 22 I've just come to the realization that whatever we're going to do, it needs to be done quickly.

Speaker 10 I mean, if this thing drags

Speaker 22 out much longer, it will be moved. And it gets

Speaker 22 less and less prosecutable every day.

Speaker 23 I totally agree.

Speaker 6 That's where we are.

Speaker 2 In the intervening months of collecting and working through the files, audio clips, photos, and other state and federal records, I came upon many names of people connected to the investigation.

Speaker 2 Klansmen who had participated in the crime or had knowledge of it.

Speaker 2 FBI and MHSP agents who had investigated the case, divers who had recovered the remains of Dean Moore in October of 1964, along with the Jeep Motor and other heavy weights they were attached to.

Speaker 2 Witnesses, informants, Buzz, and quite a lot of bullshit.

Speaker 2 A flurry of excitement and action surrounded my finding of an original document at a Mississippi University archive that contained the confession by Charles Edwards on the day of his arrest in November 1964.

Speaker 2 The document, strangely an original, had been sitting untouched for so long that the paperclip had rusted and fused into the sheets.

Speaker 2 It was an affidavit signed in blue pen by an arresting officer named Gwynne Cole of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol. And I discover Gwynne Cole was still alive.

Speaker 2 If Cole could remember Edward's confession, he'd be an excellent witness for any grand jury proceeding.

Speaker 2 Lampton agreed, and on another trip south, he, Thomas, two officers from MHSP, and I drove to Gwynne Cole's house to meet with him, all of us packed into a tiny car.

Speaker 2 The MHSP officer in the passenger seat who does most of the talking is named Alan Applewhite.

Speaker 2 The second officer, the driver, is named Dewey Weems. Quiet and wary of me and my camera, Weems was just beginning his career in the early 60s and was involved involved with the Dean Moore case.

Speaker 2 The first occasion was when Charles Moore was still alive.

Speaker 2 Weems was tasked by Governor Paul Johnson to investigate and ultimately quell the student protest at Alcorn College on April 20th and 21st, 1964.

Speaker 2 Weems actually took the photos I have of the protest that show the Alcorn students standing on bleachers of the football field with their backs turned defiantly to the camera.

Speaker 2 I'd like to know more about that situation because essentially, Charles Moore became available for the clan to pick up in Meadville because he was suspended from Alcorn shortly after Weems took the pictures.

Speaker 2 But Weems, who has since died, wouldn't agree to a formal interview.

Speaker 2 Weems, along with Gwen Cole, arrested Charles Marcus Edwards.

Speaker 2 We've just pulled up outside Gwyn Cole's house.

Speaker 6 We can get out, we can't.

Speaker 23 We can get out, I mean, just don't

Speaker 7 ride crap on that just 60 million.

Speaker 10 I'm not going to ambush somebody.

Speaker 19 I mean, I've noted it enough.

Speaker 14 Don't forget about it.

Speaker 2 Lambton thinks Cole will talk more openly without my physical presence in the room, so on the spot, I agree to remain outside while Thomas goes in with the others to record the conversation.

Speaker 2 Lambton takes a color copy of the affidavit I found with Gwynne Cole's signature.

Speaker 26 Thomas Moore.

Speaker 27 How you doing?

Speaker 6 I don't remember you.

Speaker 25 This is Thomas Moore. This is Charles Edward Moore's brother.

Speaker 21 Come on around, sit down.

Speaker 26 Just tell us

Speaker 2 what happened.

Speaker 10 So he can hear that from you.

Speaker 10 Just

Speaker 19 with the arrest and why you signed the...

Speaker 26 affidavit.

Speaker 26 Just tell us what you signed up.

Speaker 21 You know what I'm saying down there in Meadow.

Speaker 2 Justice of the peace.

Speaker 21 I think we woke him up, if I'm not badly mistaken, and

Speaker 21 he signed that warrant for us to correct him.

Speaker 2 In the early morning hours of November 6, 1964, a Justice of the Peace in Meadville issued arrest warrants for James Ford Seal and Charles Marcus Edwards, charging them with the murder of Henry D.

Speaker 2 and Charles Moore.

Speaker 26 So y'all, you got the arrest warrant?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Okay, what happened after that?

Speaker 17 We picked him up.

Speaker 26 And who is we?

Speaker 10 Do you remember who was there?

Speaker 27 Well, me and

Speaker 17 Bill Dukes, the FBI agent, and

Speaker 21 the rest of them, I don't remember who was there.

Speaker 17 To tell you the truth.

Speaker 21 I'm telling the truth, because I don't know.

Speaker 2 Not a stellar start, but Gwynne Cole's in poor health and his memory is filled with many investigations. In fact, Cole was one of the lead investigators on the Mississippi Burning case.

Speaker 2 According to Cole's signed affidavit, Charles Marcus Edwards was arrested at 5.25 a.m., November 6, 1964, at his new residence in Bunkley.

Speaker 2 Edwards moved from his previous home in the Kirby community the day after Dean Moore went missing.

Speaker 2 Gwynne Cole knocked at the front door and Edwards answered, leaving the screen door locked. Cole identified himself and the other officers and told Edwards he wanted to talk with him.

Speaker 2 Edwards asked Cole if he had a warrant, and Cole replied that he did, a warrant charging him with murder. Edwards was informed of his rights, and the officers left with him in custody at 5.29 a.m.

Speaker 2 en route to Jackson, Mississippi.

Speaker 21 I rode in the back seat.

Speaker 17 of a car of FBI agent.

Speaker 19 Me and Bill Dukes, and we had Edwards in the back seat with with us.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 26 Did he say anything going to Jackson?

Speaker 11 Not a word.

Speaker 2 Initially, Edwards denied having any knowledge of the disappearance of Henry D. and Charles Moore.

Speaker 2 Quote, Edwards was visibly nervous and stated several times during the course of the interview that his main concern was for his family, particularly his wife and children.

Speaker 2 At 9.07 a.m., after nearly two hours of questioning, Edwards changed his story.

Speaker 2 He claimed that he'd been forced to move from his old neighborhood several months before because his wife was afraid of who she referred to as Negroes who parked in front of their home at night.

Speaker 2 Edwards stated that Dee was one of these men and that his wife had complained that she had seen Dee on one occasion peeping at her.

Speaker 2 It is true that Dee lived near Edwards in the Kirby community, but it would be shown later that the peeping story was Edwards' attempt to misdirect the officers.

Speaker 2 Edwards then stated that it was because of this that he had gone with James Ford Seal and others to pick up Henry Dee in Meadville.

Speaker 2 He didn't know the identity of the other Negro with Dee at the time, he said.

Speaker 2 Edwards stated that their intention was to whip Dee and Moore, which they did in the nearby woods.

Speaker 2 Edwards stated that he did not know what happened to them after that, but the two were still alive when he left. He declined to identify the others who were present.

Speaker 2 Edwards advised he had nothing to do with any murders, stated he would not testify and would not give a signed statement.

Speaker 2 But even without a signed statement, Edwards had just confessed to officers that he'd been involved with kidnapping and assaulting Dean Moore.

Speaker 2 But did Cole remember it? That's all I know about it.

Speaker 13 Were you present with the

Speaker 13 come out?

Speaker 21 Bill told me that

Speaker 25 the boy had made a statement.

Speaker 19 I said, yeah, what did he tell you?

Speaker 21 He told me to him and there was seals.

Speaker 21 Picked him up on that, picked him up on the highway.

Speaker 21 Took him up there in the woods and whipped him.

Speaker 10 That's what he said, Edwards.

Speaker 11 That's what he said.

Speaker 28 Edwards told me.

Speaker 26 You weren't present during the interview, no.

Speaker 2 This was going to be a problem.

Speaker 2 While Gwynne Cole had taken part in the arrest arrest of Edwards and accompanied him to Jackson, he had not, according to his recollection, heard the confession from Charles Edwards directly.

Speaker 23 Let me ask you this.

Speaker 10 Have you signed the affidavit?

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Why did you sign it?

Speaker 21 Bill, this sheriff did in front of me and said sign it.

Speaker 26 I just want to know, is that your signature?

Speaker 21 That's my signature. Yes, sir.

Speaker 21 That is my signature.

Speaker 26 Had you ever talked to anyone that told you they knew who killed Moore and Deeves? Did you ever talk to anyone that told you, I know what happened?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 26 Did you know Gilbert?

Speaker 26 Ernest Gilbert. Ernest Gilbert.
He was the FBI informant.

Speaker 19 Did you know him at all?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 26 Had you ever been told

Speaker 19 by the FBI where they got that information?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 19 Who else other than Dukes might have been in that meeting, in that interrogation?

Speaker 17 The FBI agent, but I can't call his name. He was from Texas.

Speaker 11 Okay. He was with us.

Speaker 2 This would have been FBI agent Curtis Perryman, but both Dukes and Perryman were dead.

Speaker 2 It's clear that Gwynne Cole isn't going to be our star witness after all.

Speaker 2 Why wasn't Cole in the room with Edwards and the two FBI agents when Edwards gave his confession is one question I might have asked.

Speaker 2 Thomas is nearly speechless.

Speaker 26 Well

Speaker 2 he's claiming that

Speaker 16 he wasn't there, but he stayed as his signature.

Speaker 16 Oh, man.

Speaker 22 Baby, you see, I can't

Speaker 28 go to court and put Gwen Cole on the stand and ask him what happened.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 it's over.

Speaker 22 I mean, once he says I never heard the statement, it's over.

Speaker 2 And you've got to...

Speaker 2 Gwen Cole didn't witness Edwards' confession, and that makes me wonder what District Attorney Lennox Foreman knew at the time, because Cole was one of the main people who was supposed to have told Foreman the information about the case.

Speaker 2 Foreman didn't move forward on anything, despite what appears on paper at least to be ample evidence.

Speaker 2 The FBI sometimes did not share information with local authorities for fear they were in the Klan.

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 With so many people involved dead, it's impossible to know for sure what happened.

Speaker 30 They had the information to prosecute, but they didn't because they would have lost their informants.

Speaker 11 That's right.

Speaker 22 I mean, the state didn't.

Speaker 2 But Alan Applewhite offers what sounds like at least an arguable theory for why the case never went forward in 1964.

Speaker 13 More important than my brother and everything.

Speaker 28 That's right.

Speaker 6 Why?

Speaker 24 Why?

Speaker 14 Because

Speaker 6 they were looking at the big picture.

Speaker 2 Once Dee and Moore were discovered, the FBI began an investigation into their case.

Speaker 2 Then, Klansman Ernest Gilbert, the man FBI called JN30, came forward with information about the murders. The FBI saw this as an opportunity to use the D.

Speaker 2 Moore case as a vehicle to develop more informants for other cases. So the FBI didn't want to give Gilbert up, nor did they want his fellow Klansmen to find out he was informing and kill him.

Speaker 2 And when it came to sharing information about cases with local authorities like Gwynne Cole or even Lennox Foreman, the FBI may not have been as forthcoming as they needed to be.

Speaker 2 All combined to keep the Dean Moore case from moving forward.

Speaker 6 Nice to meet you, sir. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Nice to meet you. Keep in touch.
We say goodbye to the two Mississippi Highway Patrolmen and try to figure out our next moves.

Speaker 31 Hi, I'll thank you.

Speaker 2 So we still have reason reason for hope, Don, you think, in this case?

Speaker 10 Always reason, okay?

Speaker 29 Always reason to hope.

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Speaker 2 While working this case, we had to look for ways to conjure a lot of hope. And Thomas often tried to do this by bringing the Dean Moore story to the local community.

Speaker 11 Public opinion hurts.

Speaker 29 You know, it's okay if you isolate yourself. However, if the community isolate themselves from these two individuals,

Speaker 13 then it's going to hurt.

Speaker 2 On one such occasion, we visited the Roxy Baptist Church, the very church whose name was shouted out by either Dee or Moore during their torture as a possible hiding place for guns.

Speaker 2 The Reverend Clyde Briggs's old congregation.

Speaker 2 Thomas wanted some local help for something he had in mind for James Ford Seal.

Speaker 10 Well, David, this is one of the most important things that we're about to do.

Speaker 10 This is a big day.

Speaker 10 They're gonna saw a singer pretty soon.

Speaker 2 A portrait of the late Reverend Clyde Briggs hangs up high, centered behind the pulpit.

Speaker 2 The church was full of its regular attendees dressed in their Sunday best, along with a few who Thomas had invited and some press from Jackson and Natchez.

Speaker 2 After some rousing gospel, Thomas stood at the front. Beside him, a sign on a pole that we'd made in Jackson.

Speaker 2 There, written in black and red text on white plastic, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah D.

Speaker 2 Rest in peace and justice, With the word justice underlined in red.

Speaker 33 First of all, it's an honor for me to be here.

Speaker 10 My name is Thomas Moore, the son of Mazer Moore from Franklin County, Meadville, Mississippi.

Speaker 33 My brother was Charles Eddie Moore as a terrible thing happened 41 years ago.

Speaker 33 Do I have a right to be here?

Speaker 10 I have a right to be here

Speaker 33 because I am going to hold Franklin County,

Speaker 33 the state of Mississippi,

Speaker 25 accountable for the death of Charles Edward Moore and Henry David.

Speaker 33 I cannot fight this battle by myself. So I need you to demand from your local authorities

Speaker 23 justice.

Speaker 23 Because Franklin County would never get over this until this shout is removed. If they can do it in Neshawa County,

Speaker 23 You can do it here.

Speaker 10 This is the time.

Speaker 25 This is our time. This is not time for violence.

Speaker 33 Now, you want to ask me what I thought about done?

Speaker 25 We don't want to talk about that in church.

Speaker 33 I still think about what I could have done.

Speaker 10 But I want to sit in the courthouse

Speaker 23 and I want to watch them walk through.

Speaker 33 If you read the Clarence Ledger two days ago, the head of artists told me about, is the Ku Klux Klan really dead?

Speaker 33 They are trying to come back.

Speaker 10 And we need to stay on top of this.

Speaker 29 And I don't have no fear.

Speaker 33 I don't have no fear.

Speaker 33 Yea, though I walk through the valleys of the shadows of death,

Speaker 29 I have no fear.

Speaker 33 What is the difference? They are fighting terrorists,

Speaker 33 and we got two right here in Franklin County:

Speaker 33 James Ford Seal,

Speaker 13 Charles Marcus Edwards. I am leaving here in just a few minutes,

Speaker 33 and I am going to place this sign

Speaker 10 not only as personal problem,

Speaker 33 but on public ground.

Speaker 33 Because I want everybody that passed by to know this guy lives here.

Speaker 23 That we're watching you,

Speaker 10 and it's just a matter of time.

Speaker 23 If anybody wants to go with me, let's go.

Speaker 33 I'm going out of here.

Speaker 2 Thomas walks out the front door of the church, and several men and a few women follow.

Speaker 2 He was. The atmosphere in the church was electric.
The group makes their way to Highway 33 at the BP station.

Speaker 2 Then, with Thomas carrying the sign, another carrying a ladder and another a large old-fashioned five-pound hammer, The group walks along the gravel shoulder toward the place where James Seal lives.

Speaker 33 Come on up here, brother Rev.

Speaker 23 Right there by that twice sign.

Speaker 33 We're not gonna be on this property.

Speaker 2 This is where we live.

Speaker 23 Mac, we're gonna put it right there by that 55 miles out.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 33 I'm not going over in front of his house.

Speaker 13 He ain't crazy enough to sh. He ain't gonna do nothing, you know.

Speaker 27 We know that.

Speaker 33 He's a coward, dude.

Speaker 23 What about right here?

Speaker 2 The men hammer the sign at the top of the driveway, well within sight of Seals RV, and obvious to any passerby.

Speaker 13 Hi there.

Speaker 28 That's pretty good.

Speaker 23 Heavenly Father, we come at this moment.

Speaker 33 Give you all the praise.

Speaker 2 Then the men stand in a circle next to the sign and stack their hands in the center, like spokes in a wheel.

Speaker 28 Lord,

Speaker 23 right this wrong, Heavenly Father.

Speaker 2 Amen.

Speaker 23 Okay, let's go.

Speaker 2 Thomas would erect other signs around Franklin County to memorialize Charles and Henry.

Speaker 2 The sign at Seale's house would be ripped down within the hour, but the message from the local community to Seal was clear.

Speaker 2 With Gwynne Cole unable to give us an eyewitness account of Edward's confession, Thomas and I decided to focus on Seal's arrest.

Speaker 2 According to my ever-growing stack of documents, Seale may have inadvertently given a partial confession himself.

Speaker 2 The names on the FBI report detailing Seale's arrest were MHSP agents Nat Trout, deceased, and Ford O'Neill, also deceased.

Speaker 2 FBI Special Agent Leonard Wolfe, who I'd heard had Alzheimer's and didn't even know who he was, and FBI agent Edward Putz.

Speaker 2 Mississippi officials had told me that Putz was either senile or dead. Here's District Attorney Ronnie Harper explaining the situation.

Speaker 34 We know that Putz is not available. We know that

Speaker 34 these guys are either deceased or have no ability to recall what happened.

Speaker 2 But after a quick brush through an online phone book, I found an Edward Putz living in Miami and gave him a call.

Speaker 12 Hello. Can I speak to Ed Putts, please?

Speaker 35 This is he.

Speaker 12 Oh, hi, Mr. Putz.
My name is David, and I'm working on a story about a killing case that you may have worked on down in Mississippi down in 1964.

Speaker 35 Right.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I think you know the case. It's the D.
Moore case. And I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about it because I think you can really help shed some light on that case.
Right.

Speaker 12 Do you remember the case?

Speaker 6 Sure.

Speaker 35 You mean the two guys that they tied to a tree and whipped and then threw in the the Mississippi?

Speaker 12 That's it. Right.
That's it.

Speaker 2 Far from being senile or dead at age 88, I found Special Agent Putz to be sharp and clear, and he didn't suffer fools. Most importantly, after 40 years, he still remembered everything.

Speaker 12 Now, I've been reading some documents here, and it says that you were involved in the arrest of James Ford Seale.

Speaker 35 That's right.

Speaker 12 Now, do you remember taking Mr. Seale to Jackson?

Speaker 35 Right.

Speaker 12 And do you remember him admitting on the way there, well, it's a partial admission.

Speaker 35 He said he did, but

Speaker 35 we never prove it.

Speaker 12 Right. Something like that.

Speaker 35 Did you see my FD 302?

Speaker 12 There is an FT-302 here, and I just wanted to get your version of the story. It's sort of...

Speaker 35 Whatever's in the FD-302 is what he said.

Speaker 12 Actually, I'll just read it to you here, if you don't mind. It's a little paragraph here.
I guess Special Agent Wolf was someone that was with you, and and he said

Speaker 35 yeah Lenny Wolfe out of Chicago. He's dead.

Speaker 12 Oh he's dead? Oh that's unfortunate.

Speaker 12 He says we know that on Saturday afternoon May 2nd 1964 you picked up in your car Henry Dee and Charles Moore two Negro boys from Roxy.

Speaker 12 You and Charles Edwards and others took them to some remote place and beat them to death. You then transported and disposed of their bodies by dropping them in the Mississippi River.

Speaker 12 You didn't even give them a decent burial. We know you did it.
You know you did it. The Lord above knows you did it.
And then James Seal says,

Speaker 12 yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You're going to have to prove it.
And you remember that conversation? Yes, I do.

Speaker 12 Wow.

Speaker 12 How did you get him to say that, though?

Speaker 28 How? Yeah.

Speaker 35 I don't know. You know,

Speaker 35 I mean, maybe he was...

Speaker 35 Hard to say.

Speaker 24 Hard to say.

Speaker 35 Do you think... I mean, we didn't beat him or anything like that, you know?

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 12 Right, because there was that, wasn't there, there was that allegation, wasn't there, that Ford O'Neill had

Speaker 36 beaten him. And what do you know about that?

Speaker 20 No, no, no.

Speaker 2 James Ford Seale went to a Justice of the Peace in Franklin County and swore an affidavit that MHSP officer Ford O'Neill did willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously commit an assault and battery on him during Seale's November 64 arrest.

Speaker 2 Nothing came of the charges, but District Attorney Lennox Foreman later stated that he believed the story of the beating that Seal put out in the community would have a detrimental effect on the case and used it as one of the reasons he wouldn't go forward with a grand jury.

Speaker 35 You can never beat a guy because you, if you beat a guy, they tell you what you want to hear, and then you'd never know whether it's the truth or not.

Speaker 36 Well, I thank you very much for talking to me today, sir. I hope I hope we can talk again, and I may give you a call next week and just check up.

Speaker 15 All right. Thanks very much, sir.

Speaker 11 Bye-bye.

Speaker 2 In another conversation, Ed Putz let me know that he didn't want to sit down for a filmed interview, but he was willing to testify if it ever came to that.

Speaker 2 Thomas called Lambton with the news about Putz. Spell that last name for me.

Speaker 2 He

Speaker 2 and Paul UPZ and Zulu. He's located in Florida.
Okay.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, what we will do is go down and interview him.
I want to think that he is somebody that Jim Ingram had on their list to go interview. Apparently, beaten us to the punch, which is

Speaker 2 fine. And we'll just have to see in the context of everything how that fits in.
That still

Speaker 2 may not give us what we need to be in federal court.

Speaker 2 I remember the frustration building in Thomas and I around this time. We felt that if we stopped pressing even for a moment, that the whole push for justice would come to a crashing halt.

Speaker 2 Thomas felt that through the course of filming over 15 months, we were doing things that officials should be doing by now: looking through the documents, finding witnesses, looking for new evidence.

Speaker 2 It was true that we'd had many promises, but nothing seemed to move forward unless we were on the ground and in people's faces.

Speaker 37 Over the last year,

Speaker 37 you know, it's

Speaker 7 I'm frustrated that

Speaker 38 I

Speaker 39 bring them information and

Speaker 39 they say, you know, well, are you beating me to the point?

Speaker 7 Well, yeah, we are beating it to the point because we're punching.

Speaker 39 My question is, are they punching?

Speaker 2 Thomas decided that it was time to confront his demons once and for all. He would attempt to speak to Charles Edwards face to face one more time.

Speaker 2 Only by meeting his fear fear head-on, Thomas felt, would he be able to find some peace.

Speaker 2 Also, being the victim's brother, Thomas's gut instincts had always told him that only he could get the conspirators in his brother's case to start talking.

Speaker 2 But how to arrange a face-to-face meet and where?

Speaker 2 We'd spent a lot of time, especially in the beginning of our investigation, speaking to people about Edwards and Seal.

Speaker 15 A couple of guys, one guy's named Charles Marcus Edwards.

Speaker 20 You ever heard of that guy? Yeah, uh-huh. You know that guy? Well, he lives in

Speaker 20 Bunkley from where I'm from.

Speaker 20 That's my daddy's uncle. Oh, really? Yeah.
See him a lot, man. We hunt together, deer hunt, and all that.
But, you know, we don't ever talk about nothing like this.

Speaker 2 What's he like?

Speaker 7 What's he like? Yeah.

Speaker 20 He's a church-going man.

Speaker 6 He

Speaker 20 helps you do anything you ask him to do.

Speaker 20 Drows a garden every year. Just a country fella, you know?

Speaker 19 Real good guy.

Speaker 15 Is he a good hunter?

Speaker 20 Oh, yeah. Deacon kills a deer.

Speaker 2 So aside from being a decent hunter, Edwards was also a good gardener and a church-going man.

Speaker 40 Have you heard of this case, though? I know that the one of the men that supposedly had something to do with it is a deacon in our church.

Speaker 15 He's the deacon in your church? Would this be Mr. Edwards? Is it Charles Marcus Edwards? Right.
Okay, I guess he's still alive then, obviously.

Speaker 20 He's the deacon in your church.

Speaker 40 Yeah, he's still very much alive.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 15 What church is that? Is that a bat? Obviously, it's a Baptist church?

Speaker 24 Bunkley. Bunkley Baptist.

Speaker 40 That's about 50 miles from here.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 15 And is he there every Sunday?

Speaker 6 Every Sunday.

Speaker 24 Yeah. It has been for years.

Speaker 6 Years and years and years.

Speaker 2 The deacon of a church, the Bunkley Baptist Church. This could be an opportunity.

Speaker 10 Well, let me ask you this. If...

Speaker 37 Believe me, my mind ain't made up. I'm just torn in between this thing here.

Speaker 2 Thomas and I had discussed a plan for confronting Edwards, but first he wanted to run it by Dunlampton.

Speaker 10 If I decided to go down to the church and see him, he may get mad and walk away from me.

Speaker 27 But with that, in fact, when you find out that I went down and talked to him, is that going to have any interference with what you're going to do?

Speaker 2 As Deacon Edwards would likely be one of the first to arrive on any given Sunday, Thomas wanted to try for for a showdown here.

Speaker 2 If Edwards was a religious man, perhaps the church would make him think twice about telling a lie.

Speaker 37 I mean, I want to do the right thing.

Speaker 10 All right, sir. Well, thanks for talking with me there.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 7 we'll talk shortly.

Speaker 33 Thank you, sir.

Speaker 7 So I'm clear with my decision.

Speaker 37 Let's go knock this shit out.

Speaker 39 Because, you know, I was concerned that,

Speaker 10 and matter of fact, he said, he said, if you decide to go, I'm still gonna do what I gotta do.

Speaker 37 And that's what kind of clear my mind.

Speaker 7 You see what I'm saying?

Speaker 37 So, fuck it, let's let's get a goddamn betting practice and get grand slam to somebody.

Speaker 39 I mean, like you said, you know, I would hate for you to leave here, and we didn't try.

Speaker 37 Now, we go down there, and he ain't there, we get the fuck on out of bunker.

Speaker 39 But if he there,

Speaker 37 here I am, man, run, but you can't fucking hide.

Speaker 36 Tell me what you're gonna do and tell me what you're doing.

Speaker 24 Well,

Speaker 10 I'm gonna prepare an envelope

Speaker 16 to pass them Charles Marcus Edwards

Speaker 16 today if he come to church.

Speaker 16 What I have here is a...

Speaker 16 A few pages from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Report. In this report, it has the name of Charles Marcus Edwards, James Seal,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 16 allegedly that they picked up Charles Moore and Henry Dee.

Speaker 16 I've carefully blackened out some information that I didn't want him to know about right at this time.

Speaker 16 And I want to ask him, Charles Edwards,

Speaker 16 why do he have a bad case of conscience? Why is his name in this document?

Speaker 16 I'm sure he haven't seen this.

Speaker 16 My intent is to give this to

Speaker 16 Charles Marcus Edwards, that he may have some bedtime reading stuff,

Speaker 16 just in case he has nothing else to do.

Speaker 2 Thomas writes a name on the cover of the envelope in black marker.

Speaker 16 Mr. Charles Marcus Edwards.

Speaker 2 And then seals it.

Speaker 16 Happy dream.

Speaker 16 All right.

Speaker 16 Test one, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Speaker 16 We should be getting pretty close.

Speaker 2 The church is a simple red brick building with a whitewashed wooden steeple. A sign with letters falling off out front reads, Unkey Baptet Herch, Bunkley Baptist Church.

Speaker 2 On a pole next to the sign hangs a small church bell. Anybody who rang it would soon find out that there were dozens of red wasps building a nest inside.

Speaker 14 I think the best thing is to just keep going back and forth in the front of his plane because then we're then we're on the road and going and it's.

Speaker 20 Okay.

Speaker 2 After more than an hour of luckless drive-bys, around 9:35 a.m., Thomas was ready to throw in the towel.

Speaker 2 And then.

Speaker 2 There's the car.

Speaker 2 Is that his car?

Speaker 14 Yep, that's his car.

Speaker 17 Want to do it now?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Ready? Go.

Speaker 2 Charles Marcus Edwards had parked his Chevy Impala in front of the church and was following his wife toward the front door. I pull the van into the lane, grab a small camera, and Thomas and I get out.

Speaker 2 In my hurry, I leave the van running and you can hear it in the background.

Speaker 23 Mr. Edwards,

Speaker 41 how you doing, sir?

Speaker 2 I got something for you, sir.

Speaker 6 What is it?

Speaker 16 There's something that I think you you want to read.

Speaker 41 You take it on the back. No, no, no, sir.

Speaker 38 Take it on back, please.

Speaker 41 No, sir.

Speaker 27 I want you to read it because...

Speaker 41 Well, I want to ask you why your name is in no FBI report, sir.

Speaker 6 I'm not on no FBI report.

Speaker 11 That's what you have in your hand, sir.

Speaker 31 I'm not.

Speaker 31 All I want to do is talk to you. What's your name, sir?

Speaker 11 My name is Moore.

Speaker 38 Thomas James Moore.

Speaker 31 I'm going to tell you, sir. I did not kill you, brother.

Speaker 31 I didn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 41 Well, sir, all I want to ask you, why is your name and James Ford Seal in the document?

Speaker 31 Well the FBI, the SOI dropped all this case, and you know that.

Speaker 38 Well I know that I know from the FBI file sir that he'll know they dropped your case because it wasn't any evidence and I didn't have anything.

Speaker 31 I've never been on that mission river in my life.

Speaker 14 Sir, did you have anything? Did you have anything to do with picking those boys up though, sir?

Speaker 41 Down the city? The boy said that you and Jane Forteal picked them up.

Speaker 10 It did not say you killed them.

Speaker 2 Edwards pauses, looks at his feet, then starts to move toward the church, pulling his wife along with him. His silence speaks.

Speaker 14 Did you have anything to do with that, sir, picking those boys up? I hadn't got any.

Speaker 31 I hadn't got anything. Y'all get off this church now and quit stirring up the building on the church.

Speaker 2 Edwards finally reaches the door of the church, clearly preoccupied, starts fumbling with his keys to open the white doors.

Speaker 5 Mr. Edwards, why did you move the day after those boys were killed?

Speaker 2 Finally, Edwards gets the door door open, and he and his wife are gone.

Speaker 15 Time to go. Yeah.

Speaker 14 How do you feel now?

Speaker 6 I feel great. I feel great.

Speaker 27 I feel great. I mean, I did what I had to do.

Speaker 39 Stay got wasn't a success.

Speaker 16 I got down.

Speaker 10 42 years I took me to see that son of this to his face.

Speaker 27 He showed the nervousness. He talking about he'd never been on that Mississippi River.

Speaker 10 And nobody say he'd been on the Mississippi River.

Speaker 27 I asked him the question. I can't think of anything else I need to ask him.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 27 He made me ask him the question.

Speaker 16 All I want to know is why your name is in the FBI documents.

Speaker 7 If he was nervous last year, he fucked up now.

Speaker 14 Get him on the stand. He will not lie.
That guy will say he picked him up on the stand.

Speaker 14 You got to call Dunlampton and tell him. Because

Speaker 14 the way he didn't answer when I asked if he picked those boys up, he will talk, he will speak the truth in the court.

Speaker 7 If he's forced to, he will.

Speaker 8 You have been listening to episode four

Speaker 8 Bunkley.

Speaker 8 Visit cbc.ca/slash sks to see video of the encounters with Charles Marcus Edwards and James Ford Seal.

Speaker 8 And subscribe to SKS on your favorite podcast app.

Speaker 8 Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen.

Speaker 8 The series is also produced by Chris Oak, Steph Kampf, Amal Dudlich, Eunice Kim, and executive producer, Arif Nurani, and mixed by Cecil Fernandez. Our theme song is Terrorized by Willie King.

Speaker 9 Now you talk about terror.

Speaker 9 I think you talk about terror.

Speaker 9 People have been terrorized

Speaker 9 all my days.

Speaker 16 So, what is his name? Do you think that that was a

Speaker 6 slam dunk?

Speaker 6 Slam dunk home run

Speaker 14 star traveler rocket ship.

Speaker 2 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/slash podcasts.