S28 E2: The Klansman | "Someone Knows Something"

After the podcast sponsor has

an international logo,

and use

the newspaper.

Wise Videsh means

fast, safe, transparent, and affordable.

Bina hidden charges.

Ya achanak buddhi hui prices key.

Ap Indian bank account,

preyjano koon ki currency me madat kar sakte or pesa kahimi bhej sakte.

Smart baniy 1.5 customers kaad wise chunye.

Aaj hi wise app download kare, ya wise.com visit kare.

Terms and conditions apply.

This is a CBC podcast.

What if this just looks kind of like a town hall or something?

This is the village hall, yeah.

Oh, oh, the village hall.

Oh,

okay, you write down

who it's to

and all that, and from

all the good stuff.

It's going to be

to the FBI in Washington,

public affairs specialist.

Attention, Neil Schiff

from Thomas Moore and David Ridgeon.

Mr.

Schiff, please find and close nine pages of FBI investigation into the murder of Charles Edna Moore and Henry D.

It just happened to be the town we were going through it.

It just happened to be a problem.

What are we doing here, Thomas?

We received a call of Neil Schiffman, FBI,

and he stated that they don't have any reports of the investigation by the FBI.

Therefore, the public couldn't give us an interview.

However, when we told him that we have nine pages of an investigative report,

then he kind of agreed that if we sent it, then he'll look into it.

So that's what we're doing.

We are faxing this report to the FBI in Washington.

You are listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Original Podcasts.

In season three, David Ridgen revisits his 2007 documentary, Mississippi Cold Case.

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.

This is episode two,

The Klansman.

Now you talk about terror.

I think you talk about terror.

People have been terrorized.

All my days.

All my days.

Hey, hey, David, David, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here.

You see where that storm is over there?

At a rest stop in Texas, I'm gassing up, and Thomas, who's stretching his legs, points off to the east to a bleak, foreboding cloud.

The kind of storm that approaches forever as you drive the kilometers away under this big midwestern sky.

That is Mississippi.

That's where we are going to go.

Final destination, Mississippi.

Thomas and I shared the driving on the 18-hour journey from Colorado Springs to Franklin County, Mississippi.

Through rain and hail and even tornadoes, I'd film Thomas flipping through the memories of his 19-year-old brother Charles and friend Henry and his mother Maisie.

He told me about growing up in Mississippi driving a mule cart, plying the fields and gardens of white people, stories about his army life, picking up pieces of a friend blown up by a mine, being a Huey helicopter gunner, his killing of North Vietnamese, and then being spit on by anti-war protesters as he returns from Vietnam.

The goal of finding Charles Marcus Edwards brought us together.

Two people who probably maybe wouldn't have chosen each other as collaborators or possibly even friends under any other circumstance.

At the threshold of the unknown in a civil rights era murder narrative, the mission brought us together.

I mean, as far as my feeling,

I would never trust a white male down here.

No.

No.

Right now, the only guy that

is even close to that is Jerry Mitchell, as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know about us down here.

We'd be going to visit Jerry Mitchell in Jackson in just a couple of weeks.

When you were in the Army, was that the first time that you sort of were exposed to white people, like in terms of talking and having to live with them?

Yeah, because I didn't stay in New Orleans long enough

after I got out of high school to deal with too many white.

So yeah, in the military is where

I had first opportunity to deal with white and to

respect them as individual.

I mean,

I'm tomb sergeant in Vietnam, this guy, white guy, he knew I was scared.

First mission, is you scared?

I was like, yep.

He went back to the rug sack and got a fifth of liquor, told me how he drank.

He was on a helicopter, going on missing.

So they took care of, you know, I mean, I respect that.

The Vietnam War was the first major conflict where U.S.

forces were not segregated.

Black and white were made to work alongside each other toward a common military goal.

But still, trust issues persisted for Thomas.

But you know,

I get the feeling sometimes that

are you telling me everything you know are you just telling me enough to satisfy me?

And that's the same way I feel about Harper.

What do you mean your hands are tied?

What do you mean?

Ronnie Harper is the long-serving district attorney in the area of Mississippi we're going.

Thomas has met him before, but come away from those meetings not wholly satisfied.

And we'll be speaking to him again soon.

Surely

there has not been any more tragic

thing happening in Franklin County than that.

I think Franklin County,

like the movies I've seen,

something like the secret of Franklin County

Finding somebody come back and set the record straight

for you

if that's his god

huh

it's the FBI calling Hopefully the documents we faxed them have jogged their memories about the Dean Moore case.

Hello?

David?

Uh yeah, is this Mr.

Schiff?

It's Neil Schiff.

You may call me Neil.

Okay.

Okay, Neil.

How you doing?

I'm doing well.

What's up?

Hi, David.

And, you know, we did talk, and this was reviewed by superiors, and there it really is nothing for us to provide you.

Even though you had sent these pages to me, it was determined that this wasn't a federal situation, and therefore we have really nothing to be involved with.

You'd have to go to the locals and the state.

Right, but that's exactly what I need someone to tell me: is that there was an FBI investigation, and that now there's nothing going on with the case.

I need someone officially.

Do you know when they decided that there was not enough evidence?

Is this a decision from way back or just recently?

The final word from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was in our file as recently as June of 2003.

They concurred with the United States Attorney's Office here.

I'm just sitting here with Thomas Moore.

He's the brother of one of the murdered victims, and I think he might have a question for you.

I got involved several years ago, and

That's when I received the the nine pages of the FBI report.

And when I talked to Ronnie Hopper down in Natchez the district attorney the big effort was that this happened on

in the home of Children's National Forest my understanding was there were allegations

that it happened in two or three different locations

how what you mean the and there was never any provable evidence to determine factually at which location it occurred well well the FBI report said

that

they were picked up in Franklin County and taken nearby the home of Chillin National Forest and beat severely and then the bodies were transported from Mississippi, across the river into Louisiana and dropped into the Mississippi River.

That was out 41 years ago and that's in the report.

And I'm going to, while I'm in Mississippi, and I'm going to get the other 991 pages that the FBI talks about a lot more about this case.

So, you know, I'm not reading a thousand pages.

I don't have time to do that.

But whatever we did, we turned over to the Department of Justice, U.S.

Attorney's Office.

In this particular situation, it was decided that the case would be closed.

Is it possible for us to talk to any of the original investigating agents?

Well, that would be for you to go through the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI because there's no one around from 1965.

Okay, and how do I get in touch with that society?

Yes, I'll give you a phone number.

Okay.

I get the numbers for the Department of Justice Publicity and the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.

And then Deborah gives us the number for the sitting U.S.

Attorney in Jackson, a man who will become very important for this case later on.

D-U-N-N Lambton.

To clarify, there's at least two levels of justice that can potentially help in the case.

At the state level, there's District Attorney Ronnie Harper, and at the federal level, there's U.S.

Attorney Dunn Lambton.

Okay.

He would be the person in the decision-making process with regards to this case, then, Dunn.

It was his office that determined we did not have enough evidence to provide federal jurisdiction.

It was actually Lambton's predecessor, Brad Pigott, who did not move forward on a federal case in 2000.

Pigett, Reeves, Johnson, and Minor.

Later, I contacted former U.S.

Attorney Brad Pigett to ask him why the case did not proceed in 2000.

I'm afraid that

while we looked into that during my tenure as U.S.

Attorney, my memory is very scarce on that particular case,

and I really can't share any specifics for that reason.

I I see.

Do you recall why it didn't go forward in 2000?

Why the case did you?

Very generally, but not on anything that I could disclose.

No, sorry.

There must have been something that happened, right, that made it not go forward.

I don't recall.

Maybe Pigott's successor in the role of U.S.

Attorney, Dun Lambton, would be more helpful.

Then again, maybe not.

I remember these early phone calls with FBI and other officials were like talking to characters from a Kafka novel.

Unself-consciously bureaucratic, looking down with a measure of corporate condescension, but nevertheless holding out the promise of a next step no matter how frustrating or confusing.

Okay, well if I have any more questions, I hope I can call you back.

Yes, David, if you have any questions, you call me and we'll see what we can do.

Thanks very much, Neil.

Thank you, Deborah.

Bottom line, if we go with what was said here, without being able to pinpoint the place or places of the crime, where Dee and Moore were beaten, for example, jurisdictional issues seem to have been at least part of the reason things haven't moved on the case in the modern era.

But Thomas and I felt even then that there must be more to the story.

What do you think of that?

What I make of that?

What I make of that?

So far,

since yesterday, yesterday, we are continuing to prove that Mississippi is backwards.

That Mississippi is in a total denial.

Like he made a comment, you know,

I ain't got time to read a thousand documents.

Well, maybe everybody else felt that way, too.

Hello there, this is a message from Mr.

Dunn Lampton.

I make an appointment for us to see U.S.

Attorney Dunn Lampton the following week, and on the evening of July 7th, 2005, we cross the Mississippi River at the small town of Vidalia, Louisiana, and arrive in Natchez, Mississippi.

Natchez was one of the powerhouses of cotton plantation industry and culture from the time of the cotton gin in the late 1700s all the way to the early 20th century.

This area of Mississippi surrounding surrounding Natchez and into Louisiana, also an area of lumber and oil production and historically a shipping hub for traffic along the Big River, was a main focal point of the Klan and Klan violence from the mid-1950s onward.

Tourists from all over the world still flock here to visit the palatial antebellum plantation homes that used to be run by the cotton bosses and serviced by African slaves.

These plantation mansions, with names like Dunleath and Monmouth, are surrounded by opulent grounds, though the larger neighborhoods around them can be quite run down.

It's a city that has had many episodes of white-on-black and even white-on-white terror.

Explosions, horrific killings, beatings, marches, and boycotts of all kinds.

Did you watch the news this morning?

What was it?

Well,

big explosion in London.

Some Al-Qaeda outfit is claiming responsibility.

They have several explosions, on the ground, system,

at least one double-decked bus.

They know they have casualties, but it's too early to figure out how many.

Tony Blair, he spoke, saying they were a bunch of cowards.

President Bush also spoke in reference to being a bunch of cowards.

They're standing their ground against al-Qaeda.

Here we are in the 21st century dealing with a

network al-Qaeda.

There are some similarities in

today's al-Qaeda and the 60s KKK.

From the beginning, Thomas and I had planned that we would try to find and then meet with Charles Marcus Edwards, whom Thomas takes to calling simply Marcus, and ask him why his name was in the FBI files.

Thomas had never met Edwards before, and he and I knew him only through a grainy picture in the photocopy of Stephanie Saul's December 1998 Newsday article.

Edwards, then in his 60s, looked in good shape, and Thomas decided he wanted to speak to him now or forever languish in guilt.

We also wanted to interview others who may have been too afraid to come forward with information at the time.

Retired loggers who worked with whites in the woods, old bootleggers who sold moonshine to whites, even the area's few remaining black activists from the civil rights era.

And it would be the first time that the case would be publicly discussed in any community, white or black, and the first time that Thomas would talk to whites about it, period.

But before we did any of that, we wanted to experience the case on the ground, visit the places where we knew things happened.

18 miles down into Crackleville.

And very early the first morning after our arrival, we headed to Meadville, just a 20-minute drive from Natchez, to start that process.

While we're very conscious of being seen by locals, We also want to establish a visualization of where the hitchhiking began and what the sight lines might have been.

Thomas walks quickly along the road toward the edge of town, even holds out his thumb, and I position myself at various points behind him to see what can be seen.

It's very early, so there's almost nobody around, and the morning light is perfect, but neither of us are sure this approach is really getting us anywhere.

Hey, David, you know, I bet half of Franklin County knows that I'm in town.

You know, it'd be great if Marco was to come by and I hitchhike him and he give me a ride and I introduce myself, he'd probably jump out of the truck.

You probably jump out.

But Charles Marcus Edwards does not drive by, and we decide to move out of sight.

Stopped wearing your seatbelt as soon as we got into this system.

I don't know why.

Maybe that's what you're used to.

Over the course of the next many days and months and years, we'd speak to people and go to places that help us visualize the case.

This is my friend David Riddle.

Jolie Rollins is a friendly, thicker set man, bald, gray beard and glasses.

Thomas was the best man at Jolie's wedding and once we're settled at Jolie's kitchen table, The two slip into the easy shorthand of old friends for whom years apart are meaningless.

Joe Lee was reportedly one of the last people to see Charles Moore and Henry Dee before they were picked up by the Klan on May 2, 1964 in Meadville.

On Saturday, May the 2nd,

I was doing some grocery shopping at Hollinger's store

in Meadville, Mississippi.

for my mother and when I went into the store

I saw two of my classmates Charles Moore and Henry Dee.

And

I think the thing that they was

getting out of the store was everybody, we had these big sodas, they were called gut busters, they were 16 ounces, and we used to get one of them and most of the time a honey bun.

That was our favorite thing, was a big soda and a honey bun, and that's what both of them had in their hand.

So we hung outside of the store for a few minutes, you know, just kidding around because we was teenager kids.

And I hadn't seen Henry for a while.

He had, I think, if I'm not mistaken, he had just returned from Chicago.

Tell me a little bit about Charles, and then tell me a bit about Henry.

So, just the kinds of things that you remember about them.

You know, Charles was the type of guy that you'd always like to do things to make people laugh, and he was like a little funny guy.

What did he play on the football team?

Was the center on the football team?

I think the biggest guy on that team was probably me, and I think I weighed about what, 160 pounds then.

And everybody had these big players, and we used to always run

trick plays on them.

And we used to cheat on the testers like everybody in school do.

We had that down so good, it wasn't even funny.

The teachers couldn't even catch us doing that.

None of us that hung in the group never really did anything to be in trouble with nobody.

Henry was a guy,

I guess by him going to Chicago every summer, he used to tell us he was city slick.

So

he had a lot of things that he would try to take advantage of us with, but we say, hey, man, you know, we country boys, you can't beat us and stuff like that.

But, you know, I never knowed Henry to be into any problems.

And just a lot of fun.

And

we all just did normal things a kid would do.

When Henry and Charles spotted Jolie at the store, Jolie says they asked him to give them a ride home.

They asked me which way was I going I told them I was going to go up to the red and white store that was just on the other end of town and they said well come on and drop us out at the fork I said man I would be more than glad to I said well my father got me restricted with the car today I can't I can't go out of the city so they said well okay drop us up at the store so

when we got up to the store I dropped them out and they went across the streets to the gas station And I went into the supermarket and did some shopping.

And when I came out, they were

standing there and I told them I'd catch up with them later because you know we had said we was going to hang out a little bit on that Saturday night

and actually that was the last time that I actually

saw them.

The gas station was just a short walk away from the tasty freeze where Henry and Charles were ultimately picked up.

Tell me about how hitchhiking worked at that time.

Where we lived at, it was small and almost everybody, you know, black, white, whatever, knew each other.

They definitely knew the kids.

And, you know, that's,

you would jump in the car with anybody that would stop because it was a common thing.

And most of the time, you got in the car with someone that you knew.

If it was a stranger, we didn't get in the car with them.

So I'm pretty sure whoever got them, they knew who it was.

Jolie estimates that he last saw Charles and Henry around 10 or 11 a.m.

Once somebody was saying that Charles's mother had passed him and told him to wait.

She would pick him up on the way back.

Afterwards, Thomas confirmed this story that his mother Maisie had been feeling ill and decided to head to the doctor that Saturday morning.

Maisie saw her son Charles hitchhiking but was going in the opposite direction to the doctor's.

She told Thomas she decided to pick Charles up on the way back.

As a matter of fact, I talked to her and she said she wasn't gone 10 minutes and when she come back, they were gone.

Both were gone and she never seen no more or heard from them.

But there's one additional piece of information about Maisie that Thomas hadn't heard before.

I think after

they found them, I think somebody put some kind of a threat on them.

So Maisie Moore told you that she had been threatened?

Okay, now tell me about that.

One day while working in the store, Miss Maisie came in and she had did some shopping.

shopping.

And

I was bagging up the grocery tour.

I was also a bag boy in the store.

I had bagged up the stuff and I

took it out to

the car that she was riding in.

And on the way to the car, me and her were talking.

And she told me that she had been threatened, but she didn't tell me who had threatened her.

And she said that they had told her.

to don't try to do anything about her son being missing, to just leave it alone.

And I told her I said well

Mama, maybe you might need to think about moving away from out there she told me boy that's been my home.

I ain't leaving my house

I didn't realize that

Perhaps she had been threatening

but you know we never talked about that that time back then we was

We didn't want to remember.

We just didn't

want to I guess because it was it was just like a shock.

Right.

Well it was a shock.

And

she made me promise her that I wouldn't do anything.

That was the reason that it went so long.

I know, I know.

You had to wait till.

We go back over the events of that day, Saturday, May 2nd, 1964, and the following weeks, to see if Jolie can remember any other details.

I didn't realize anything had happened to them until several days later.

I was at Junior Hunt's place.

That's where we kind of hung out.

We played cards and we shot poo there and stuff like that

and these two guys come in they were white and asked for me by name and I asked them who were they and they told me that they were

FBI agents and they wanted to talk to me about Charles Moore and Henry Dee

then my father gave them permission to talk to me and we went outside and

I sat in the back seat of their car and talked to them for maybe 20 minutes to a half an hour and they was asking me about Charles and Henry and

what they had on and stuff.

I remember Charles having on a pair of jeans and I'm pretty sure it was a sweatshirt and Henry,

I don't know if he had on jeans or not, but I remember whatever he had on it was a dark blue and they

found Henry and Charles in the river and they had weights or something on them.

They had been dropped into the riverbed and

it was reported that someone fishing had found them.

I was quite upset and it was a hard thing at such a young age in my life to have to deal with.

I want to say something, David.

Just,

you know, I got

the same kind of problem too with my sister.

Jolie leaves the kitchen for a moment, then returns with a photo album showing me a time-worn picture of a young woman.

This is a picture of my sister.

She was

killed in a one-car accident.

The car burned up

maybe three-quarters of the way

and after we had the

funeral and stuff my mother made me promise her also that I wouldn't do anything until after they were deceased.

I know her sons is not satisfied with what was told to them and I know the rest of us is not satisfied with it either so we're going to look at this.

We got some people working on opening up an investigation down in the state of Mississippi on this also.

So you guys have something in common both.

I mean it seems like everybody's got somebody that's been killed.

Exactly, exactly.

And this is what happens when we were living down there in this small town and the type of shit that was going on.

We didn't know all this stuff was going on.

Like we have found out that Franklin Connor was just infested with them crew club claims.

It was.

It was.

It was.

You picked up the two boys and dropped them off, and you weren't able to take them onwards.

Right, because my father had me on a restriction with his car that day.

I couldn't leave out the city limits with his car.

I felt regret back then.

I felt it then, and I feel it now.

And, you know, I probably would, when I laid out my last time, I'd probably take it with me when I die.

And that's okay to feel that way because I feel guilty about it.

I feel guilty that me and mama didn't talk.

Jesus never talked about it.

I found that over many interviews with blacks and also some whites over the years that stories of violence and loss are a part of a legacy of deliberately sown fear and uncertainty, part of the civil rights era fabric of the area.

The feeling that tragedy or violence or even the hate could have been prevented, that justice might have been achieved if only.

Dee and Moore and the rest of the men and women we know were killed or beaten or discriminated against during those days in the 1950s and 60s were far from the only victims of the American soil terror of white supremacy.

A couple of days after arriving in Mississippi, Thomas and I took a trip into nearby Louisiana to visit someone else very important to the case.

Miss Collins.

Yeah, how you doing?

How you doing?

Thelma Collins is one of Henry Dee's sisters.

Thomas and I would find her in the small Louisiana town where she'd been living for many years.

She's a gracious woman, shorter in stature, with the resilient mindset of one who has raised 12 children and lost a brother to murder.

I see your face and you resemble Henry Dee.

Oh?

There were no known pictures of Henry Dee at the time, but Thomas saw his face and every one of his family members that we would eventually track down.

Your sister-grandson, I guess.

Uh-huh.

Henry Hezekiah Dee was born on January 8th, 1945.

He was raised in the rural village of Roxy, Mississippi by his grandmother after his mother, Isophine, was deemed mentally ill and had to be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Henry Dee was a good boy.

He went to school, he tended to his grandmother, for that was his pride of joy, his grandmother.

Henry had traveled back and forth to Chicago several times to visit an aunt there and as we heard from Joe Lee was thought of by his friends in Mississippi as a bit of a city slicker.

He had processed hair with a a reddish tinge that he was very proud of and would often wear a bandana to protect it.

And he never did bother nobody.

He would smile.

If you bring a conversation,

Henry would talk.

But other than that, he would smile.

That's the kind of person he was.

What did he want to do when he got older?

What were his aspirations?

What did Henry want to be?

He wanted to look out for his grandmother.

Work and take care of his grandmother was the main thing he had on his mind was his grandmother.

That was his proud joy because she had him ever since he was a little baby.

My mama, you know, she lost her mind.

So she left five here to us.

And they had the, the family took,

some of them took two and some took one like that to take care of.

When did she die?

She hadn't died.

My mother's living.

We hadn't told her this.

We hadn't told her this because

her mind,

I wouldn't want to be the one to break it to her.

Not me.

I wouldn't dare to break it to her.

Mama's 85.

She'll be 86 her birthday.

But she just left us.

Most of us was like five-year-old and

six and like that.

In fact, as of July 2017, Icy Fiend is still alive, in her late 90s, institutionalized, and still has no idea her son Henry Dee was murdered.

Do you still see your mother?

Yeah, we did our birthday party this month.

Where is she now?

She's in Jackson, Mississippi.

She's in a home and

she's doing fine.

Yeah, hurry.

So your mom does not know that her son Henry D is dead?

She don't know a shit.

She don't even know her husband pass.

We hadn't told her that.

Henry Dee graduated high school in 1963.

Afterward, he worked at the Haltam Lumber Company in Roxy, and on the day he was murdered, according to those who last saw him, he was on his way there to pick up his paycheck.

He and Charles Moore decided to hitch a ride together as they were going in the same direction.

In the weeks following their disappearance, there were rumors, repeated if not started, by Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Huto, who was also a reputed Klan sympathizer, that Charles and Henry had gone to Louisiana to look for work.

Growing worried, Maisie Moore, Thomas's mother, looked into the rumor on her own.

Mama came down here to visit you, did she?

Yeah, your mother came

to my house.

And she told me, that's when I found it out.

She told me, she said,

is my son and your brother here?

I said, no, they're not here.

She said, well, they're supposed to be and came here to get a job.

I said, no, they're not here.

And she said, Lord, have mercy.

She said, I don't know.

She said, the boys has come up missing and we don't know where they live.

So you didn't know that they were missing until mama came back?

I didn't know they was missing until your mother came.

And that's when

I found out they was missing.

We still didn't know nothing until one day

my uncle called me and told me they found them.

And,

you know, it really hurt.

It just hurt.

I can't say how bad it hurt, but it hurts.

Because like right now, he's killing me to talk about it.

It hurts.

But we have to move on, you know.

Never.

Thelma and her remaining siblings were happy to allow Thomas and I to continue working on the case on their behalf because none of them had the time or resources to do so.

And we'd connect with Thelma again many times over the next months and years.

Thomas Moore is doing a wonderful job, and I appreciate him and I thank him because

nobody else hadn't picked it up that it was a dead case,

forgotten.

They were

just murdered and forgotten.

The market's uncertain, revenues tight, and hiring on hold.

That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving.

Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast.

No bulky overhead, no rigid long-term contracts, just the right expert right when you need them.

Work smarter and faster with Upwork.

Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance freelance expert.

That's upwork.com.

Post a job for free and get started today.

What kind of person takes on the law?

Can they ever really know what they're getting into?

A really tough-looking guy came up to us and said, are you part of this gay case?

My family started getting death threats.

I wasn't able to go outside alone anymore.

I'm Phelan Johnson, host of See You in Court, a new podcast about the cases that changed Canada and the ordinary people who made history.

This is David and Goliath we have here.

Find and follow, see you in court wherever you get your podcasts.

So you got got catfish, right?

Okay, we're going.

Okay, you want a grilled cheese?

I know it's better.

You can get cheese at this.

This is my friend from Canada.

Back in Mississippi, Thomas and I visit Delamay's restaurant, a drive-in greasy spoon located at the entrance to Meadville.

He's from Canada.

He don't know about all this stuff.

He don't know what fish is.

He knows what fish is, but he don't know the catfish.

You want leisure tomatoes?

Yeah, no tomato.

No tomato.

You put leisure tomato on mine.

I don't care.

That's all right with me.

Jesus Christ.

Catfish and grilled cheese aside, our visit to the small restaurant at the entrance to Meadville was about more than sandwiches.

This is the ice cream parlour, they call it at that time, the taste of freeze that mentioned in the reports.

Place that Charles Moore and Henry Dee was picked up.

Just up the road is the gas station where Joe Lee Rollins last saw Dean Moore.

It's easy to picture them walking in this direction, looking for a ride out of town.

On the morning of the 2nd of May, Charles Adam Moore and Henry Dee was hitchhiking from this spot.

They were picked up by a member of the Ku Klux Klan, KKK,

driven into the homeless children's national forest,

where they were beaten with bean sticks until they were going to function.

We drove into the forest, mostly towering pines with a few hardwoods, and stopped almost randomly at a dead-end overgrown road.

Did you ever used to come here when

you were younger?

No.

It's sort of like a national park, wasn't it?

Well,

blacks didn't hang around this kind of shit, you know.

It was predominant

white rules, you know.

But you weren't allowed to come in here?

Well, you just, nobody ever told you you couldn't come in, but you just didn't do no shit like that.

This was not the place they were brought, but we walked into the forest to get a sense of it, more for my benefit, I guess.

And Thomas wanted to show me the kind of sticks that may have been used to undertake the beating.

In the documents, they were called bean sticks, slender, stripped new branches.

Just imagine a person tied to a tree, tape over the mouth, legs tied to the tree, probably a rope around the neck,

and

hidden like this.

They beat them unconscious

and wrapped the bodies in tarps so they wouldn't get fucking blood in the car.

Like their goddamn car was more important than these two guys they just beat the goddamn hell out of.

But they want to protect their little fucking car.

After being beaten bloody and unconscious, Dee and Moore were taken to Clyde Seal's farm in the Bunkley community, deep within the Homo Chitter National Forest.

From there, a phone call was made using the code word Kiwoo, meaning, Klansman, I want you.

Jack Seale and Ernest Parker drove from Natchez in Parker's Red Ford Galaxy to answer the coded clan call for help.

Jack Seale was James' older brother and Clyde's son.

He was the nighthawk of his local clavern.

Ex-Navy and a garbage man by trade, he was known like his brother James to be violent and is known to have taken part in many other instances of Klan violence in the 1960s.

Ernest Parker was from a family made wealthy by oil and cattle.

He was a member of the White Knights and also the Americans for the Preservation of the White Race, a Klan-sympathizing auxiliary organization based in Natchez.

Parker's wealth supported white supremacy in the area, for example by helping to build white private schools.

And Parker and his family also owned Parker's Island, in the old Mississippi River where Dean Moore's remains were found.

After Parker and Jack Seale arrived at Clyde Seal's farm in Bunkley, according to the FBI report, James Seal taped Dean Moore's mouths shut, and they were bundled into a plastic tarp so their blood wouldn't get in the car, and then stuffed into Parker's trunk.

Then a long three-hour drive along country roads to the ultimate destination, Parker's Landing in Louisiana.

a place Thomas and I would ultimately refer to as the kill site.

As we drove out of the Homachita Forest on the Bunkley Road towards Meadville, Thomas reflected.

It's been

37, 38 years since I traveled this particular road.

I see things that

flash it back in my memories, like certain things on the side of the road, certain curves, certain hills.

It make me wonder

What conscience does Charles Marcus Edwards have?

What does he think?

I mean, if I can remember things just passing by,

surely he can be reminded of

how he helped torture and eventually kill Charles Moore and Henry D.

I'm sure they were begging for their life,

hollering, crying, praying.

Sometimes you make you wonder,

How can a person like that survive?

If the report is true, that they took Charles Moore and Henry Dee up into the Toluda, Louisiana area, this is the highway they have to travel because this is the only way to come across the Mississippi River and that's it.

So this has to be the road that they travel.

So here we go.

I've never been here.

Always wanted to come over, but

my first time

getting an opportunity to come into this place.

As we grew closer to the kill site, Thomas became taciturn and irritable.

I don't know.

I'm probably sad, you know, sad.

Eventually, we arrive at the place where Dean Moore's partial remains were discovered.

The place in that 1964 black and white film I first saw at CBC with the men fishing out the bones.

And the place I returned to with my son so many years later.

On the far side of the waterway, Parker's Island, also known as Davis Island after the previous owner and namesake of the place, none other than Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy.

As Thomas and I walk down to the river, the mud gets thicker and eventually impossible to navigate.

And there's a man in a boat coming toward us.

It's a member of the Parker family.

He's coming this way.

Okay.

We'll tell him exactly what we're doing here.

How you doing?

He points out that we're on private property and asks us to leave after I'm through getting a few shots with my camera.

According to the FBI informant JN30, the Klansmen were surprised to find that Dee and Moore had survived the journey from the Homachita Forest to Parker's Landing.

Upon arrival, Dee and Moore were dragged out of the trunk and thrown on the ground.

Charles Moore was chained to a 1944 Willys Army Jeep engine.

Henry Dee was attached to some old train rails and flywheels.

Jack Seale, James Ford Seal's brother, said that they discussed shooting them, but decided not to because it would have gotten blood on the boat.

A clansman asked either Dee or Moore if they knew what was going to happen.

He nodded that he did.

And one by one, they were taken by boat out onto the old river.

Henry Dee first, followed by Charles, and thrown overboard while still alive.

Where I'm standing here is in Louisiana.

That over there is Parker Island, that's in Mississippi.

This is where Charles Moore and Harry Day were brought

and prepared and tossed over into the Mississippi River.

According to the reports,

they were still alive.

Well, my feelings pretty mad, pretty angry.

I just talked to a parker.

You know, he said that he was a nice talking guy.

He could have told, get the hell off, but he told me, go ahead and do what we got to do.

We didn't see a poster sign.

Well, it's a grim sight.

Knowing that this is probably the last

minutes, second that Charlie Moore and him would do on this face of the earth

alive

It's a goddamn shame

I plan to do something about it

Man, these little towns like Roxa, that's a little town there one red light in there

So you talking about rural

this is rural Mississippi.

You see how dead those trees are around there?

They spray that insecticide on there to kill the tree.

Back in the van on the first morning after our arrival in Natchez, we're finished with the hitchhiking demonstration in Meadville and now heading back to Natchez for our appointment with District Attorney Ronnie Harper.

His would actually be the first interview outside of Thomas that I would conduct in Mississippi for the case.

Officer District Attorney Ronnie Harper right here.

If the D.

Moore case is to be taken up by a state-level official, Ronnie Harper would be the one to do it.

Hello.

My name is Thomas Moore and I'm here to see Attorney Ronnie Hopper.

Sergeant, how you been, man?

Tide.

It's been a long time.

You look good.

Come on in.

Ronnie Harper is tall in a blue suit and red tie with white stripes.

He graduated from the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, as it is known, and has met Thomas Moore at least once before.

So, Mr.

Harper, just introduce yourself.

My name is Ronnie Harper.

I'm the district attorney for the 6th Circuit Court District in Mississippi, which would include Adams, Franklin, Wilkinson, and Emitt counties in the southwest corner of the state.

Well, here I am again.

I know you are, and we're still trying.

That's all I can tell you at this point.

You know, in 1998, I came over, and then the Connachung thing.

I think I talked to you once again.

I think we did talk once.

Yeah, we've talked several times.

Yeah.

Of course, Ernest Gilbert died.

The one from Baton Rouge?

Right.

Wolf Welford from Louis Island.

He was the one who said that

they called him that night.

Ernest Gilbert was one of the highest-ranking Klansmen in the state of Mississippi at the time.

And he acted as a spokesperson for the Klan.

Here he is being introduced at a Klan rally in Louisiana, a recording Gilbert himself made on a quarter-inch reel-to-reel recorder.

A little later on, folks, we will have the burning of the cross.

But at right existing time, I would like to introduce now a good friend from Mississippi, Mr.

Ernest Gilbert.

Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

My pleasure to be in Louisiana again.

First, to set things straight, I'd like to say that

I am and have been a Klansman for as long as there's been a Klan this last time in the state of Mississippi.

He was head of the KBI, or Klan Bureau of Investigations for the White Knights, and he also, as it turns out, became an FBI informant in August of 1964, shortly after he was told by some of the Klansmen involved about the murder of Dean Moore.

Gilbert would supply the FBI with information about the Klan and their activities.

For example, he assisted with the Myburn case, identified the manufacturer of Klan robes, talked about Klan meetings, furnished the identities and roles of numerous Klansmen in over 12 claverins and 200 members, including the activities of Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard.

And he also provided information about key pieces of the D.

Moore case.

Gilbert was confidential informant JN30, the informant from which much of the information from our nine-page report about the killings had been gathered.

Gilbert was paid for his role as FBI informant, but came forward first, according to the FBI and those close to him, because he was deeply troubled by what he heard from his fellow Klansmen about the treatment and murder of Henry D.

and Charles Moore.

Gilbert was tracked down in the late 90s by Connie Chung and a crew from ABC News with the help of a local African-American law enforcement officer named Eddie Stewart, who had befriended Gilbert.

But despite the fact that this key informant was obviously willing to talk, the D.

Moore case did not move forward at the time, and Ernest Gilbert has since died.

Back to District Attorney Ronnie Harper.

This is basically an unsolved murder case, an open investigation.

There were never any formal arrests, never any indictments returned, never any trials.

So you've got none of that.

You're basically going back to getting the work product of the officers and trying to go back through and reconstruct it and see who you can find,

hopefully get more information because obviously

I think we've talked about this before.

I mean, there was an extensive investigation in this case.

There was a voluminous file.

Let me during the time.

During the time?

Absolutely.

The FBI did an extensive one.

But even then, they didn't feel confident that they had enough evidence to file formal charges.

Where do you know they arrested the old guy?

They were arrested

by the Justice Court in November and dismissed in January.

There were never any hearings.

I think they took them, tried to interview them, and then released them on bond and then subsequently, very shortly, dismissed them.

It appeared to me that was an investigative tool they tried to use.

And I've been around a lot of investigations.

I've never seen an investigation as thorough as they tried to do that one.

In the final analysis, they didn't feel confident even in federal court, apparently, that they could prevail because they didn't file any charges.

Ronnie Harper obviously hadn't been the district attorney 41 years before, and he can't or doesn't really say why his predecessor chose not to pursue the case.

but part of the reason that Harper didn't follow up on the file years later, he says, was that he too was told that there was no FBI investigation.

I initially requested a file

at the beginning, and they wrote me back telling me they didn't have one.

So he told us that...

Subsequent to that,

I think with the assistance of one of the local reporters in Jackson,

They found out that they did have a file on microfish in Washington.

This reporter was Jerry Mitchell at the Clarion Ledger in Jackson.

Someone Thomas and I will soon be visiting.

And they subsequently sent me the file.

So that's where I got what I have.

And Sergeant Moore, I want you to understand something.

And I think I've told you this before.

When I was elected to this position, I took an oath to support the law, to prosecute people that violated the law.

And I told you then that it didn't make any difference to me who it was or when it happened or anything.

If a case could be developed and someone was charged and indicted with a crime, be it murder or what else, that I was going to prosecute it.

And I've tried to get assistance in getting it investigated.

A district attorney's office is not really charged with investigating.

We have to rely on the law enforcement agencies to do the investigations.

And the biggest hurdles we had is that this case was different from those, not in the type of crime it was or in the importance of the victims, but just in the status of the case as we look at it 40 years later.

You know, I don't know what to tell tell you.

I think we're running out of time.

I think

time, of course, time is a problem.

Yeah, I think we're running out of time.

I mean, 10 years ago, nine years ago, I don't know.

All I can tell you is that I am trying to make sure that it moves as rapidly as possible.

So what you're telling me, the case is still open.

Oh, absolutely.

Of course, I can't speak for what.

I mean, from you.

I mean, from you.

Absolutely.

You know, I've never indicated that

we wouldn't do anything.

Of course,

I'm not an investigative.

But I mean, certainly, as far as I'm concerned, the investigation is still ongoing, yes,

if that's your question to me.

So I will stay in touch with you and

periodically we'll talk about, hey, what you got?

Absolutely.

If I come up with something, I'm looking at

trying to get something going on my side as far as

investigative work.

You may can find out something law enforcement can't.

Well, that's what I'm hoping.

I mean, you know, you may very well be able to.

I'm hoping to do some of that down there.

Because I know they talked to a lot of people

back during that time.

Some of them probably still living some of them not.

But it was apparent to me that a lot of those people were hesitant to talk

out of fear or whatever.

Absolutely.

That may talk to you now that still may not talk to law enforcement.

Right, right, right.

Whatever it takes.

I mean that's just

the least I can do.

I step out of the room to give Thomas and Ronnie Harper a chance to speak privately.

Afterwards, Thomas tells me what they talked about sitting on the curb outside Harper's office and eating some local boiled peanuts.

Well we talked about the condition of the bodies.

He told me that later on

Navy divers went down and there was skeleton, parts of skeleton still attached to the parts of the engine block.

And I asked him about how was Henry D identified?

He said that well Henry Dee had identification in his pocket.

And oh yeah, by the way, he gave me

something that I always wonder about.

Why was Charles Moore expelled from college?

And for the first time in 41 years, this is what I see.

This is from the president of

Alcorn E ⁇ M College, which at that time was J.D.

Boyd.

And he wrote this letter to Charles Moore.

Dear student,

you have been suspended from Alcorn College for conduct on the campus unbecoming a student.

Now according to

Ronnie Harper,

this was a protest

for the food in the cafeteria.

That's what the protest was about.

Some stinking country food in the cafeteria.

Had it not been for this, he'd have been in college.

Bottom line.

Later, we visit Alcorn College, one of a handful of Mississippi's HBCs or historically black colleges, but no officials will talk to us and Thomas and I get a few shots of the bleachers where the protest was held and leave.

Documents I've obtained from various archives and from eyewitnesses have presented a number of reasons for the protest that spring of 1964.

From a curfew imposed on students to football players stealing from the student union to the quality of cafeteria food.

In all cases, it is is clear that the governor of Mississippi, Paul Johnson, was heavily involved in the decision to have police move in and for the expulsion plan laid out by Principal J.D.

Boyd.

If Charles had not been suspended, he would not have been in Meadville less than two weeks later, hitchhiking.

It's still our first day here.

So far, we've been to Meadville for a quick hitchhiking reconnoiter, then to Ronnie Harper in Natchez, now back to Franklin County.

Near Roxy, Mississippi, we stop in at what was then a BP gas station for a snack, Thomas's euphemism for boiled peanuts or a massive sandwich.

I generally stuck to fruit bars and cereal being a vegetarian much to Thomas's needling and laughter.

Thomas went inside to pay and came back to the van with an old friend of his, a cousin, actually,

a man by the name of Kenny Bird, who was wearing a straw hat and great blue coveralls with his name embroidered on the left breast.

Kenny Bird.

Yeah.

Kenny Bird's story was about to change the entire course of her investigation.

Well, he said he knows what James Seal lived at.

Right there.

Right here.

James Ford Seal.

who was supposed to be dead.

Seal was the Klansman who had reportedly assisted with the pickup, whipping, and murder of Dean Moore.

He'd also been arrested but then released along with Charles Marcus Edwards back in November 1964.

Yes, James Seal there.

Right there.

Just right there.

See that opening between those pine trees right there?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hang on there.

Let me get it and get a shot of it.

See that opening right there to the right down there?

It's a mobile home.

Yep.

One of them motor homes.

That you can drive across country.

yeah yeah right how do you know he lives here well he lives here i stay here

i live here

james seals live right down there and and and this is the guy that's supposed to have been

the torture guy right so the trailer's sitting right there come on come on i'll show you how

You have been listening to episode two,

The Klansman.

Visit cbc.ca slash sks to see pictures of Thomas Moore in Vietnam, James Ford Seale, and Charles Marcus Edwards when they were arrested in 1964 and other photos associated with the case.

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

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.

Now you talk about terror.

I think you talk about terror.

People have been terrorized

all my days

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.