S28 E3: The Hornet’s Nest | "Someone Knows Something"

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This is a CBC podcast.

Far as I know, the James Ford Seals, I see him once or twice a month

riding in that white Malibu car, Elwood Chevrolet car.

That's Kenny Bird now.

He's here with us in the van in the moments after telling us that James Ford Seal is alive.

He's been reported as dead in the media.

The media, most people think he's dead.

Right, no, he's not dead.

That's the same James Seals I know of.

That's supposed to be him live right down that hill there in that motorhome.

And is it well known around here that he's alive and well and living over there?

Yes, as far as I know, everybody knows he lives here and all where he lives at.

He's been living here for years.

You're listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Original Podcasts.

In season three, David Ridgeon 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 3:

The Hornet's

Now you talk about terror.

I think you talk about terror.

People have been terrorized.

Oh my days.

Oh my days.

We ought to go in there and get this son of it.

You know, I've been focusing on Mark because this is the son of bitch.

This is the guy that did all the whooping and the interrogating and shit.

We ought to just come down in there on him and take him over to Harper and say, here he is.

He made my day.

So we just saw James Fort Seal's car drive by.

We're going to drive by and

see if he comes out of it.

See if he's there.

There was somebody behind the wheel.

It looked like it could have been his wife.

Okay.

So let's just get up there.

I'll bring the camera up when we get past.

Okay, so let's see what we see here.

Down a driveway at the bottom of a hill next to a red brick bungalow sits a white Fleetwood bounder motorhome parked next to an open gazebo which serves as a sort of outdoor living room.

An elderly couple, one a gray-haired, balding man, glasses with knobby elbows tucked into a plaid short-sleeved shirt, the other a shorter dark silver-haired woman, are collecting groceries in plastic bags out of the back seat of a white Chevy.

over this direction over here.

I zoom in and try to steady my camera.

This has been one of many drive-bys since we first discovered the person's identity at the end of my telephoto.

And this would be the best picture I'd get.

It looked like it.

Yep.

Yep.

It is him.

James Seale, the man who, along with other Klansmen, brutally murdered Henry Dee and Charles Moore.

So do you think that he is accepted in the community?

As far as I know, it looks like everybody here in this community accepted.

When we started from Colorado, we wanted to speak to Charles Marcus Edwards.

Now, with James Ford Seal, we had someone new to focus on.

And as we drop Kenny off back at the BP station, our plans begin to shift.

Seale in the 1960s was known for his unpredictable violence as a member of the Klan.

Edwards was thought of as more of a Klan functionary, even a weak link, since he had talked to the FBI on the day of his arrest in November 1964, revealing some of the details of the crime.

But since their arrest and release on $5,000 bond, Edwards has not admitted anything to anyone.

hey Jerry Mitchell this is Thomas James Moore James Moore I was just trying to call you well I just told my phone was on

no problem you want to get together in the morning tomorrow be fine I need to get those FBI documents out and look at them well I got you know I oh you did give me the nine pages but I understand you have the the whole page

I got a stack of stuff.

Okay.

Okay.

Hey, Jerry.

Yep.

James Seals

is alive and well.

Oh, okay.

He live in Roxham, Mississippi.

And I have him on video, on camera.

Yeah.

30 minutes after I hit Franklin County.

That's driving 15 minutes and then stopping at a store to get some boiled peanuts.

Right.

Within 30 minutes, I knew that he was alive because the first person I talked to told me that.

How about that?

Now, Jerry, you know, I don't know where you got the information.

I bet it being dead?

Yeah.

Think for his family.

I found out later that Seal's son, James Jr., who lived in Alabama, helped spread the rumor to the media that his father was dead.

Well, I'm glad to know he's he's alive and well.

He's,

if you can get David to talk to him, I doubt he'll do an interview, but man, he's a piece of work.

He is a piece of work.

Edwards, I got a different impression of than I did Seal.

Seal was just absolutely unreconstructed.

I mean, there's just no question about it.

I have talked to whites.

And I have talked to blacks.

And they both said the same thing and I cannot understand

how Franklin Countyans can afford to have a renegade dangerous person that they is afraid of

in the community and nobody doing anything about it I cannot understand that it took an army veteran right of 30 years in the military that has retired

Come back here and just get on the ground and talk to people.

Yeah.

Just talking to normal people.

I didn't actually print that he was dead, but I had had somebody in his family tell me that, but obviously that was.

They were lying about it, obviously.

We made plans to meet Jerry the next day and said goodbye.

I'll see you tomorrow.

Thank you.

Look forward to seeing you.

Yes, sir.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I beat them.

They will not have a bad day down here.

Every day better than better.

You know what I mean?

Thomas wanted to share news of our trip with a couple of others

trying to respect these graves and not walk on top of these bodies kind of like

got my way through here

The old Mount Olive Cemetery is where Thomas's family, his mother Maisie, father Charlie and brother Charles were buried.

We walk over grassy humps and past sun-bleached lambs and angels perched on leaning stones.

That's his grave.

Charles Eddie Moore's tombstone was etched by hand, weather-worn and modest, hidden in the back right corner of the cemetery grounds.

I gotta give him a new tombstone.

I don't know why this

been defaced.

You see that?

This was a local guy that did this, didn't spell his name right.

I take a closer look.

Charles is hand-drawn into the cement as Chirley, and last name Moore is missing the final E.

I mean, it's even turned wrong.

No, but

that's my father's grave.

That's my mother's grave.

What does it say on the tombstone?

It says, Charles Daymore,

born August 10th, 1944,

buried

July 1964.

Darling, we will miss you.

Then on the bottom that said anywhere,

anywhere in Glory is all right.

That's what it said

Anywhere in Glory

On another trip a cousin of Henry Dee's brought me to the graveyard where Henry had been buried at the time the family feared that any headstone could be desecrated, so there's no marker

I asked Thomas about the service that the Moore family held for Charles.

It was a small funeral, mostly of the community up here and relatives,

a few classmates.

It was sad.

Didn't nobody talk.

The preacher didn't talk anything about the violent act or nothing like that.

Mama requested that I wear my uniform

and she asked me to walk in front of the casket into the church.

I don't know why she asked me to do that, but I did that.

I had on my Class A khaki uniform.

He had a nickname, Nub, NUB.

Everybody knew Nub.

Yeah, that's what mom and them called him, Nub.

I never called him Charles Moore.

I called him Nub.

You could say anything to your brother right now.

What would you say to him?

I always tell him, Charles Moore, you know,

I miss you.

Your death brought hard things on us.

Your senseless death.

So what I'm doing is trying to figure out who is responsible and hold that guy or those people,

me Villa, Mississippi, Franklin County, and the state of Mississippi County.

I miss you.

I miss the whole family.

So rest in peace.

I like the word.

Dated for the day I read on the bottom.

Say anywhere in glory.

It's all right.

As we leave the graveyard in the van, Thomas tells me about the last time he was here in 1999-2000 during Connie Chung's ABC 2020 investigation.

They brought me down.

I met Connie Chung over in Meadville.

We drove up to the cemetery, interviewed, took pictures, and that was it.

The whole thing lasted about

four hours, maybe.

The drive up, setting up, the little interview we had,

and that was it.

Comparing what we're doing now,

You've been in Colorado three four days.

We've been shooting and talking.

We get horse talking.

So there was no involvement from me

from Kanachong about the cave.

Humid sun and the smell of steamed pine permeates the air.

Thomas and I have driven as deep as we can into the Homachito National Forest without losing phone signal.

We thought it was a fitting location for what we planned next.

Hello?

Hello, can I speak to Mr.

Edwards, please?

Who is this?

My name's David Ridgen, and I'm calling with Thomas Moore.

Can I just talk to you for a couple of seconds?

I don't believe you can.

Sir, Mr.

Moore's...

Mr.

Moore's down here trying to...

I guess he hung up.

Can you hung up?

Our thinking was that phoning first might be the best option, being less confrontational, while still leaving open the option of knocking on Edwards' door later on.

Hello, Mr.

Edwards.

Sorry, Mr.

Moore just wants to talk to you for, like, all he wants to do is talk to you, man.

Man,

Edwards didn't seem overly open to talking on the phone.

What do you think?

I told her that.

Yeah, that motherfucker didn't talk to me.

But you tried.

I don't believe.

I don't believe you can't

Coward man, you didn't do it.

I don't want to talk to him about it.

Let's let's get it all.

Let's convince me we should be looking somebody else

We decide to try once more this time with Thomas speaking to Edwards directly

I Think the best thing to say David is to ever tell me why you was arrested 40 years ago

You don't think he'll hang up?

Yeah, he gonna hang up

As

As soon as I say this is Thomas Moore, he's gonna hang up.

Edwards, this is Thomas Moore.

In the name of our God, will you please talk to me?

Just don't talk to me.

Okay, I know.

Ibbas, this is Thomas Moore.

In the name of our God, will you please talk to me?

I need closure in the killing of my brother 41 years ago.

And you were named, and you was arrested 41 years ago.

One of the two guys.

Tell me why the FBI arrested you, why they have so many documents on you.

If you're not the guy, then let's close it

there's no sense in you and i both going through hell for the rest of our life

i'm not a violent guy

i want to talk to you in a neutral gown man to man face to face just the two of us

we set edwards aside for now

It's hot, man.

Eventually, we decide to proceed along several tracks, try to continue approaching Edwards, the potential weak link in the case, to get him to talk, and simultaneously apply pressure on Seale, whom Thomas felt was more dangerous, by using other tactics.

But first, we had to make a trip to Jackson, Mississippi.

There you come right there.

Hey.

All right.

How you doing?

Jerry Mitchell is an appealing mixture of laid-back southern charm and professionalism, dressed in a sharp blue shirt and tie.

Not overdressed, but certainly a fashionable step above Thomas and I, sweating through our ball caps, t-shirts, and shorts.

He's also become something of an icon in civil rights era journalism, reporting on cases and through that reporting, helping to move those cases into the courtroom.

Byron de LeBekwith, Sam Bowers, Bobby Cherry, just some of the perpetrators Mitchell has played a role in bringing to justice.

So we'll sit down and chat with you.

Sure, dude.

Sure, absolutely.

Figure out how we're going to eat this catfish.

We got to talk about that too.

In 1999-2000, Jerry and ABC-TV had obtained copies of some of the original pages from the FBI investigation that was conducted into the Dean Moore case, nine pages of which Jerry had already shared with Thomas.

Turned off

some of the last stories on this.

Uh-huh.

When I talked to Seal, what Seal said to me.

But here's the

stack of the Fi stuff.

Just outside of Jerry's cubicle in the Clarion Ledger's busy newsroom sits a banker's box, and there's a stack of papers piled on top.

All this about this key.

Yeah.

Told you.

If y'all want to take and make copies of them, it's fine with me.

This represented about half of the files that I would eventually lay my hands on throughout the process of filming from various sources around the USA.

Mitchell's generous handoff was a treasure trove of unredacted names and addresses for everyone the FBI interviewed, including information about Dean Moore's remains and the day that Edwards and Seale were arrested.

Thomas wished he could have had the files years earlier, and with mountains of evidence like this, the question remains and festers, why did Lennox Foreman, the state district attorney, do nothing?

Two months after Charles Marcus Edwards and James Ford Seale were arrested, Foreman asked to have the affidavits against them, the murder charges, dismissed without prejudice, saying that he needed additional information or evidence if he was to consider moving forward.

Let me ask you, why do you think he didn't prosecute?

Well.

He insists that he didn't have enough evidence to do it, but of course the FBI agents that I've talked to who were involved in investigating the case said they presented him evidence and then when that wasn't enough they went out and got more and brought it back to him and he just kept refusing.

So the case has languished.

I mean it was reopened back in

2000, I think it was, when they found out that the killings could have taken place on federal property and the FBI looked at that, but they decided not to pursue.

this case and so it's just languished all this time.

What do you think the chances are?

I mean, Thomas's, I guess what do you think of Thomas' endeavor now?

I think it's great.

I think the huge plus for this case are these FBI documents, the fact that you've got almost a thousand pages of FBI documents, that's so much, in terms of cases, that makes it so much easier.

It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but it means it's going to be easier to pursue this case than it would be, say,

Demet-Till case or some of these other cases.

They basically had had no investigation at the time.

So you do have the names of potential suspects even beyond the two guys that got arrested.

So people who might have information about the case, people who can be questioned and potential witnesses and all those kinds of things.

So as with all these cases, it's difficult.

It's difficult to piece these things together.

It's difficult to prosecute, but it can be done.

And we've seen that.

We saw it with the case of the three civil rights workers and

the Benchester White case, the four little girls that were killed in the Birmingham church bombing, all those things were basically a lot of them pieced together because of FBI investigations, the documents that were generated originally.

Matter of fact, we was on the way here.

Right.

And David talked to FBI in Washington and the first thing they got and said, well, first of all,

the FBI didn't investigate it.

What are you talking about?

We stopped on the road and faxed him the nine pages.

Yeah, exactly.

And then he called back the day later and said, yeah, okay, okay, okay.

Well, that's like originally with this case, I don't know if you remember that or not.

Originally, when I asked the FBI about this case, they said all the documents in the case had been destroyed.

Well, then I ended up, someone I know had gotten access to some of those documents.

And so then I basically wrote a story and said, hey, wait a minute.

These documents haven't been destroyed.

They do still exist.

And so eventually I was able to get copies of the whole thing.

With the file in hand, I'd have to read through it all at least a few times and track down all the witnesses I could, including old FBI or Mississippi Highway Patrol agents, to see what they remembered.

We'd have to hope that some of the best witnesses would still be alive over 40 years later.

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I'm Dennis Cooper, host of Culpable, and I want to tell you about this case I've been following in a small Ohio town.

When 17-year-old Danny Violet stormed out of his house one afternoon in 1998, his family thought it was just another episode of Teenage Angst.

But their worst fears materialized when his lifeless, asphyxiated body was later found in a nearby cornfield.

The question remains, what happened to Danny?

From Tenderfoot TV, an all-new season of Culpable is available now.

Mr.

Lampton.

At noon.

Okay.

Buoyed by our meeting with Jerry Mitchell and our growing pile of evidence.

We left for our first meeting with the federal U.S.

Attorney for Southern Mississippi, Don Lambton.

Did you know that Thomas and I were in the same unit in the military?

As it turns out, Lambton and Thomas had served in the same Army division at the same time, though they did not know each other.

Lampton, a colonel, and Thomas, a command sergeant major.

I retired work me.

What'd you retire?

You now?

Command automatically.

That's impressive.

I'm really proud of that.

Well, you should be.

Very proud.

You should be.

Dun Lampton, with his dry sense of humor and casual lack of ceremony, all in a suit and tie, made a positive first impression.

Is it all?

Could you turn it on?

He's sitting behind a wooden desk in a gigantic corner office in the Department of Justice's Jackson, Mississippi office tower.

We were mobilized and we were made a, we were attached to the 4th Infantry Division.

The coincidental connection breaks the ice quickly and we soon get down to business.

Federal prosecutors have to prove that it happened on federal property.

State prosecutor doesn't have to do that.

And what I want to do and what I will do, and it hasn't happened before, is to get everybody

around one table that has any responsibility or authority and see what we have.

A Republican, Lambton, was appointed by George W.

Bush on September 7th, 2001.

But he'd never heard about the D.

Moore case until I'd contacted him the week before our initial meeting.

I'm going to review that.

Then I'll make sure that Ronnie Harper has all the evidence that I have.

And,

you know, we just, I mean, we owe it to the people that were treated so poorly.

And it hurt to just talk about it.

It hurt me last night to just read stuff that I,

you know, you read about stuff like this.

What

person would do, what country, what enemy do we have that would do stuff like that to human beings?

It's just.

But we're seeing it today.

Oh, yeah.

With the terrorists.

And we've got to understand, the Klan was a terrorist organization back in the 60s.

And they had a lot of power because people were afraid of them.

And people are not afraid of them anymore.

I just need to just get a general statement, I guess, or as much of a statement as you can as to where the case is now and what your intentions are.

David, right now,

my office has made a decision that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that it happened on federal property.

We have to be able to prove that.

And then there's some problems with the proof as to who actually was involved in the murder but I had not really looked at this file that decision was made before I got here and I will look at the file I was doing it last night but if there's you know sufficient evidence and if we can develop any new leads we'll go with it and I'm gonna take a personal interest to make sure that it just like you said that everything that can be done has been done and now is the time to right some wrongs that that have been just too long without any justice for the family.

There's no statute limitations on murder, no justice was done back in the 60s.

It was just a mockery.

We're going to take a real careful look at this for you.

Least I can do for

my old sergeant major.

Old Sergeant never die.

This one.

That's great.

Thank you.

Okay.

This is a good chance.

A few weeks later, Lambton gathered local, state, and federal authorities to discuss the Dean Moore case.

He announced that in addition to looking at Dee Moore, they would also re-evaluate the case of Worless Jackson, another civil rights era case from Natchez, Mississippi.

Worlest was killed by a car bomb in 1967.

Speaking to the press afterwards, Lambton encouraged anyone with information about the cases, even those who may have played a role, to speak to investigators as soon as possible.

If there's any consideration to be given, Lambton said, it'll be given to people who come forward first.

Oh, man.

So he said he's going to take a personal interest in me.

He said he owe that to his sergeant mates.

That made me feel pretty good.

Lambton is your man.

He just impressed me the way he walked and shit.

Like, I'm in bad, I'm a goddamn wide Earth.

Wyatt Earp or not, in order to get the case into federal court, Lambton will need an eyewitness to confirm that at least part of the crime occurred on federal land, in this case in the Homachito National Forest.

We continued speaking with people throughout the community in search of a witness.

and to learn more about the atmosphere at the time.

It wasn't difficult to find talkers.

Often, they chose to speak to us, approaching in a friendly manner, accompanied by a kind of grace I found particular to the South, but also steeped in a healthy dose of suspicion of strangers, particularly northern ones.

You just had to stop and see.

When you live in a small town, you just stop and see what people are doing.

You always stop and see.

Because Meebo is a good little town.

It's a nice little town.

This is Downtown Rebel Ku Kluck Klan, Mississippi.

Main Street.

I'm a resident already atom scam, but I know everything about this place.

Okay, well, let me tell you what happened in 1964.

Thomas tells the story of his brother's death again and again, adding new details every time as we slowly uncover them.

And those two guys are still alive.

That's terrible.

It's terrible.

It wasn't nothing like that happened around here.

Zeal is from

down around Bunker.

Oh, did you ever work there around a paper mill?

No, I worked at Armstrong.

The International Paper Company in Natchez counted many Klansmen among its white employees and was a major marshalling space for white supremacy in the region.

Charles Marcus Edwards worked there and the Armstrong tire and rubber plant also in Natchez was another main organizing space for the Klan.

You think you're gonna hear me stand up here and preach to you about hanging a nigger, a black man, Negro, or Afro-American, any way you want to put it?

There were a number of clan groups.

The White Knights, like you're hearing at this rally, also the Original Knights, United Klans of America, and so on.

Sometimes they were connected, sometimes not, and at times fought with each other.

And members changed their affiliations often due to disputes over money, ideology, and control.

The White Knights organized themselves in a quasi-military fashion and different cells of operation.

According to FBI documents, members of the Seale family, including James Ford Seal, were part of the more violent cells.

What do the people in Meadville and Roxy think about having James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards living in their community?

I think the general opinion is that they were guilty

and they just got off.

I think that's pretty much

the feeling everywhere, blacks and whites, probably.

Deep down in their heart, they wouldn't tell you, but I think most of them believe that they are

guilty and they should have been convicted.

Margaret King worked as a chancery clerk in the courts of Franklin County in the 1960s.

We're sitting in the polished dining area of her home near Meadville.

Her hair has recently been styled and she wears narrow glasses.

Well-spoken and forthright, she's a force to be reckoned with.

It was a very, very tense time.

It's a very tense time.

You just, it was the first time that you didn't really feel comfortable and free and,

you know, not afraid.

And so

it was pretty bad.

I think the blacks and the whites both were afraid.

I press Margaret and everyone else I meet about Edwards and Seale living in Franklin County.

How could a community live alongside people who they suspect were involved in a grisly murder for over 40 years?

It was a law enforcement.

They just, you know, they had a way to

do things, you know, to keep from bringing it up and, you know, just postpone and

all that kind of stuff.

Some members of the establishment, like Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Huto, were later found to be sympathetic or even members of the Klan.

From the moment of the Mississippi Burning or Myburn case onward, the FBI began a process of infiltration that would eventually help to weaken the 1960s Klan to the point where it was difficult to find a member who was not an informant, paid or otherwise.

But before that point came, in the late 60s and early 70s, The Klan was able to rule its membership and the citizens it drew from with a relentless threat of violence and terroristic acts.

So much so that Ronnie Harper's predecessor in the position of district attorney, Lennox Foreman, was directly affected by it.

Okay, Mr.

Foreman, who was a DA at the time, he was very afraid.

And when Lennox had to go to Natchez for a court case or something, which was in his district, he was never alone.

He had the Highway Patrolman with him or he went to the wait station where the men were working.

They're law enforcement people.

He wanted them them to be with him.

I think he'd been threatened.

I'm sure he'd been threatened.

It was all secret, but I think he probably was afraid he's afraid of his shaddock.

The late former Natchez police chief J.T.

Robinson, a man once renowned for standing up to the Klan, but who now sits before me in this interview, enfeebled by a stroke, used the exact same wording to describe the former district attorney.

What can you tell me about Lennox Foreman?

Did you know Lennox Foreman?

Yeah, I sure did.

Scared of his shatter.

Lennox could have put a lot of pressure on the clan, you know.

He just didn't live.

But now, you know, as I got older, I know why.

He lost his house, his cattle, and everything else out there at Farker County.

Those zombies used to laugh about how they'd drive by and shoot a cow on the belly.

JT says that the clan used to shoot Foreman's cattle with a 22 rifle, wounding them just enough so they would die slowly.

We're trying to short.

Take about a week to die, you know.

So, you think Lennox Foreman was afraid of the Klan?

I sure do.

Whether you were black or white, poor or in a high-ranking position in the justice system,

the one word that seemed to sum up the 1960s in Mississippi was fear.

Hi there.

Can I help you?

Are you Mary Lou Webb?

I am.

Oh, hi, Mary Lou.

I'm Dave Ridge, and I called you from Toronto about a film I'm working on, about Thomas Moore's brother.

And you said I could look it through your archives, your news archive?

Yeah, I said you could go to the library.

Mary Lou Webb is a petite white woman with the demeanor of an angry Sunday school teacher.

She's also the owner and editor of the Franklin Advocate, the local newspaper of record in Franklin County.

In the days following the national news that James Ford Seal was still alive and free, Mary Lou Webb wrote an article speaking, according to her, on behalf of the community.

She writes in part, The Franklin advocate has weighed the issues and decided not to revisit the 1960s racial incidents which took place in this county and southwest Mississippi.

The editor sees no new evidence, no reason to put a new generation through painful memories.

In my mind, now this is my mind, and I can do this because I have the paper and I have to think about everybody's welfare.

And my husband and I lived through hell here before.

We really did.

The whole county lived through this before.

Okay.

That was years ago.

People have moved on.

And it doesn't do any good, and it's not going to do that dead man any good for his ancestors to get in a squabble with the the whites again.

There's no good in that.

So, you think the people in the town agree with you?

By and large.

Really?

I do.

Because everybody, you know, there's too much trouble in the world to bring this up again.

You know, every time I go to an airport and try to buy something from a vendor, or I use a restroom and it's clean, there's nobody speaking English.

We have given every single solitary job

that once once belonged to Americans to somebody from overseas.

And if we went over there, they wouldn't do that.

They'd have better sense than we do.

That's what we ought to be worrying about.

Not something that happened 50 years ago, almost, but something that's happening here and now.

You're welcome to look at those things.

They're over there in the library.

Okay.

And you're welcome in this building, but I just think we're beating a dead dog.

We're just beating a dead dog in pursuing the D Moore case, says Mary Lou Webb.

Is it fear of kicking the hornet's nest or anger that it's about to be kicked?

Just have you figured out how you're gonna do it.

You think that's it?

Huh?

Yep.

You wanna do it?

You wanna do it?

Hell yeah, I'll do it.

Let's go.

We're going back to the intersection and turn around and we're going to approach James Ford Seal

from the public highway.

And then I will confront him and tell him, I will tell him who I am

and ask him, will he be willing to talk to me about

the death of Charles Eddie Moore on neutral ground?

Anxious to move forward, despite the fears and doubts and perceived inaction that have pained him so over the past 40 years Thomas and I head to James Ford Seal's place or rather the roadside on the hill above the RV where Seal stays

even people's in

Mississippi Franklin County and other counties that when you mention the word James Seal it's kind of like you know this is an outlaw but yet

He's accepted in his community because nobody want to encounter him.

Well, let's do it.

Fuck it.

Don't fuck with me now.

Get my goddamn stick.

What I'm going to stick it.

I just want the stick to be assembled.

Once I make the conversation, we're going to have to get on out of there now.

Fearing Seal might have a gun at the ready, Thomas decides to surprise him from a safe distance.

Hey, sir!

Hey sir!

I'm calling for James Ford Sill!

I'm looking for James Ford Sill.

My name is Thomas James Moore.

I'm the brother of Charles Eddie Moore

Some bitch ran inside, a whole bunch of

all of them they ran inside Won't you come out and be a man?

All I want to do is talk to you punk

I'm not gonna do you like you cowardly did those guys Todd Moore and Henry D

I hope to see you in court

I Had followed Thomas at a distance with my camera to give him time to talk to Ceo without being a distraction.

After Ceo and the others he was with ran inside the RV, Thomas paused for a moment with his walking stick, then began running back to the van.

I feel good, though.

I feel good.

I sit

The inscription on Charles Edmonds headstone says, anywhere in glory is all right with me.

So confronting him anywhere, anytime is all right with me.

All right.

We'll come back here to James Ford Seals, but Next time we wouldn't be alone.

And we'd be seeing Charles Marcus Edwards soon, too.

Though not in the way I first expected.

What a day.

What a day.

You have been listening to episode three,

The Hornet's Nest.

Visit cbc.ca slash sks to see a detailed map of the locations relevant to the case.

And subscribe to SKS on your favorite podcast app.

Someone knows something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgeon.

The series is also produced by Chris Oak, Steph Kamp, 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.

Ain't scared of nobody, cause I want my freedom.

I want my freedom, I want my freedom, ain't scared of nobody, cause I want my freedom, I want my freedom now

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