KKK leader, convict, preacher of hate and murder
Edgar Ray Killen, a Mississippi preacher and Ku Klux Klan leader who four decades after the fact was convicted in the killing of three civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer of 1964, died at the Mississippi State Penitentiary near Parchman. He was 92 and was serving a sentence of 60 years.
The state corrections department announced the death. The cause was not immediately known.
The slayings of the three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were among the most notorious events of the civil rights era.
The killings occurred in Neshoba County, Mississippi, which had a long reputation as a centre of Klan violence. Killen, whose family had lived in the area for generations, operated a sawmill, preached at Baptist churches.
On June 21, 1964, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were in Neshoba County to inspect a black church that had been burned down and to register voters as part of a civil rights effort known as Freedom Summer. As the three men were driving, a deputy sheriff pulled over their station wagon on the pretext of speeding and took them to the county jail. They were released at 10 pm. and told to get out of the county as fast as possible.
They were followed by two cars filled with Klansmen, who had been alerted and organised by Killen, according to court evidence. After a high-speed chase down a dark highway, the civil rights workers were forced from their car and shot to death at close range.
Their bodies were not discovered for 44 days. A search led by the FBI eventually found them buried 15 feet deep in an earthen dam on a nearby farm.
Killen, who was known to be a Klan organiser or ‘‘Kleagle,’’ came under immediate suspicion. He was among 18 local men, including police officers, later arrested by federal agents and tried for conspiracy.
Testimony from the 1967 trial described Killen as the ringleader who co-ordinated the vigilante Klan group, although he was not present for the killings.
Seven Klansmen were convicted of conspiracy, but Killen was acquitted. The all-white jury reportedly voted 11-1 in favour of a guilty verdict, but the lone holdout said she could ‘‘never convict a preacher.’’
Killen returned to his normal life in Neshoba County.
Further investigations led to Killen, who went on trial for murder in 2005. Killen, 80 at the time, was in a wheelchair as he recovered from two broken legs suffered while cutting wood.
Before the jury began deliberating, prosecutors added manslaughter to the original murder charges. In the end, Killen was convicted of three counts of manslaughter. The verdict was delivered on June 21, 2005 — 41 years to do the day after the killings.
Edgar Ray Killen was born January 17, 1925, in Union, Mississippi, where his family had been involved in logging, lumber and farming since the 19th century.
Details about his early life are sketchy. He was married twice but had no children. He was convicted in 1976 of making threats over the telephone to a woman.
Although he did not admit to being a member of the Klan, he had been known to federal investigators and other Klan watchers for decades.
In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, FBI agents knocked on Killen’s door, seeking information.
As the agents were about to leave, Killen asked if they had identified the killer.
He added, ‘‘Man, I just want to shake his hand.’’
- The Washington Post.