Racial slaying of teen in 1959 could get fresh look
CORINTH, Miss. — Eberlene King remembers her 15-year-old brother as he lay dying, after white teenagers cruised through their black neighborhood in a pickup on Halloween night 1959 and shot him in the face.
“His eyes ... were hanging out,” King said. “His head was full of pellets.”
William Roy Prather died the next morning in their hometown of Corinth, Miss., a few miles south of the Tennessee line.
Eight white teens were charged with murder, but only one was convicted. Jerry Darnell Glidewell, then 16, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in January 1960 and served less than a year in state prison. Six of the seven others in the truck got a year’s probation through youth court, and an 18-year-old walked free.
The black teen’s slaying has never drawn much attention, even as federal and state authorities in the past 15 years have re-opened investigations of racially motivated killings from the civil rights era.
Now, the U.S. Justice Department says it has referred Prather’s killing to the state of Mississippi “for potential prosecution.” The Associated Press dug into the case to reveal information not previously reported, including details about the Justice Department’s investigation and AP interviews with King and Glidewell.
It’s unclear whether a district attorney will pursue charges against any aging defendant in a decades-old case where witnesses’ memories may be fading and some pieces of evidence, including the truck and the shotgun, have disappeared.
“Although prosecution of some of the subjects may be barred by double jeopardy and other subjects are deceased, the Department referred the matter to the state of Mississippi to determine whether any state prosecutions might be appropriate,” the Justice Department said of the Prather case.
King said FBI agents knocked on her door a few years ago and hand-delivered a letter from the Justice Department. The letter said no federal charges could be brought in the killing of her brother, based on laws that existed in 1959. It said “the only possible prosecution” would be for the state to bring unspecified charges against one suspect who was 18 at the time of the crime.
Glidewell said “four or five” of the people with him that night are still alive. “I don’t know where they live right now,” he said. “I don’t ever see them.”