DOJ closes investigation of Emmett Till’s 1955 killing without charges
ATLANTA — The Justice Department announced Monday it had closed an investigation into the abduction and murder of Emmett Till, the African American teenager whose gruesome killing by two white men more than six decades ago in Mississippi helped begin the civil rights movement.
In a news release, federal officials said there was not enough evidence to pursue charges in the case, which was reopened after a historian claimed in a book that Carolyn Bryant Donham, the central witness whose account of an encounter with Emmett led to his death, had recanted the most salacious portions of her story — that he had grabbed her and made sexually suggestive remarks.
Citing the statute of limitations and Donham’s denial that she had ever changed her story, the Justice Department said it could not move forward with prosecuting her for perjury.
During a moment of the trial in which jurors were not present, Donham claimed that the teenager had made sexually vulgar comments toward her and physical contact.
But in a book published in 2017, “The Blood of Emmett
Till”byTimothyTyson,the author wrote that Donham had recanted her testimony in a 2008 interview, saying the earlier stories she told were “not true.”
“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Tyson, a researcher and historian at Duke University, quoted Donham as saying in the book.
Tyson’s claim generated outrage and renewed calls for the case to be reopened.
In a statement Monday, theJusticeDepartmentsaid Tyson, despite saying he had recorded two interviews with Donham, provided just one recording to the FBI that did not contain a recantation.
Tyson has said although he did not record Donham’s recantation, he took detailed notes.
“Carolyn started spilling the beans before I got the recorder going. I documented her words carefully,” Tyson said in an email Monday. “My reporting is rocksolid.”
At a news conference Monday in Chicago, Emmett’s family members said they were disappointed by the result of the investigation but were not surprised.
“I did not expect that they would have found any new evidence, but we must look to the future,” said Ollie Gordon, a cousin of Emmett’s. “I ask where do we go from here.”
Emmett Till was killed in August 1955, authorities said. He was 14.