Suspect arrested in 1964 Klan killings

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. – More than 40 years after one of the most notorious crimes of the turbulent civil rights era – the “Freedom Summer” slayings of three young civil rights workers – a reputed Ku Klux Klansman was arrested Thursday on murder charges in the case.

Sheriff Larry Myers told the Associated Press that Edgar Ray Killen was arrested at his home without incident. Myers said there would be more arrests in connection with the killings, which were dramatized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.”

In 1964, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, who were helping to register black voters, were murdered on a dirt road as they drove to a church to investigate a fire. They were allegedly stopped by Klansmen, beaten and shot to death. Several weeks later, their bodies were found buried in a dam a few miles from the church.

Nineteen men – including Killen and many of them Klansmen – were indicted. Seven were convicted of federal civil rights violations in 1967 and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to 10 years.

Killen was freed after his trial on federal conspiracy charges ended in a hung jury.

But the state never brought murder charges against any of the men and none of those who were convicted served more than six years.

Killen’s arrest followed a grand jury session Thursday that apparently included testimony from individuals believed to have knowledge of the slayings. Myers said Killen, a 79-year-old preacher, was being held on three counts of murder.

“We went ahead and got him because he was high profile and we knew where he was,” the sheriff said.

The grand jury considered whether sufficient evidence still existed after 41 years to bring charges in the crimes. Killen was identified in testimony in earlier federal court proceedings as having a role in the killings.

Mississippi has had some success reopening old civil rights murder cases, including a 1994 conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.

But until recently there has been little progress in building murder cases against anyone involved in the Ku Klux Klan slayings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner – though the case has remained very much in the public eye. Attorney General Jim Hood reopened an investigation of the slayings and just last month, an anonymous donor posted a $100,000 reward for information leading to murder charges.

Goodman’s mother, Carolyn, said she “knew that in the end the right thing was going to happen.”

“As I have said many times before, I’m not looking for revenge. I’m looking for justice,” Carolyn Goodman, 89, said from her home in New York.