Cold Case Files - Most Notorious: Crimes of the Klan

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

Vernon Dahmer was a shop owner in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and President of the local chapter of the NAACP. At midnight on January 10th, 1966, two truckloads of Klansmen drove to his house and firebombed it. Vernon's family never stopped seeking justice, but it would take them more than three decades to find it. Want to live a healthier lifestyle? Try NOOM! Sign up for your trial today at www.noom.com/coldcase  Download BEST FIENDS - America's favorite 5-star mobile puzzle game - FOR FREE on the Apple app store or Google Play! That's "friends" without the "R" - BEST FIENDS!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. This episode examines a sensitive topic. Please listen with caution. Vernon Dahmer lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the 1960s. He had a wife and eight children, seven sons and one daughter. He was a successful man who owned a cotton farm, a sawmill, and a grocery store. He volunteered as music director and Sunday school teacher at his local church. In addition to all of his other obligations, he served two terms as president of his local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, commonly known as the NAACP. I think it's safe to say he liked to help people. He helped people of all skin colors, a quality that should have been admired and celebrated. However, on January

10, 1966, the Ku Klux Klan committed the ultimate act of retribution. They firebombed his home. And as the flames incinerated the walls of his house, the smoke scorched his lungs, suffocating him. At the age of 58, Vernon Dahmer was murdered because he believed all people were created equal. The memory of what happened that night will forever plague Vernon's wife, Ellie Dahmer. I heard the gunshots coming in.

In a short time, they threw something in through the living room and it just scuffed in flame. The flame was just roaring, coming after us. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Vernon Dahmer was born in 1908. His mother, Ellen, was identified as being biracial. Her mother had been raped by a white slave owner. Vernon's father, George, was a white man described as honest and hardworking. Vernon himself had very light skin,

which would have made attaching a label to his race difficult based on just looking at him. Vernon could have chosen to live as a white man, which would have made his life in the first half of the 20th century considerably easier. He was a helper, though, and he knew that everyone should be treated equally, so he used his heritage and insight to advocate for equal rights. Vernon was frequently known to use the phrase, if you don't vote, you don't count. In the 1950s, he played a key part in the lawsuit against Luther Cox, a white segregationist in Forest County.

Cox refused to allow people of color to vote unless they could answer irrelevant and absurd questions such as, how many bubbles are there in a bar of soap? Despite the personal risks, Vernon continued to be a civil rights activist for the rest of his life. There was also the matter of the poll tax, which I didn't even know had ever existed. In the 1890s, certain states instituted what was basically a voting fee, and they called it a poll tax. It was a tax on all voters, but it really had a single goal in mind, to keep black people from voting. A person might say that there's no proof of that. The states were just trying to raise money. However, there was a catch.

If you were poor and white, you could be grandfathered into being able to vote for free. You met the criteria if you had a family member that had voted prior to the Civil War. That exemption did not apply to African Americans. The federal government intervened. They understood what was happening in the states blocking people of color from voting. In 1964, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited poll taxes in federal elections. There were five states that continued to implement the poll tax even after the amendment took effect. Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, and the most relevant to this particular case, Mississippi. Vernon Dahmer was undeterred by his state's outright disregard for the Constitution

and also its non-white citizens. On January 9, 1966, Dahmer encouraged everyone in the community to vote, despite the tax. He announced publicly over the radio that he personally would pay the poll tax for anyone who couldn't afford it. It's likely not a coincidence that it was late that same night and early into the next morning that the KKK initiated what they called the Dahmer Project. They planned to firebomb the home and then shoot the family as they fled from their burning house. A firebomb, I learned, isn't really a bomb in that it's not intended to destroy things through an explosion. Its basic purpose is to set its target on fire. They can be made to look a number of different ways,

but the main component is a container with accelerant, like gasoline, which is ignited and then launched. After the Dahmer house caught on fire, Vernon's wife Ellie gathered the children and led them out of the house through a back window. Vernon grabbed his gun, went to the front door, and fired back at the men attacking his home, drawing attention away from his family. His daughter Betty was 10 at the time,

but her young age didn't impair her memory of what was happening. This is Betty. I was screaming and crying because I was in pain, but when I could look at my daddy and see that the skin was literally hanging off him like a sheet of paper, and he never complained, he never cried. He was just concerned that we stay out of the reflection of the light from the house so that if they did come back, they couldn't find us to kill us.

When the assailants finally left, Burnham was burned on the outside and the inside. His wife Ellie rushed him to the hospital. This is Ellie again. He would tell me, don't cry. Everything's going to be all right. Burnham was dying then, and I didn't know it. America has fallen in love with Best Fiends, the five-star rated mobile puzzle game. Discover the world of Best Fiends and its cute characters in this fiendishly fun, free-to-download mobile puzzle game. It's not just puzzles. There's a great storyline

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To do what he did to four people, including a 10-year-old boy, is just beyond words. A family and their housekeeper held hostage and tortured for 19 hours before their mansion was set on fire with them inside. It's just hard to imagine that such a nice family could be the victim of something so depraved. In WTOP's 22 Hours, An American Nightmare, you'll be shocked by the new details of this heinous crime and you won't believe how investigators brought the killer to justice. He did not act alone. Mark my words. Download 22 Hours, An American Nightmare, with new episodes every Monday on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. Alexa isn't the only one with breaking news.

Make sure to hang around at the end of this podcast for the latest breaking headlines on the AP News Minute. The FBI sent 28 agents to Hattiesburg to find out who was responsible for the death of Vernon Dahmer. One of them was Special Agent Jim Ingram. He had had threats against his life because he used his small grocery store next to his home to register blacks to vote. So we knew the Klan had been watching Vernon Dahmer. We found a gun. A gun had been dropped. We knew a car had been shot up. We had enough evidence at the scene to assist us in our investigation. They didn't find any fingerprints on the gun, so the investigators conducted a door-to-door hunt for the owner. In 1966, there were over 10,000 men in the KKK in the state of Mississippi alone. That's a lot of doors to knock on. They did get some Klan members to talk,

helping to narrow the investigation. Here's Special Agent Ingram again. All of a sudden, the Klan had turned into a murder's role, selecting individuals who they felt should be assassinated and removed from society. So other Klan members started to say, this is not for me. I could go to prison. I'm getting out. While the investigation was being conducted, the Dahmer family was planning a funeral. Vernon Jr., the oldest of seven boys, was a master sergeant in the Air Force. The day after his father was killed, he returned to Hattiesburg and had to face a heartbreaking reality. This is Vernon Jr. My dad had died. My little sister was still in the hospital. The home site had been destroyed

along with the grocery store. My family was homeless. He was seeking the opportunity. The right was there. He was seeking the opportunity to vote. But this opportunity was being denied by the hate mongers, better known as the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. A year later, despite the effort of 28 FBI investigators, not a single arrest had been made. It seems the white knights were hiding under their bedsheets. Here's Vernon Jr. again. Looking at the history of Mississippi, I didn't have much hope. Black folks had been murdered by white folks and nothing ever been done about it. So as far as hope is concerned, I really didn't have a lot of hope.

Even though a year had passed without much success, the FBI continued to investigate. They were able to create a list of 14 KLA members that they believe took part in the attack on the Dahmer family home. I realized I needed to do a search before I shared what Special Agent Ingram was about to say. It made me feel repulsed, and at the same time, hope someone would delete my search history for me if I somehow became incapacitated. What I searched for was the ranking system used by the KKK. It must be difficult to communicate with a pillowcase over one's face, because I found a lot of conflicting information. It turns out there are different branches or factions of the KKK, and the faction that taunted people of color in Hattiesburg was part of a group known as the White Knights.

Their leader was known as the White Knights. Their leader was known as the Imperial Wizard. However, the majority of sources agreed that the national head of the KKK is referred to as the Grand Wizard, and the head clan member of a state is called the Grand Dragon. Individual members were referred to as ghouls. The FBI's investigation led them to the Imperial Wizard of Mississippi's White Knights, Sam Bowers. They were also looking for a ghoul named Billy Roy Pitts. The FBI believed that the gun they had discovered belonged to Pitts. Here's Special Agent Ingram again. On January the 10th, Billy Roy Pitts was one of those individuals who was assigned by Sam Bowers, head of the White Knights of the KKK, to assassinate

Vernon Dahmer. Billy Roy Pitts was scared. The FBI wanted to question him. But even more terrifying was the fact that the members of his organization thought he would snitch. Pitts ran, fearing for his freedom and also his life. Here's Billy Roy Pitts again. I went out to Texas a while, went to New Orleans a while, and I ran until I couldn't go anymore. The FBI was looking for me. The Ku Klux Klan was looking for me. The police department was looking for me, which most of them was part of the Klan. Everybody was looking for me. Everybody wanted me. I had nowhere to turn, nowhere to go. Did you hear that? He was afraid of the Klan who was searching for him. He was also afraid of the police, not because they wanted to arrest him, but because most of them were

also Klan members. Sometimes there aren't good people on either side. Pitts managed to hide for six months, and he ended up with his brother, a religious leader in Louisiana. The pressure belt and the stress of a life on the run drove the former ghoul to talk to his brother about what happened. This is Billy Roy Pitts again. I sat down and I told my brother the whole story from A to Z. And I told him I don't know what to do. So he advised me the best thing I could do was go to the FBI.

Tell them the whole thing. Pay whatever price I had to pay and get on with my life. Billy Roy makes a deal with the FBI. In exchange for immunity and protection from the brotherhood of hate he'd formerly sworn allegiance to, he would tell what he knew. The Klan had secret code names for their various hate crimes, which they referred to as projects. Pitts shared the layout of the projects with the FBI.

Project number one was like harassing someone, burning a cross in front of their house as a warning. And project number two was like taking someone out, beating them, whatever. And number three was burning of a building or burning their house or their church or whatever. And number four was annihilation, killing someone.

Pitts told them that only one member of the KKK in the state of Mississippi could authorize a project number four, annihilation. That man was Sam Bowers. Billy Roy claims he was only supposed to be the lookout while the other men and sheets burned the family's home and shot at them. Here's Pitts again. He wanted to make sure that Vernon Damer was taken care of. He wanted a number three and if at all possible a number four done on Vernon Damer and one of the men made a remark on the way back to the car after it was all over he heard him holler out

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slash cold case. The last weight loss program you'll ever need. He shared every despicable detail about the night Vernon was murdered, including the names of the men in sheets. Here's Special Agent Ingram again. He named all the individuals involved in riding in the two cars. He names the individuals who was assigned to firebomb the grocery store of Vernon Damers, firebomb the house, who was to shoot and keep family members inside the house where they would be totally destroyed in a fire. So he laid out to the government everything that we needed to know.

I guess the KKK was right about one thing. Billy Roy Pitts did snitch. Part of his deal included testifying against those he had named. At the same time that the FBI began arresting the Klan members that Pitts had identified, multiple threats were made against Billy Roy Pitts' life. Here's Jim Ingram again. He had every right to be scared. In other words, Billy Roy Pitts was on their hit list. Here's Jim Ingram again. The threats from the Klan expanded to include the prosecutor,

a man named James Dukes. But I'm not sure he was as intimidated as Billy Roy Pitts. Here's James Dukes. The people that were involved in this investigation were not intimidated by a bunch of hoodlums. And I don't mean to say that braggadociously, but this was our community. In January of 1968, two years after Vernon's murder, James Dukes charged the nine men Pitts named. He also charged Sam Bowers with murder and added on conspiracy to commit arson. I wanted to say this next part is surprising, but that's not accurate. Only seven of the nine men actually made it to a trial,

and only four were found guilty. Sam Bowers, the leader of a hate group with more than 10,000 members, hung the jury. So he was tried again with the same result. The third trial also resulted in a hung jury, and Sam Bowers walked away a free man. With each trial, the Dahmer family was forced to relive their traumas and grief for Vernon's loss. Here's Ellie Dahmer again. Oh, I cried each time that we couldn't get a jury that would convict him. I know the

prosecutors tried hard, but they picked the best people they thought would be on the jury, but they have no way of knowing how they're going to vote either. James Dukes also wanted Sam Bowers to be convicted as a statement against the KKK and the hate they spewed, like an incurable disease, at risk of spreading through Mississippi. Here's Dukes again. Sam Bowers was the acknowledged leader, grand wizard if you please, of the white knights of the Ku Klux Klan. You cut off the head of the snake, you kill the snake. And that's what he was.

He was the head of a snake. It felt like Sam Bowers had quite literally gotten away with murder. Hate and fear are powerful tools. They're powerful, but not impossible to overcome. It took 26 years, but Sam Bowers was once again charged with Vernon's murder. When the Everest family was actually successful in getting a new trial, we really got in high gear, so to speak, about trying to get my daddy's case reopened. That was Betty Dahmer, and the successful trial she's referring to is that of a man named Medgar Evers. He, like Vernon, was a civil rights activist in Mississippi, and he was shot and killed by Byron Beckwith, a member of a white supremacist group in 1963.

Unfortunately, also like Vernon, his first two trials resulted in hung juries. Thirty years later, in 1994, Beckwith was put on trial once again. He was retried because a mix of new witnesses and new evidence were discovered. The thing is, no one would have looked if it wasn't for the persistence of Mrs. Evers, the victim's widow. After a trial that lasted ten months, Byron Beckwith was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Following the example set by Mrs. Evers, in 1996, the Dahmer family requested to talk with the new district attorney, Mr. Lindsey Carter. He agreed to examine the case and formulated a plan. This is Lindsey Carter.

A lot of the witnesses were deceased, and the rest were unwilling to talk to you. And so we started to realize that if we put everything together, which we were slowly doing, trying to reconstruct all the evidence that was used at the original trial, that we may need somebody in addition that didn't testify at the first trial. It sounds like his plan was to find someone who was close to Sam Bowers nearly 30 years ago. A series of anonymous tips led Carter to a potential witness, a man named Bob Stringer. Stringer claimed to have been a teenage errand boy for Sam Bowers in 1966. This is Bob Stringer describing a statement he claimed to hear from Sam Bowers.

Slammed his hand on the table and stands up kind of and says, you know, something's got to be done about the dam down south. He's causing problems. Well, I said, just put a code four on him. Said, that'll shut him up. Billy Roy Pitts told us that a code four or a project four met annihilation. Stringer's story matched that of Pitts, meaning he was a credible witness, and his testimony could be the new evidence

they needed to convict Sam Bowers. Billy Roy Pitts was asked once again to testify against his former leader. This is Billy Roy Pitts again. I told them that I would do it for the Dahmer family, but only for the Dahmer family. I wouldn't do it for the Attorney General's office, the FBI, or nobody else. And the only reason was for the Dahmer family only, because I felt that I owed the Dahmer family that much. In August of 1998, 78-year-old Sam Bowers was tried for the fourth time for the murder

of Vernon Dahmer. The prosecutor was a man named Bob Helfrich, an assistant district attorney. News sources from the time imply that the trial against Bowers was also a statement to the Klan. Their time of power and influence was over. This statement from ADA Bob Helfrich seems to give that theory some credibility. was a very small minority that gave Mississippi and the whole South a bad name. It's like a sore that's festering that you need to clean. Bower's attorney claimed that his client had nothing to do with Vernon's death. He said that Billy Roy Pitts was just looking for a way to make a deal.

Here's Bob Helfrich again. His attorney likened it to a persecution, saying we were persecuting Sam Bowers, that Bowers didn't have anything to do with it, and that Pitts was a liar. And I find Pitts to be a very, very honest person. I won't comment on the integrity of Billy Roy Pitts, but I do note when he made his initial statement, he was terrified. He was scared of the Klan, and he was scared of the police because they were also the Klan. That doesn't sound like someone who had a high enough status to order a Project 4 on anyone.

The trial lasted a little under a week, with witnesses on both sides giving conflicting statements about Bowers' involvement in the Klan. A defense witness even said that Bowers was a gentleman at all times and never used racial slurs. Pitts and the other witnesses for the prosecution recounted the hatred emanating from Sam Bowers as he authorized Vernon Dahmer's murder. In his closing argument, ADA Helfrich reminded the jury that justice delayed is not justice denied. The jury that was sent to deliberate the fate of Sam Bowers looked a little different than it had in the previous trials. It was comprised of six African Americans, five Caucasians, and one Asian American. The Domber family waited, wondering if this would be the

first trial that finally brought them a sense of closure. This is Domber's son, Vernon Jr. Looking at this guy and how he had escaped justice for some 32 years, he walked the streets while my dad lay dead in the cemetery. I wanted him to go to prison. After only three hours, the jury had come to a decision. Sam Bowers was guilty of murder and would spend the rest of his life in prison. The emotion filling the courtroom must have been tremendous as Sam Bowers was escorted out by the authorities. They had waited more than 30 years for this moment. Another matter had also been 30 years in the making. Billy Roy Pitts approached the Dahmer family, a family whose house he had once watched burst into flames,

and he apologized. This is Billy Roy Pitts again. The Dahmer family, they forgave me for what I'd done. That was a relief. There's no way for me to describe the feeling that I had because I had battled for all these years with this on my conscience. Forgiveness is hard sometimes,

but I think in this case, the words spoken to her by Billy Roy Pitts helped Ellie Dahmer with her own emotional recovery. This is Ellie. I didn't know I could forgive Billy Roy for helped Ellie Dahmer with her own emotional recovery. This is Ellie. I didn't know I could forgive Billy Roy for what he had done. But you know when a person asks for forgiveness, and you can look him straight in the eyes, you can about feel it. It took a burden off my heart because he didn't have any more hate for me than I had for them.

I stopped hating Billy Roy that day. Almost 40 years after her husband Vernon was murdered because of his belief in the right for everyone to vote, Ellie Dahmer served as an election commissioner in that same county. In this case, I think it's fair to let Ellie have the last words. I certainly hope that if there are any young people who don't go to the polling boat, they will find strength in going to the polling boat. We pay such a high price, black Americans especially, to have the privilege to vote. If anybody's paid a price for it, my family has paid a price for it. Cold Case Files is written and hosted by Brooke Giddings.

Produced by Scott Brody, McKamey Lynn, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Original music by Blake Maples. We're distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com and by downloading the A&E app.