Someone Knows Something - S3 Episode 7: Epilogue

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

In this bonus episode, David travels back to Mississippi, follows up on the Dee & Moore case, and looks at the fate of other civil rights era cases in the wake of the James Ford Seale trial. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sks/season3/someone-knows-something-season-3-dee-moor-transcripts-listen-1.4360239

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Yep. Got a sea donkey, a very beautiful animal. Did you breed that? No, I buy all this. I got a guy that goes to St. Louis. It's July 2017, and I'm back again in Mississippi for a bit of a different kind of episode. One where I'll follow up on the Dee Moore case, but where I'll also look at what happened after the SEAL trial

on other Civil Rights era cases. Hey, guys. Love that sound. But first I start here on the palatial farm of Brian Brough, where the only other successfully prosecuted federal civil rights era case, other than the DeMoore case, began. Though Brian doesn't know much about that, yet. Dramadary? What kind of camel?

Yeah, one hump? One hump. I have a boy and a girl. They all like you. They're gentle. They know we feed every day. Brian Brough is forty-something, blonde, gregarious, and wealthy. Difficult not to like.

And he's leading me around this place on foot and by ATV. He's collected a number of other animals here, including a zebra-donkey hybrid and a camel. My daughter wants a giraffe, but they're expensive as shit. $50,000. And they die of cold weather. You have to have a few of them, I think, to make them survive for a long time. Yes, and they've got mental problems. My friends that own giraffes have a few of them, I think, to make them survive for a long time. Yes, and they've got mental problems. My friends that own giraffes have regretted buying them. Up ahead, a small cabin, newly renovated with a custom stone swimming pool beside it.

And in another ATV following close behind, Stanley Nelson, a Louisiana print journalist and close friend of mine, and Bonnie Carter, a retired linguistics professor in her mid-70s who grew up on this property back when it was a timber and cattle ranch. Bonnie's family sold the farm to Brian in 2003. So I've worked hard to keep the place rustic. I'll show you the house stopped here. You see? So this was Chessa's house.

This small cottage, Chessa's house, is part of why we're here today. And this is where my guests stay because it brings you back in time. It's simple. So this was the house that you could touch the ceiling. It was a block. Looks like his kitchen was in one end. Back then they lived in one room. What was once a small, simple dwelling was the home of Benchester White, an African-American man who lived and worked as a farmhand on the property when it was owned by the Carter family. Had anybody been living in the house? No. No one had been here since Chess or since after Chess?

I don't think so. You would answer that question. I couldn't. I wouldn't think anybody been here since Chess or since after Chess? I don't think so. You would answer that question. I couldn't. I wouldn't think anybody lived here after Chess. We got the property in March. Three three of oh three. Pretty amazing. What's the anniversary of that?

About three. That was the year Avance was arrested again for the murder of Chess White. Three three oh three. On June 10th, 1966, Ben Chester White was brutally murdered by members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He was 66 years old. Stanley wrote about the case in his book, Devil's Walking, Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s. We all sit down in the main room of Chess's cabin, so Brian can hear this story for the first time. So in the book I describe Chess White's murder as making about as much sense as stomping a puppy to death,

because there was absolutely nothing that man had done to anyone. Chess White was picked up by three Klansmen named Claude Fuller, James Jones, and Ernest Avance, and driven to a bridge over the nearby Pretty Creek. So instead of getting Chess out of the car, Fuller just takes it and shoots the car. He empties that rifle for 17 or 18 rounds. Avance, the other Klansman, Avance has a shotgun, takes it, points it right at his head, shoots in his head, you know, all that matter.

Gets all over Jones and all over the car. Chess is shot up to 18 times with an M1 carbine, once with a shotgun, and then thrown off the bridge. After they dumped him, how long did it take to find him? It was a woman and her children were taking him down on a Sunday to wait in the creek and then they found him. Jones, the guy that drive him, ended up being the one. It was bothering him and he ended up confessing and told the story and every time he would tell a story he would add to it and would tell a little more every time and that became the, they ended up arresting all three.

How soon after the killing? A month, a week? I would say within a few days. Oh that quick? So they had the evidence? Yeah. But this was 1966 Mississippi, and despite a full confession by Jones, a crime scene filled with evidence, and a botched frame-up job by Fuller, none of them ever faced justice back then. Over 30 years pass. Fuller dies, Jones dies,

Avance is still alive, but because of double jeopardy laws, he can't be tried again by the state on the same charges. Somebody mentioned that maybe there's a federal case here because the murder occurred on federal property, on Pretty Creek. So they told me it's in a national file. Just as in the Dean Moore case years later, federal prosecutors are able to claim jurisdiction because at least part of the crime took place in the Homichita National Forest. Ernest Avance is convicted for the murder and dies in jail the next year in 2004.

So Avance, after all these years… I don't know much about the Klan. I've heard stories, but it was kind of like the mafia. They got their way. You're in the heart of the Klan. You're in the heart of it. This is the heart, really, of when the Klan violence sort of all kicked off. Adams County? Adams, Concordia Parish, southwest Mississippi. Really? Brian Breaux is like many I've met in the South or North,

who often have no idea of the kinds of violence and hatred that took place on the very ground they daily walk. Nobody is left of Chess's family to tell his story. The few original pieces of his breezeblock cabin are now covered by drywall. But at least Chess found justice where so many have not. Man, I've got chills listening to this. You are listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Original Podcasts.

This is a bonus episode investigating the aftermath of the Dee and Moore case, as well as a look at what's to come for SKS. This is Season 3. Epilogue. Now you talk about terror. I think you talk about terror. People have been terrorized. All my days.

All my days. Hey, Thomas. Yeah. You got me? What are you at now? I'm at Stanley Nelson's place. He lives near Faraday, Louisiana. What game are you working on?

Are you working on a science show? Oh, he's working on lots of stuff. I just read some stuff from the old Ben Chester White trial here. We're going to go talk to Ernest Gilbert's daughter tomorrow. She gave me some film to look at, and I'm just going to give it back to her. Anyway, it's an interesting time being back down here, especially not having you here.

Usually you're here with me, so it's a different experience for sure. Yeah, yeah. Be careful down there. I'm going to give you some advice. I wouldn't go down there unless you already did. I wouldn't go fuck with Marcus, man. Thomas cautions me against visiting

Charles Marcus Edwards again without him. I'm not going to go there this time. You got the picture of the memorial, right, I sent you? Yeah, I got it, yeah, yeah. So how was Thelma, though? Thelma was good. She was good. Thelma Collins is Henry D.'s sister.

And she was happy to see me, happy to see the family, and we talked for, I don't know, about an hour or so, and we had a good old time there. She was telling me some stuff that I had never heard before. I wanted to tell you and see what you thought about it. But she said that before Henry D went missing on May 2nd, that he had visited her, I don't know, for a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, but that during the visit, he said to her that he had been followed.

He was being followed around Franklin County, Henry D. But he had told me that there had been somebody following him and this boy. He said, but I didn't know who it was. You know, we didn't pay it no attention, to tell you the truth, because we never had been through nothing like that. We didn't pay it no attention. He just told me, he said, well, sister, he said, sometimes me and that boy be walking, he said, somehow to get behind us.

But after they disappeared, that's when we went to thank him. You know, I've never knew that before. I never heard that story before. Yeah. He had talked to me about it. Did you ever tell anybody that part? Mm-mm. I never told them that part. Did you ever hear that before? Back then, there was so much ungodly stuff, unheard of crap going on. People didn't, they didn't look at it as a danger sign. It was something that just happened.

It's the same, it's the same. Thomas and I spend a long time catching up, talking about everything and nothing at all. He sounds good, still working out every day on the treadmill down at the Army base. And his brother Charles is always part of our conversation. Jeffrey is Thomas' only child. seems like I think about them more now than I ever did all the time I thought about him. But back then, it was a tragedy how evil it was. Even though I think about what his last thoughts were,

I was thinking about the other night when they jumped him and Henry D and they were rolling their ass back to the shore. What was their thought versus none of them, probably with the heavy load on them tied to their body. They probably went down underneath the Heaven Guide Dog waiting and was sank into the goddamn mud. I think about that. I think about that.

You know, that was part of my PTSD. That whole episode putting me in a class by myself. Don't nobody understand me. And I don't want them to. Every day I can explain, especially when I talk with you, because you got to know me different than a whole bunch of people. Nobody else knows me better than you. And that's important to me. You got to know where a person came from before you know where he's at. You got to know that. People got to know that I was down and out,

but look at me now. And if I can make it, it's hoping you. Well, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, my friend. Here's the Homachetta River. Yeah, I want to sit down and look at that. I'll keep talking to Thomas, but now Stanley Nelson and I have to drive down Highway 61 in Mississippi for a visit with someone else. This time, the daughter of a Klansman.

We're just on our way to see Michelle Gilbert. And Michelle is Ernest Gilbert's daughter. Ernest was a Klan official high up in the structure of the Klan, who was a Klan informant. He was an informant for the FBI. In fact, Ernest Gilbert was informant JN30, who in August of 1964 began giving the FBI important information about the murders of Henry D. and Charles Moore. To me, of your stories, the most amazing thing is you and Thomas are talking to Thomas' cousin at the BP station

about Seal being dead, and the cousin points, he's not dead, he's staying right over there. And then you go and you find him. Stanley and I have known each other for 10 years now. He lives on his own in the Louisiana countryside. Quiet, unassuming, fair, and polite, he's good at getting people to open up to him. It's a good chance we would have faced some kind of violence. On the drive down to Michelle Gilbert's, we trade stories of some of the situations we

found ourselves in while investigating Klan murders. Tell me what happened to you. I've been threatened a few times, chased around a few times. One time with Thomas, I can remember that sticks out was we were driving by the house down on Highway 33 there near Roxy where James Seal was living in his trailer with his partner. And the man who lived in the house where Seal was parked saw Thomas and I looking at the property

and trying to figure out if Seal was there. And he jumped in his white jeep and just skidded out chasing us up and we we took off we knew he was going to come after us and we took off in the van that we had and we raced down beside the roxy baptist church down sort of the back way into Roxy there. And he was still following us. Probably for about 30 minutes, we wound our way in and around Roxy, which is a very tiny town. And he was just steaming around trying to find us. I'm not sure what would have happened if he actually got up to us.

Thomas and I eventually managed to give him the slip and got away. Tell me your story. I know you were almost run off a road or something at some point. Yeah, I was walking one morning. I'd get up early at dawn, and two mornings in a row, this pickup truck just... I see the lights come on way in the distance. The truck fires up, and it's an older model. It looked like a Chevrolet, but I'm not good on vehicles. And I was walking on my side of the road toward the truck and it veered over toward me more and more and more and finally I sort of jumped out as far as I could off the road and it came within inches from me and the same exact thing

happened the next morning and thinking back about it you know there's no question that had he wanted to hit me, he could have. So obviously he was trying to scare me. And I have an idea of who it is, but I can't prove it. What case would it have been? It was during the time when the Frank Morris case was really, a lot was developing and happening in it. So my assumption it had probably something to do with that. In February 2007, a month after James Ford's seal was indicted, the Department of Justice and FBI announced an initiative where they said they would be looking into a number of other civil rights-era cold cases. One of those cases, the Klan murder of a black businessman named Frank Morris,

occurred in Faraday, Louisiana, Concordia Parish. As the lead reporter for the Concordia Sentinel, Stanley decided to take a look at the case, the first civil rights cold case he had ever tackled. His work here would go on to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. And I thought, well, that's interesting. Little story there. I mean, it was fascinating to me, but I didn't really think he could do much with it.

It was too much time, and I never went back and looked at an old Klan murder. The murder of Frank Morris occurs in December 1964, and the story of it starts with an infamous and much-feared local deputy sheriff named Frank DeLauder. Here's what happened. Frank DeLauder gets into an argument with Frank Morris. According to Stanley's research, Deputy DeLauder gets into an argument with Frank Morris. According to Stanley's research, Deputy De Lauder gets into an argument with Frank Morris over credit for a shoe repair. De Lauder tells a Klansman named Cooney Paso to get together a wrecking crew and burn the shop down. Somehow he gets connected to Spencer, who's 25 years old, was attending Klan meetings.

Arthur Leonard Spencer was a trucker and admitted member of the Klan. He's asked to join the wrecking crew and is the name to pay attention to here, because in 2007, when Stanley began looking into the case, Spencer was the only suspect who was still alive. Paso and Spencer come to the front of the building, they get out, nobody's supposed to, they don't expect anybody to be there. But supposedly unbeknownst to the Klansman, Frank Morris was asleep in the back room of his shop. Morris awoke to the sound of glass breaking and got up to find two white men. One had a shotgun, the other an empty can of gasoline and a match.

Morris comes out, confronts him. They force him back in the shop like the flames. Frank somehow managed to escape, though he was horribly burned, and Stanley and I have found the only known photos of him after the blaze, taken by one of his friends, as appalling and painful as can be imagined. One witness reported that as Frank fled the back door of the shop, he left charred and shredded flesh behind on the ground in the shape of his feet. Frank was taken to the hospital where he held out,

drugged with morphine for four days, before he finally succumbed. He knew who was responsible. He knew Frank DeLauder was responsible because of that argument. But he did not know who those two men were. In the early 1970s, DeLauder was investigated for corruption and ultimately convicted on federal charges of racketeering and police brutality.

But the Frank Morris case went cold. Decades later, Stanley found four witnesses, most of them family members, who had heard Paso and Spencer talking openly about the murder. Stanley and I have interviewed these witnesses extensively, including Spencer's own son named Boo, and Boo's partner, Edith, who remembers Spencer talking about his role in Frank's murder.

I just told him exactly what I heard, you know. I mean, he did it. He was the last one alive. And there was no one else to testify against him. And I was really shocked that he said that in front of me. He never said anything in front of me before, but he was scared because y'all had come to his house, and he thought y'all were the FBI. In 2011, three grand juries were called to look into Frank Morris' case, but no indictment was handed up.

Were you surprised that there was no indictment? Yes. Yes, I really was. Do you remember what I told you when we first started? You always said they weren't going to do nothing. Never do nothing, Mr. Stanley. It ain't going to matter. Arthur Leonard Spencer died in 2013, and the Morris case was closed by the DOJ Civil Rights Division in 2014. I think the feds blew it on the potential of developing the Spencer as a suspect.

They didn't move quickly enough. They didn't have the thing outlined in their head. I guess the grand juries were partly fishing expeditions to try to look at other cases too. So I don't know how seriously they ever took Spencer, and if they didn't take him seriously, I don't understand why they would not. We're getting close to Michelle Gilbert's place, so for now we suspend our conversation on the Morris case. So that little section when we ended Adams County,

I wonder if that was Franklin. We just went through a piece of Franklin. I think it was, yeah. Stanley and I arrive at Michelle's place. We're up here on the left, I think. Her father, Ernest Gilbert, was confidential informant JN30, who gave the FBI much of its initial information about the abduction, beating, and murder

of Henry D. and Charles Moore. How big's the dog? Big. Michelle's mid-40s has brown hair with highlights, green eyes, pink lipstick, and a white t-shirt with a gold owl on the front. And she's got three small Pomeranians, Precious, Princess, and the one I'm hearing now, a rescue dog named Lily Pearl. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you guys? Do you remember me? Yes, I do. Nice to see you again. How are you? Y'all come on in. I'm making some tea. I've got some cold tea in the fridge.

Sure, that'd be great. They'll come, they'll show up. They'll show up. It's been a long time since you might have felt in control of your mortgage. Let Dominion Lending Center's help. With access to hundreds of financial institutions, they shop for the best rate and the best product for you. It's your mortgage renewal. Take control of it. Find a mortgage expert in your area at dominionlending.ca.

Are you sure you parked over here? Do you see it anywhere? I think it's back this way. Come on. Hey, you're going the wrong way. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Whether renting, considering buying a home, or renewing a mortgage, many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances and clear your head, visit Canada.ca slash It Pays to Know. A message from the Government of Canada. I have a bag of the stuff that you gave me when I was here last time. So I've got the regular eight footage and I have all the tape and I've got all the pictures and everything else. So I'm also working on a podcast, which looks at the case that Ernest was involved in heavily

with the Dean Moore case. It's still a very difficult thing for me to, yeah, not real sure how to deal with. I still do. The man I knew, and then all this is just not the same two people. And it tortured him. And it's very hard for me to deal with. You told us one time about when you first realized your dad's background in the corner. Dad called me, and he said, I need you to come over. I said, okay, well, I've got this to do. And he said, no, I need you to just drop everything.

There's something I need to tell you. And I'm like, if you knew my dad, you were like, oh, crap. What have I done now? You know, what's coming up? And so I went over there and sat down, and he had his coffee cup, and he was out on the back deck that he had built, and he had this look on his face. And he said, there's things that you just don't know about my life,

and I didn't want you to ever know. And, you know, basically, I was trying to hide from you. And he said that a reporter had called him from 2020. His name was Harry Phillips, and he wanted to investigate things that had happened when he was in the Klan. And like I said, over the years, I guess growing up, I knew of the Klan. I knew what it was. I knew that my daddy knew people that were in the Klan. It wasn't something that we talked about, but he just knew. I had known, I guess, that he had been...

I grew up, I can remember as a six-year-old, I saw that picture on the wall, and it struck me as funny. The cross was burning. And I asked asked him and I remember being a little bitty girl daddy why would you burn the cross and I will never forget that look on his face it was like oh god you know it's like it hit him like what am I gonna tell her you know and he's like well it's more illuminating. I mean, he was trying to explain it and how adults try to explain to children. And I just said, well, I don't think he should burn Jesus' cross. And I never saw the picture in the house again.

It really struck him. And I think he realized, okay, maybe I'm leading this double life, but now I realize it's affecting her. So as far back, that is my very first memory of even fathoming him, I guess, really being a party to the things that happened then. But it wasn't until the late 1990s that Gilbert actually spoke to his daughter about what he had done. I was like, okay, what are you talking about? And he goes, well, there was a murder.

And I actually crawled out of my skin. I'm like, what are you talking about? There was a murder. And he said, there were two kids murdered. And he started crying. I mean mean he was just sobbing and he said and i i did what i thought was right he said because it wasn't right and he really started going on about how wrong it was. And he said, I went to the FBI about it. And I brought down the Klan. And I was just kind of overwhelmed.

Yeah, I mean, it would overwhelm anybody. I think you sit there and kind of look at your father and go, what the hell are you telling me? Gilbert had lived with the secret for years and likely would have taken it to his grave had he not been contacted by that TV producer. He said, well, he told me if I did not talk, they were going to go with the story without me talking about it. And he said, and I don't feel like, it was kind of, he felt like he was caught. You know, I have to tell them or they're just going to go off the wall with whatever they want to go with, and I have no choice.

He didn't want it put all over the news, and then, you know, me and the girls have to suffer for something he was involved in. I don't think he ever regretted one minute of what he did because he felt like he had to do something. I think he just, he wanted it to be left alone and just let it go. He wanted to have some peace in life before he left this world, and I don't think he did. I found out he was in the Klan up until the late 70s.

I think he got involved in it as a, because everybody else was involved in it, you know, and it was a big, we got to do something, because back then everybody was scared of the blacks and the whites got together, that it'd be this big mess, and I think he really was like, we've got to preserve our world, you know, what we're accustomed to, I guess. And so it kind of went off on that tangent.

But I think when it hit him, the severity of what people were doing and, you know, it's like he told me, he said, you have these crazy, bloodthirsty people out there and they just want to go kill somebody. Ernest Gilbert was a leader in a white supremacist group that was at best afraid of racial equality.

He participated in and helped organize events that led to furthering the ideals of white supremacy, helping in the least to fuel violence. But when things turned violent, he changed his mind and became a paid informant for the FBI. I think once he got into the FBI, I think he wanted to do his part and let it go. And I think they kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, and I think he wanted to do his part and let it go. And I think they kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing,

and I think he felt trapped. He made the comment one time, they had everything they needed, but they wouldn't stop. It was like, he said, it was like they wanted to prolong it. And I think he became very disgusted with that. If you wanted to shut this down, you could, but you're not. And I think he resented them for that. The FBI? Yes.

The reason he stayed in the clinic was because the FBI wanted him to stay and provide information to him. That was exactly why he stayed. He told me that out of his own mouth. And then with people that are psychotically crazy, that you've got to remain close to without letting them know that you're going behind their back, because you know they'll kill you. And you know they'll kill your family. And you know that if they can beat somebody to death the way they did more than one time, it's not going to be a nice killing. Can you see your children being tortured that way?

An additional insult is that the Dean Moore case that he informed about in 1964, I think it was August, early August 1964, he talked to an FBI agent who lived in Natchez at the time, and told him what he had heard. The irony or the troubling point is that the information he gave actually never got to the person who could have made a difference in the case at that time. According to Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol Officer Gwen Cole, who was one of the lead Mississippi investigators on the D. Moore case, the FBI never told him the information they had gathered from Ernest Gilbert. And so this information may have never found its way to District Attorney Lennox Foreman, who could

have used it to call a grand jury. Regardless, Gilbert's information was ruled inadmissible in the 2007 trial of James Ford Seal. Because they wanted to protect your dad's identity, the FBI needed to protect their confidential informant. And he found no peace. It was like all the good he tried to do was defeated. And then when you finally think you're free from it, here comes some asshole with a camera wanting to so in 2000 when the abc documentary came out there was hope that this there would be a trial in the seal case but the u.s attorney at the time brad pie got decided

there wasn't enough evidence and they didn't bring your dad in, and they didn't actually go forward with the case. So how did your dad react to that after coming out in public? I don't know if you really want me to really tell you how he reacted to that. He said the same fucking shit over and over again. And Dave didn't say that for very often, so when he said it, it was disgust. He said all they're doing is stirring the shit pot, trying to stir everybody up again,

and they're not going to do anything about it. I know after this all happened, there's something that changed about him. He became very distant, you know, very, like he withdrew within himself. I just want people to know that he was not a monster. And I think he tried to do what he thought was right. And I don't think he ever felt like he did enough.

So your mom knew all this stuff too, right? Like she must have known because she's in those clan pictures. And so did you ever talk or confront your mom knew all this stuff too, right? Like she must have known because she's in those pictures. And so did you ever talk or confront your mom about that? I tried, but my mother and I were like night and day. I was always a lot closer to my father. I think she knew a lot of what went on, but she never really talked about it much. I don't think she really, he let her all the way in to what he was involved in and how deep he was involved in it. I really don't.

And what year did he die? He died in 2004. I ended up having to have him committed. He had dementia and he had post-traumatic stress disorder. And he went horribly, horribly downhill. I finally bought a trailer and moved it next to their house so I could be closer. And he was walking around, and we had like five acres out there, and he was just walking around with a shotgun one night.

Came up to the house, started beating on the door, and he was talking all kind of gibberish, and I'm like, Daddy, okay, calm down. And we didn't go outside, you don't scare the girls. And it just got to the house, started beating on the door, and was talking all kind of gibberish, and I'm like, Daddy, okay, calm down, and we're going to go outside and scare the girls. And it just got to the point that he was dangerous. He didn't know. His mind was gone, but he was still afraid of something, because he always had a gun. Ernest Gilbert may not have been deemed mentally fit to testify,

and this was confirmed in discussions with officials during my investigation of the DeMoore case. Here's the truth. Everybody wasn't evil. But a lot of people lived in the midst of evil. A little later on, folks, we will have the burning of the crown. I take out my computer to show Michelle the digital copies I made of her father's 8mm films and audio he recorded at Klan gatherings. I suspect that Gilbert is making at least some of these recordings

with the intention of sharing them with the FBI, since there are several shots of license plates and Klansmen with their masks off. Daddy was pretty high up in the Klan. I do know that. He was the Imperial Wizard at one time, and then he was the Grand Cyclops, whatever the hell that was. I said, were y'all playing Dungeons and Dragons or what? He didn't like that. All right, some more Rowley stuff. Now, Jack's in some of those, I think.

There's some of him and Jack together goofing off. Jack, meaning Myron Wayne, Jack's seal, James Ford Seal's older brother. Jack was directly involved in the murder of Dean Moore, and he and his wife were also close friends of Ernest Gilbert. There's Jack Seal. It looks like he's standing next to a police officer. A lot of the cops were in the Klan, too.

A lot of the National Guard. Many times, men of ill character have come into the Klan for the purpose of creating things that make the organization itself look bad. So every man that you see with a robe on, or every man who carries a news card in his pocket, or every man who professes to be a Klansman is not necessarily one. Confession right there. Can you make of that? It's almost like he's... Yeah, foreshadowing. That's... That's him.

That was his way. So we're here 10 years after the FBI and Department of Justice to look at civil rights cases and expand on the work that Jerry and others and myself had done up to that point. And the closest we've come is the Morris case, I think. And it's gone nowhere. The suspect is dead.

And you've just talked about all the reasons what they should have done and didn't do. And also, I think some of the people in the grand jury weren't cooperating in a way that would have been conducive to moving forward, perhaps. And now we've got a situation where the window of opportunity for finding actual justice with real perpetrators is almost all but gone in any of these cases. What's the next thing? Like, why are we doing this? Because we're still trying to tell the story.

If learning the history and what actually happened and writing history is the only thing left to do, then that's what we have to do because we have to get every piece of information we can find. It adds to the story. It adds to the understanding of what happened. And it's important. And we still may run into something, and you never know. You may find a peripheral suspect or a peripheral witness that no one has talked to before. So how many cases have been closed after a paper review and no further work done? We don't

know. We have no idea. We are still to this day getting heavily redacted documents even on cases that are closed and it still takes forever to get a case, even if it's closed. People like us who are actually working every day trying to figure it out, you put those things in our hands, we'll figure out something to do with it. And to me, the FBI and justice are almost negligent by not doing everything within their power to release those right away, totally unredacted. They could do that. I agree.

Why don't they do it? Are they afraid that people like us are going to find their mistakes because we call them out when we see them? I've been somewhat critical of, I don't think the Bureau was aggressive enough. I think they moved too slowly. And in each of the cases where justice has looked into these civil rights era murders and hasn't moved forward, which is the majority, they've sent a letter to the family.

And in those letters, they give exact reasons why they can't move forward. And they had 10 years to do this stuff, and 10 years later, what do we have? We have lots of families who saw these cases brought up again. They had to relive those emotions again. Think about that again, not sleep about it again. And if you're a government agency and you're going to ask people, tell people that you're going to buy and do these cases again, it to me is a sin not to give it 110%. The majority of stories from the civil rights era have yet to be told, and the extent of the repercussions decades later to be fully understood.

The forgotten victims vastly outnumber the official government roster. Men and women threatened, beaten, murdered and disappeared. Reports from the U.S. Attorney General's Civil Rights Division following the passing of the Emmett Till Act in 2008 say there were at least 113 cold cases involving 126 murdered victims from the civil rights era. Some of those 126 victims saw justice. Benchester White, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, and also Jimmy Lee Jackson. Jackson was murdered during the famous voting rights marches in Selma, Alabama in 1965. His killer, former state trooper James Bonnard Fowler, was indicted by Alabama's only African-American district attorney in 2007

and successfully prosecuted in state court. Prosecutors brought the case in large part because of the reporting of John Fleming, a journalist at the Anniston Star in Alabama. But beyond success in the courtroom, finding the truth and memorializing the victims of white supremacy is possibly even more important. To me, I would love to bring my boys and listen to this story coming from you guys. Back at Chess' cabin with Brian Brough.

I want them to understand the evilness out there, but as well as history. I want to spend a half a day with you hearing all... Let me tell you, we could do that. I'm glad to hear this because, you know, I've heard pieces. If you didn't want to put a little plaque or something out front, you could put something inside just for people that stayed here to know. Well, you know what I'm going to do? I want to get a book and know more about it for my guests.

This is hard to know now that everything's gone. We get back on the ATV. I'm glad I've opened up to you guys because there's a lot I don't know about. And I need to hear about it. Well thanks for all your generosity. And Brian agrees to make a plaque memorializing Chess White at the farm. We'll do a plaque for Chess. I want to do that.

Yeah. plaque memorializing Chess White at the farm. We'll do a plaque for Chess. I want to do that. When you came in, I had some reservation about you. And then there comes Dunlap, and we met him. And that was a continuation of the story. So I had a Mississippi lawyer, Republican, and a Canadian, and my black ass died at Red's Head.

So it had to be that way because nobody else stepped up to the plate. It had to be that way. And to have me and you together, you know, you remember you tried to teach me how to say crew, club, clan? I said, oh, fuck this. You know,

you're the vegetarian, I want sausage. That was a mixture that was meant to be. That's the way I look at that thing. You have been listening to Season 3, Epilogue. Season 4 of SKS, Wayne Gravett, is coming February 2018. Subscribe now to make sure you don't miss a single update or episode.

Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen. The series is mixed by Cecil Fernandez and produced by Chris Oak, Steph Camp, Amal Delich, Eunice Kim, and executive producer Arif Noorani. Our theme song is Terrorized by Willie King. Now you talk about terror I think you talk about terror People have been terrorized All my days All my days