Reputed Klan member convicted in 1964 deaths

JACKSON, Miss. - A jury on Thursday convicted reputed Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi, grisly drownings that went unpunished before federal prosecuto rs re-examined the forgotten case.

Seale, 71, faces life in prison in the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The 19-year-olds disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964, and their bodies were found later in the Mississippi River.

Thomas Moore of Colorado Springs, Charles Eddie Moore’s older brother, said he believed justice was done.

“We’ve come a long way, baby,” said Thomas Moore, 63.

Thomas Moore has not lived in Mississippi since he entered the Army in 1964, weeks before his brother disappeared. For nearly two years, he pushed prosecutors to reopen the long-ignored case.

“I now feel that Mississippi is my home,” said Moore, a Vietnam veteran who spent 30 years in the military. “Mississippi, you came a long way, and I’m so proud the jury spoke.”

“I thank the Lord that we got justice,” Dee’s older sister, Thelma Collins of Springfield, La., said outside the courthouse.

Seale sat stone-faced as the verdict was read and showed no emotion as marshals led him out of the courtroom. Seale was taken back to a county jail north of Jackson, where he has been held since he was arrested. Federal prosecutors indicted Seale in January almost 43 years after the slayings. He is to be sentenced Aug. 24 on two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy.

The prosecution’s star witness was Charles Marcus Edwards, a confessed Klansman. During closing arguments earlier in the day, prosecutors acknowledged they made “a deal with the devil” but said that offering immunity to Edwards to get his testimony against Seale was the only way to get justice.

Edwards testified that he and Seale belonged to the same Klan chapter, or “klavern,” that was led by Seale’s father. Seale has denied he belonged to the Klan.

Edwards testified that Dee and Moore were stuffed, alive, into the trunk of Seale’s Volkswagen and driven to a farm. They were later tied up and driven across the Mississippi River into Louisiana, Edwards said, and Seale told him that Dee and Moore were attached to heavy weights and dumped alive into the river.