User:Jessmanners/Mississippi Cold Case

Moore and Dee murders
On May 2, 1964, Charles Eddie Moore, a college student, and Henry Hezekiah Dee, a millworker, both 19 and from Franklin County, Mississippi, were picked up by KKK members while they were hitchhiking in Meadville. They were abducted, interrogated and tortured in a nearby forest They were locked in a trunk of a car, driven across state lines, chained to a Jeep motor block and train rails, and dropped alive into the Mississippi River to die.

Moore and Dee's mangled torsos were discovered on July 12 and 13, 1964 during the frantic FBI search for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers who disappeared on June 21, 1964. When it was discovered that the bodies were those of two black men and not those of the civil rights workers, two of whom were white, media interest evaporated and the press moved on. While the FBI investigated the case and arrested two suspects in November 1964, the district attorney concluded that there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. The case was dropped by local authorities, some of whom were complicit in the crime, according to FBI and HUAC documents.

Copied from Mississippi Cold Case

''The two suspects that were arrested for the murder case of Moore and Dee were James Ford Seale, 29, and Charles Marcus Edwards, 31. In the days after their arrest, Edwards admitted to the kidnapping and assault of the two men, yet would not admit to the murder of them. After their arrest, the FBI became overwhelmed with the case of the three civil rights workers, so Moore and Dee's case was turned over to local authorities. It was not until 2000 that the federal authorities re-opened the murder investigation and discovered documents to help assist in the conviction of Edwards and Seale. After Edwards admitted to the murders, he was granted immunity to testify against Seale, who was convicted in 2007.''