James Ford Seale: Difference between revisions

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James Ford Seale (born 1936) is a former Ku Klux Klan member who the U.S. Justice Department charged on January 24, 2007 with the kidnapping of two black teenagers in Meadville, Mississippi, in 1964.[1]. James Ford Seale was also a crop duster and former police officer in Louisiana in the 1970s. [2]

Klansmen abducted the two murdered African American men, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, as they were hitchhiking on May 2 1964, on their way to a party. According to F.B.I. records, Seale suspected Dee of civil-rights activity and told the boys he was a revenue agent, investigating moonshine stills, and then drove them into the Homochitto National Forest between Meadville and Natchez. Other Klansmen followed, and as Seale held a sawed-off shotgun, the other men tied the young men to a tree and severely beat them with long, skinny sticks (called "bean sticks" in Mississippi because they're often used to "stalk" beans in gardens). According to the January 2007 indictment, the Klansmen then took the pair, who were reportedly still alive, to a nearby farm where Seale reportedly duct-taped their mouths and hands. Then the Klansmen wrapped the bloody pair in a plastic tarp and put them into the trunk of another Klansman's red Ford (the diseased Ernest Parker, according to FBI records) and drove almost 100 miles to the Ole River near Tallulah, La. They had to drive through Louisiana to get there, but the backwater was actually located in Warren County, Miss., meaning that they were also killed in Mississippi.

There the pair were tied to an old Jeep block and train rails with chains before being dumped in the river, reportedly while they were still alive.[3] [4] According to a Klan informant, Seale would say later that he would have shot them first, but didn't want to get blood all over the boat.

The bodies of the pair were found two months later during the search for three missing civil rights workers. The FBI launched an investigation, and presented their findings to local District Attorney Lenox Forman. FBI agents and Mississippi Highway Patrol officers arrested Seale and fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards on Nov. 6, 1964, shortly after the discovery of the bodies, based on informant tips. They were released on Nov. 11, after family members posted $5,000 bond each. On Jan. 11, 1965, District Attorney Lenox Forman filed a “motion to dismiss affidavits” with Justice of the Peace Willie Bedford, who signed the motion the same day. The motions state: “… that in the interest of justice and in order to fully develop the facts in this case, the affidavits against James Seale and Charles Edwards should be dismissed by this Court without prejudice to the Defendants or to the State of Mississippi at this time in order that the investigation may be continued and completed for presentation to a Grand Jury at some later date.”[5]

Ku Klux Klan members confessed to authorities that the Klansmen believed Dee was “part of the agitation that was going on in Mississippi."[6] Indeed, the indictment affidavit filed Jan. 24, 2007, in U.S. District Court in Jackson, charges Seale with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy. The “introductory allegations” begin: “The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKKK) operated in the Southern District of Mississippi and elsewhere, and was a secret organization of adult white males who, among other things, targeted for violence African Americans they believed were involved in civil rights activity in order to intimidate and retaliate against such individuals.” The document says that Seale and other Klan members suspected Dee of being involved with civil rights activity. Moore was included because he was a friend of Dee. The feds, who are believed to have given Edwards immunity for telling the whole story, now argue that Seale and other Klansmen planned the abduction of Dee, who might have had knowledge of "subversive" civil-rights activity. [7]

The case was reopened in 2005 after Thomas Moore, brother of Charles Moore, returned to Mississippi with filmmaker David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on a search for justice in the case. There they met up with Donna Ladd and photographer Kate Medley from the Jackson Free Press, an alternative newspaper in Jackson, Miss. During several days of reporting, the CBC and the Free Press discovered simultaneously from locals that Seale had not died, as had been reported to gullible press by Seale's family members.[8] The discovery helped to re-energize interest in the case after Moore and Ridgen visited U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton on the same trip, and Lampton pledged to re-open the case[9]. Moore and Ridgen returned to Mississippi every few months to continue filming, making seven trips together for the CBC production, every time visiting Dunn Lampton's office where Moore would present more information. The Jackson Free Press has continued its investigation as well, publishing a package of follow-up stories to keep local interest in the case high, including a verbatim response by Thomas Moore to an editorial that appeared in the Franklin Advocate, the weekly newspaper in Meadville, in which the editor said the case should not be re-opened. (Editor Mary Lou Webb did not publish Moore's response.) Readers of the Jackson Free Press also started a fund to purchase a new tombstone for Charles Moore.[10]

This wasn't the first time that authorities had pledged to re-open the Dee-Moore case, or that Moore had called for justice for the murders. On Dec. 16, 1998, Newsday reporter Stephanie Saul had investigated the case and interviewed Thomas Moore about his brother’s murder. “I’m looking for justice, not revenge,” he told Saul.[11] Then after ABC's "20-20" [12] and The Clarion-Ledger [13] probed several civil rights cold cases several years before, including Dee-Moore, the local district attorney, Ronnie Harper, had promised to investigate the case again. But nothing came of it, and media interest turned elsewhere until the CBC contacted the JFP and then Moore, and faciliated the meetup of the group in Meadville on July 8, 2005.

The earliest media interest in the case seemed to come from two authors. In his 1970 book, “Attack on Terror: The FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi,” writer Don Whitehead described some of the FBI’s 1960s-era findings on the Dee-Moore murders. Then in his 1996 book, “Betrayed: The Presidential Failure to Protect Black Lives,” writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson detailed the Moore and Dee case, named Seale and another suspect, and called on federal officials to indict the men on kidnapping charges. Hutchinson pointed out that because the crime occurred in a national forest, the feds had jurisdiction. [14]

Seale was arraigned and denied bond because he is considered a flight risk: He owns no property, he is a pilot, and he lives in a motor home, which he and his wife briefly left Roxie in after the reporting team's initial July 2005 visits, according to Roxie residents. Seale's trial is currently scheduled for early April. It is believed that the primary testimont will come from fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, who reportedly has been given state and federal immunity to tell the full story of what happened.