James Ford Seale

James Ford Seale (born 1936) is a former Ku Klux Klan member charged by the U.S. Justice Department on January 24, 2007, and subsequently convicted on June 14, 2007, with the kidnapping of two African-American teenagers in Meadville, Mississippi, in 1964. At the time of his arrest James Ford Seale worked at a lumber plant in Roxie, Mississippi. He also worked as a crop duster and was a police officer in Louisiana briefly in the 1970s. He was convicted on June 14, 2007 by a federal jury. Klansman James Ford Seale was sentenced August 24, 2007, to three life terms for his part in the 1964 murders of two black Mississippi teens. On September 9,2008, Seale's conviction was overturned.

Double murder in 1964

Klansmen abducted the two African American men, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, 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 young men 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 deceased Ernest Parker, according to FBI records) and drove almost 100 miles to the Ole River near Tallulah, Louisiana. They had to drive through Louisiana to get there, but the backwater was actually located in Warren County, Mississippi, meaning that they were killed in Mississippi.

There the pair were tied to an old Jeep engine block and sections of railroad track rails with chains before being dumped in the river, reportedly while they were still alive. 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.”

Original hearing in 1966

On January 14, 1966, while smoking a cigar, Seale appeared in Washington before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was investigating Klan conspiracies at that point. Seale was there with nine other alleged Klansmen from the violent White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, including his father, Clyde Seale, and Charles Marcus Edwards, his alleged accomplice in the Dee-Moore murders. All the Klansmen repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment, even as chief investigator Donald T. Appell and House members used the opportunity to place into the record what they believed the men had done, including kidnapping and murdering Dee and Moore in 1964. In addition, according to the hearing transcript, Appell introduced testimony of a Meadville man named Alton Alford that Seale beat him with his shotgun, and asked Seale if he was involved in the 1965 death of a Klansman named Earl Hodges who had fallen out with Seale’s father. Appell also accused the men of accusing Mississippi highway patrolmen of “false arrest” to help them escape criminal charges.

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 federal government has jurisdiction.

Reopening of the case in 2005

The case was reopened in 2005 after Thomas Moore, a retired 30-year Army veteran and the brother of Charles Moore (one of the 1964 victims), returned to Mississippi with filmmaker David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to begin shooting the film Mississippi Cold Case. Together they began 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 newsweekly in Jackson, Miss. During several days of reporting, the Moore, Ridgen and the Free Press discovered from locals that Seale had not died, as had been reported to gullible press by Seale's family members. 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.

Moore and Ridgen returned to Mississippi every few months to continue filming, making seven trips together for Mississippi Cold Case, 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.

Indictment, trial and conviction in 2007

The indictment affidavit filed Jan. 24, 2007, in U.S. District Court in Jackson, charged 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.

Seale was arraigned and denied bond because he is considered a flight risk: He owned no property, was a pilot, and lived in a motor home, which he and his wife used to leave Roxie, for a brief time, after the reporting team's initial July 2005 visits, according to Roxie residents. Primary testimony was from fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards who, after being confronted by Thomas Moore and David Ridgen during filming of a scene in Mississippi Cold Case, was given state and federal immunity from prosecution to tell the full story of what happened. Seale was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy on June 14 2007 by a federal jury. On August 24 2007, James Ford Seale was sentenced to serve three life terms for his crimes. The Judge Wingate said that he took into account Seale’s advanced age and poor health, but added, “Then I had to take a look at the crime itself, the horror, the ghastliness of it.” Seale will serve his sentence at a medical facility. [1]

2008 Updates

James Ford Seale had his conviction overturned by appeals court on September 09, 2008.