An 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was convicted of manslaughter Tuesday in the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers – exactly 41 years after they disappeared.

Testimony begins today in the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen, a one-time Ku Klux Klansman charged with killing three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.

A jury of four blacks and 13 whites has been sworn in to hear the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen – a one-time Ku Klux Klansman charged with killing three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.

Reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen watched from a wheelchair today as jury selection began in his murder trial in one of most shocking crimes of the civil rights era – the 1964 slayings of three voter-registration volunteers that was later depicted in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”

More than 40 years after one of the most notorious crimes of the US civil rights era – the “Freedom Summer” killings of three young civil rights workers - a reputed Ku Klux Klansman was arrested on murder charges in the case.