Man faces life in jail over Ku Klux Klan killings

A REPUTED member of white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan, has been found guilty in the US of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers.

James Ford Seale, 71, had pleaded not guilty to charges related to the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee in south-west Mississippi.

The 19-year-olds disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964, and their bodies were found in the Mississippi River.

The jury in Jackson, Mississippi, was told the victims were hitchhiking, stopped by Klansmen and taken to a forest where they were beaten. The Klansmen were trying to find out if blacks were bringing firearms into Franklin County, it was claimed.

Federal prosecutors indicted Mr Seale in January — almost 43 years after the murders.

When he is sentenced on August 24, he faces life in prison on the two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy.

Jurors deliberated just a few hours before convicting Mr Seale late on Thursday night.

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

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

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

“Those two 19-year-old kids had to have been absolutely terrified,” US barrister, Dunn Lampton, told jurors.