Edgar Ray Killen (1926—) was recently recharged with the 1964 slayings of three Civil Rights workers in rural Mississippi. An ordained baptist minister and sawmill operator, Killen had not been recharged for the killings of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black Mississippian, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, until recently. Killen was appointed "kleagle," or klavern recruiter and organizer, for the Neshoba and Lauderdale County chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He personally fufilled his duties as a high ranking Klan officer - and had scheduled trips to kill Schwerner earlier that year.

After finally receiving word of the whereabouts of Schwerner, it is alleged that Killen, along with Cecil Price (sheriff of Neshoba County, Miss. at the time) hunted the three men down. The men were killed, and the car they were driving was mysteriously found months later charred and hidden in a marsh in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

In December 1964, after the FBI further investigated the case, Killen was arrested with nineteen others. He was later acquitted in an 1967 trial. From then until 2005, he was a free man. However, Killen created a public scandal when he declared that he would organize a Ku Klux Klan rally for the 2004 Mississippi Annual State Fair, in Jackson, Mississippi. Because of this, the Hinds County sheriff, Malcolm MacMillan, promised to reopen the trial against Edgar Killen. He was arrested for three counts of murder on January 6, 2005. However, he was freed on bond shortly thereafter. His case is similar to that of Byron De La Beckwith, charged with the killing of Medgar Evers in 1963, and arrested in 1994.

See also

• Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders