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SKS Season 3: Episode 3 - “The Hornet’s Nest”

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

VOICE 1: On March 20^th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

ANNOUNCER: This is a CBC podcast.

[Music]

KENNY BYRD: As far as I know the James Ford Seale, I see him once or twice a month, riding in that white Malibu car there, Chevrolet car.

RIDGEN: That’s Kenny Byrd now. He’s here with us in the van in the moments after telling us that James Ford Seale is alive.

He’s been reported as dead in the media. Most people think he’s dead.

KENNY: Right. No, he's not dead. That's the same James Seale that I know of, that supposed be him that live down that hill there in that motor home.

RIDGEN: Is it well known around here that he’s alive and well and living over there?

KENNY: Yes, far as I know everybody knows he lives here now. He’s been living here for years.

[Music]

ANGELINE: You are listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Original Podcasts. In Season 3, David Ridgen revisits his 2007 documentary Mississippi Cold Case. Teaming up with Thomas Moore to investigate the murders of his brother, Charles Moore, and Henry Dee, two 19-year-olds who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. This is Episode 3: The Hornet’s Nest.

[Theme music]

THOMAS MOORE: Go in there and get that son of a bitch. I've been focusing on Marcus. This is the son of a bitch. This is the guy that did all the whooping and interrogating and shit. We'll just come down in there on him and take him on to Harper and say here he is. He made my day.

[Music]

RIDGEN: So, we just saw James Ford Seale's car drive by, we're going to drive by and see if he comes out of it.

THOMAS: Okay.

RIDGEN: Just see if he's there. There was somebody behind the wheel, it looked like it could've been his wife.

THOMAS: Okay.

RIDGEN: So, let's just get up there I wanna— I'll bring the camera up when we get past. There we go.

Okay, so let's see what we see here.

Down a driveway, at the bottom of a hill next to a red-brick bungalow sits a white Fleetwood Bounder motorhome, parked next to an open gazebo, which serves as a sort of outdoor living room. An elderly couple, one a gray-haired, slight balding man, glasses, with knobby elbows tucked into a plaid short-sleeve shirt, the other a shorter dark-silver haired woman, are collecting groceries in plastic bags out of the back seat of a white Chevy. I zoom in and try to steady my camera. This has been one of many drive-bys since we first discovered the person’s identity at the end of my telephoto. And this would be the best picture I’d get.

THOMAS: It look like him. Yep. Yep.

RIDGEN: It is him. James Seale. The man who, along with other Klansmen, brutally murdered Henry Dee and Charles Moore.

THOMAS: So, do you think that he is accepted in the community or he's just like, there he is, this is the bad guy, you know?

KENNY: As far as I know, they all accept him here in the community. He goes down there to that church. It looks like everybody here in this community accept him.

RIDGEN: When we started from Colorado, we wanted to speak to Charles Marcus Edwards. Now, with James Ford Seale we had someone new to focus on. And as we drop Kenny off back at the BP station, our plans begin to shift. Seale in the 1960s was known for his unpredictable violence as a member of the Klan. Edwards was thought of as more of a Klan functionary, even a weak link since he had talked to the FBI on the day of his arrest in November 1964, revealing some of the details of the crime. Clyde Seale, the head of the Franklin Klavern, had actually threatened Edwards to keep his mouth shut, suggesting that the Klan did not have enough money to raise his kids or wife. But, since their arrest and release on $5,000 bond, Edwards has not admitted anything to anyone.

[Music]

[Phone ringing]

JERRY MITCHELL: Newsroom. Jerry Mitchell.

THOMAS: Hey! Jerry Mitchell! This is Thomas James Moore!

JERRY: Hey, Mr. Moore, I was just trying to call you.

THOMAS: Well, I just turned my phone on.

JERRY: Aw, no problem. Do you want to get together in the morning?

THOMAS: Tomorrow would be fine.

JERRY: So, I need to get those FBI documents out and look at them.

THOMAS: Well I've got-- you did give me the 9 pages. But I understand you have the whole package.

JERRY: No, no I've got a stack of stuff, so...

THOMAS: Okay. Hey, Jerry. James Seale.

JERRY: Uh-huh.

THOMAS: Is alive and well.

JERRY: Oh, okay.

THOMAS: He live in Roxie, Mississippi.

THOMAS: And I have him on video, on camcorder.

JERRY: How about that.

THOMAS: Yeah. 30 minutes after I hit Franklin County, that's driving 15 minutes and then stopping at a store to get some boiled peanuts.

JERRY: Right.

THOMAS: Within 30 minutes, I knew he was alive because the first person I talked to told me that.

JERRY: How about that.

THOMAS: Now, Jerry, you know, I don't know where you got the information.

JERRY: About him being dead?

THOMAS: Yeah.

JERRY: I think from his family.

RIDGEN: I found out later that Seale’s son James Jr., who lived in Alabama, may have helped spread the rumour to the media that his father was dead.

JERRY: Well, I'm glad to know he's alive and well. He's a-- he's a, if you can get David to talk to him, I doubt he'll do an interview. But man, he's a piece of work. He is a piece of work. Edwards, I got a different impression of than I did Seale. Seale was just absolutely unreconstructed. I mean, there's just no question about it.

THOMAS: I have talked to whites and I have talked to blacks. And they both say the same thing. And I cannot understand how Franklin Countians can afford to have a renegade, dangerous person that they is afraid of in the community. And nobody doing anything about it. I cannot understand that. It took an army veteran of 30 years in the military that has retired...

JERRY: [Laughs]

THOMAS: To come back here and get on the ground and talk to people.

JERRY: Yeah.

THOMAS: Just talking to normal people.

JERRY: I'm going go back and look. I didn't actually print that he was dead, but I had somebody in his family tell me that. But obviously that was a, they were lying about it, obviously.

RIDGEN: We made plans to meet Jerry the next day and said goodbye.

THOMAS: See you tomorrow.

JERRY: Look forward to seeing you.

THOMAS: Yes, sir.

JERRY: Bye-bye.

THOMAS: Bye-bye. I'll be damned. We haven't had a bad day down here. Every day is better and better, you know what I mean?

RIDGEN: Thomas wanted to share news of our trip with a couple of others.

THOMAS: Trying to respect these graves and not walk on to one of these bodies. Kind of like guiding my way through here.

RIDGEN: The old Mount Olive cemetery is where Thomas’s family, his mother Mazie, father Charlie, and brother Charles, were buried. We walk over grassy humps and past sun-bleached lambs and angels perched on leaning stones.

[Katydids buzzing]

THOMAS: That's-- that's his grave.

RIDGEN: Charles Eddie Moore’s tombstone was etched by hand, weather-worn and modest, hidden in the back-right corner of the cemetery grounds.

THOMAS: I gotta get him a new tombstone. I don't know why this been defaced. You see that? This was a local guy that did this. Didn't spell his name right.

RIDGEN: I take a closer look. “Charles” is hand drawn into the cement as C-H-E-R-L-I-E and last name “Moore” is missing the final E.

THOMAS: It's even turned wrong. That's my father's grave. That's my mother's grave.

RIDGEN: What does it say on the tombstone?

THOMAS: It says Charles Eddie Moore. Born August the 10^th, 1944. Buried July, 1964. “Darling we will miss you.” Then at the bottom it say “anywhere … anywhere in glory is all right.” That's what it says. Anywhere in glory.

RIDGEN: On another trip, a cousin of Henry Dee’s showed me the area where Henry had been buried. At the time the family feared that any headstone could be desecrated. So, there’s no marker. I asked Thomas about the service that the Moore family held for Charles.

THOMAS: It was a small. It was a small funeral. Mostly of the community up here, relatives, a few classmates. It was sad.

THOMAS: Didn’t nobody talk. The preacher didn’t talk anything about the violent act or nothing like that. Mama requested I wear my uniform and she asked me to walk in front of the casket into the church. I don't know why she asked me to do that, but I did that. Had on my class A khaki uniform. He had a nickname. Nub. Yeah. N-U-B. Everybody knew Nub. That's what mama and them called him, Nub. I never called him Charles Moore. I called him Nub.

RIDGEN: If you could say anything to you brother right now, what would you say to him?

THOMAS: I would tell him, Charles Moore, you know, I miss you. Your death brought hard things on us. Your senseless death. So, what I'm doing is trying to figure out who is responsible. And hold that guy, or those people, Meadville, Mississippi, Franklin County, and the state of Mississippi, accountable. Well, I miss you. I miss the whole family. So, rest in peace. I like the word read on the bottom said, “Anywhere in glory is all right.”

[Music]

RIDGEN: As we leave the graveyard in the van, Thomas tells me about the last time he was here, in 1999-2000, during Connie Chung’s ABC 20/20 investigation.

THOMAS: They brought me down. I met Connie Chung over in Meadville, and we drove up to the cemetery. Interview. Took pictures. And that was it! The whole thing lasted about 4 hours, maybe. They drive up, setting up, the little interview we had. And that was it. Compared to what we're doing now. I mean, you've been in Colorado three, four days. We've been shooting and talking. Get hoarse talking. So, there was no involvement from me from Connie Chung, about the case.

[Car door shuts]

RIDGEN: Humid sun and the smell of steamed pine permeates the air. Thomas and I have driven as deep as we can into the Homochitto National Forest without losing phone signal. We thought it was a fitting location for what we planned next.

[Phone ringing]

CHARLES MARCUS EDWARDS: Hello?

RIDGEN: Hello, can I speak to Mr. Edwards please?

EDWARDS: Who is this?

RIDGEN: My name's David Ridgen and I'm calling with Thomas Moore. Can I just talk to you for a couple of seconds?

EDWARDS: I don't believe you can.

RIDGEN: Sir, Mr. Moore's down here trying to—

[Phone clicks]

RIDGEN: Oh, I guess he hung up.

THOMAS: He hung up.

RIDGEN: Our thinking was that phoning first might be the best option, being less confrontational while still leaving open the option of knocking on Edward’s door later on.

[Phone ringing]

EDWARDS: Hello?

RIDGEN: Hello, Mr. Edwards, sorry. Mr. Moore just wants to talk to you. Like, all he wants to do is—

[Phone clicks]

RIDGEN:—talk to you man to man.

Edwards didn’t seem overly open to talking on the phone.

RIDGEN: What do you think?

THOMAS: I told you that! Yeah that motherfucker ain't gonna talk to me. But you tried.

THOMAS: I don't believe— "I don't believe you can." Coward, man. If you didn't do it, why you don't want to talk to me about it? Let's get it all, let's-- let's convince me we should be looking for somebody else.

RIDGEN: We decide to try once more, this time with Thomas speaking to Edwards directly.

THOMAS: I think the best thing to say, David, is, "Edwards, tell me why you was arrested 40 years ago?"

RIDGEN: You don't think he'll hang up?

THOMAS: Yeah, he gonna hang up. As soon as he said, as soon as I say this is Thomas Moore, he's gonna hang up.

[Music]

THOMAS: Edwards, this is Thomas Moore. In the name of our God, would you please talk to me.

RIDGEN: Just don’t--

THOMAS: Okay, I know.

[Clears throat]

RIDGEN: Get ready.

[Phone ringing]

VOICE 1: Hello, we are not available now. Please leave your name and number after the beep.

[Beeping]

THOMAS: Edwards. This is Thomas Moore. In the name of our God, will you please talk to me? I need closure in the killing of my brother 41 years ago. And you was named, and you was arrested 41 years ago. One of the two guys. Tell me why the FBI arrested you. Why they have so many documents on you. If you're not the guy, then let's close it. There's no sense you and I both going through hell for the rest of our lives. I'm not a violent guy. I want to talk to you, in a neutral ground. Man to man. Face to face. Just the two of u—

[Beep]

THOMAS: [Sighs]

RIDGEN: We set Edwards aside for now.

All right, let's get out of here.

THOMAS: It's hot, man.

RIDGEN: Eventually we decide to proceed along several tracks. Try to continue approaching Edwards, the potential weak link in the case, to get him to talk, and simultaneously apply pressure on Seale, whom Thomas felt was more dangerous, by using other tactics. But first, we had to make a trip to Jackson, Mississippi.

THOMAS: There he come right there. All right! How you doing?

JERRY: Doing great.

RIDGEN: Jerry Mitchell is an appealing mixture of laid-back Southern charm and professionalism, dressed in a sharp blue shirt and tie. Not overdressed, but certainly a fashionable step above Thomas and I, sweating through our ballcaps, t-shirts and shorts. He’s also become something of an icon in civil rights-era journalism. Reporting on cases and through that reporting helping to move those cases into the courtroom. Byron de la Beckwith, Sam Bowers, Bobby Cherry. Just some of the perpetrators Mitchell has played a role in bringing to justice.

THOMAS: So, we're here to sit down and chat with you a little bit.

JERRY: Sure. Sure. Absolutely.

THOMAS: Figure out how we're gonna eat this catfish. We gotta talk about that too.

RIDGEN: In 1999-2000 Jerry and ABC TV had obtained copies of some of the original pages from the FBI investigation that was conducted into the Dee and Moore case, 9 pages of which Jerry had already shared with Thomas.

JERRY: Printed off some of the last stories on this. When I talked to Seale, what Seale said to me. But here's the stack of FBI stuff.

RIDGEN: Just outside of Jerry’s cubicle in the Clarion-Ledger’s busy newsroom sits a banker’s box. And there’s a stack of papers piled on top.

THOMAS: All this about this case?

JERRY: Yeah.

THOMAS: God!

JERRY: Told you.

JERRY: If y'all want to take, make copies of them, it's fine with me.

RIDGEN: This represented about half of the files that I would eventually lay my hands on throughout the process of filming from various sources around the USA. Mitchell’s generous hand-off was a treasure trove of unredacted names and addresses for everyone the FBI interviewed, including information about Dee and Moore’s remains and the day that Edwards and Seale were arrested. Thomas wished he could have had the files years earlier. And with mountains of evidence like this, the question remains and festers, why did Lenox Forman, the State District Attorney, do nothing? Two months after Charles Marcus Edwards and James Ford Seale were arrested, Forman asked to have the affidavits against them, the murder charges, dismissed without prejudice, saying that he needed additional information or evidence if he was to consider moving forward.

THOMAS: Let me ask you, why you think he didn't prosecute?

JERRY: Well, he insisted that he didn't have enough evidence to do it. But of course, the FBI agents that I have talked to who were involved in investigating the case said that they presented him evidence and when that wasn't enough, they went out and got more and brought it back to him. And he just kept refusing. So, the case is languished. I mean, it was reopened back in 2000 I think it was, when they found out that the killings could have taken place on federal property, and the FBI looked at that. But they decided not to pursue this case. And so, it's just languished all this time.

RIDGEN: What do you think the chances are, I mean Thomas's. I guess, what do you think of Thomas's endeavour now?

JERRY: I think it's great. The huge thing plus for this case are these FBI documents. The fact that you've got almost a thousand pages of FBI documents. That's so much, in terms of cases, that makes it so much easier. Doesn't mean it's gonna be easy, but it means it's gonna to be easier to pursue this case than it would be, say, the Emmett Till case, or some of these other cases that basically had no investigation at the time. So, you do have the names of potential suspects, even beyond the two guys that got arrested. So, people who might have information about the case, people who can be questioned and potential witnesses and all those kinds of things. So, as with all these cases, it's difficult. It's difficult to piece these things together. It's difficult to prosecute. But it can be done. We’ve seen that. We saw that with the case of the three civil rights workers, and the Ben Chester White case, the four little girls that were killed in the Birmingham church bombing. All those things were basically a lot of ‘em pieced together because of FBI investigations. The documents that were generated originally.

THOMAS: Matter of fact, we was on the way here.

JERRY: Right.

THOMAS: And David talked to FBI in Washington and the first thing the guy said “well, first of all, the FBI didn't investigate.” What are you talking about? We stopped on the road and faxed him the nine pages. And then he called back the day later and said “yeah OK, OK, OK.”

JERRY: Well, that's like originally with this case, I don't know if you remember that or not. Originally when I asked the FBI about this case, they said all the documents in the case had been destroyed. Well, then I ended up-- Someone I know had gotten access to some of those documents. And so I then basically wrote a story and said “hey, wait a minute, these documents haven't, haven't been destroyed. They do still exist.” So eventually I was able to get copies of the whole thing.

RIDGEN: With the file in hand, I’d have to read through it all at least a few times, and track down all witnesses I could, including old FBI or Mississippi Highway Patrol agents, to see what they knew or remembered. We’d have to hope that some of the best witnesses would still be alive over 40 years later.

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

RIDGEN: Hi there. We’re here to see Mr. Lampton at noon.

Buoyed by our meeting with Jerry Mitchell and our growing pile of evidence, we left for our first meeting with the Federal U. S. Attorney for Southern Mississippi, Dunn Lampton.

LAMPTON: Did you know that Thomas and I were in the same unit in the military?

RIDGEN: No way!

THOMAS: Small world!

RIDGEN: As it turns out, Thomas and Lampton had served in the same army division at the same time, though they did not know each other. Lampton a colonel, and Thomas a command sergeant major.

LAMPTON: That’s—that’s impressive.

THOMAS: I’m very proud of it.

LAMPTON: Well, you should be. You should be.

RIDGEN: Dunn Lampton with his dry sense of humour and casual lack of ceremony, all in a suit and tie, made a positive first impression.

LAMPTON: Is it on? Could you turn it on?

RIDGEN: He’s sitting behind a wooden desk in a gigantic corner office in the Department of Justice’s Jackson, Mississippi office tower.

LAMPTON: We were mobilized and we were made, we were attached to the fourth infantry division.

RIDGEN: The coincidental connection breaks the ice quickly, and we soon get down to business.

[Music]

LAMPTON: Federal prosecutors have to prove that it happened on federal property. State prosecutors doesn't have to do that. And what I want to do, and what I will do, and it hasn't happened before, is to get everybody around one table that has any responsibility or authority, and see what we have.

RIDGEN: A Republican, Lampton was appointed by George W. Bush on September 7th, 2001. But he’d never heard about the Dee-Moore case until I’d contacted him the week before our initial meeting.

LAMPTON: So, I'm gonna review that and then I'll make that sure Ronnie Harper has all the evidence that I have. And we'll just-- I mean, we owe it to the people that were treated so poorly.

THOMAS: And it hurts to just talk about it. It hurt me last night to just read stuff that I … you know, you read about stuff like this. What person would do-- What country? What enemy do we have that would do stuff like that to a human being? It’s just...

LAMPTON: We're seeing it today with the terrorists. And what we got to understand, the Klan was a terrorist organization back in the ‘60s. And they, they had a lot of power because people were afraid of them. And people are not afraid of them anymore.

RIDGEN: I just need to just get a general statement, I guess, or as much of a statement as you can as to where the case is now and what your intentions are.

LAMPTON: David, right now my office has made a decision that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that it happened on federal property. We have to be able to prove that. And then there is some problems with the proof as to who was actually involved in the murder. But I had not really looked at this file. That decision was made before I got here. And I will look at the file, I was doing it last night. But if there is sufficient evidence and if we can develop any new leads, we'll go with it. And I'm gonna take a personal interest to make sure that it, just like you said, that everything that can be done has been done. Now is the time to right some wrongs that have been just too long without any justice for the family. There's no statute of limitations on murder. No justice was done back in the 60s. It was just a mockery. We're gonna take a real careful look at this for you. OK? Least I can do for my old sergeant major.

THOMAS: Old soldiers never die.

RIDGEN: That’s great, thank you.

[Music]

THOMAS: Have a good day, sir.

RIDGEN: A few weeks later, Lampton gathered local, state and federal authorities to discuss the Dee and Moore Case. He announced that in addition to looking at Dee-Moore, they would also re-evaluate the case of Wharlest Jackson, another civil rights era case from Natchez, Mississippi. Wharlest was killed by a car bomb in 1967. Speaking to the press afterwards, Lampton encouraged anyone with information about the cases, even those who may have played a role, to speak to investigators as soon as possible. “If there’s any consideration to be given,” Lampton said, “it’ll be given to people who come forward first.”

THOMAS: Oh man! So, he said he gonna take a personal interest, said he owed that to us, sergeant major. That made me feel pretty good.

RIDGEN: Lampton is your man.

THOMAS: He just impressed me the way he walk and shit. Like I'm the bad-- I'm the goddamn Wyatt Earp.

[Music]

RIDGEN: Wyatt Earp or not, in order to get the case into Federal Court, Lampton will need an eyewitness to confirm that at least part of the crime occurred on Federal Land, in this case, in the Homochitto National Forest. We continued speaking with people in the community in search of a witness, and to learn more about the atmosphere at the time. It wasn’t difficult to find talkers. Often they chose to speak to us, approaching in a friendly manner accompanied by a kind of grace I found particular to the South, but also steeped in a healthy dose of suspicion of strangers, particularly Northern ones.

MEADVILLE WOMAN: I just had to stop and see. When you live in a small town, you just stop and see what people are doing. You always stop and see. Because Meadville's a good little town. It's a nice little town.

[Car starting]

THOMAS: This is downtown, rebel, Ku Klux Klan Mississippi. Main Street.

THELMA COLLINS: I'm a resident now of Adams County, but I know everything about this place—

THOMAS: OK. Well, let me tell you what happened in 1964.

RIDGEN: Thomas tells the story of his brother’s death again and again, adding new details every time as we slowly uncover them.

THOMAS: And those two guys still alive.

COLLINS: That's terrible, that's terrible.

COLLINS: It wouldn't nothing like that happen around here. Seale is from down on down around Bunkley.

THOMAS: Did you ever work around the paper mill?

COLLINS: No, I worked at Armstrong.

RIDGEN: The International Paper Company in Natchez counted many Klansmen among its white employees, and was a major marshalling space for white supremacy in the region. Charles Marcus Edwards worked there. And the Armstrong Tire and Rubber Plant, also in Natchez, was another main organizing space for the Klan.

VOICE 1: We can stand up here and preach to you about…

RIDGEN: There were a number of Klan groups. The White Knights, like you’re hearing at this rally. Also, the Original Knights, United Klans of America, and so on. Sometimes they were connected, sometimes not, and at times fought with each other. And members changed their affiliations often due to disputes over money, ideology, and control. The White Knights organized themselves in a quasi-military fashion, and different cells of operation. According to FBI documents, members of the Seale family, include James Ford Seale, were part of the more violent cells.

What do the people in Meadville and Roxie think about having James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards living in their community?

MARGEURITE KING: I think the general opinion is that they were guilty, and they just got off. I think that's pretty much the feeling everywhere. Blacks and white probably. Deep down in their heart, they wouldn't tell you, but I think most of them believe that they guilty and they should have been convicted.

RIDGEN: Marguerite King worked as a chancery clerk in the courts of Franklin County in the 1960s. We’re sitting in the polished dining area of her home near Meadville. Her hair has recently been styled and she wears narrow glasses. Well-spoken and forthright, she is a force to be reckoned with.

Can you tell me what you remember about that time? Just give me the atmosphere that was in Meadville amongst white people, and just tell me about that time.

MARGEURITE: It was a very, very tense time. Very tense time. You just-- It was the first time you didn't really feel comfortable and free, and you know, not afraid. And so, it was pretty bad. I think the blacks and the whites both were afraid.

RIDGEN: I press Marguerite, and everyone else I meet, about Edwards and Seale living in Franklin County. How could a community live alongside people who they suspect were involved in a grisly murder for over 40 years?

MARGEURITE: It was the law enforcement. They just, they had a way to do things, you know, to keep from bringing it up. And you know, just postpone, and all that kind of stuff.

RIDGEN: Some members of the establishment, like Franklin County sheriff Wayne Hutto, were later found to be sympathetic to or even members of the Klan. From the moment of the Mississippi Burning or MIBURN case onward, the FBI began a process of infiltration that would eventually help to weaken the 1960s Klan to the point where it was difficult to find a member who was not an informant, paid or otherwise. But before that point came, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the Klan was able to rule its membership and the citizens it drew from with a relentless threat of violence and terroristic acts. So much so, that Ronnie Harper’s predecessor in the position of District Attorney, Lenox Foreman, was directly affected by it.

MARGEURITE: Okay, Mr. Foreman, who was DA at the time, he was very afraid. And when Lennox had to go to Natchez for a court case or something, which was in his district, he was never alone. He had the highway patrol men with him, or he went to the wait station where the men were working there, law enforcement people. He wanted them to be with him. I think he'd been threatened. I'm sure he'd been threatened. It was all a secret. But I think he probably so afraid he was afraid of his shadow.

RIDGEN: The late former Natchez Police Chief, J.T. Robinson, a man once renowned for standing up to the Klan but who now sits before me in this interview enfeebled by a stroke, used the exact same wording to describe the former District Attorney.

What can you tell me about Lennox Forman. Did you know Lennox Forman?

J.T. ROBINSON: Yeah, I sure did. Scared of his shadow. Lennox coulda put a lot of pressure on the Klan, you know. He wouldn't—didn’t do it. But now, you know, as I get older, I know why. He lost his house, cattle, and everything else out there in Franklin County. There are some who used to laugh about how they'd drive by and shoot a cow in the belly.

RIDGEN: J.T. says that the Klan used to shoot Forman’s cattle with a .22 rifle, wounding them just enough so they would die slowly.

ROBINSON: With a .22 short, take ‘em about a week to die, you know? RIDGEN: So, you think Lennox Forman was afraid of the Klan?

ROBINSON: I sure do.

RIDGEN: Whether you were black or white, poor or in a high-ranking position in the justice system, the one word that seemed to sum up the 1960s in Mississippi was “fear.”

RIDGEN: Hi there!

MARY LOU WEBB: Can I help you?

RIDGEN: Are you Mary Lou Webb?

MARY LOU: I am.

RIDGEN: Hi, Mary Lou. I'm Dave Ridgen. I called you from Toronto about the film I'm working on about Thomas Moore's brother.

MARY LOU: Yes.

RIDGEN: And you said I could look through your archives. Your news archives.

MARY LOU: And I said you could go to the library.

RIDGEN: Mary Lou Webb is a petite, white woman with the demeanor of an angry Sunday school teacher. She’s also the owner and editor of the Franklin Advocate, the local newspaper of record in Franklin County. In the days following the national news that James Ford Seale was still alive and free, Mary Lou Webb wrote an article, speaking, according to her, on behalf of the community. She writes in part, “The Franklin Advocate has weighed the issues and decided not to re-visit the 1960s racial incidents which took place in this county and Southwest Mississippi. The editor sees no new evidence, no reason, to put a new generation through painful memories.

MARY LOU: In my mind, now this is my mind and I can do this because I have the paper. And I have to think about everybody's welfare. And my husband and I lived through hell here before. We really did. The whole county lived through this before. OK. That was years ago. People have moved on. And it doesn't do any good, and it's gonna do not that dead man any good for his ancestors to get in a squabble with the whites again. There's no good in that.

RIDGEN: So, you think the people in the town agree with you?

MARY LOU: By and large.

RIDGEN: Really?

MARY LOU: I do. Because everybody, you know, there's too much trouble in the world to bring this up again. You know, every time I go to an airport and try to buy something from a vendor, or I use the restroom and it's clean, there's nobody speaking English. We have given every single solitary job that once belonged to Americans to somebody from overseas. And if we went over there, they wouldn't do that. They have better sense than we have. That's what we ought to be worrying about. Not something that happened 50 years ago, almost. But something that's happening here and now. You are welcome to look at those things. They are over there in the library. And you are welcome in this building, but I just think we are beating a dead dog.

RIDGEN: We’re just beating a dead dog in pursuing the Dee-Moore case, says Mary Lou Webb. Is it fear of kicking the hornet’s nest, or anger that it’s about to be kicked?

THOMAS: You think that's him? Huh?

RIDGEN: Yep.

THOMAS: You wanna do it?

RIDGEN: Do you want to do it?

THOMAS: Hell yeah, I'll do it!

RIDGEN: Let's go.

THOMAS: We are going back to the intersection, turn around, and we are going to approach James Ford Seale from the public highway. Then I will confront him and tell him. I will tell him who I am and ask him would he be willing to talk to me about the death of Charles Eddie Moore on neutral ground.

RIDGEN: Anxious to move forward despite the fears and doubts and perceived inaction that have pained him so over the past 40 years, Thomas and I head to James Ford Seale’s place. Or rather, the roadside on the hill above the RV where Seale stays.

THOMAS: Even peoples in Mississippi, Franklin County and other counties, that when you mention the word James Seale is kind of like--You know, this is an outlaw. But yet, he's accepted in his community because no one want to encounter him. Let's do it.

RIDGEN: OK.

THOMAS: Fuck it.

[Car turns off]

THOMAS: You don't fuck with me. Get my goddamn stick. Where my stick at? I just want the stick to be a symbol.

[Music]

THOMAS: Once I make the confrontation, we gonna have to get on outta there now.

RIDGEN: Fearing Seale might have a gun at the ready, Thomas decides to surprise him from a safe distance.

THOMAS: Hey, sir! Hey, sir! Hello! I'm calling for James Ford Seale! I'm looking for James Ford Seale! My name is Thomas James Moore! I'm the brother of Charles Eddie Moore! The son of a bitch ran inside. The whole bunch of them. All of 'em. They ran inside. Why don't you come out and be a man! All I want to do is talk to you, punk! I'm not gonna do you like you cowardly did those guys! Charles Moore and Henry Dee! I hope to see you in court!

RIDGEN: OK. Let's get outta here.

I had followed Thomas at a distance with my camera to give him time to talk to Seale without being a distraction. After Seale and the others he was with ran inside the RV, Thomas paused for a moment with his walking stick, then began running back to the van.

[Door shuts]

THOMAS: [Laughs] I feel good doing it. I feel good. Shit!

[Music]

THOMAS: The inscription on Charles Eddie Moore's headstone says “anywhere in glory is all right with me.” So, confronting him anywhere anytime is all right with me. All right.

[Music]

RIDGEN: We’ll come back here to James Ford Seale’s. But next time we wouldn’t be alone. And we’d be seeing Charles Marcus Edwards soon too, though not in the way I first expected.

THOMAS: What a day. What a day.

[Music]

ANGELINE: You have been listening to Episode 3: The Hornet’s Nest. Visit CBC.ca/SKS to see a detailed map of the locations relevant to the case, and subscribe to SKS on your favourite podcast app.

Someone Knows Something is hosted, written and produced by David Ridgen. The also produced by Chris Oke, Steph Kampf, Amil Delic, Eunice Kim and Executive Producer Arif Noorani, and mixed by Cesil Fernandes. Our theme song is “Terrorized” by Willie King.

[Theme music]

[Singing]

ANNOUNCER: For more CBC original podcasts, go to CBC.ca/originalpodcasts.

TRANSCRIPT: Someone Knows Something - Season 3 EP 3

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