Aug. 4, 1964 - Bodies believed to be those of three civil rights workers missing since June 21 were found early tonight near Philadelphia, Miss.
FBI agents recovered the bodies from a newly erected earthen dam in a thickly wooded area about six miles southwest of Philadelphia, in east-central Mississippi.
The dam is several hundred yards off State Highway 21, near the Neshoba County fairgrounds.
The missing men were Michael Schwerner, 24 years old, and Andrew Goodman, 20, both white and both from New York, and James Chaney, 21, a Negro of Meridian, Miss.
Fulton Jackson, the county coroner, made a preliminary examination at the scene. The bodies were then sealed in plastic bags and brought by ambulance to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
Roy K. Moore, special agent in charge of the Jackson FBI office, said physicians and fingerprint experts would seek to make positive identification and establish the cause of death.
Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson Jr. said in a statement: “If these are the bodies of the three civil rights workers who have been missing several weeks, the investigative forces of the state of Mississippi will exert every effort to apprehend those who may have been responsible.”
Johnson said he understood FBI agents had searched the area once before and had noticed the new dam. Later, when they saw that the dam had collected no water despite heavy showers, they returned for a further investigation.
Excavation uncovered the bodies in the fill of the dam, the Governor said.
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