Nov. 6, 1964 - Two white men, one an acknowledged member of the Ku Klux Klan, were arrested today on charges of killing two Negroes whose bodies were found by chance during the search for three civil rights workers.
The Justice Department announced that James Ford Seale (right), a 29‐year‐old truck driver, and Charles Marcus Edwards (left), 31, a paper mill employee, had been charged with the murder last spring of Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19.
The two Negroes vanished last spring. Their torsos were found in the Mississippi River near Tallulah, La., in July by a search party looking for the rights workers — Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Cheney.
The rights workers were later found buried beneath an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss. They had been shot to death. Their killers have not been apprehended.
Moore, a college student, and Dee, a local laborer, were not connected with civil rights activity, authorities said.
Seale and Edwards were arrested by local officers and agents of the FBI at their homes near here this morning.
The two Negroes were killed “on or about May 2,” authorities said. The FBI identified Edwards as a “self‐admitted Klansman.”
Seale, the father of three children, works for a mill in Roxie. Edwards, the father of four, is employed by a paper mill at Natchez.
The FBI said the arrests culminated an “extensive and lengthy” investigation but declined to specify what evidence led to the apprehension of the two men. Authorities said the investigation was continuing.
The lower portion of a body identified as that of Moore was spotted by a fisherman, James Bowles of Tallulah, on July 12. A second lower portion of a body, that of Dee, was fished out of the river the following day in the same area. They had been last seen on May 2 hitchhiking near Meadville.
The bodies of Moore and Dee were identified from personal effects found in the pockets of their trousers. Authorities indicated they had been beaten to death.
Seale and Edwards were arrested on warrants charging them with “willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and with malice aforethought” killing the two Negroes. They are being held in the Hinds County Jail in Jackson without bond.
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