Breaking Legal News - POSTED: 2007/01/25 14:50
Federal authorities arrested a Mississippi man Wednesday for the 1964 kidnapping and deaths of two black men in another reopened civil rights-era case. James Ford Seale, now 71 years old, was originally arrested in 1964 on suspicion of kidnapping two young black men, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, who were later found dead in the Mississippi river, but was released due to a lack of evidence after providing information to the FBI.
In 2000, after the Clarion-Ledger reported on the contents of Seale's file, the US Justice Department reopened the case, but the LA Times and later, the Clarion-Ledger reported that Seale had in fact died. Thomas Moore, brother of Charles Moore, had pushed for the case to be reopened again, but authorities hesitated, until the 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for the civil rights era deaths of three civil rights workers.
Seale will be arraigned Thursday in Jackson, Mississippi, on kidnapping charges.