Some murder cases during the civil rights era aren’t likely to end up in court.
The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson reports that “three years after the FBI pledged to investigate more than 100 unsolved civil rights killings, the agency is ready to close all but a handful.”
The Post reports that investigators know in most cases who the culprits are, but indictments aren’t likely because the suspects died and it has only gotten tougher to gather evidence.
“There’s maybe five to seven cases where we don’t know who did it,” FBI Special Agent Cynthia Deitle told the Post. “Some we know; others we know but can’t prove. For every other case, we got it.”
The story surfaces just days after Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen, who is serving a 60-year-sentence in the slaying of three civil rights workers in 1964, filed a lawsuit alleging that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI used a member of the Mafia to beat and intimidate people to get information for the FBI in his case.
To read the full Post story click here.
