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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 7: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about him. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 8: Good Evening. In the summer of nineteen sixty five, several
Speaker 8: Ku Klux Klan members riding in a pickup truck shot
Speaker 8: two black deputies on patrol in Washington Parish, Louisiana. Deputy
Speaker 8: O'Neil Moore, the driver of the patrol car and father
Speaker 8: of four daughters, died instantly. His partner, Creed Rogers, survived
Speaker 8: and radioed in a description of the vehicle. Less than
Speaker 8: an hour later, police and Mississippi spotted the truck and
Speaker 8: arrested its driver, a decorated World War II veteran named
Speaker 8: Ernest Ray mc kelvin. They returned mc kelvin to Washington Parish,
Speaker 8: where he spent eleven days in jail before authorities released him. Afterward,
Speaker 8: the FBI sent its top inspector to Bogalusa, Louisiana to
Speaker 8: participate in the murder inquiry, the only Civil rights era
Speaker 8: FBI investigation into the killing of a black law enforcement
Speaker 8: officer by the KKK. Despite that assistance, lack of evidence
Speaker 8: and witnesses unwilling to come forward forced Louisiana prosecutors eventually
Speaker 8: to drop all charges against mce calvin. The FBI continued
Speaker 8: its investigation, but could not gather enough evidence to filed charges,
Speaker 8: leaving the murder of an O'Neill Moore unsolved. Clan of
Speaker 8: Devils the murder of a Black Luisi The Anna Deputy
Speaker 8: Sheriff is Stanley Nelson's investigation of this case, which the
Speaker 8: FBI probe from nineteen sixty five to twenty sixteen. Nelson
Speaker 8: describes the clan's growth and the emergence of black activism
Speaker 8: in Bogalusa and Washington Parish against the backdrop of political
Speaker 8: and social change in the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 8: With the assistance of two retired FBI agents who worked
Speaker 8: the case, Nelson also explores the lives of the primary suspects,
Speaker 8: all of whom are now dead, and points to the
Speaker 8: clansmen most likely responsible for the senseless and horrific attack.
Speaker 8: The book that were featuring this evening is Clan of Devils,
Speaker 8: the Murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff, with my
Speaker 8: special guest, journalist and author Nelson. Welcome, Welcome to the program,
Speaker 8: and thank you very much for this interview Stanley Nelson.
Speaker 2: Thanks Dan, good to be with you.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much for this interview. Let me ask
Speaker 8: you first off, how you came to be involved with
Speaker 8: this book, Clan of Devils. What brought you to this project?
Speaker 2: Well, since two thousand and seven, I've been working on
Speaker 2: unsolved murders committed by the Klan in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: and I lived in northeastern Louisiana, located in a Concordia
Speaker 2: centinels located in little town called very Day. In this
Speaker 2: area of northeastern Louisiana in southwest Mississippi, there were multiple
Speaker 2: incidents of clan violence and I began to connect eight
Speaker 2: murders to a little known clan group called a sever
Speaker 2: Dollar group. And over the case, over the period of
Speaker 2: working on these cases, writing stories of stories over years,
Speaker 2: I met a number of FBI agents and retired agents
Speaker 2: who had worked on some of the crimes that I
Speaker 2: was working on, and over the course of that time,
Speaker 2: there was one particular retired agent named Ted Gardner who
Speaker 2: kept mentioning to me the horrendous murder of a black
Speaker 2: law enforcement officer in Washington Parish, which is in southeastern
Speaker 2: Louisiana if you're familiar with it, but the state Louisiana
Speaker 2: is shaped like a boot. In Washington Parish is in
Speaker 2: the tip top of the toe of the boot, and
Speaker 2: the only parish in the state that's bordered on two
Speaker 2: sides by Mississippi. And so he began to talk to
Speaker 2: me about this murder and how it went down, and
Speaker 2: he had worked on the case during the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: I also had met or came to know another retired
Speaker 2: agent name Milton Graham, who had also worked on that case.
Speaker 2: And between those two men, they sort of left me
Speaker 2: a trail to falla uh, and that's what I did.
Speaker 8: Give us a little bit more of the background. You
Speaker 8: talk about the proximity the New Orleans that this Vernardo
Speaker 8: is that's involved in this story as well. Let's talk
Speaker 8: about just this area and the population and some background
Speaker 8: on this area before we start.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is an area of a lot of
Speaker 2: forest and Washington Parish the county seat of the parish
Speaker 2: seat is Franklinton and about the center of the parish
Speaker 2: and the biggest town is Bogaloosa, which is along the
Speaker 2: Pearl River on the eastern side of the parish. Bogolu
Speaker 2: So was founded in early nineteen hundreds by the Goodyear Brothers,
Speaker 2: who the tire makers, who bought vast acreage of forests
Speaker 2: in both Louisiana Mississippi and built what was the largest
Speaker 2: sawmill in the parish in the early nineteen hundreds. And
Speaker 2: that sawmill and that industry by over the nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: and forties morphed into a paper mill and the paper
Speaker 2: mail became one of the largest employers in the parish.
Speaker 2: And Washington Parish is also a big dairy parish and
Speaker 2: had a huge income. A lot of people worked in
Speaker 2: the dairy industry. So Washington Parish was is not far
Speaker 2: from New Orleans. During World War Two, when so many
Speaker 2: men were away in war, Louisiana became the parishes became
Speaker 2: many became homes to a lot of gambling and prostitution activities,
Speaker 2: and that was particularly true Washington Parish. This this was
Speaker 2: the result of work by the Mob in New Orleans
Speaker 2: to carl Us Marcello Mob who paid off sheriffs in
Speaker 2: some cases and operated houses of prostitution and lots of gambling.
Speaker 2: So consequently he had lots of violence that's always associated
Speaker 2: with those type of activities. In the late nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: a man named Dorman Crowe who was a young man.
Speaker 2: He was the son of a lawger employed by the
Speaker 2: very industry that the Goodyear Brothers brought to life there.
Speaker 2: He decided that he wanted to throw his hat into
Speaker 2: the ring and run for sheriff. He went around the parish.
Speaker 2: He promised to do away with the gambling and prostitution.
Speaker 2: Influenced to run the Mob back to New Orleans and
Speaker 2: he won. He beat a two term in come his
Speaker 2: first two or two re election bids, he was elected
Speaker 2: by huge margins. By the mid nineteen fifties came the
Speaker 2: Brown Versus Board of Education, which in the US was
Speaker 2: a big case that basically called for the u integration
Speaker 2: of public schools. As a consequence of that, we saw
Speaker 2: a rise of white segregationists in an organization known as
Speaker 2: the White Citizens' Council and the citizens' councils were m
Speaker 2: determined to stop integration at all courts and and keep
Speaker 2: things just as they were. And this occurred in the
Speaker 2: fifties in Washington Parish. There was a big white citizen
Speaker 2: council that was born in Bogalusa and spread across the parish,
Speaker 2: and they decided that the sheriff was too friendly to
Speaker 2: black people. And the fact was the sheriff, Dorman Crowe,
Speaker 2: had always received good black support and there were about
Speaker 2: eighteen hundred black voters in the parish at that time.
Speaker 2: And what the white citizens' council decided to do is,
Speaker 2: in order to beat the sheriff, we're going to have
Speaker 2: to remove some black voters from the rolls. And a
Speaker 2: man named Ernest Ray Mcalvin from Bogalusa was a white
Speaker 2: citizen Council member and he helped lead the effort to
Speaker 2: purge black voters from the pole from the rolls. And
Speaker 2: this was particularly designed for the nineteen sixty election when
Speaker 2: what became the Klan ran its own candidate. And so
Speaker 2: by the time that election came around in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: mcelvin and others had successfully removed about eighty five percent
Speaker 2: of the black voters from the rolls wow, and it
Speaker 2: looked very likely that they were going to beat the sheriff.
Speaker 2: But the sheriff was a fighter, and he went out
Speaker 2: and campaigned hard, and when the results came, he won
Speaker 2: by one hundred and thirty seven votes, which astounded the
Speaker 2: segregation as they could not believe that that happened. About
Speaker 2: two days after that election, a federal judge, in response
Speaker 2: to a lawsuit that had been found by the Justice Department,
Speaker 2: ordered that all of those voters removed from the polls
Speaker 2: from the voting rows to be put back on them.
Speaker 2: So all those votes were restored. But two days after
Speaker 2: the election, and so what happened next In Louisiana, particularly
Speaker 2: in early in nineteen sixty late nineteen sixty, a klan
Speaker 2: group was formed in the Sreport Bowser area, which is
Speaker 2: in the northwestern part of the state, and that clan
Speaker 2: became known as the Original Knights of the Ku Klux
Speaker 2: Klan and their constitution, and one of their leaders had
Speaker 2: been a member of the Knights of the Ku Klux
Speaker 2: Klan from the nineteen teens. In nineteen twenties, which by
Speaker 2: some accounts had four million members. According to some accounts,
Speaker 2: and you might have many folks have seen pictures of
Speaker 2: these huge clan marshes through Washington.
Speaker 4: D C.
Speaker 2: With everybody in their robes that's from that era. And
Speaker 2: so one member, one man that was a member of
Speaker 2: that original group of clan, he helped form the Original Knights,
Speaker 2: and that original Knight swept through Louisiana, went into Mississippi
Speaker 2: and later morphed into the White Knights in Mississippi, which
Speaker 2: was responsible for the killing of the three civil rights
Speaker 2: workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi in nineteen sixty four. And so
Speaker 2: Bogalusa in Washington Parish became in Louisiana the home of
Speaker 2: the largest percentage of clansmen anywhere in the state, and
Speaker 2: their whole focus soon became that we are going. And
Speaker 2: keep in mind that during this election in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: as it was, the election was sixty four, but the
Speaker 2: campaign began the sixty three. All of the talk in
Speaker 2: the US and was centered on Congress and Talco passage
Speaker 2: of the Civil Rights at what became the Civil Rights
Speaker 2: Act of nineteen sixty four. There was talking late that
Speaker 2: year of sixty three of freedom writers coming into Mississippi
Speaker 2: so the Klan in bogalus in Washington Parish determined that
Speaker 2: we're going to ruin our same man against the sheriff,
Speaker 2: and we're not going to be able to remove the
Speaker 2: black voters. We tried that before and that didn't work,
Speaker 2: and it became one of the most bitter elections in
Speaker 2: the history of Washington Parish. It did not look well
Speaker 2: for the sheriff in the first round. He owned his
Speaker 2: main challenger almost beating but there was a third candidate
Speaker 2: and it threw it into a runoff. And they went
Speaker 2: to the polls and on election day a huge turnout,
Speaker 2: absolutely a massive turnout lines in Bogalusa, and when the
Speaker 2: votes were counted, the sheriff had won by one less
Speaker 2: vote than he did in nineteen sixty sixty. He won
Speaker 2: by one hundred and thirty six votes. And the Klan
Speaker 2: was absolutely absolutely furious because actually what they had done
Speaker 2: is they had run candidates, clan candidates for every office
Speaker 2: in the parish. Their goal was to take over the parish,
Speaker 2: but the one position that they wanted more than any
Speaker 2: other position was sheriff. Sheriff in Louisiana particular at that
Speaker 2: time was particularly particularly strong and the Klan felt that
Speaker 2: if we can take over as sheriffs, then we'll have
Speaker 2: control of law enforcement. We will be able to run
Speaker 2: the civil rights agitators out of town, will be able
Speaker 2: to extinguish any local efforts for civil rights. We will
Speaker 2: maintain segregation and therefore maintain white supremacy. But that goal
Speaker 2: was dashed when Crowe defeated their candidate in January of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four, And so now the Klan had to
Speaker 2: look at another way to fight.
Speaker 8: What does Sheriff Crow do in response as a result
Speaker 8: of the election, and who does he decide to hire
Speaker 8: and why?
Speaker 2: Well, here in lies the whole the matter right here.
Speaker 2: The Klan had heard that during the campaign for the
Speaker 2: sixty four and for sixty four that Crow had made
Speaker 2: a promise to black voters that if they helped him
Speaker 2: win re election, that he would name two black deputies.
Speaker 2: The Klan thought it was a big joke, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't a joke. Crow had gone to the black community
Speaker 2: and he said, indeed, support me again. Crowe was a
Speaker 2: kind of fellow. He could see that times were changing.
Speaker 2: He could see that blacks were going to have a
Speaker 2: role in government and things were going to change. And
Speaker 2: he realized that two black officers, particularly in patrolling black
Speaker 2: communities in the parish, would serve a good purpose. The
Speaker 2: black community would be better satisfied by that. And it's
Speaker 2: the way it usually started when black officers were hired
Speaker 2: for the first time. Well, Clynn heard these stories that
Speaker 2: the sheriff would do this, but they really did not
Speaker 2: believe that he would. But when his fifth term began
Speaker 2: in the summer of sixty four, he did just exactly
Speaker 2: what he promised the white community, and he hired two
Speaker 2: black deputies. He was given a list of five people
Speaker 2: recommended by the black community. He interviewed those candidates, and
Speaker 2: he chose only more early thirties father of four dollars
Speaker 2: wife Mavella, who's still alive and enjoying a good you know,
Speaker 2: enjoying healthy and doing well in Washington Parish, and Creed Rogers,
Speaker 2: who was in his early forties married and had one
Speaker 2: son who was older. Those men began their job on
Speaker 2: June one, nineteen sixty four, and when they took that job,
Speaker 2: the Klan was absolutely just furious and vowed revenge. And
Speaker 2: it wouldn't take long for a few things to happen
Speaker 2: in which really things would go from bad to worse.
Speaker 2: But the two deputies begin their jobs were basically liked
Speaker 2: by many people in the white community, and the sheriff
Speaker 2: was proud of the way they were working. And so
Speaker 2: here's what happened, basically is about a month. The one
Speaker 2: thing that the Klan did not want was and the
Speaker 2: thing that they feared because to understand how this rocked
Speaker 2: their world, they realized that when two black deputies were hired,
Speaker 2: that that badge that they wore, that behind that badge
Speaker 2: carried the full authority of the laws, local laws and
Speaker 2: the laws of the United States. And they realized that
Speaker 2: now a black man, for the first time ever in
Speaker 2: their lives, now had the authority to arrest a white
Speaker 2: person that did something wrong. And this was something that
Speaker 2: the clan had a hard difficult. In fact, not only
Speaker 2: could they not stand the thought of it, they vowed
Speaker 2: that this was not going to happen. So immediately after
Speaker 2: those deputies began their work, and all of the Klan
Speaker 2: meeting houses, which were called claverings across the parish, all
Speaker 2: the talk began, what are we going to do about
Speaker 2: these deputies? What are we going to do about these deputies?
Speaker 2: And then about a month later, the fueral grew even
Speaker 2: greater when owed him more and Creed Rogers were traveling
Speaker 2: down the road one night on patrol when they were
Speaker 2: jolted when another car bumped them in the back and
Speaker 2: both cars stopped. They got out and it was a
Speaker 2: white man in the other car, and he was intoxicated,
Speaker 2: heavily intoxicated. He no way that he could drive that car.
Speaker 2: He was a danger to society. They radioed in that
Speaker 2: they had this white man and they were told to
Speaker 2: bring this man to jail. They brought him to the county,
Speaker 2: to the parish jail in Franklinton. The man was arrested.
Speaker 2: He was this was his third DWI driving while intoxicated,
Speaker 2: although he had been pulled over multiple times and not
Speaker 2: given a ticket. And as a consequence of his record,
Speaker 2: he was sent to the state prison in Angola. And
Speaker 2: so now you have a case where a white man,
Speaker 2: what's the biggest clan, fear that authority of the law
Speaker 2: of these black men. And now a white man who
Speaker 2: was a relative and friend to several clansmen, now he
Speaker 2: is in jail because of what a black man did.
Speaker 2: And that's when that's when the determination became even greater
Speaker 2: that they were going to get those deputies.
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Speaker 8: Now you talked about that was the seemingly catalyst for
Speaker 8: these people or these clansmen here. So what happens in
Speaker 8: just before this June first, given the climate that's going on,
Speaker 8: You talk about a meeting just before that with officials
Speaker 8: city officials.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, well this comes a little bit later. Let
Speaker 2: me take you through that. So during the course of
Speaker 2: their first year on the job, the Klan is constantly plotting.
Speaker 2: They harassed their deputies a couple of times an agent
Speaker 2: with a Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department, threatens to give
Speaker 2: them a ticket when he finds them one night on
Speaker 2: the side of the road, out off the road in
Speaker 2: the distance target shooting with a can, you know, just
Speaker 2: shooting into this can, and he accuses them a knight hunting.
Speaker 2: He does not arrest him, but the deputies go and
Speaker 2: tell the sheriff what's happened, and the sheriff is infuriated.
Speaker 2: He writes to the head of the Louisiana Department Widlife
Speaker 2: and Fisheries and demands that that agent be sent out
Speaker 2: of the parish to someplace else. And the significance of
Speaker 2: the agent, his name was Lbert Strahan, was that Lbert
Speaker 2: Strahan was a clan official in Washington Parish. So things continue.
Speaker 2: We now have passed the Civil Rights after nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: and now the thing to do is how do we
Speaker 2: get implementation of that act? How is it now enforced
Speaker 2: by the federal government. So during early nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: the local civil rights groups, with help from the Congress
Speaker 2: will Racial Equality in some other civil rights groups, began
Speaker 2: to hold marches throughout the spring of winter and spring
Speaker 2: of sixty five. Things are very very tense in Bogalusa.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of fighting clansmen on the street to
Speaker 2: attacking marchers just for no reason whatsoever. The violence is
Speaker 2: continuing to grow. And among the things that the active
Speaker 2: civil rights workers demanded was is that the city began
Speaker 2: to enforce the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: in other words, hire black people for city jobs, enforce
Speaker 2: the law that black people can go into restaurants and
Speaker 2: set at the counter and order something to eat, that
Speaker 2: the police in Bogalusa quit harassing black people, and just
Speaker 2: multiple really very simple, simple things, but back then they
Speaker 2: were huge things. The mayor and the city council continued
Speaker 2: to deny these things until May of sixty four, when
Speaker 2: about mid May, I excuse mail of sixty five, about
Speaker 2: mid point of that month, he agrees to the demands,
Speaker 2: and the mayor has been influenced by Governor John mckiffyn.
Speaker 2: Mckiffen was elected in January of sixty four, at the
Speaker 2: same time Crowe was elected to his fifth term. Mckiffen
Speaker 2: had run as a segregationist, but he soon became a
Speaker 2: moderate on race, and he soon began to realize that
Speaker 2: Bogalusa was nothing but a powder keg and the only
Speaker 2: thing standing in the way of Bogolusa in Washington Parish
Speaker 2: following the war the law was the ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 2: He knew how the clan was. Mackiffin was from North Louisiana.
Speaker 2: He knew that he had to do something because he
Speaker 2: feared all out war in Boglu and he feared the
Speaker 2: loss of lives. So Mackifthin does something that really nobody
Speaker 2: ever knew about it until you know. I began researching
Speaker 2: this book and found some documents from FBI files that
Speaker 2: was really quite stunning. Publicly Mackiffin had had after the
Speaker 2: well he would later say that he had a secret
Speaker 2: meeting in gog Lusa, but he would not reveal what happened.
Speaker 2: But what he had done was he decided that I've
Speaker 2: got to go talk to some clan leaders. I've got
Speaker 2: to get them off the streets, and I got to
Speaker 2: demand it. So he goes to Bogalusa about the in
Speaker 2: late May of May thirty thirty one of sixty five,
Speaker 2: and he goes to the home of a clansman who
Speaker 2: just incidentally lives next door to his moral enemy, the sheriff,
Speaker 2: and he goes out there and there's clan leaders there,
Speaker 2: and Mafiffin says to them, you're going to have to
Speaker 2: get off the streets of Bogolusa. I'm going to demand
Speaker 2: that you do that. You're going to have to let
Speaker 2: this play out. And he told him that he supported
Speaker 2: the Bogalusa mayor in accepting the demands of the black community,
Speaker 2: and he also the Klan had immediately once the mayor
Speaker 2: had accepted those demands, the Klan began a recall petition
Speaker 2: against the mayor, and the governor said, stop that recall
Speaker 2: petition and get off the streets of Bogalusa. The Klan
Speaker 2: had one demand of Mackiffen to do it, and their
Speaker 2: demand was this, you get that white man out of
Speaker 2: jail that was put there in the state pen because
Speaker 2: of those two black deputies. And Mackiffen refused to do it.
Speaker 2: So he thought when he left, however, that most of
Speaker 2: them eventually agreed that they would do that, and he
Speaker 2: thought that he had gotten through to him. And then
Speaker 2: forty eight hours later, O'Neill, Moore and Creed Rogers begin
Speaker 2: their final ride together through Washington Parish.
Speaker 8: Take us through that Uh, final ride that happens June second,
Speaker 8: nineteen sixty five, and the patrol car as you write,
Speaker 8: easing through town.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, so what would the the way the deputies work.
Speaker 2: There was one when when they when the sheriff was
Speaker 2: re elected for that fifth term, and he hired the
Speaker 2: two black deputies. Uh, he bought a patrol car for
Speaker 2: them to share, and they rode on patrol together. So
Speaker 2: one week one deputy would keep the car at his
Speaker 2: house and he would be the driver, and the next
Speaker 2: week the other deputy would be the driver. And it
Speaker 2: just so happens that on Wednesday night, June two, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five, that it was only Oleill Moore's week to drive.
Speaker 2: So later that afternoon, three or four o'clock they begin
Speaker 2: their shift. O'Neill goes and picks up Creed Rogers. So
Speaker 2: it's sort of a routine night. They drove drive to Bogolusa.
Speaker 2: They go to the substation there, the Sheriff's office substation,
Speaker 2: check in there, They go to Franklinton, the county seat
Speaker 2: where the courthouse is. They check in there, do a
Speaker 2: little work there, and then they decide go on and
Speaker 2: make their night patrol. So they patrol up through the
Speaker 2: north end of the parish and then turn east to
Speaker 2: a little town called Angie, and Angie is in the
Speaker 2: northeastern corner of the parish. Below Angie south five miles
Speaker 2: is a little town called warner Doough where the two
Speaker 2: deputies live, and six miles below that is Bogolusa, the
Speaker 2: largest town in the parish. So it is about it
Speaker 2: is about ten o'clock or so at night. A little later,
Speaker 2: and O'Neill and Creed are going to go to O'Neill's
Speaker 2: house where Mavella is cooking them a catfish supper. They're
Speaker 2: going to take their break to eat something, and they're
Speaker 2: both hungry and looking forward to that. But as they
Speaker 2: turn and head south at Angie, they notice kind of
Speaker 2: suddenly there's this black pickup behind them. There's nothing menacing
Speaker 2: about the truck. It just sort of seems to come
Speaker 2: out of nowhere. And as they're traveling, they look to
Speaker 2: their left to the east and they see a looks
Speaker 2: like a trash fire or a debris fire. They drive
Speaker 2: past the fire, but Creed says to O'Neill, why don't
Speaker 2: we turn around and look make sure that fire is
Speaker 2: not going to get out of control. So they slow
Speaker 2: down to a stop, and that truck slows down to
Speaker 2: a stop behind them, but slowly goes around them. And
Speaker 2: as it goes around it both definitely sort of lean
Speaker 2: over and look, and all they can see is the
Speaker 2: outline of the driver, and they don't have they don't
Speaker 2: see anyone else. They can't really see what the driver's
Speaker 2: face looks like. They can just see that outline, don't
Speaker 2: think anything about it, but they do observe that the
Speaker 2: driver goes ahead a little ways and just sort of
Speaker 2: goes at a snail's pace. They turn around and drive
Speaker 2: back to where the fire was a couple of hundred yards,
Speaker 2: look it over, see there's nothing, doesn't look like it's
Speaker 2: going to spread, that it's contained. So they get back
Speaker 2: in the car and the truck they can still see
Speaker 2: it up ahead, so they speed on up and as
Speaker 2: they're about a mile or so outside of and they
Speaker 2: pass the truck. And when they pass the truck again,
Speaker 2: Creed Rogers, who's on the passenger side, looks over and
Speaker 2: again all he can see is this very dim outline
Speaker 2: of a driver, and it appears to be a white male,
Speaker 2: but he can't tell much more than that, he doesn't
Speaker 2: see anybody else. They passed the truck and as they
Speaker 2: get to barn a Dough, O'Neill puts on his left
Speaker 2: blinker to turn east into barn Dough on Main Street.
Speaker 8: He does that.
Speaker 2: They turn east in just a block or two. They
Speaker 2: come to the railroad tracks that go to the double
Speaker 2: set of railroad tracks and they notice that that truck
Speaker 2: has turned as well, and it's now right behind them.
Speaker 2: They're going about twenty five miles an hour. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, they hear this boom and O'Neill's immediate response is, hey,
Speaker 2: is our vehicle backfire? And Creed, at the sound of
Speaker 2: that boom, sees this big hole in the dashboard. He says, no,
Speaker 2: somebody's shooting. Speed up. O'Neill floors it and when he
Speaker 2: does that, there's this volley of gunfire that that truck
Speaker 2: lights up like a Christmas tree. I mean, it's just light,
Speaker 2: just the just fire on fire. O'Neill is shot and
Speaker 2: killed instantly. He takes a devastating shot to the head.
Speaker 2: He loses control of the car and it crashes into
Speaker 2: a oak tree on the right side of the road.
Speaker 2: Creed is shot in the shoulder Creed Rogers, and he
Speaker 2: sees that the car is going to crash. He tries
Speaker 2: to brace himself, but the crash is so hard his
Speaker 2: head actually breaks out the window on that side of
Speaker 2: the patrol car. He essentially will lose his right eye
Speaker 2: as a result of that crash. He is sitting there,
Speaker 2: O'Neill has slumped over onto him and he can tell
Speaker 2: that he's dead. He is da O'Neill is days for
Speaker 2: a few minutes, and then he eventually picks up the
Speaker 2: radio and he calls to the dispatcher been shot up
Speaker 2: in Varnado. He says, we need help bath Immediately, dispatcher
Speaker 2: contacts other officers, the FBI is notified, and just quickly
Speaker 2: that town fills up with policeman. O'Neill provides a description
Speaker 2: of that pickup and it becomes a really one of
Speaker 2: the most crucial things of the case, and he is
Speaker 2: able to he has seen that truck as it passes
Speaker 2: while they're shooting. So he's seen that truck, gotten a
Speaker 2: pretty good look at it three times, and he offers
Speaker 2: this description. He says, it's a dark colored pickup, maybe black,
Speaker 2: maybe green, maybe blue. I can't tell it's an old
Speaker 2: mid model Chevrolet pick up. It's got a white grill
Speaker 2: on the top. It has sideboards on the bike, and
Speaker 2: sideboards or these boards that people will put on the
Speaker 2: back of a pickup so you can have a higher
Speaker 2: load if you've got to load something up, if you
Speaker 2: have animals to put back there to keep them from
Speaker 2: falling out, and it would these sideboards that were somewhat small,
Speaker 2: sixty eight inches high on both sides. And then he
Speaker 2: gets one of the clue. He says that there is
Speaker 2: a rebel flag embalm license plate on the front of
Speaker 2: the grill to the right of center, and that right
Speaker 2: of center will become a very very key description. About
Speaker 2: an hour later, in Tylertown, Mississippi, two officers are sitting
Speaker 2: in the car together. They had gotten this all Points bulletin.
Speaker 2: They're sitting there and all of a sudden, this black
Speaker 2: pickup truck comes storming through town. They estimate sixty five
Speaker 2: seventy miles an hour. It runs a stop sign, they
Speaker 2: pull it over. Man comes out of the truck identifies
Speaker 2: himself as Ernest Ray Mcelvin Ogalusa, the man that you
Speaker 2: might recall and prior to the nineteen sixty election had
Speaker 2: led the purge of black voters in Washington Paris. They
Speaker 2: take him to the title of town jail. He will
Speaker 2: not talk. He says only a few basic things. The
Speaker 2: one thing that the officers noted immediately is the one
Speaker 2: thing missing, or the sideboards on the truck. They ask
Speaker 2: mcelevin about his sideboards, and he won't answer. He won't
Speaker 2: say anything about the sideboards. He says, I've been to
Speaker 2: a secret meeting, That's all he will say. The officers,
Speaker 2: of course, they're waiting for the FBI to come in
Speaker 2: the city. Highway Safety patrol is there of state troopers
Speaker 2: Louisiana come. But while they are holding mcevin in the sale,
Speaker 2: they hear him throw up three times, and they hear
Speaker 2: him wash his He washes his hands in arms three times,
Speaker 2: so that if there was any gunpowder anyway, he's probably
Speaker 2: as washed all of that away. They hold him. Sheriff
Speaker 2: Crow a day or two later, comes from Washington Parish
Speaker 2: where a murder warrant for his arrest, take him to
Speaker 2: Frankrentton and books him in the jail there, where micalvin
Speaker 2: is held all together in jail for eleven days before
Speaker 2: he's released.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about the two witnesses, and you say the
Speaker 8: two only witnesses, and one's Daniel Scraps Fornia, a forty
Speaker 8: eight year old old teacher at Vernardo High went toes
Speaker 8: c see and then talk about the other witness, housewife
Speaker 8: Jesse Thigpen, and what she saw.
Speaker 2: Well, both of them saw. They had different slightly different angles,
Speaker 2: but they were both on the east side, I mean,
Speaker 2: excuse me, on the as the truck was and the
Speaker 2: car were kept dripping down the road. They were on
Speaker 2: the left side of the vehicles. Apps sees sees the truck,
Speaker 2: sees the car, but does not see the shooters. He
Speaker 2: sees a little bit of fire, but he cannot see
Speaker 2: the person he missed. Jesse Bell big Penn, who lives
Speaker 2: not far from where Daniel Fournia is Scraps is, she
Speaker 2: sees it from a slightly different angle. She sees both
Speaker 2: vehicles as well, but it's very dark, there are very
Speaker 2: few street lights. She hears the you know, the gunfire.
Speaker 2: She hears the car bricking through the oak tree. She
Speaker 2: sees a tire mounted on the left side of the truck,
Speaker 2: right behind the driver's side, and indeed mclevn's truck did
Speaker 2: have that on there, but they cannot identify seeing any person.
Speaker 2: The problem that would develop through the years would be
Speaker 2: that in the prosecution of the case, among many things,
Speaker 2: but one very simple thing would be that Creed Rogers
Speaker 2: could not specifically identify mcelvin as having been the driver.
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing is that when the FBI began
Speaker 2: its investigation, they went looking for every black truck, dark
Speaker 2: colored truck in Louisiana, Mississippi. They eventually found two hundred
Speaker 2: that matched the general description of the truck. There were
Speaker 2: similarities to mcalvan's truck. Some did have sideboards on them,
Speaker 2: white grills, some had white grills. But there was one
Speaker 2: very distinctive thing, one key thing that Creed Rogers had
Speaker 2: said had described, and that was that the Confederate flag
Speaker 2: license plate was to the right of center, and that
Speaker 2: was only on one truck the FBI discovered, and that
Speaker 2: was on ray Mcalvin's truck. That was another key thing.
Speaker 2: The problem with the case would be, among other things,
Speaker 2: that none of the eyewitnesses, the two eyewitnesses, could not
Speaker 2: state specifically for sure that that was ray Mcalvin's truck.
Speaker 2: They could not even make out sideboards because of the
Speaker 2: distance from which they were from where it happened. So
Speaker 2: that was one problem. Creed Rogers could not specifically identify
Speaker 2: ray Mcalvin as the driver, and so the district attorney
Speaker 2: had a real problem. He did form a grand jury,
Speaker 2: but he didn't have anything to bring to a grand jury.
Speaker 2: And one thing another problem was is that Creed Rogers
Speaker 2: was seriously injured and it would be quite some time
Speaker 2: before he could testify before a grand jury. So those
Speaker 2: were some of the initial problems. And then of course,
Speaker 2: as the FBI goes out and begins to search for
Speaker 2: suspects and criminals and people involved in the case, it
Speaker 2: became very apparent to them that everybody was scared to death.
Speaker 2: Black witnesses, black people were afraid to talk. White people
Speaker 2: were afraid to talk. They found one man along the
Speaker 2: route of the escape route of the truck who said
Speaker 2: that very night, passing by his house about ten thirty
Speaker 2: or so, just minutes after this crime occurred, that he
Speaker 2: saw Bray Mcalvin's truck pass The FBI asked him, well,
Speaker 2: how are you sure that it's mclelevin's truck, and a
Speaker 2: man said, well, about a month or two earlier, mcelevin
Speaker 2: had had a tire issue with his car with his
Speaker 2: truck right by my house, and I walked down there
Speaker 2: while he was working on it. I'd seen that truck
Speaker 2: multiple times and he said, look, I know that truck.
Speaker 2: That's the truck I saw that night. The FBI will
Speaker 2: say things like, well, we might need your testimony, and
Speaker 2: people would constantly say, oh, no, I'm not testifying against
Speaker 2: the Klan. Are you crazy? They'll kill all my family
Speaker 2: and the FBI. But soon, in their teletites to headquarters
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. Would tell Jaegar Hoover and all
Speaker 2: the people working on the case up there that look,
Speaker 2: the Klan has taken a strong stance against the government
Speaker 2: here and people are afraid to say anything, and that
Speaker 2: would be just a major major problem for the FBI.
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Speaker 8: com slash murder Now, Stanley, we were talking about that
Speaker 8: mcklvin is arrested. Ray McKelvin is arrested. What we didn't
Speaker 8: mention is some of the evidence, some of the interesting
Speaker 8: things that were found in his truck. Can you tell
Speaker 8: us about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, they've found a couple of pistols in his truck.
Speaker 2: They found well, probably the most significant thing that they
Speaker 2: found his truck was a clip for an M one
Speaker 2: tanker Garon. It's a military style rifle, heavy duty rifle,
Speaker 2: high powered rifle. The FPI would come to believe based
Speaker 2: on they were able to determine that both Moore and
Speaker 2: Rogers and the vehicle had been shot up by from
Speaker 2: slugs from a shotgun and from a high powered rifle,
Speaker 2: which they felt could have been a tanker M one garan.
Speaker 2: Ray McElman was a military war veteran of World War II.
Speaker 2: He was shot and wounded at Saipan during the war.
Speaker 2: Thought he was going to die, but a man came
Speaker 2: and rescued him and saved his life. So that was
Speaker 2: always an interest in him, but they couldn't take it
Speaker 2: any farther. The other thing they found one fingerprint on
Speaker 2: his pickup truck that wasn't his. But through the years,
Speaker 2: through fifty one years, they were never able to identify
Speaker 2: who that print belonged to, even though they tried really hard.
Speaker 2: So the main takeaway for Mcalvin to pick up was
Speaker 2: they didn't They didn't find anything other than that one fingerprint,
Speaker 2: but they did find that clip for a tanker in
Speaker 2: one Guaran.
Speaker 8: It's interesting that they did find the citizens a card,
Speaker 8: a Citizens Council of Greater New Orleans. You talk about
Speaker 8: the Citizens Council, the National States Right Party card, and NRA,
Speaker 8: but also very interestingly it's also a special Deputy for
Speaker 8: the Louisiana State Police, effective November eighth, nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2: Yes, and those type of things they had. Those in
Speaker 2: Mississippi too, were mostly political things that somebody from the
Speaker 2: local level could be a representative or some other official
Speaker 2: could ask somebody that knew the governor, would you give
Speaker 2: him one of these cards? They you know, I guess
Speaker 2: they were solid out after by some people, but they
Speaker 2: really didn't have any power and it's hard to tell
Speaker 2: if a governor. Mckiffin was not governor at that time.
Speaker 2: In fact, Jimmy Davis was governor at the time, so
Speaker 2: it's hard to know if that had any specific meeting
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 8: Tell us what the national FBI response is to the
Speaker 8: shooting of these.
Speaker 2: Deputies, well, there were two fronts there. One is just
Speaker 2: the fact that they were wrapped up in multiple cases
Speaker 2: at this time that they responded really strongly, and it
Speaker 2: was also an extra emphasis because these were law enforcement
Speaker 2: officers that were attacked and that seemed to be of
Speaker 2: special interest to really even the local law people, you know,
Speaker 2: they still felt that was one of their own, even
Speaker 2: though maybe not they didn't feel as strongly as the
Speaker 2: FBI did. So many of the agents that were there
Speaker 2: on the ground, many of them arrived that next day.
Speaker 2: The FBI set up a headquarters at a local hotel.
Speaker 2: They brought in Joe Sullivan, who was a very famous
Speaker 2: FBI inspector that helped run the investigation into the murder
Speaker 2: of the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia that's fifteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, and the Justice Department sent John dor who
Speaker 2: was head of the Civil Rights Division, and Dora also
Speaker 2: was involved in those big Mississippi cases in the prosecution
Speaker 2: of those Both of those men were sent to the
Speaker 2: streets they you know, as I mentioned earlier, Governor mckiffin
Speaker 2: was concerned of violence taking hold and being seriously getting
Speaker 2: out of control in Vogelusa. And of course, once those
Speaker 2: deputies were attacked that happened, the blacks were outraged. Civil
Speaker 2: rights organizations from the cross the country came, clansmen turned out,
Speaker 2: segregations turned out, and just day after day in Bogolusa,
Speaker 2: it was just a mess. Door in Sullivan one day,
Speaker 2: was on the streets and he saw local Bogolusa policemen
Speaker 2: just standing watching and laughing as white men would run
Speaker 2: from a sidewalk into the crowd of marchers and just
Speaker 2: knocked somebody down. In fact, he berated the officers for that.
Speaker 2: Door saw this too. And Door also saw that that,
Speaker 2: you know, blacks could not go into white restaurants and
Speaker 2: order all these things that a year earlier, the Civil
Speaker 2: Rights Act in nineteen sixty four was supposed to to
Speaker 2: bring right. So he took advantage of a couple of
Speaker 2: local suits from black black activists that had been filed,
Speaker 2: and Door decided that and mckiffin, the governor, had a
Speaker 2: month ago earlier, embraced this idea. Dor said, well, Bogalusa
Speaker 2: is just going to have to be our test on
Speaker 2: whether the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four has
Speaker 2: any teeth or not. And so he went and fouled
Speaker 2: the federal government filed a lawsuit against the original knights
Speaker 2: of the Ku Klux Klan and sought had injunctions against
Speaker 2: them or not interfering with free marches, with not trying
Speaker 2: to intimidate people from going into flats, from going into
Speaker 2: white restaurants, and all the multiple things that the clan
Speaker 2: was doing to intimidate the public. So this became the
Speaker 2: major test case of whether the Civil Rights Act of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four was going to have any meaning and
Speaker 2: would also be a signal to other communities across the South,
Speaker 2: particularly in what you're going to be required to do.
Speaker 2: So he found that suit in July sixty five, and
Speaker 2: by September it came to court in New Orleans the
Speaker 2: Fifth Circuit, and the US government won, and the three
Speaker 2: judge panel began to institute these rules. They were holding
Speaker 2: civil city officials would be held in contempt if these
Speaker 2: if this Act was not in force, that integration didn't
Speaker 2: begin in public facilities. And so it was a victory.
Speaker 2: But the other key victory for the FBI that maybe
Speaker 2: a few people realized was the FBI was able to
Speaker 2: lean on a couple of the head clan leaders and
Speaker 2: forced them to provide the court with a list of
Speaker 2: clan members. And it was a list of about one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty names, and that list devastated a lot
Speaker 2: of land members. And it also did one other thing.
Speaker 2: For months and months and months since its inception, the
Speaker 2: clan leaders had been telling its members, do not talk
Speaker 2: to the FBI, Do not tell them anything that we
Speaker 2: do here. You keep your mouth shut. Do not identify
Speaker 2: another member of the klan. If you do, you'll be
Speaker 2: drummed out of the klan and you may be hurt.
Speaker 2: And so now our average clansman is sitting there, well,
Speaker 2: you know what in the world, our clan leaders just
Speaker 2: divulge our name. And it caused great dissension within the Klan.
Speaker 2: And consequently, as a result of that, the FBI was
Speaker 2: able to develop some really good informants that helped them
Speaker 2: figure out who the main suspects were and got a
Speaker 2: good feeling of kind of what happened and how this
Speaker 2: murder went down.
Speaker 8: You talk about that that was a factor that produced informants.
Speaker 8: But also you mentioned that the idea of people that
Speaker 8: were considered too renegade or too radical for the clan.
Speaker 8: A lot of these when people spoke of the violence
Speaker 8: that was planned or that they had in their minds,
Speaker 8: a lot of these people weren't prepared to go that
Speaker 8: far with their membership in the clan.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, well, the clan is always made up of
Speaker 2: a few different type of people and with different motives.
Speaker 2: First of all, you know, when the Original Knights were
Speaker 2: formed in nineteen sixty in Louisiana, they were formed supposedly
Speaker 2: as a political organization designed to stop integration. The robes
Speaker 2: were symbolic, you know. But you know, but we have
Speaker 2: to sell robes because the clan has to make money.
Speaker 2: So members are required to buy robe. You were required
Speaker 2: to pay dues, You're required to pay an initiation fee. Well,
Speaker 2: among the three founders of the Original Knights in Louisiana
Speaker 2: was a dry try cleaner from Sreeport named John Swinson,
Speaker 2: made of the robes and made the profit from the robe.
Speaker 2: So the money was always a big issue in the klan.
Speaker 2: The other thing was you always had this violent core
Speaker 2: that wanted to do violent things. When a good number
Speaker 2: of klansmen. Men became klansmen because when they sell things,
Speaker 2: like James Meredith be enrolled at Old Miss. The thought was, well, look,
Speaker 2: our congressmen, our senators, our leaders can't stop it. I
Speaker 2: guess we're going to have to do it ourselves. So
Speaker 2: the Klan was attracted to a lot of white men
Speaker 2: that this is the way we can stop it. But
Speaker 2: most of those white men were not violent men and
Speaker 2: didn't necessarily believe in violence, even though they were in
Speaker 2: an organization that promoted it. In what you had happened,
Speaker 2: by sixty three, you had sort of a purge of
Speaker 2: the Klan, and that the violent members began to take over,
Speaker 2: so that by sixty four mostly violent men were involved
Speaker 2: and a few just a regular clansmen with no violent
Speaker 2: intent personally. When this trial happened in sixty September sixty
Speaker 2: five in the fifth Circuit in New Orleans, when this
Speaker 2: trial revealed everybody's name, you saw in sort of another
Speaker 2: mass excellence from the clan, so that all you were
Speaker 2: left with were these real hardcore, criminal minded men.
Speaker 8: You write about that the informants told of the organization
Speaker 8: and all of and potential members that and possible potential
Speaker 8: suspects were formed at that time. Tell us some of
Speaker 8: these suspects that were found to be by the FBI,
Speaker 8: and also about Saxon Farmer, the guy that lived right
Speaker 8: across from Sheriff Crow.
Speaker 2: Well, so what I did in going through the FBI
Speaker 2: files and we had those files had never been released before,
Speaker 2: well not in bulk, and the only files that had
Speaker 2: been released were heavily redacted. And so when I got
Speaker 2: involved and interested in this case, I asked the Center
Speaker 2: of Investigative Reporting in California, who had worked with before
Speaker 2: we began to talk about how we can get these docums.
Speaker 2: It takes a long time to the Free Information Act
Speaker 2: to get documents like these. I've been going through this
Speaker 2: for years, and you wait for for years to get
Speaker 2: documents in So I said, why don't we file suit
Speaker 2: against the Justice Department for because we had tried multiple
Speaker 2: means before they had rejected our FOIL request on getting
Speaker 2: you know, unredacted files. We were able to get O'Neill
Speaker 2: Moore's widow. They'velomore signed a privacy waiver, which is one
Speaker 2: thing that the government officer said, well, it's a lot
Speaker 2: of private things that hurts the families. Well, when we
Speaker 2: got that waiver, Miss O'Neill, Miss Mabella wanted those files released.
Speaker 2: And so when we went to court in federal court
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, and we argued that this was an
Speaker 2: importance to the public to know what these files say,
Speaker 2: that it's important to justice, and it's been a long
Speaker 2: long time the case has been closed, it was closed
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. There would be no reason not to
Speaker 2: release it in a timely, fast manner. And the judge
Speaker 2: ruled in our favor, and shortly thereafter we've again sent
Speaker 2: of receiving monthly document drops from the Justice Department. And
Speaker 2: as I began to review those files month after month
Speaker 2: after month, we clearly could sort of pick out the
Speaker 2: main suspects. And among those was a guy named Saxon Farmer,
Speaker 2: who was a very violent man in Voglusa. He ran
Speaker 2: he on some gas stations. He was a real proponent
Speaker 2: of violence. And they found one informant who was also
Speaker 2: a suspect himself, but it wasn't really informant. He was
Speaker 2: a clansman and a suspect who said that about a
Speaker 2: short time before the deputies were shot, and o'neilmore was
Speaker 2: killed that Saxon Farmer had said that we're going to
Speaker 2: get them two inwards, you know, we're going to get them.
Speaker 2: In a short time after that, they did get them,
Speaker 2: So Saxon Farmer was certainly a suspect. Another key suspect
Speaker 2: out of Bogolusa was a man named rest who was
Speaker 2: the city attorney from Bogolusa and a member of the
Speaker 2: Klan during that time. And Restor would tip off klansmen
Speaker 2: over termits that we would being sought from civil rights
Speaker 2: workers or groups to have marches and stuff. He would
Speaker 2: be alerting them as to who it was and when
Speaker 2: all of these seen would be happening. Restor later in
Speaker 2: his life became an alcoholic, and the FBI actually had
Speaker 2: tapes of him confessing that he was in the truck
Speaker 2: and involved in the shooting. Its rest is taken before
Speaker 2: Grandeury as others are in the nineteen nineties, but nothing
Speaker 2: comes out of it. Why they couldn't prosecute Restor remains
Speaker 2: a mystery to me. It was a Justice Department decision,
Speaker 2: not a FBI decision. You had instances like this man confessed.
Speaker 2: There was a man named Elmo Breeman who was a
Speaker 2: who told people in North Carolina. He was a commercial painter,
Speaker 2: that he was involved in the murder of a black
Speaker 2: man black law enforcement office in Washington Parish. The FBI
Speaker 2: determined that he obviously had knowledge, but uh, the Justice
Speaker 2: Department didn't feel that they could prosecute him. And then
Speaker 2: you had the most interesting thing to me of all
Speaker 2: were the widows or the ex wifs of clansmen. And
Speaker 2: un tell one story in the book, and it's just
Speaker 2: absolutely fascinating, was there was a couple named John and
Speaker 2: Irene Birch, and mister bur Birch was in the Klan
Speaker 2: at that time in Varnado where the deputies lived, and
Speaker 2: he was a suspect at the time, but he denied
Speaker 2: any knowledge of the crime. And when Irene was interviewed
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five, she said, no, he was home
Speaker 2: with me all night long. So about twenty years later,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five, this really strange thing happens. Uh
Speaker 2: A well, I said, eighty five, let's get down to say,
Speaker 2: uh uh year or so after that, the FBI gets
Speaker 2: a phone call or a message from Ivrene Birch, and
Speaker 2: Irene Birch tells the FBI to come see her and
Speaker 2: this is what has happened. Irene, according to her family
Speaker 2: and according to what she told the FBI, had been
Speaker 2: the victim of terrible domestic abuse by her husband throughout
Speaker 2: their marriage. But in nineteen eighty five, her husband, James,
Speaker 2: had taken a barstool at their home one night and
Speaker 2: knocked her to the floor, knocked her out, and for Iverne,
Speaker 2: this was the last straw and she determined she wasn't
Speaker 2: going to accept this anymore. She filed complaint against him.
Speaker 2: Her husband was arrested and the day of court came
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five at the Franklinton Courthouse. They're up
Speaker 2: on the second floor, is heard by the judge. The
Speaker 2: judge and rules, and the judge of rules against Irene,
Speaker 2: rules in favor of her husband. The case is dismissed.
Speaker 2: Irene is just distraught, devastated, can't believe this. She leaves
Speaker 2: the court room and goes and leaves the courthouse. Her
Speaker 2: husband is escorted downstairs to the bottom floor and as
Speaker 2: he and his attorney are going into the Clerk of
Speaker 2: Court's office apparent to file some paperwork, Irene walks into
Speaker 2: the foyer of the court house, reaches into her purse,
Speaker 2: pulls out a revolver and shoots her husband dead, shoots
Speaker 2: him four or five times. Well, I say dead. He
Speaker 2: lives for a few hours, but then he dies. Irene
Speaker 2: is convicted and sentenced to state prison at the women's
Speaker 2: facility at Saint Gabriel, and it is there that she
Speaker 2: contacts and ascid FBI agents come see her. She also
Speaker 2: makes contact with Kreed Rogers and tells him that she
Speaker 2: has something to tell. The FBI comes and Irene says,
Speaker 2: I lied to y'all in nineteen sixty five. She said,
Speaker 2: my husband, I was afraid of him. That he had
Speaker 2: actually left that night in his truck that had and
Speaker 2: came back the next morning, walks in and tells me
Speaker 2: that those two black deputies didn't say it that nicely,
Speaker 2: but those two black deputies wouldn't be bothering anybody anymore.
Speaker 2: Apparently at that time, thinking that both of them had
Speaker 2: been killed. She said that like mc elvin, her husband
Speaker 2: had sideboards on the back of his truck, that he
Speaker 2: burned the sideboards that morning, and that he burned his
Speaker 2: grand robe. And then he told her if you ever
Speaker 2: open this mouth your mouth about this, I'll kill you
Speaker 2: and Irene says she was afraid of her husband, and
Speaker 2: she was afraid of the clan, and as she told
Speaker 2: the FBI, she said, basically, I'm telling you this to
Speaker 2: clear my conscience. My husband's there, I killed him. Y'all
Speaker 2: won't be able to do anything to him. But I
Speaker 2: just wanted to know you to know that I lied
Speaker 2: to you. And that's what he told me. One of
Speaker 2: Birch's daughters told me that before this happened, a year
Speaker 2: or so, that she had asked her daddy one day.
Speaker 2: He said, Daddy, did you kill did you help kill
Speaker 2: those that deputy? And first of all, she asked him
Speaker 2: did he know Mcalvin? Well, he did know Mcalvin, and
Speaker 2: she said did you kill those deputies? And he said no,
Speaker 2: I was in the other truck. And that statement had
Speaker 2: great significance to me because it confirmed with the FBI
Speaker 2: had had long known, is that this was a This
Speaker 2: was a military type operation that involved two pickup trucks
Speaker 2: in a car. And my take on it was that
Speaker 2: whichever pickup truck got in position first would be one
Speaker 2: that shot at the two deputies, and it just happened
Speaker 2: to be mcelvan's. We know a car was involved because
Speaker 2: a salesman from Florida who was traveling threw wanted to
Speaker 2: about that time, got stopped on the outskirts of town
Speaker 2: and held there for a minute or two by this
Speaker 2: man in his car. And he could tell the man
Speaker 2: had a whip an tunnel radio in the back of
Speaker 2: the car. Wasn't a police car. And he says, why
Speaker 2: that man stopped him to keep him. I guess passing
Speaker 2: on by town through town at that moment that salesman
Speaker 2: heard those shots go off. He could hear the shots
Speaker 2: in which the deputies were being killed, which confirms the
Speaker 2: fact that there were three vehicles involved that night, including
Speaker 2: mister Burchess vehicle and Robert Rester, the city attorney, was
Speaker 2: in one of those two trucks apparently as well that night,
Speaker 2: so the stories told by the wife. There's another similar
Speaker 2: example told by an ex wife of another clansman who
Speaker 2: was a key suspect, and she said basically she had
Speaker 2: lied to the FBI as well, telling them that her
Speaker 2: husband had been with her all night, when in fact
Speaker 2: he had not, and when he arrived he said something
Speaker 2: very similar about those two black deputies won't be bothering
Speaker 2: anybody anymore, and she literally left him the next day,
Speaker 2: and that man her husband also left town with another man,
Speaker 2: and he was the other man said that this suspect
Speaker 2: was looking over his shoulder the whole time as they
Speaker 2: went to Oklahoma, and this man couldn't get out of
Speaker 2: town fast enough.
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Speaker 8: You talk about this man, I believe you're talking about
Speaker 8: Wilford Moore. Yes, yes, let's talk about these suspects and
Speaker 8: how FBI get around to this suspect list, how they
Speaker 8: make the connection. What is obviously the Klan is the connection,
Speaker 8: but connect all of these people as the FBI does,
Speaker 8: and you do in your investigation.
Speaker 2: Well you connected, you know the process of elimination and
Speaker 2: who knew who and who was So what you basically
Speaker 2: have was a group of clansmen from born Dough, the
Speaker 2: town where the deputies lived, and a group of clansmen
Speaker 2: from Bogalusa, who many of them had were sort of Klan,
Speaker 2: had become clann outcast who had been kicked out of
Speaker 2: the Klan for their violent tendencies. Wilfrid Moore was one
Speaker 2: that had been kicked out because he just couldn't get enough.
Speaker 2: He just wanted to be violent all the time. Some
Speaker 2: of the suspects in Varnadoe Uh just never would tell
Speaker 2: the FBI the truth. Uh Uh. There were two different,
Speaker 2: two different, two or three different men in Varnade of
Speaker 2: Bobby Lane Archie roy Sel who were brothers in law.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: The FBI called them in repeated lines, but they just
Speaker 2: never These guys would just never tell the truth. And
Speaker 2: the interesting thing is that the FBI is surveillance on
Speaker 2: mc elvin and some of these suspects for decades and
Speaker 2: decades and decades, and you just couldn't get the eyewitness,
Speaker 2: the one person to say yes. You know, if the
Speaker 2: two witnesses in Varnado, if Jesse Bell Thigpen, or if
Speaker 2: Scrapswoonier could have just said, oh, that's no question, that
Speaker 2: was Ray Mcalvin's truck. I mean, I think that would
Speaker 2: have been strong, or if they had just recognized anybody else.
Speaker 2: And apparently, you know, as I mentioned those deputies when
Speaker 2: the truck passed them two or three times that night,
Speaker 2: I mean, when they saw the truck two or three times,
Speaker 2: Apparently the other shooters were hiding either laying down in
Speaker 2: the bike, which I would suspect that they were doing
Speaker 2: because that was a really small pickup truck that mcelvin had.
Speaker 2: Obviously mcealvin would have been driving his own truck. I
Speaker 2: don't think it was an old pickup, kind of hard
Speaker 2: to handle. And obviously he could not drive that truck
Speaker 2: and fire a shotgun and a high powered rifle at
Speaker 2: the same time. So they know at least three people
Speaker 2: were in the truck that did the shooting. Could have
Speaker 2: been more, but at least three. But there was just
Speaker 2: never that one witness who could positively say, yes, I
Speaker 2: saw so and so fired this shot. Wilfrid More circumstantially.
Speaker 2: There was a witnesses that said when Wilfrid was trying
Speaker 2: to get out of town doing everything he could, but
Speaker 2: day or two after this happened, he was he was
Speaker 2: ready to run that This man said, he came to
Speaker 2: my house. He was unloading possessions that he owned to
Speaker 2: try to raise money to get out of town. And
Speaker 2: the man said, I looked through the bathroom window and
Speaker 2: I saw Wilfrid take an M one tanker garn Ie
Speaker 2: powered rifle and leaned against the tree. And he says
Speaker 2: the man inside the house said, I went back and
Speaker 2: did some other things, came back, looked out the window again,
Speaker 2: and that rifle was gone. Apparently he had sold it.
Speaker 2: The FBI looked for those weapons, never find them. They
Speaker 2: looked for those sideboards that they suspect were possibly burned
Speaker 2: at some time that night, could have taken them and
Speaker 2: threw them into that fire that was burning on the
Speaker 2: highway there towards Angie, north of Vantage, I don't know where.
Speaker 2: They could never figure out what happened to the sideboards
Speaker 2: and to the creator of the FBI. Everything they looked for,
Speaker 2: they looked for. They even in two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: after Wilford's Moore's wife told them what her husband had
Speaker 2: had left the house that night. She thought she mentioned
Speaker 2: that he had a cash of this hole covered by
Speaker 2: a concrete block on the back in the house that
Speaker 2: the weapons were stored in. And so in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, the FBI go to that house. Of course
Speaker 2: they're all they're gone, they're not there anymore. The new
Speaker 2: family's there, and they dig up that concrete block and
Speaker 2: they find no weapons. So what I say is is
Speaker 2: that the men involved in this project were hardcore men
Speaker 2: that they had a lot of hatred in their heart,
Speaker 2: but they had one key thing that criminals have, and
Speaker 2: that's feel a good I would say good criminal or
Speaker 2: successful criminals have, and that is the ability to keep
Speaker 2: their mouths shut. And mc elvin through all of his
Speaker 2: life he may have privately had a conversation with family,
Speaker 2: he never would be interviewed by reporters. He never said
Speaker 2: publicly anything about that. The only word he would put
Speaker 2: out that he didn't do it. And I always wondered
Speaker 2: what meaning that I didn't do it? Did that just
Speaker 2: mean that I didn't fire the shots that did it?
Speaker 2: Maybe I was driving the truck, so maybe you know,
Speaker 2: don't know, it's all speculation, but these were people, the
Speaker 2: people involved in this. Other than you say, well what
Speaker 2: about rest of the city attorney his alcohol is and
Speaker 2: got him in trouble. It also became a problem for
Speaker 2: the FBI, who could say, this man, even when we
Speaker 2: gave him a lot of detective test that he failed,
Speaker 2: he's so drunk that we gave it to him. We
Speaker 2: can't really say this works. And how we going to
Speaker 2: get him on the you know, a defense attorney will
Speaker 2: tear us up. But I say that, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: I think the Justice Department should have rolled the dice
Speaker 2: on a couple of these men and just tried it anyway,
Speaker 2: will take a chance to lose it. And you know,
Speaker 2: because they had some very compelling you know, confessions tape, confessions,
Speaker 2: ex wifs, widow. It's just too much good stuff there
Speaker 2: that I think could have resulted in a conviction.
Speaker 8: You rate it. In December sixty five, the Grand Dragon
Speaker 8: Charles Christmas abolished that Saxon Farmer's title is Grand Titan
Speaker 8: second in command. Is there some significance and is this
Speaker 8: some testament to the sort of the division between some
Speaker 8: clan members and these people. Some of these people.
Speaker 2: Absolutely And if you think it was, you had had
Speaker 2: in September of sixty five the big court case in
Speaker 2: New Orleans where the clan members were identified, and where
Speaker 2: you had clan members now seeing that their leaders had
Speaker 2: sold them out, and you also had this, you have
Speaker 2: this continuous thing that happens within the Klan, that these
Speaker 2: are divisions over leadership. And so Charles Christmas had been
Speaker 2: forced to testify. He apparently, from what I can tell,
Speaker 2: was not involved in any way in the murder of
Speaker 2: of of of O'Neill moore. However, it was this constant
Speaker 2: bickering between he and Sax Farmer over control, and I
Speaker 2: think he wanted to get away from Farm and Farmer
Speaker 2: wanted to go even more militant. You know, Farmer was
Speaker 2: the kind of guy that accused him of something. He
Speaker 2: doesn't care, He'll do something else just to prove he
Speaker 2: doesn't fear you. You know that nobody's going to stop him.
Speaker 2: And that's what by sixty five, that's what you really
Speaker 2: had in Bobolus in Warshton Parish with nothing but these
Speaker 2: hard hardcore men. I mean, sixty six and on, and
Speaker 2: the numbers just continued to dwindle, but Farmer was involved
Speaker 2: in the Klan through the nineteen seventies. He was constantly involved.
Speaker 2: Iving that Glad No, I was just going to say that,
Speaker 2: you know, he's just the example of the hardcore, hate filled,
Speaker 2: just willing to die preserve white supremacy and segregation. He just,
Speaker 2: by George is not going to live a life in
Speaker 2: which a black has any control or saying what he does.
Speaker 2: And he doesn't want to mix with black people, and
Speaker 2: he doesn't feel that are qualified to serve an office
Speaker 2: in the United States, and the basically he feels that
Speaker 2: all blacks should be you know, shipped back to Africa.
Speaker 2: That's his attitude and he died by that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you write about the change in attitude eventually eventually
Speaker 8: in the area in terms of people accepting, the whites
Speaker 8: accepting and even people that would consider themselves clan accepting
Speaker 8: the reality of the civil rights movement that these laws
Speaker 8: of segregation worked to be ended.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So what you had by the particularly by the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies was, you know, men like David Duke rose
Speaker 2: up during that time and they sort of had this
Speaker 2: new modern clan idea. Okay, so look what the federal
Speaker 2: government did during the sixties. Now we have force bussing,
Speaker 2: which had become a critical thing that a lot of
Speaker 2: white people opposed, particularly in cities. It was a big
Speaker 2: issue of the busting issues. So what they capitalized then
Speaker 2: on was they realized, well, civil rights is here, so
Speaker 2: how do we combat it now? And so there was
Speaker 2: this newer clan that was simply trying to figure out
Speaker 2: ways to keep the races separated, and you know, and
Speaker 2: they would use issues like bussing, which were divisive issues,
Speaker 2: to to keep their keep a white following intact. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, what does David do lived by He lives
Speaker 2: by being provocative and reaching out to that hardcore element
Speaker 2: or those people that support it silently, you know, for
Speaker 2: money that they supported financially. And then politicians will like
Speaker 2: people some would like people like to because he takes
Speaker 2: that issue and helps get them to support so if
Speaker 2: they constantly a new issue, you know as time passes on.
Speaker 2: But yeah, white people, you know, people have to understand
Speaker 2: white people buy in large, were not violent and they
Speaker 2: didn't condone the violence, but their silence sort of was
Speaker 2: not a good thing because you know, they didn't get involved.
Speaker 2: But white people were just as afraid of these clan
Speaker 2: criminals as black people were. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: don't know this, but the clan also targeted a lot
Speaker 2: of white men, mostly poor white men, many alcoholics, many
Speaker 2: of them had trouble sustaining their families, and you know,
Speaker 2: and so the clan was going out, these vigilantes, going
Speaker 2: out on these night time raids of homes and stuff
Speaker 2: and hurting people. And in an era when there's no
Speaker 2: cell phones and in an era when there's no GPS
Speaker 2: is on your car, you could literally get by with
Speaker 2: things that you can't get by with today. And that's
Speaker 2: another reason when Washington Parish you have lonely dirt roads,
Speaker 2: graveled roads, forests, and you could literally you're literally the
Speaker 2: clan was literally invisible until they showed up at your
Speaker 2: door to Bernard Cronell's or to hurt you. So that's
Speaker 2: a real fear. And a lot of people at that
Speaker 2: time didn't have phones in their home, many people didn't
Speaker 2: have cars, So very isolated time, a different time which
Speaker 2: a clan could work really effectively.
Speaker 8: Yeah, certainly I want to thank you very much Stanley
Speaker 8: for coming on and talking about this incredible book. Clan
Speaker 8: of Devils the murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff.
Speaker 8: Please tell our audience the other book of regarding the
Speaker 8: subject that you were an author of, and if there's
Speaker 8: a way that people might take a look at your
Speaker 8: other work website, Facebook page, etc.
Speaker 2: Yes, all of the stories that I wrote over the
Speaker 2: years about clan cases, particularly in northeastern Louisiana, in southwest
Speaker 2: Mississippi or online on the Concordia Sentinel, all of those
Speaker 2: stories are there. My first book was Devil's Walking. It
Speaker 2: was about the rise of the Silver Dollar Group, which
Speaker 2: really were a group of tradition, a group of men
Speaker 2: belonging to traditional clans who grew dissatisfied with those clans,
Speaker 2: such as the original Knights, and they go underground and
Speaker 2: they're led by a man who does the recruiting. His
Speaker 2: name is Red Glover. And when he recruits someone to
Speaker 2: his underground clan within a clan, he gives them a
Speaker 2: silver dollar minute in the year of their births, and
Speaker 2: that becomes their token. They don't wear robes, they don't
Speaker 2: wear they don't have rallies, they don't crosses. They simply
Speaker 2: go out commit violence and their unity is through that
Speaker 2: silver dollar and it's about that book covers eight murders
Speaker 2: that I link to the silver Dollar group.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you so much. Stanley Nelson, Clan of Devils,
Speaker 8: the murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff. Thank you
Speaker 8: so much. You have a great evening. Thank you so
Speaker 8: much for this interview. Thank you, damn my pleasure. Good night,