Initially charged with killing two black teens in 1964
JACKSON – A federal court of appeals has upheld the conviction of a reputed Ku Klux Klan member accused of killing two black teens more than 40 years ago. Two of the three judges recently said the evidence against James Ford Seale was sufficient to uphold his 2007 conviction. The decision came from the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, on March 12.
Seale, now 74, is accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee on May 2, 1964. Both men were 19-years old.
Seale is currently serving three life-sentences in a federal prison for those murders.
Court records showed that on the day they disappeared in 1964, Moore and Dee were hitchhiking near Mississippi 184 (also called old U.S. 84) and McNair Road, in Bude. They were soon picked up by Ku Klux Klan members who wrongly told the teens they were law enforcement agents.
Witnesses later said Seale believed Moore and Dee were black Muslims involved in selling guns, especially since Dee had just returned from Chicago.
At the time, Moore was a student at Alcorn A&M College and Dee was a sawmill worker.
Seale, a former sheriff’s deputy and his fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, took Moore and Dee to the Homochitto National Forest, near Meadville, Miss., where they tied them to a tree and beat them.
Investigators said the two teens were then stuffed in the trunk of Seale’s Volkswagen and driven across the state line to Louisiana.
One teen was strapped to an old Jeep engine block and the other to railroad ties and they were bound and dumped in the Mississippi River, while still alive.
On July 12, 1964, while federal investigators and volunteers were looking for three missing Civil Rights workers: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, they found the bodies of Moore and Dee in the river.
When it was discovered that the bodies were those of two black men and not those of the Civil Rights workers – two of whom were white – the FBI handed the case over to local authorities for prosecution. Seale and Edwards were arrested, but a justice of the peace immediately dropped all the charges against the two men.
For more than 40 years, the murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were buried deep within the FBI cold case files, until Moore’s older brother, Thomas, became obsessed with bringing his brother’s killers to justice.
All initial efforts to prosecute Seale were hampered when investigators reported that Seale was “long dead.”
In 2005, during the investigation, Seale’s mobile home was discovered and he was taken into custody.
On Jan. 24, 2007, Seale appeared in federal court in Jackson, charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to kidnap. Seale pleaded not guilty, and was denied bond by U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson.
Amid many motion hearings from the defense and prosecution, Seale’s trial was set for May 30, 2007, in Jackson. Seale was convicted by a majority-white jury on June 14, 2007. He was sentenced to three life-sentences on Aug. 24.
The recent decision in New Orleans last month, was a severe blow to Seale’s defense team, who said they plan to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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