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Attorney General Jim Hood helped win the conviction of Edgar Ray Killen in 2005.(Photo: AP/Rogelio V. Solis)
JACKSON, Miss.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— Mississippi<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Attorney General Jim Hood announced an end to the active federal and state investigation into the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss.
"There's nothing else that can be done," he said in a news conference Monday.
"The FBI, my office and other law enforcement agencies have spent decades chasing leads, searching for evidence and fighting for justice for the three young men who were senselessly murdered on June 21, 1964," he said. "It has been a thorough and complete investigation. I am convinced that during the last 52 years, investigators have done everything possible under the law to find those responsible and hold them accountable; however, we have determined that there is no likelihood of any additional convictions. Absent any new information presented to the FBI or my office, this case will be closed."
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The Justice Department also released a 48-page report on the case. It's the latest in a wave of civil rights cold cases to be closed for good by the department.
In 2005, Hood and District Attorney Mark Duncan prosecuted Edgar Ray Killen, the only suspect ever tried for murder<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in the killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
On the anniversary of the killings, a Neshoba County jury convicted Killen of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison and remains in the State Penitentiary at Parchman, Miss.
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Now 91, Killen has<span style="color: Red;">*</span>lost all of his appeals and refuses to discuss the case.
Hood said he informed relatives of the victims about the decision to close the case.
"We sincerely appreciate the blood, sweat and tears of the FBI agents, Department of Justice officials, Navy Seabees, the U.S. attorney's office and local court offices that assisted in the case," he said. "The FBI agents who came into Mississippi faced threats and harassment in addition to the oppressive heat of a Mississippi summer. Despite a hostile environment, these law enforcement officers remained solely focused on locating the missing and solving this heinous crime."
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He thanked the Justice Department's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Barry Kowalski and William Nolan as well as FBI Special Agent Jeromy Turner.
"The state of Mississippi was committed to seeing this investigation through to fruition and to moving forward," Hood said. "We should all acknowledge that our diversity is this state's greatest asset. That remarkable diversity manifests itself in the unique culture we share with the world."
There are few criminal cases in the state that have drawn more national and international headlines than the killings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, which the FBI dubbed the Mississippi Burning<span style="color: Red;">*</span>investigation.
The three civil rights workers arrived in Neshoba County that day to investigate the burning of an African-American church and the beating of members in Neshoba County when sherriff's deputy Cecil Price arrested and jailed them.
After 10 p.m., he released them and later helped Klansmen intercept the trio in high-speed chase down Mississippi 19.
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FILE - In this Dec. 4, 1964 file photo civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King displays pictures of three civil rights workers, who were slain in Mississippi the summer before, from left Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, at a news conference in New York, where he commended the FBI for its arrests in Mississippi in connection with the slayings. As the burgeoning civil rights movement gathered force in the 1960s, demonstrators were brutalized and killed, sometimes at the hands of law officers. Many slayings remain unsolved. But in some cases where local authorities failed to go after the attackers or all-white juries refused to convict, the federal government moved in with civil rights charges. (AP Photo/JL, File)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> JL, AP
On June 29, 1964, the FBI began distributing these pictures of civil rights workers, from left, Michael Schwerner, 24, of New York, James Chaney, 21, from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, 20, of New York, who disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21, 1964. The three civil rights workers, part of the "Freedom Summer" program, were abducted, killed and buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County. (AP Photo/FBI)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> Anonymous, AP
Federal and state investigators probe the swampy area near Philadelphia, Miss., where the burned station wagon of the missing civil rights trio was found June 23, 1964. The civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, 24, Andrew Goodman, 21, both white and James Chaney, 21, black, were last seen in Philadelphia, Miss., Sunday night, June 21, 1964. (AP Photo)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> AP
Mrs. Caroline Goodman, center, with Mrs. Fannie Chaney, mother of James E. Chaney, slain civil rights worker, left, and Mrs. Nathan Schwerner, mother of slain Michael Schwerner, are escorted from Ethical Culture Society Hall August 9, 1964, after attending funeral services for her son Andrew Goodman, in New York. Man at right is unidentified. More than 1,200 mourners attended services for Goodman. About 450 persons were outside the hall behind police lines, and another 175 were seated in the hall's basement. (AP Photo)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> AP
Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey, right, and deputy Cecil Price, center, pass a Meridian policeman en route to court on the third day of their conspiracy trial in the slaying of three civil rights workers in Meridian, Miss., Oct. 11, 1967. At left is Richard Andrew Willis, another of 18 people charged under an 1870 federal law of conspiring to deprive Freedom Summer activists Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney of their civil rights. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> JACK THORNELL, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Investigators locked up the charred station wagon of a missing civil rights trio, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, after it was found in a swampy area near Philadelphia, Miss., June 6, 1964. Three civil rights workers, two white and one black, have been missing since Sunday night. They were last seen as they drove this vehicle from Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> JACK THORNELL, AP
J.R. "Bud" and Beatrice Cole show the memorial marker in Neshoba County, Miss., January 6, 1989, to James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, civil rights workers murdered in 1964. They are flanked by the Mt. Zion Methodist Church, burned by the Ku Klux Klan five days before the murders. The night of the burning, Klansmen beat Cole as he left a meeting at the church, suspected of being a meeting place for civil rights workers. (AP Photo/Strat Douthat)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> STRAT DOUTHAT, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A historic marker outside Mt. Zion Church in rural Neshoba County, shown Wednesday, June 17, 1999, briefly tells of the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers, Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who were killed June 21, 1964, following the burning of the church, located, just outside Philadelphia, Miss. The facility was rebuilt in 1965. (AP Photo/Rogelio Solis)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> ROGELIO SOLIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Escorted by Neshoba County Sheriff's Department deputy Grant Myers, left, reputed former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, right, charged with the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, walks into court, at the Neshoba County Courthouse in Philadelphia, Miss., Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005. A March 28 trial date and a $250,000 bond were ordered for Killen, charged with the 1964 murders of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black Mississippian, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24. (AP Photo/Neshoba Democrat, Kyle Carter, Pool)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> KYLE CARTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
FILE - In this June 15, 2014 file photograph, flowers top the memorial marker for Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, civil rights workers who were killed in the "Mississippi Burning" case of 1964, outside the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Miss., following a commemorative service in their honor. The men are going to be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, but the honor is not sitting well with some of their relatives. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)<span style="color: Red;">*</span> Rogelio V. Solis, AP
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When he flashed his red lights, the trio pulled over their station wagon.
Taken to remote Rock Cut Road, they were killed by Klansmen and their bodies buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam.
Forty-four days later, a tip to the FBI led to the grisly discovery of their bodies.
In 1967, Price was among seven convicted on federal conspiracy charges. Eleven others walked away, including Killen.
Hood said there were two suspects still living, James "Pete" Harris and Jimmy Lee Townsend, but there is not enough evidence to pursue cases against them.
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According to testimony in the 1967 federal trial, Harris made telephone calls to help gather Klansmen to beat and eventually kill the civil rights workers. Townsend, a teenager at the time, was reportedly in one of the cars in that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>high-speed chase, but stayed with the car when it broke down.
Much has been done to memorialize the three slain civil rights workers. Mississippi 19 in Neshoba County now bears their names, and a historical marker recognizes their deaths.
In 2011, the Jackson FBI office was named after the slain trio and Roy K. Moore, the FBI agent who opened the office in 1964 and headed the investigation.
In 2014, President Barack Obama gave the highest civilian honor to the three slain civil rights activists whose work with others helped pave the way for him to become the nation's first African-American president.
He handed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the families of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
When Freedom Summer came, these three young men "refused to sit on the sidelines," Obama said.
Their killings "shook the conscience of the nation," he said. "It took 44 days to find their bodies and 41 years to prosecute their killings."
He said the medals are meant not to honor their deaths but "to honor how they lived."
Follow Jerry Mitchell on Twitter: @JMitchellNews
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