Mississippi: Killen tied to killing of Goodman, Schwerner, Chaney
AP reports: The day after three civil rights workers were killed in 1964, local Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen talked about the deaths to a young Meridian police officer he had sworn in to the Klan only a few months earlier, the ex-officer testified Friday.
Mike Hatcher - who said he attended only a few Klan meetings - said Killen gave him a gun to pass on to someone else.
"He proceeded to tell me, 'We got rid of those civil rights workers. You won't have no more trouble out of Goatee,'" Hatcher, 68, testified in Killen's murder trial. ...
The most emotional testimony of the day came from Goodman's 89-year-old mother, Carolyn Goodman of New York, who talked about how Andy, the middle of her three sons, wanted to go to Mississippi for the Freedom Summer of 1964 to help register black voters.
Andy Goodman met Schwerner at a civil-rights training seminar in Oxford, Ohio, in mid-June 1964, and drove with him to Mississippi after Schwerner learned of the June 16 burning of Mount Zion United Methodist Church. Schwerner had spoken to the congregation May 31 about establishing a freedom school to teach black people about their rights. -- AP Wire | 06/17/2005 | Witness says Killen told him 'We got rid of those civil rights workers'