Read the Full '20/20' Transcript
This is an uncorrected and unedited transcript of the "20/20" broadcast which first aired June 14, 2000.
ABC NEWS
Good evening. And welcome to 20/20 WEDNESDAY. Diane and Charlie are off. Tonight, we are devoting most of this hour to a special report. Explosive new developments in a continuing investigation. Three murders that have never been solved. They occurred during one of this country's darkest chapters when bigotry bred violence and the law looked the other way. Two black teen-agers offered a ride and then killed in cold blood. An elderly black farmhand shot to death at close range. Decades have passed and their stories have faded. But now, our investigation has brought these cases back to life and just maybe justice will prevail at last.
(VO) THOMAS MOORE visits the grave of his brother Charles who was murdered along with a friend 36 years ago. There was evidence, informants, even two arrests, but nobody was ever convicted of murder.
(OC) What kind of men would do that to someone like your brother?
THOMAS MOORE
Hate. Ignorant. Not being able to accept a person as who they are.
ABC NEWS
(VO) He owns only a single image of his younger brother, a college student. Of the other victim, Henry Dee, there isn't even a photo. Thomas has been plagued by the murders. When he returned from Vietnam, he earned a second college degree and dedicated it in the name of his brother and in the name of justice.
THOMAS MOORE
I will pursue this as far as I can until I die trying to find out who did this and why.
ABC NEWS
(VO) It was May 2nd, 1964, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, both 19, were offered a ride in Meadville, Mississippi, taken deep into the nearby Homochitto National Forest and beaten, their bodies dumped into the Mississippi River. Two alleged Klansman, James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards were arrested.
JT ROBINSON
When they made the arrests on those people, I didn't have any doubt in my mind that that's the one that done it. I didn't.
ABC NEWS
(VO) J.T. Robinson was police chief in nearby Natchez.
(OC) You think that Charles Marcus Edwards killed those two men?
JT ROBINSON
I think he was part -- he was with James Seale and they done it.
ABC NEWS
(VO) Both suspects were soon freed. An FBI investigation petered out. And as we learned in a surprising response to our inquiry, the entire FBI file on the case was destroyed in 1977 or so they thought. Until this headline appeared recently in the Jackson-Clarion Ledger over a story by reporter Jerry Mitchell.
JERRY MITCHELL
And so then I was able to go back to the FBI and go, 'Wait a minute, you know, those files weren't destroyed, here are copies.'
ABC NEWS
(VO) From a different source, 20/20 obtained an unredacted copy of the FBI file. Nearly a thousand pages of reports, notes, diagrams, maps and photographs. But most revealing was the fact that the FBI had one very important informant. An informant who remained anonymous, refusing to testify in open court for fear of retaliation from the Klan. Retired FBI assistant director Jim Ingram was at the time a special agent assigned to the case. He remembers the informant code name JN-30.
JIM INGRAM
JN-30 was so important to the FBI that the agents themselves did not know his identity, except two agents that worked or handled him.
ABC NEWS
Informant JN-30 provided the FBI with crucial information about the murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee. From the beginning here on Highway 84 in tiny Meadville to the murky depths of the Mississippi River some 40 miles away. According to JN-30 the killers confided in him in horrifying detail about what transpired just after the two young men were last seen near this roadside drive-in.
(VO) JN-30 said James Ford Seale picked up Charles Moore and Henry Dee. Followed by Charles Edwards and Seale's father, Clyde, in a pickup, they drove into the forest, tied the victims to a tree and beat them. Reeling a shotgun, James Seale harangued them about an imagined black Muslim plot to arm local blacks.
(OC) At that time, did you think it was possible that your brother was killed just because the color of his skin?
THOMAS MOORE
Absolutely. No other reason. No other reason.
ABC NEWS
Did you suspect that Klansmen had killed him?
THOMAS MOORE
Yes.
ABC NEWS
(VO) According to JN-30, James Seale's brother, Jack, and a prominent local landowner, Ernest Parker, put the victims into the trunk of a car and drove to a remote landing on the Mississippi River. Moore and Dee were tied to a jeep engine block and dropped into the muddy water. Six months later, Navy divers found the engine block, a skull and other evidence exactly where JN-30 told them to look. The FBI was convinced their suspects were the killers. But in 1964, Thomas Moore knew not to expect justice.
THOMAS MOORE
Did I believe that they would be arrested and convicted? No. No. ABC NEWS
No way?
THOMAS MOORE
No way.
ABC NEWS
(VO) And he was right. The FBI investigation soon hit a wall.
JIM INGRAM
We, in the FBI, felt there was sufficient evidence. But if the prosecutor is not going to move forward, that -- that stops it at the time.
ABC NEWS
(VO) The FBI file shows that with the informant too fearful to testify and a lack of other witnesses, the district attorney felt he could not prosecute the suspects. Three of them lived out their lives and died free men. The two who were arrested briefly in 1964 are still alive. According to the file during questioning, one of them, James Ford Seale, was told the FBI knew he was involved in the murders. Seale replied: 'Yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it.'
MAN
Hello. Mr. Seale?
JAMES SEALE
Yeah.
MAN
How you doing?
JAMES SEALE Pretty good.
ABC NEWS
(VO) Today, James Seale travels the country in his luxury motor home. We found him camped near Natchez.
JAMES SEALE
I have nothing to say to you.
MAN
Nothing to say? JAMES SEALE
The best thing for you to do is get your ass up that hill.
MAN
All right, sir. All right. Did you have anything to do with the killing of those two boys?
JAMES SEALE
Get up the hill.
ABC NEWS
(VO) According to the FBI file, when he was under arrest, Charles Marcus Edwards confessed that he, Seale and others took the victims to some woods and whipped them. But he said they were still alive when he left. We found Edwards last year living quietly in the country outside Natchez.
(OC) Did you murder Henry Dee and Charles Moore?
CHARLES EDWARDS
I did not. I did not murder those two kids.
ABC NEWS
The investigators said that you told them that you and a couple of other guys picked up Henry Dee and Charles Moore, took them to the forest…
CHARLES EDWARDS
They told you a lie because I hadn't said that.
ABC NEWS
Mr. Edwards, back in the 1960s, do you think you would have called yourself a racist?
CHARLES EDWARDS
Well, I was prejudice, yeah.
ABC NEWS
(VO) To this day, the entire case remains in limbo. But that could soon change. We have found the FBI's star informant, JN-30, and now he is ready to go public.
ERNEST GILBERT
I wish to God I would never have known about this. I really do.
ABC NEWS
In a moment, you will meet the man they call JN-30. We'll be right back.
ANNOUNCER
He was an imperial wizard of the KKK. Now he is speaking out for the first time about the unsolved murders of two teen-age boys.
ERNEST GILBERT
They were taken to the Mississippi River, weights were tied on them and they were thrown in the river alive.
(Commercial break)
ABC NEWS
When the bodies of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, two black 19-year-olds, were discovered in the Mississippi River in 1964, their families suspected it was the work of the Ku Klux Klan. They never thought they would see the murders solved. But little did they know that one was quietly trying to seek justice. Now, he tells his story for the first time.
ERNEST GILBERT
(From tape) The white people in this state are going to war. And to hell with who tries to stop them.
ABC NEWS
(VO) He was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan who says he knew the killers of Charles Moore and Henry Dee.
Mr. GILBERT: They murdered those two young boys, cold-blooded murder.
ABC NEWS
(VO) Now 36 years later, he's decided to go public for the first time and reveal what he knows.
ERNEST GILBERT
I'm doing that because I'd like to clear my conscience.
ABC NEWS
(VO) His name is ERNEST GILBERT
. (OC) Mr. Gilbert, were the killers of Charles Moore and Henry Dee white knights of the KKK?
ERNEST GILBERT
Yes, they were.
ABC NEWS
Every single one of them?
ERNEST GILBERT
Yes.
(From tape) We the officers and members of the original knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi…
ABC NEWS
(VO) ERNEST GILBERT
was once the KKK's chief spokesman and for a time its leader in Mississippi.
(OC) Were you elected to the position of imperial wizard?
ERNEST GILBERT
Imperial wizard.
ABC NEWS
That was your title?
ERNEST GILBERT
And the white knights.
ABC NEWS
(VO) He was also chief organizer, secretly recruiting officers of the law.
(OC) Did you recruit sheriff's deputies? Sheriffs themselves?
ERNEST GILBERT
Yes, I did.
ABC NEWS
