James Ford Seale

James Ford Seale (June 25, 1935 – August 2, 2011) was a Ku Klux Klan member charged by the U.S. Justice Department on January 24, 2007, and subsequently convicted on June 14, 2007, for the May 1964 kidnapping and murder of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two African-American young men in Meadville, Mississippi. At the time of his arrest, Seale worked at a lumber plant in Roxie, Mississippi. He also worked as a crop duster and was a police officer in Louisiana briefly in the 1970s. He was a member of the militant Klan organization known as the Silver Dollar Group, whose members were identified with a silver dollar; occasionally minted the year of the member's birth.

Seale was convicted on June 14, 2007, by a federal jury on one count of conspiracy to kidnap two persons, and two counts of kidnapping. He was sentenced on August 24, 2007, to three life terms for his part in the 1964 murders of the two Mississippi teens. In 2008, Seale's kidnapping conviction was overturned by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, before being reinstated by that court sitting en banc the following year. He was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he died in 2011.

Background Southern Mississippi was an active area of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Many working class whites feared greater job competition from blacks if integration changed the society and tensions were high over desegregation of schools. The Natchez area became a center of Ku Klux Klan and other segregationist activity, with violence directed against black churches, often used as the center of community organizing, and black activists. Seale's brother Jack and his father Clyde were also members of the Silver Dollar Group. According to a Klan informant, Seale said later that he would have shot them first, but didn't want to get blood all over the boat. Edwards himself testified in 2007 that the two boys were stuffed alive into the back of Seale's car before being taken to the farm where they were beaten.

The bodies of the pair were found about two months later by US Navy divers who were working on the investigation associated with the disappearance in June of three civil rights workers: Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman; both from New York City and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi.

1966 Congressional hearing On January 14, 1966, Seale was called to appear in Washington before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was investigating Klan activities. Seale was there with nine other alleged Klansmen from the violent White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, including his father, Clyde Seale, and Charles Marcus Edwards, his alleged accomplice in the Dee-Moore murders. The Klansmen repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment, while the chief investigator Donald T. Appell and House members placed into the record what they believed the men had done, including kidnapping and murdering Dee and Moore in 1964. According to the hearing transcript, Appell introduced testimony of Alton Alford, a Meadville man, who said that Seale beat him with his shotgun. Appell asked Seale if he was involved in the 1965 murder of a disillusioned Klansman named Earl Hodges, who had fallen out with Seale's father and was killed by the Klan to prevent him from telling the authorities about their activities. Appell accused Seale and Edwards of claiming "false arrest" by Mississippi highway patrolmen to help them escape criminal charges.

Possible involvement in the assassination of Wharlest Jackson Seale, a member of the Silver Dollar Group, was one of the suspects in the car bombing assassination of civil rights activist Wharlest Jackson in Natchez, Mississippi that took place in 1967. Jackson was a member of the NAACP chapter in Natchez. The Silver Dollar Group was a militant Klan organization founded by Raleigh Jackson "Red" Glover. Glover was the main suspect in the Wharlest Jackson case.

1970 plane crash In 1970, Seale "was the lone survivor and only eyewitness to the deadliest air disaster in Concordia Parish's history in which five people died on a foggy morning." Among the death was Dr. Charles Colvin, who had been the attending physician for Frank Morris, one of the victims of the Silver Dollar Group. The pair confirmed this fact when Kenny Byrd, a resident of Roxie, pointed them toward Seale's trailer. The same morning, Moore and Ridgen met with Ladd and Medley. During this trip, the former Klansman James Kenneth Greer told Ladd and Medley that Seale was living in Roxie, Mississippi next to his brother.

The discovery of Seale helped to revive interest in the case; Moore and Ridgen visited the U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, who pledged to re-open the case. Two weeks after the trip, Ladd published the first of several articles in the Jackson Free Press about the investigation and the discovery that Seale was alive. to keep local interest high. At the end of July 2005, the paper published Thomas Moore's response to an editorial that appeared in the Franklin Advocate, the weekly in Meadville, in which the editor said the case should not be re-opened. (Editor Mary Lou Webb of the Advocate did not publish Moore's response.)

Indictment, trial and conviction in 2007

The indictment affidavit filed January 24, 2007, in U.S. District Court in Jackson, charged Seale with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy. The "introductory allegations" begin:

The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKKK) operated in the Southern District of Mississippi and elsewhere, and was a secret organization of adult white males who, among other things, targeted for violence African Americans they believed were involved in civil rights activity in order to intimidate and retaliate against such individuals.

The document says that Seale and other Klan members suspected Dee of being involved with civil rights activity. Moore was included in the abduction and murder because he was a friend of Dee.

Seale was arraigned and denied bond because he was considered a flight risk: he owned no property, was a pilot, and lived in a motor home. He and his wife had already left Roxie for a brief time after the reporting team's initial July 2005 visits, according to Roxie residents. Primary testimony was from fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards. After he was confronted by Thomas Moore and David Ridgen during filming of a scene in Mississippi Cold Case, state and federal officials gave him immunity from prosecution to tell the full story of what happened.

Seale was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy on June 14, 2007, by a federal jury. On August 24, 2007, Seale was sentenced to serve three life terms for his crimes. Judge Wingate said that he took into account Seale's advanced age and poor health, but added, "Then I had to take a look at the crime itself, the horror, the ghastliness of it." Seale was imprisoned for a year at a medical facility.

Seale's conviction was overturned on September 9, 2008, by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that the lower court had failed to recognize the statute of limitations for kidnapping had expired. At the time of the kidnapping, the act was a capital crime under federal law; capital crimes have no statute of limitations. However, in the 1970s Congress and the Supreme Court redefined kidnapping as a non-capital crime, with a statute of limitations. The lower court did not apply the newer statute of limitations, while the appeals court did. and the court agreed to do so en banc.

On June 5, 2009, the en banc panel of 5th Circuit judges ruled in an evenly divided decision on the matter, thus upholding the district court's decision. Seale's three convictions and sentences were re-instated. On motion of defense counsel, the 5th Circuit asked the US Supreme Court to review the case. On November 2, 2009, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, letting the lower rulings stand.

Death Seale died in prison on August 2, 2011. He had been serving his sentence at FCI Terre Haute.

Representation in other media The documentary Mississippi Cold Case (2007) was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and was David Ridgen's first introduction to the Dee-Moore case. The six part podcast Someone Knows Something was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and features Thomas Moore and David Ridgen attempting to find justice for Moore's brother, Charles Moore, in the modern day.