Olen Lovell Burrage

Olen Lavelle Burrage (March 16, 1930 – March 15, 2013) was an American farmer and businessman who was tried and acquitted of the June 1964 murders of three civil rights workers. Burrage owned the farm where the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were found buried in an earthen dam.

Biography Burrage was born in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on March 16, 1930, to Leon Lavelle Burrage and Sudie Elizabeth Burrage. He served in the United States Marine Corps as a truck mechanic during the 1950s. Burrage sold his trucking business in 1990 and dabbled in cattle farming and timberland resources for the remainder of his life. An extensive search of the area was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), local and state authorities, and four hundred United States Navy sailors. The three men's bodies were not discovered until two months later, when the team received a tip that led them to Burrage's farm. During the investigation it emerged that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in the incident.

Burrage's dam In 1964 Burrage was developing a cattle farm on a tract of land he had purchased known as the Old Jolly Farm on Highway 21 a few miles southwest of Philadelphia. Burrage hired Herman Tucker to build a dam to create a pond for watering livestock.

Arrest and trial After being indicted by a federal grand jury in December 1964, Burrage was placed under arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for violation of Title 18, Section 241, United States Code: "conspiracy against rights".

He was officially arrested at 8:27 a.m., December 4, 1964, and transported to the Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Meridian, Mississippi, where he was taken to the bachelor officers quarters, where he was photographed and fingerprinted.

In a 1964 confession, Ku Klux Klansman turned FBI informant Horace Barnette had told investigators that he met Burrage after the bodies were buried in the dam. An FBI agent read his confession to the jury during the trial.

“Burrage got a glass gallon jug and filled it with gasoline to be used to burn the 1963 Ford car owned by the three civil rights workers,” Barnette said. “Burrage took one of the diesel trucks from under a trailer and said, `I will use this to pick you up, no one will suspect a truck on the road this time at night.’ It was then about 1 to 1:30 in the morning.”

At trial, Burrage who did not live on the farm where the bodies were found, insisted that he knew nothing about the killings. Family members and friends corroborated his alibi that he was at home and at church on the night of the murders, and he was acquitted in 1967.

Death Burrage died in Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian on March 15, 2013, the day before his 83rd birthday. The local newspaper, The Neshoba Democrat, did not mention Burrage's implication in the murders in his obituary.