Informant Says KKK Sought 1966 Killing Over Voter Drive

Vernon Dahmer was targeted for death by Samuel H. Bowers and his White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan because of his efforts to register blacks to vote, an FBI informant said Wednesday.

And the lawyer defending Bowers at his arson and murder trial attended a meeting where the Klan attack on Dahmer’s home was discussed, former Klansman Billy Roy Pitts testified, bringing an unsuccessful defense demand for a mistrial.

Bowers is being tried for the fifth time in connection with the Jan. 10, 1966, attack on Dahmer. He was tried four times in the late 1960s but never convicted. Bowers spent six years in prison for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers, detailed in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”

Dahmer, fighting flames that engulfed his Hattiesburg home, held eight Klansmen at bay while his family fled through a back window. He died in his wife’s arms 12 hours later.

Pitts said Bowers was upset because the Klan in Forrest County, where the Dahmers lived, had done nothing to silence Dahmer and his efforts to register blacks.

Bowers “wanted this taken care of because Dahmer was causing problems between whites and blacks with these voter registration drives,” Pitts testified.

Pitts, 54, was a key witness in trials that led to the convictions of four others in the killing, and he previously testified against Bowers. He is serving a life prison term for his own role in the case.

Pitts said that there were several planning sessions before the attack and that Bowers’ defense attorney, Travis Buckley, attended one of the meetings. Buckley was arrested in 1966 on an arson charge in the case but was not convicted.

Pitts said his assigned role in the attack was to stand guard with a pistol to protect the other Klansmen.