Trial Opens in Black Man’s Savage Dragging Death

When authorities found the body, arm and head of James Byrd Jr. strewn on a logging road last June, the lighter they found nearby etched with a Ku Klux Klan mark made it clear to them they had a racial crime on their hands.

On Tuesday, opening the trial of one of three men charged in the 49-year-old black man’s death, prosecutors called defendant John William King “full of hate,” and said he murdered Byrd to publicize a white supremacist group he planned to launch.

Authorities said Byrd accepted a ride with King and two former roommates, who took him to a clearing, chained his ankles and dragged him behind a pickup truck for three miles until his body tore in pieces.

Horrifying the 8,000 inhabitants of this town, the killing prompted a siege of scrutiny both by outsiders and residents themselves. Although on edge at what many felt were misperceptions of their town, black and white residents said in recent days they were eager for authorities to confront the crime head-on in court.

Byrd’s killing appalled residents of Jasper, which more than many East Texas communities appeared to have overcome the region’s historic racial tribulations. About 45% black, Jasper is led by an African American mayor, Chamber of Commerce president, hospital administrator and two black school principals. A snug, vital town despite about 12% unemployment, it relies heavily on the tourists who come in search of antiques, bass fishing and campsites in the hills nearby.

Both in its savagery and method, the slaying recalled racist murders that most here supposed had been left in the South’s past. Instead, this logging town became the destination not for tourists but for a cacophony of media and demonstrators, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Dallas-based New Black Panthers. At the same time, residents quickly plunged into official and unofficial soul-searching that has lingered long after the curious drifted away.

Listening to the prosecution’s opening statement Tuesday, King, a 24-year-old unemployed laborer, appeared incongruously bland, with cropped brown hair and plain plaid shirt. Dist. Atty. Guy James Gray, however, sketched another picture of him, detailing the pentagram tattoo King wears upon his skull, the word “Satan” tattooed on his body and racial slurs and violent images tattooed along King’s arms down to the wrists.

“He’s what they call a full sleever,” Gray said.

Plans Found to Form Supremacist Group

Gray said evidence, including the lighter, a wrench, cigarette butts, beer bottles and tiny specks of blood, linked King and two former roommates to the crime. Searching King’s apartment, authorities found elaborate written plans to start a Jasper white supremacist group called the Texas Rebel Soldiers, complete with a constitution and a membership application.

Eighteen-year-old Michelle Chapman, a friend of King’s, testified about letters from King during a recent stint in prison, in which he showed a preoccupation with white women being attracted to black men.

The jury of 11 whites and one African American, picked from heavily white Jasper County, listened attentively to the sometimes graphic descriptions. Some flinched, however, when prosecutors showed a series of gory photographs of Byrd’s body parts and the dusty remains of his clothing. Several Byrd family members left the room or wept.

Byrd’s killing has prompted prosecutors to ask the death penalty for King and former roommates Shawn Allen Berry, 23, and Lawrence Russell Brewer, 31, whom King met in prison.

King denies killing Byrd. In a seven-page November letter written from prison to the Dallas Morning News, he alleged the slaying was not a hate crime but a drug deal gone wrong. The letter, which King’s court-appointed attorney called “ a terrible, terrible mistake,” alleged that co-defendant Berry had drug ties to Byrd and killed him under the influence of steroids.

At the time of the killing, all three suspects had already spent time in prison. King was on parole from a burglary conviction; in prison he belonged to a group called Confederate Knights of America and collected an assortment of tattoos, including a woodpecker draped in a KKK hood, the phrase “Aryan Pride” and a picture of a black man being hanged.

Prosecutors said King and his friends offered Byrd a ride home late at night after spying him walking home from a party. Before the evening was done, some kind of fight took place.

The three abandoned his mutilated corpse outside Jasper’s black cemetery; Byrd’s blood speckled the shoes of all three defendants, authorities said. The barbarity of his death contrasted especially deeply with Byrd’s mild, sociable way of life.

Though Byrd also had a prison record, serving time for theft, forgery, and parole violations, Jasper’s former police chief told a reporter Byrd “wasn’t a bad guy,” despite his tendency to get in trouble. At the time of his death he was living in a modest apartment on a disability pension, after a sojourn in Dallas, where he had married, had three children and later divorced.

A drinker, he was a familiar sight, ambling home at night, singing in a rich voice. “His favorite song was ‘Purple Rain.’ He’d sing the blues a lot too,” said 14-year-old neighbor John Lynn Martin. “I saw him at the grocery store once. He dropped a dollar and I tried to give it to him, and he said ‘Keep it.’ ”

Byrd’s family members spoke out firmly soon after his death, urging reconciliation and testifying before a U.S. Senate committee on hate crimes. Byrd’s sister, Clara Taylor, began organizing a Jasper-based foundation to promote ethnic harmony.

The city government created its own 40-member race relations task force, which dismantled an iron fence that once segregated a black cemetery. The group began scouting a site for a public swimming pool.

And it presided over 20 town meetings, where residents reaffirmed their outrage at the killing--and then, cautiously, uncharacteristically, explored the chasms that riddle racial encounters here.

Perhaps the most surprising form of dialogue has been the confessions. A white auto mechanic approached former school administrator Clifton Williams, blurting his apology for selling Williams a used muffler and tailpipe years back, and overcharging him because of his race.

Yet along with the group therapy-tinged “dialogue” on race, many blacks also stressed their affection for the community.

“Jasper is the most cooperative city I have ever seen,” said Pastor John Hardin, of the Mount Olive Baptist Church. “Especially in the case of bereavement or trouble. I have never seen another city that knows how to console and how to help in time of need as well as Jasper.”

The Friday night before Valentine’s Day, students socializing at the Lone Star ice cream store outlined similar contradictions.

Kelli Snow, 13, a white student at Jasper Middle School, was sharing gold and silver Hershey’s kisses with a group of white girlfriends while she waited to be picked up for her Valentine’s party. Fifteen-year-old Anthony Gillis, an African American student at Jasper High School, chattered with half a dozen black youths.

Differing Views of Racial Problems

Most nodded and affirmed each other’s statements, while retaining their separate groupings.

“It isn’t Jasper,” Gillis declared. “I’ve lived in Jasper all my life and nobody ever said anything racial to me at Jasper High School.”

Everyone nodded. They also nodded when Snow described the racial turmoil that, by contrast, has roiled Jasper Middle School.

Despite interventions by school officials, they said, racial incidents are constant. A girl made racist threats, and left school soon after. A boy came to school wearing a Confederate flag around his waist. A student carved an image in the dust of a truck dragging a man.

“Parents don’t understand how bad it is in the middle school, how vicious it is,” said Mary Stiles, 14. “It’s people trying to fit in. By high school, they seem to grow up.”

Community leader Walter Diggles, an African American regional planning director, said the youngsters’ experiences reflect the strain of a town laboring under an international stigma.

“Young folks are pretty honest with their feelings. They hear what’s said at home about the trial and murder, and they tend to repeat it. They’re probably a little more open,” Diggles said. “No doubt about it, there is quite a lot of anxiety and tension in the community. I’d be very untruthful if I told you the community is taking this in stride.’