Suspect in ’64 Deaths in Miss. Is Out on Bail

To the shock of local residents who lobbied for his arrest, Edgar Ray Killen, the 79-year-old man charged with engineering the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers, was ordered released on bond Wednesday by a circuit court judge who also set a March trial date.

Newsday also learned that Killen’s defense attorney was arrested in September 2003 for attempting to buy methamphetamine from an informant. Federal authorities never brought the case against Mitch Moran to trial, and state prosecutor Mark Duncan, who is prosecuting Killen, also declined to do so.

Killen posted the $250,000 bond ordered by Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon, using family land as collateral, and returned to his home on Road 515 by the end of the day. The road is also where the murders of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman took place.

“His spirits are good. In fact, he has a sense of humor,” Moran said of Killen.

Moran, based in Carthage, Miss., acknowledged that he had been arrested in the Sept. 17 incident classified as a felony misdemeanor, but denied ever buying illegal drugs. He said the arrest was made by Leake County, Miss., sheriff’s deputies who were angry at him for defending accused drug dealers.

Federal and state agents also were involved in the arrest, and Moran acknowledged that he did not inform Killen of the arrest before taking the nationally watched case.

“I certainly didn’t feel like I needed to. He had serious problems on his hands,” Moran said.

Moran said Killen “seems very competent” to stand trail in what is projected to be an emotionally charged affair that prosecutors said would draw heavily from the 1967 federal civil rights case that convicted seven conspirators in the murders but imprisoned none for more than six years.

Killen, a Baptist minister and accused Ku Klux Klan leader, was acquitted in that trial by a sole juror who said she “could never convict a preacher.”