Philadelphia, Miss.
A 79-year-old preacher was arrested last week for the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers—a case dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning. Edgar Ray Killen, a reputed Ku Klux Klan member, said he was innocent. The victims—James Chaney, 21; Michael Schwerner, 24; and Andrew Goodman, 20—had been registering black voters. They disappeared after driving down a dirt road to investigate a fire in a black church. Their bodies were found in a ditch. No one was charged, but prosecutors reopened the investigation in 1999. “This has been a long time coming,” said Goodman’s mother, Carolyn. “But it was definitely worth the wait.”
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