US warns civil rights-era killers: we're on your trail

[Judi Lynn]

US warns civil rights-era killers: we're on your trail
Email Print Normal font Large font Darryl Fears in Washington
March 1, 2007

THE US Justice Department is to team up with civil rights groups to pursue the killers of scores of black men and women murdered by white vigilantes decades ago.

The Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, and the FBI director, Robert Mueller, said on Tuesday that the Federal Government's interest in 40 unsolved murder cases was renewed after successful prosecutions of civil rights-era murder suspects in recent years.

Mr Gonzales said witnesses who had been silent were now prepared to come forward and technological advances could help authorities link suspects to crimes. The officials said their agencies would soon open investigations into 12 cases, but they would not name them.

Their announcement came on the heels of news that a grand jury in Mississippi had declined to indict Carolyn Bryant, the wife of one of two men who admitted to killing Emmett Till, 14, in 1955 following their acquittal by an all-white jury.
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His alleged killers, the half brothers Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were long dead, but the documentary makers found witnesses who said that Bryant's wife, Carolyn, was in the truck that took Emmett away.
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http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/us-warns-civil-rightsera-killers-were-on-your-trail/2007/02/28/1172338708158.html