Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

SKS Season 3: Episode 4- “Bunkley”

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

ANNOUNCER: This is a CBC podcast.

[Music]

RIDGEN: Say something, can you say something to me?

THOMAS: Test one, two. Test one, two.

RIDGEN: Okay. Now, do you have the mic?

THOMAS: Yeah.

RIDGEN: Give it to me, I'm gonna stick it on. Hello, check, check, check. Mr. Edwards, check, check, check. Mr. Edwards, check, check, check.

[Music]

RIDGEN: How the hell am I going to turn around?

[Car door unlocks]

[Door opens]

[Dog barking]

RIDGEN: How are you, sir?

CHARLES EDWARDS: How are you?

RIDGEN: I'm OK. I'm David. I'm down here working on a documentary. I'm here with the brother of Charles Moore.

EDWARDS: Oh, you can hit the road. Go get back in the car now.

RIDGEN: He just wants to talk.

EDWARDS: Get off of my place. Go. Go.

RIDGEN: I'm sorry, sir. He just wants to talk.

[Barking]

[Music]

ANGELINE: You’re listening to “Someone Knows Something” from CBC Original Podcasts. In Season 3, David Ridgen revisits his 2007 documentary “Mississippi Cold Case”. Teaming up with Thomas Moore to investigate the murder of his brother, Charles Moore, and Henry Dee, who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.This is Episode 4: Bunkley.

[Music]

[Singing]

RIDGEN: Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and area in August 2005. Thomas and I had already returned to our respective homes and continued to work on the Dee-Moore case from afar. The catastrophe kept the news of Seale’s existence out of play for a month, and over the next several, I was able to get through the entire set of FBI files Jerry Mitchell had given us and find many more documents, photos, and media clips in other US archives.

[Papers rustling]

RIDGEN: Where's that one that talks about Joe Lee Rollins?

I made notes on most every page and created a comprehensive database of names and stories the FBI that I wanted to re-examine.

THOMAS MOORE: Hey, David.

RIDGEN: Oh, hey Thomas, how's it going?

THOMAS: Pretty good, pretty good. Kinda warm down here. I sent you an email. I sent you an email back. Did you get it?

RIDGEN: Thomas and I spoke every day on the phone, sometimes more than once. And we also both kept in close touch with US Attorney Dunn Lampton and others.

[Phone ringing]

RIDGEN: Dave Ridgen.

DUNN LAMPTON: Hey, David.

RIDGEN: Hi, Mr. Lampton. How are you doing?

LAMPTON: Fine. What you got?

RIDGEN: Still, top of our minds were James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards. James Ford Seale was well-known, along with his family, for violence in the region, and was a suspect in several crimes including the dynamiting of the Blue Flame Saloon in Bude, for assisting in the murder of a white man named Earl Hodges in summer of ’65, and for running over and killing a black man named Bailey Odell with his truck on the Bunkley Road in the summer of 1966. Seale was also known for threatening people, including one of his neighbours for having a black maid. Seale and his fellow Klansmen would come together often in the Bunkley Community, meeting at a property owned by a man named Archie Prather. Their meetings were supposedly part of the Bunkley Hunting Club or a Rod and Gun Club, a euphemism for "Klan Klavern." Charles Marcus Edwards was seemingly a workaday paper mill employee with a short military career, a wife named Penny, and two young sons back in 1964. However, Edwards moved from his home in the Kirby community on May 3rd, 1964. The day after Dee and Moore disappeared from Meadville. With new information in hand, we returned South again in March 2006, the next trip of many I would make South, almost always with Thomas. This time, we would try approaching Edwards at his home deep in the backwoods of Franklin County, to see if he would talk to Thomas. Time for a drive down Bunkley Road.

[Music]

THOMAS: This place has deteriorated terribly in the last 40 years or so. What you see is an imaginary—How far we really come.

RIDGEN: Bunkley was the Klan stronghold in Franklin county at the time and many of the most violent members lived here. But times changed, and the white community over the years had sold off or abandoned their former properties. As we drove the roughly twelve miles to Edward’s house, I saw barking dogs and shanty shacks. Cleared grassy spaces where farms would have been. All covered in a drifting brimstone of smoke from controlled burns in the surrounding Homochitto pine woods. It had just started to rain as I drove up.

[Barking]

RIDGEN: I approached Edward’s house trying to calm his black and white dog.

[Barking]

RIDGEN: Edwards himself rose from a swing chair under a porch with wind chimes blowing nearby. He was a robust looking man in his 70s with a salt and pepper mustache and big glasses, dressed in a gray sweat suit with a camouflage pattern hunting cap.

He just wants to talk.

EDWARDS: Get off of my place. Go. Go.

RIDGEN: I'm sorry, sir. He just wants to talk.

EDWARDS: I don't want to talk about that. I'm not guilty of that and I've had enough of it. Get in your car and get away from me.

RIDGEN: He wasn’t guilty of that, he says.

I’m sure Mr. Moore would just like a few words.

EDWARDS: I’m not, I had nothing to do with him, and I want you to get off my land.

RIDGEN: Okay, sorry, sir.

[Music]

[Barking]

RIDGEN: We had planned that Thomas, who was back in the van, would accompany me. But when I returned to the vehicle with Edwards’s barky dog in fixed pursuit of my heels, I found Thomas crouching on the floor. The way the van was situated, I had to make a several point turn at the end of Edward’s dead-end country road and drive past him again. As we went by, I noticed Edwards was holding a crowbar and hitting the side of an old shack at the foot of his property with it.

RIDGEN: Duck when we go by here.

THOMAS: Huh?

RIDGEN: Stay down.

THOMAS: You're a very determined man, David.

RIDGEN: I’m not leaving here without seeing that guy. That’s for sure. Couldn't have asked for better. He was sitting on his porch.

I knew Thomas was angry with himself and I could barely bring myself to talk to him about it. Later, months later, Thomas would admit to me that he’d felt like a failure for not confronting Edwards. When the moment came, he was struck by an “overwhelming anxiety” that kept him down on the floor of the van.

You think you'll ever be able to talk to Charles Marcus Edwards or James Ford Seale?

[Turn signal clicking]

THOMAS: I’m not going to ever say that I won’t be able to, but you gotta ask yourself how long. Time is running out. Will we ever have the time? I think this was the greatest opportunity to talk to Marcus. But…

RIDGEN: I was kinda thinking that you were gonna maybe reach your head out and say something. I was trying to figure out why you didn’t.

THOMAS: [Sighs]

RIDGEN: It was a difficult time in the case. A point where Thomas and I were still gathering information and interviewing, and the Southern authorities seemed to be waiting for us to give them more reasons to budge.

JIM INGRAM: There was an FBI agent by the name of Bill Dukes who questioned them. He’s deceased. There was an FBI agent by the name of Curtis Perryman. He’s deceased.

RIDGEN: Jim Ingram, who had a long history with Mississippi law enforcement and the FBI, was brought out of retirement by Dunn Lampton to help find aging witnesses for the Dee and Moore case. And he wasn’t having much luck.

INGRAM: There was an FBI agent, Lenny, he's in a Alzheimers home in California. He doesn't even know who he is.

There's two highway patrol investigators, they were in on the interviews. They are dead. So that's exactly where we are.

RIDGEN: Not a great place to be, if we hoped to build a case against Edwards and Seale. A fact not lost on Lampton.

LAMPTON: I mean, I've just come to the realization that whatever we're going to do, it needs to be done quickly. If this thing drags out much longer, it will be moot. And it gets less and less prosecutable every day.

[Phone ringing]

THOMAS: Yep. I totally agree.

LAMPTON: So that's where we are.

RIDGEN: In the intervening months of collecting and working through the files, audio clips, photos, and other state and federal records, I came upon many names of people connected to the investigation. Klansmen who had participated in the crime or had knowledge of it, FBI and MHSP agents who had investigated the case, divers who had recovered the remains of Dee and Moore in October of 1964, along with the Jeep motor and other heavy weights they were attached to. Witnesses, informants, buzz, and quite a lot of bullshit. A flurry of excitement surrounded my finding of an original document at a Mississippi University archive that contained the confession of Charles Edwards on the day of his arrest in November 1964. The document, strangely an original, had been sitting untouched for so long that the paper clip had rusted and fused into the sheets. It was an affidavit signed in blue pen by an arresting officer named Gwin Cole of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol. And I discovered Gwin Cole was still alive. If Cole could remember Edwards’ confession, he’d be an excellent witness for any grand jury proceeding. Lampton agreed, and on another trip South he, Thomas, two officers from MHSP, and I drove to Gwin Cole’s house to meet with him, all of us packed into a tiny car.

ALLAN APPLEWHITE: Where's that little Grand Prix with the Texas plate on it?

LAMPTON: Is this thing stolen?

RIDGEN: The MHSP officer in the passenger seat who does most of the talking is named Allan Applewhite. The second officer, the driver, is named Dewey Weems. Quiet and wary of me and my camera, Weems was just beginning his career in the early ‘60s and was involved with the Dee and Moore case. The first occasion was when Charles Moore was still alive. Weems was tasked by Governor Paul Johnson to investigate and ultimately quell the student protest at Alcorn College on April 20th and 21^st, 1964. Weems actually took the photos I have of the protest that show Alcorn students standing on bleachers of the football field with their backs turned defiantly to the camera. I’d like to know more about that situation because, essentially, Charles Moore became available for the Klan to pick up in Meadville because he was suspended from Alcorn shortly after Weems took the pictures. But Weems, who has since died, wouldn’t agree to a formal interview. Weems, along with Gwin Cole, arrested Charles Marcus Edwards. We’ve just pulled up outside Gwin Cole’s house.

ALLAN: What's that?

THOMAS: Getting out of a car like that.

DEWEY WEEMS: Y'all come on in.

ALLAN: All right. Let’s get on in.

RIDGEN: Can you ask if--

LAMPTON: We'll ask him. But what I'm saying, I'm not going to ambush somebody. I mean, I've done it enough.

RIDGEN: Just don't forget I'm out here.

Lampton thinks Cole will talk more openly without my physical presence in the room. So, on the spot, I agree to remain outside while Thomas goes in with the others to record the conversation. Lampton takes a colour copy of the affidavit I found with Gwin Cole’s signature.

[Door shuts]

GWIN COLE: Hey there!

THOMAS: Thomas Moore. How you doing?

GWIN: I don't remember you.

ALLAN: No-- This is Thomas Moore. This is Charles Edward Moore's brother. Remember--

GWIN: Come on around and sit down.

LAMPTON: Just tell us what happened, so he can hear that from you. Just with the, with the arrest and why you signed the affidavit. Just tell us what you know.

GWIN: We went down there in Meadville. A Justice of the Peace. I think we woke him up if I'm not badly mistaken. He signed that warrant for us to arrest him.

RIDGEN: In the early morning hours of November 6, 1964, a Justice of the Peace in Meadville issued arrest warrants for James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards, charging them with the murder of Henry Dee and Charles Moore.

LAMPTON: All right, ya’ll. You got the arrest warrant,

GWIN: Yeah.

LAMPTON: Okay, what happened after that?

GWIN: We picked them up.

LAMPTON: And who is we? Do you remember who was there?

GWIN: Me and Bill Dukes, the FBI agent. And the rest of ‘em, I don't remember who was there really. To tell you the truth-- I'm telling the truth! I don't know!

RIDGEN: Not a stellar start. But Gwin Cole’s in poor health and his memory is filled with many investigations. In fact, Cole was one of the lead MHSP investigators on the Mississippi Burning case. According to Cole’s signed affidavit, Charles Marcus Edwards was arrested at 5:25 A.M., November 6, 1964 at his new residence in Bunkley. Edwards moved from his previous home in the Kirby community the day after Dee and Moore went missing. Gwin Cole knocked at the front door and Edwards answered, leaving the screen door locked. Cole identified himself and the other officers and told Edwards he wanted to talk with him. Edwards asked Cole if he had a warrant and Cole replied that he did, a warrant charging him with murder. Edwards was informed of his rights, and the officers left with him in custody at 5:29 A.M. en route to Jackson, Mississippi.

GWIN: I rode in the backseat of a car, a FBI agent. Me and Bill Dukes and we had Edwards in the backseat with us.

LAMPTON: Okay. Did he say anything going to Jackson?

GWIN: Not a word.

RIDGEN: Initially, Edwards denied having any knowledge of the disappearance of Henry Dee and Charles Moore. Quote, “Edwards was visibly nervous and stated several times during the course of the interview that his main concern was for his family, particularly his wife and children.” At 9:07 A.M., after nearly two hours of questioning, Edwards changed his story. He claimed that he’d been forced to move from his old neighbourhood several months before, because his wife was afraid of who she referred to as “negroes” who parked in front of their home at night. Edwards stated that Dee was one of these men and that his wife had complained that she had seen Dee on one occasion “peeping” at her. It is true that Dee lived near Edwards in the Kirby community. But it would be shown later that the peeping story was Edwards’s attempt to misdirect the officers. Edwards then stated that it was because of this that he had gone with James Ford Seale and others to pick up Henry Dee in Meadville. He didn’t know the identity of the other “negro” with Dee at the time, he said. Edwards stated that their intention was to whip Dee and Moore, which they did in the nearby woods. Edwards stated that he did not know what happened to them after that, but the two were still alive when he left. He declined to identify the others who were present. Edwards advised he had nothing to do with any murders, stated he would not testify and would not give a signed statement. But even without a signed statement, Edwards had just confessed to officers that he’d been involved with kidnapping and assaulting Dee and Moore. But did Cole remember it?

ALLAN: Where you present with--

GWIN: Come on, come on. Bill told me that the boy had made a statement. I said “yeah, what did he tell you?” He told me that him and old Seale, picked him up—picked him up on the highway, took them up there in the wood and whooped him.

ALLAN: That’s what he said Edwards told him?

GWIN: That's what he said Edwards told him.

ALLAN: You weren't present during the interview?

GWIN: No.

RIDGEN: This was going to be a problem. While Gwin Cole had taken part in the arrest of Edwards and accompanied him to Jackson, he had not, according to his recollection, heard the confession from Charles Edwards directly.

LAMPTON: All right. Let me ask you this. Have you signed the affidavit?

GWIN: Yeah.

LAMPTON: Why did you sign it?

GWIN: He held it in front of me and said “sign it.”

LAMPTON: I just want to know, is that your signature?

GWIN: That’s my signature, yes sir.

LAMPTON: Had you ever talked to anyone that told you they knew who killed Moore and Dee's?

GWIN: No.

LAMPTON: Did you ever talk to anyone that told you “I know what happened?”

GWIN: No.

LAMPTON: Did you know Gilbert? Ernest Gilbert, he was the FBI informant. Did you know him at all?

GWIN: No.

LAMPTON: Had you ever been told by the FBI where they got that information?

GWIN: No.

LAMPTON: Who else other than Dukes might have been in that meeting? In that interrogation.

GWIN: An FBI agent, but I can't recall his name. He was from Texas. He was with us.

RIDGEN: This would’ve been FBI Agent Curtis Perryman, but both Dukes and Perryman were dead. It’s clear that Gwin Cole isn’t going to be our star witness after all. Why wasn’t Cole in the room with Edwards and the two FBI agents when Edwards gave his confession, is one question I might have asked. Thomas is nearly speechless.

THOMAS: Well, he's claiming that-- that he wasn't there, but he said that's his signature. Oh, man.

[Door closes]

[Music]

LAMPTON: You see, I can't go to court and put Gwin Cole on the stand and ask him what happened.

THOMAS: Right.

LAMPTON: I mean, it's over. Once he says “I never heard the statement,” it's over.

RIDGEN: Gwin Cole didn’t witness Edwards’ confession and that makes me wonder what district attorney Lenox Forman knew at the time. Because Cole was one of the main people who was supposed to have told Forman the information about the case. Forman didn’t move forward on anything, despite what appears on paper at least to be ample evidence. The FBI sometimes did not share information with local authorities for fear they were in the Klan.

THOMAS: You telling me this document that I have, 1,200 pages, that that wasn't given to Lenox Foreman?

LAMPTON: Absolutely.

RIDGEN: With so many people involved dead, it’s impossible to know for sure what happened.

LAMPTON: They had the information to prosecute, but they didn’t because they would’ve lost their informants.

But Allan Applewhite offers what sounds like at least an arguable theory for why the case never went forward in 1964.

ALLAN: The state didn't have access to the witness. The feds had the key, but they couldn't use the key because they would have lost their informant.

LAMPTON: OK.

THOMAS: So, the informant was more important than my brother and Henry Dee.

ALLAN: That's right.

THOMAS: Why? Why?

LAMPTON: Because they were looking at the big picture.

RIDGEN: Once Dee and Moore were discovered, the FBI began an investigation into their case. Then Klansman Ernest Gilbert, the man FBI called JN30, came forward with the information about the murders. The FBI saw an opportunity to use the Dee-Moore case as a vehicle to develop more informants for other cases. So the FBI didn’t want to give Gilbert up, nor did they want his fellow Klansmen to find out he was informing and kill him. And when it came to sharing information about cases with local authorities like Gwin Cole or even Lenox Forman, the FBI may not have been as forthcoming as they needed to be. All combined to keep the Dee and Moore case from moving forward.

DEWEY: Nice to meet you, sir.

THOMAS: Yes sir!

RIDGEN: Nice to meet you.

DEWEY: Keep in touch.

RIDGEN: We say goodbye to the two Mississippi Highway Patrolmen. And try to figure out our next moves.

[Door closes]

THOMAS: OK!

LAMPTON: Bye, Allan! Thank you.

[Door closes]

RIDGEN: So, we still have reason for hope, Dunn, you think in this case?

LAMPTON: Always reason, OK? Always reason to hope.

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

RIDGEN: While working this case, we had to look for ways to conjure a lot of hope. And Thomas often tried to do this by bringing the Dee and Moore story to the local community.

MOORE: Public opinion hurts. You know, it’s OK if you isolate yourself. However, if the community isolate themself from these two individuals, then it’s gonna hurt.

[Music]

RIDGEN: On one such occasion, we visited the Roxie Baptist Church. The very church whose name was shouted out by either Dee or Moore during their torture as a possible hiding place for guns. The Reverend Clyde Briggs’s old congregation. Thomas wanted some local help for something he had in mind for James Ford Seale.

THOMAS: Well, David, this is one of the most important things that we're about to do.

THOMAS: This a big day. They gonna start pretty singing soon.

[Music]

[Door creaking open]

RIDGEN: A portrait of the late Reverend Clyde Briggs hangs up high, centred behind the pulpit.

[Music]

REVEREND: Praise the lord.

CONGREGATION: Praise the lord.

THOMAS: Amen!

REVEREND: Praise the lord, everybody!

CONGREGATION: Praise the lord!

[Music]

[Singing]

RIDGEN: The church was full of its regular attendees dressed in their Sunday best, along with a few who Thomas had invited and some press from Jackson and Natchez.

[Singing, clapping]

RIDGEN: After some rousing gospel, Thomas stood at the front. Beside him a sign on a pole that we’d made in Jackson. There written in black and red text on white plastic, “Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. Rest in Peace and Justice.” With the word “Justice” underlined in red.

THOMAS: First of all, it's an honour for me to be here. My name is Thomas Moore, the son of Mazie Moore from Franklin County, Meadville, Mississippi. My brother was Charles Eddie Moore. A terrible thing happened, 41 years ago. Do I have a right to be here? I have a right to be here. Because I am going to hold Franklin County, the State of Mississippi, accountable for the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Dee. I cannot fight this battle by myself. So, I need you to demand from your local authorities, justice. Because Franklin County will never get over this until this shadow is removed. If they can do it in Neshoba County, you can do it here. This is the time. This is our time. This is not a time for violence. Now, if you wanna ask me what I thought about doing, we don't wanna talk about that in the church. I still think about what I could've done, but I wanna sit in the courthouse. And I wanna watch him walk through. If you read the Clarion-Ledger two days ago, they had an article talking about, is the Ku Klux Klan really dead? They're trying to come back. And we need to stay on top of this. And I don't have no fear. I have no fear. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I have no fear.”

CONGREGATION: Amen. Amen. All right.

THOMAS: What is the difference? They fighting terrorists, and we got two right here in Franklin County. James Ford Seale. Charles Marcus Edwards. I am leaving here in just a few minutes. And I am going to place this sign, not on his personal property, but on public ground. Because I want everybody that pass by to know this guy lives here. But I want them to know that we watching you. And it's just a matter of time. If anybody wanna go with me, let's go. I’m going out of here.

[Applause]

RIDGEN: Thomas walks out the front door of the church and several men and a few women follow.

THOMAS: What did you think?

RIDGEN: It was good. There's people coming with you.

THOMAS: Was I persuasive in there?

RIDGEN: He was. The atmosphere in the church was electric. The group makes their way to Highway 33 at the BP station. Then, with Thomas carrying the sign, another carrying a ladder, and another a large old fashioned 5-pound hammer, the group walks along the gravel shoulder toward the place where James Seale lives.

[Car doors slamming]

THOMAS: Come up here, brother. Right there by that white sign. We not gonna be on his property. This is where he live. Now, we gonna put it right there by the 55 miles sign. I ain't going over by his house. He ain't crazy enough to show-- He ain't gonna do nothing. We know that. He's a coward, dude. What about right here?

[Hammering]

RIDGEN: The men hammer the sign at the top of the driveway well within sight of Seale’s RV and obvious to any passerby.

THOMAS: How is that? That's pretty good.

VOICE 1: Heavenly father, we come at this moment to give you all the praise, the honour and the glory….

RIDGEN: Then the men stand in a circle next to the sign and stack their hands in the centre, like spokes in a wheel.

VOICE 1: Lord, we ask you to right this wrong, Father.

MOORE: Amen. Okay, let’s go.

RIDGEN: Thomas would erect other signs around Franklin County to memorialize Charles and Henry. The sign at Seale’s house would be ripped down within the hour, but the message from the local community to Seale was clear. With Gwin Cole unable to give us an eyewitness account of Edward’s confession, Thomas and I decided to focus on Seale’s arrest. According to my ever-growing stack of documents, Seale may have inadvertently given a partial confession himself. The names on the FBI report detailing Seale’s arrest were MHSP agents Nat Trout, deceased, and Ford O’Neal, also deceased, FBI Special Agent Leonard Wolf, who I’d heard had Alzheimer’s and didn’t even know who he was, and FBI agent Edward Putz. Mississippi officials had told me that Putz was either senile or dead. Here’s District Attorney Ronnie Harper explaining the situation:

RONNIE HARPER: We know that Putz is not available, we know that these guys are either deceased or-- or have no ability to recall what happened.

RIDGEN: But after a quick brush through an online phonebook, I found an Edward Putz living in Miami and gave him a call.

[Dial tone]

[Dialing]

ED PUTZ: Hello

RIDGEN: Can I speak to Ed Putz, please?

ED: This is he.

RIDGEN: Oh, hi, Mr. Putz. My name's David and I'm working on a story about a killing, a case you may have worked on. Down in Mississippi, down in 1964?

ED: Right.

RIDGEN: And it’s-- I think you know the case, it's the Dee-Moore case, and I just wanted to ask you a couple questions about it because I think you can really help shed some light on that case.

ED: Right.

RIDGEN: Do you remember the case?

ED: Sure. You mean the two guys that they tied to a tree, and whipped, and then threw in the Mississippi?

RIDGEN: That’s it.

ED: Right.

RIDGEN: That’s it.

Far from being senile or dead at age 88, I found Special Agent Putz to be sharp and clear, and he didn’t suffer fools. Most importantly, after over 40 years, he still remembered everything.

Now, I've been reading some documents here and it said that you were involved in the arrest of James Ford Seale.

ED: That's right.

RIDGEN: Now, do you remember taking Mr. Seale to Jackson?

ED: Right.

RIDGEN: And do you remember him admitting on the way there, well, it's a partial admission.

ED: He said he did it, but we'd never prove it.

RIDGEN: Right.

ED: Something like that. Well, did you see my FD302?

RIDGEN: There is an FD302 here. And I just wanted to get your version of the story, it's sort of…

ED: The story, whatever's in the FD302 is what he said.

RIDGEN: Actually, I'll just read it to you here, if you don't mind. There’s a little paragraph here. I guess Special Agent Wolfe was somebody that was with you, and he said--

ED: Lenny Wolfe. Yeah, Lenny Wolfe out of Chicago. He's dead.

RIDGEN: Oh, he's dead. That's unfortunate. He says, “We know that on Saturday afternoon, May 2nd, 1964 you picked up, in your car, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, two Negro boys from Roxie. You, and Charles Edwards and others took them to some remote place and beat them to death. You then transported and disposed of their bodies by dropping them in the Mississippi River. You didn't even give them a decent burial. We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it." And then James Seale says, "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You're going to have to prove it." And you remember that conversation?

ED: Yes, I do.

[Music]

RIDGEN: Wow. How did you get him to say that, though, is what I'm--

ED: How? I don't know. You know, you-- I mean, maybe he was... Hard to say. Hard to say.

RIDGEN: Do you think--

ED: I mean, we didn't beat 'em or anything like that, you know.

RIDGEN: Right, right. Because there was that allegation, wasn't there, that Ford O'Neil had beaten him? And what do you know about that?

ED: No, no, no!

RIDGEN: James Ford Seale went to a justice of the peace in Franklin County and swore an affidavit that MHSP officer Ford O’Neal “did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously commit an assault and battery” on him during Seale’s November ‘64 arrest. Nothing came of the charges, but district attorney Lenox Foreman later stated that he believed the story of the beating that Seale put out in the community would have a detrimental effect on the case, and used it as one of the reasons he wouldn’t go forward with a Grand Jury.

ED: I mean, you can never beat a guy because you, if you beat a guy, they tell you what you want to hear, and then you never know whether it's the truth or not.

RIDGEN: Well, I thank you very much for talking to me today, sir. I hope we can talk again. I may give you a call next week and just check up.

ED: All right.

RIDGEN: Thanks very much, sir.

ED: Okay.

RIDGEN: Bye-bye

[Phone clicks].

RIDGEN: In another conversation, Ed Putz let me know that he didn’t want to sit down for a filmed interview, but he was willing to testify, if it ever came to that. Thomas called Lampton with the news about Putz.

LAMPTON: Spell that last name for me.

THOMAS: P as in Paul. U. T. Z in Zulu. He's located in Florida.

LAMPTON: Okay. All right. Well, what we will do is go down and interview him. I wanna think that he is somebody that Jim Ingram had on that list to go interview. Apparently, you've beaten us to the punch, which is, which is fine. We'll just have to see, in the context of everything, how that fits in there. That still may not give us what we need to be in federal court.

RIDGEN: I remember the frustration building in Thomas and I around this time. We felt that if we stopped pressing, even for a moment, that the whole push for justice would come to a crashing halt. Thomas felt that through the course of filming, over 15 months, we were doing things that officials should be doing by now: looking through the documents, finding witnesses, looking for new evidence. It was true that we’d had many promises, but nothing seemed to move forward unless we were on the ground and in people’s faces.

THOMAS: Over the last year, you know, I'm frustrated that I bring them-- bring them information and they say, oh, you beat me to the punch. Well, yeah, we are beating you to the punch, because we’re punching. My question is, are they punching?

[Music]

RIDGEN: Thomas decided that it was time to confront his demons once and for all. He would attempt to speak to Charles Edwards face-to-face one more time. Only by meeting his fear head on, Thomas felt, would he be able to find some peace. Also, being the victim’s brother, Thomas’s gut instincts had always told him that only he could get the conspirators in his brother’s case to start talking. But how to arrange a face-to-face meet? And where? We’d spent a lot of time, especially in the beginning of our investigation, speaking to people about Edwards and Seale.

A couple of guys. One guy is Charles Marcus Edwards. Ever hear of that guy before?

COREY ARNOLD: Yeah.

RIDGEN: You know that guy?

COREY: Yeah. Well, he lives in Bunkley from where I'm from. That's my daddy's uncle.

RIDGEN: Oh, really.

COREY: Yeah. I see him a lot, man. We hunt together, deer hunt and all that, but you know, we don't ever talk about nothing like that.

RIDGEN: What's he like?

COREY: What's he like?

RIDGEN: Yeah.

COREY: He's a church going man. He help you doing anything you ask him to do. Grows a garden every year. Just a country fella. You know? He a good guy.

RIDGEN: Is he a good hunter?

COREY: Oh, yeah! He can kill some deer. Sure can.

RIDGEN: So, aside from being a decent hunter, Edwards was also a good gardener. And a church-going man.

Have you heard of this case though?

WOMAN: I know that one of the men that supposedly had something to do with it is a deacon in our church.

RIDGEN: He's the deacon in your church?

WOMAN: Mm-hmm.

RIDGEN: Would this be Mr. Edwards? Is it Charles Marcus Edwards?

WOMAN: Yeah.

RIDGEN: I guess he’s still alive, and obviously he’s the deacon in your church.

WOMAN: Yeah, he’s still very much alive.

RIDGEN: Right. What church is that? Obviously that's a Baptist church.

WOMAN: Yeah, Baptist. Bunkley. Bunkley Baptist. It's about 15 miles from here.

RIDGEN: Right. And is he there every Sunday?

WOMAN: Every Sunday. Has been for years. Years, and years, and years.

RIDGEN: The deacon of a church, the Bunkley Baptist Church. This could be an opportunity.

THOMAS: Well, let me ask you this, if... and believe me, my mind ain't made up. I'm just torn in between this thing here.

RIDGEN: Thomas and I had discussed a plan for confronting Edwards, but first he wanted to run it by Dunn Lampton.

THOMAS: If-- if I decided to go down to the church and see him, he may get mad and walk away from me. But would that, in fact, when you find out that I went down there and talked to him, would that have any interference with what you gonna do?

RIDGEN: As deacon, Edwards would likely be one of the first to arrive on any given Sunday. Thomas wanted to try for a showdown here. If Edwards was a religious man, perhaps the church would make him think twice about telling a lie.

THOMAS: I mean, I want to do the right thing. All right sir, well, thanks for talking with me then. We'll talk shortly. Thank you, sir. Bye. So, I'm clear, with my decision. Let's go and knock this shit out. Because you know, our concern that-- And as a matter of fact he said, he said if you decide to go, I'm still gonna do what I gotta do. And that's what kinda cleared my mind. See what I'm saying? So, fuck it, let's-- let's get a goddamn batting practice and grand slam this son of a bitch. I mean, like you say, I would hate for you to leave here and we didn't try. Now we go down there, and he ain't there, we get the fuck on outta Bunkley. But if he there, here I am, man. Run but you can't fucking hide.

[Music]

RIDGEN: So, tell me what you're going to do and tell me what you're doing.

THOMAS: Well…

[Papers rustling]

THOMAS: I'm gonna prepare an envelope to pass to Charles Marcus Edwards today if he come to church. What I have here is a few pages from the Federal Bureau of Investigation report. In this report it has the names of Charles Marcus Edwards and James Seale, and it’s alleging that they picked up Charles Moore and Henry Dee. I've carefully blackened out some information that I didn't want him to know about right at this time. And I want to ask him, Charles Edwards, why did he have a bad case of conscience, why is his name in this document? I'm sure he hasn't seen this.

[Paper rustling]

THOMAS: My intent is to give this to Charles Marcus Edwards, that he may have some bedtime reading stuff. Just in case he has nothing else to do.

RIDGEN: Thomas writes a name on the cover of the envelope in black marker.

THOMAS: Mr. Charles Marcus Edwards.

RIDGEN: And then seals it.

[Music]

THOMAS: Happy dreams.

RIDGEN: All right, let's stick this thing up in here.

THOMAS: Test one, two, three, four, five, six.

But we should be getting pretty close.

RIDGEN: The church is a simple, red brick building with a white-washed wooden steeple. A sign with letters falling off out front reads “Unkey Babtit Hurch”. Bunkley Baptist Church. On a pole next to the sign hangs a small church bell. Anybody who rang it would soon find out that there were dozens of red wasps building a nest inside.

I think the best thing is to just keep going back and forth in the front of his thing. Then we're on the road and going and it’s...

THOMAS: Okay.

RIDGEN: After more than an hour of luckless drive-bys, around 9:35 AM, Thomas was ready to throw in the towel. And then...

There's the car.

THOMAS: Is that his car?

RIDGEN: Yup, that's his car. Do you want to do it now?

THOMAS: Yeah. Pull up there. You ready?

RIDGEN: Go!

RIDGEN: Charles Marcus Edwards had parked his Chevy Impala in front of the church and was following his wife toward the front door. I pull the van into the lane, grab a small camera, and Thomas and I get out. In my hurry I leave the van running and you can hear it in the background.

[Car door shuts]

THOMAS: Mr. Edwards! How you doing, sir?

EDWARDS: All right.

THOMAS: I have something for you, sir.

EDWARDS: What is this?

THOMAS: It's something that I think you want to read.

EDWARDS: You take this …

THOMAS: No, no, no.

EDWARDS: You take it on back with you.

THOMAS: No, sir. I want you to read it because-- Well, I want to ask you why your name on those FBI reports?

EDWARDS: I'm not on no FBI reports.

THOMAS: That's what you have in your hand, sir.

EDWARDS: No.

THOMAS: I’m not-- All I want to do is talk to you.

EDWARDS: What's your name, fella?

THOMAS: My name is Moore. Thomas James Moore.

EDWARDS: I'm gonna tell you fella. I did not kill your brother. I didn't have anything to do with it.

THOMAS: Well, sir. All I want to ask you, why is your name and James Ford Seale in the document?

EDWARDS: The FBI … the FBI dropped all this case, and you know that.

THOMAS: Well, I know from the FBI files, sir, that it was never--

EDWARDS: They dropped the case ‘cause there wasn't any evidence. And I didn't have anything-- I've never been on that Mississippi river in my life.

RIDGEN: Sir, did you have anything-- did you have anything to do with picking those boys up though, sir? Down in Meadville.

THOMAS: The report says that you and James Ford Seale picked them up. It did not say you kill'em.

RIDGEN: Edwards pauses, looks up at his feet, then starts to move toward the church, pulling his wife along with him. His silence speaks.

Did you have anything to do with that, sir? Picking those boys up?

EDWARDS: I don’t got anything-- Y’all get off this church ground, quit stirring up things you don’t …

RIDGEN: Edwards finally reaches the door of the church, clearly pre-occupied, starts fumbling with his keys to open the white doors.

Mr. Edwards, why did you move the day after those boys were killed?

Finally, Edwards gets the door open and he and his wife are gone.

[Door slams]

RIDGEN: Time to go.

THOMAS: Yup.

[Music]

[Car door closes]

RIDGEN: How do you feel now?

THOMAS: I feel great. [Laughs] I feel great. I feel great. I mean, I did what I had to do and… The stakeout was a success! Hot goddamn! 42 years, it took me to see that son of a bitch to his face.

He showed the nervousness. Talking about he never been on the Mississippi River. Ain’t nobody said you been on the Mississippi River. I asked him the question. I can't think of anything else to I need to ask him. Right? He made me ask him the questions. All I wanted to know is why is your name in the FBI document? If he was nervous last year, he fucked up now.

RIDGEN: Get him on the stand, he will not lie. That guy will say he picked them up on the stand. You gotta call Dunn Lampton and tell him. ‘Cause the way he didn't answer when I asked if he picked those boys up, he will talk. He will speak the truth in the court. If he's forced to, he will.

[Music]

ANGELINE: You have been listening to Episode 4: Bunkley. Visit CBC.ca/SKS to see video of the encounters with Charles Marcus Edwards and James Ford Seale, and subscribe to SKS on your favourite podcast app. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written and produced by David Ridgen. The series is also produced by Chris Oke, Steph Kampf, Amil Delic, Eunice Kim and Executive Producer Arif Noorani, and mixed by Cesil Fernandes. Our theme song is “Terrorized” by Willie King.

[Theme music]

THOMAS: So, what do you think? You think that was a grand sla?.

RIDGEN: I think that's a slam dunk, home run, star traveller rocket ship.

ANNOUNCER: For more CBC original podcasts, go to CBC.ca/originalpodcasts.

TRANSCRIPT: Someone Knows Something - Season 3, EP 4

Social Sharing