Shortly after Hewitt took over, Blackie Drane and Ed Fuller, both wearing sidearms, paid him a visit. A feared bouncer in Drane’s lounges, Fuller was known to use brass knuckles, ax handles, and chains against patrons. Both were believed to have contacts within the Dixie Mafia, a group of conmen who traveled the South committing crimes. They were especially active in the illegal gambling underworld. While the Marcello mob would recruit the prostitutes, Hewitt was informed that Drane would provide the gambling machines and devices used in the operation, as well as the men who operated the games. After the sheriff was provided his protection money, Hewitt agreed to split the remaining gambling profits with Drane. Otherwise, Drane indicated, “The Man” would shut the operation down. Hewitt agreed. Once all the payoffs were made, Hewitt was to split the lounge share of profits with Richardson. In the meantime, DeLaughter demanded that, in exchange for his personal protection, Hewitt help finance a car and a camp lot for the deputy. Of all the players operating under Cross (including Richardson, Drane, Fuller, and DeLaughter), only the Marcello mob’s representative, Hewitt, did not belong to the Klan.20
When the FBI agents wandered into the lounge in the spring of 1966, Pfeifer spotted on the bar a stack of counter checks “blank and ready to be filled out.” He realized that if the lounge owners were accepting checks for prostitution and gambling, they were breaking federal laws. Pfeifer would learn that during an eighteen-month period, the lounge deposited $250,000 in checks alone for prostitution and gambling. Agents never learned how much cash was spent. Obviously, this operation could not have existed unless the sheriff was paid protection money. The agents were standing in a dark corner of the parking lot talking when they observed three scantily clad women and four men in business suits climb into a Cadillac limousine. Pfeifer and Gardner followed the vehicle to Vidalia and watched it turn right onto the bridge and cross the river into Natchez and the state of Mississippi. To both men, it was obvious that the Morville Lounge was a sophisticated operation that violated the federal Interstate Transportation in Aid of Racketeering statutes.21
To help make a case, Pfeifer first looked for a mole within the sheriff’s department, particularly a deputy who would have firsthand knowledge of Cross and DeLaughter’s criminal operations. He settled on Ike Cowan Jr., a short, stocky father of four who had served in World War II and Korea. Cowan had been implicated in a beating in 1962, but his record was clean when compared to DeLaughter’s and Deputy Bill Ogden’s. One day Pfeifer surprised Cowan with a visit to his home. He told the deputy this would be a good time for him to get on the right side of the fence and perform a beneficial service to the community he was sworn to protect and serve.22
To Pfeifer’s astonishment, Cowan began to talk, explaining how Cross had made the gamblers his solid allies in the 1950s in exchange for kickbacks. In the past, Cross had often sent deputies to various clubs to order them to stop gambling activities when there was a possibility of state police raids. But since the opening of the Morville Lounge, Cowan said, the sheriff had “gone to extremes to keep it operating.” The deputy said he had been to the lounge with the sheriff and other deputies and that he once watched a local gambler who operated an extensive burglary ring pay Cross “a stack of money” to look the other way. Pfeifer left Cowan’s home late that night after hours of conversation. He had picked Cowan’s brain clean, garnering information connecting the sheriff to the lounge. But would Cowan agree to testify against the sheriff in court?23
Two days later, while driving along the Ferriday-Vidalia highway, Pfeifer observed the sheriff in his Cadillac with Cowan and two other deputies. “They’re all pointing at me like there’s that SOB!” Pfeifer recalled years later. Continuing on his way, the agent stopped at the King Hotel to ask the bartender for help in locating someone he needed to interview. Suddenly, Cowan burst through the door into the lounge, well populated by pulpwood haulers and oil-field workers. The uniformed Cowan had his sidearm prominently displayed, while Pfeifer, dressed in a white shirt and slacks, had his revolver in the usual place—in a briefcase he always carried with him.24
“The Man wants to see you outside right now!” Cowan shouted.
Despite the tense situation, Pfeifer’s sense of humor quickly surfaced: “Well, Ike, I see you apparently do not stand up very well under interrogation!” Then he continued, “If Noah wants to get a hold of me, he should call me at my office, explain what he wants over the phone, and if it’s real business, I’ll make an appointment to see him then.”
Cowan’s face reddened when he realized Pfeifer was not going to adhere to the boss’s demands. The patrons in the bar couldn’t believe their eyes or ears. Never had they witnessed anyone stand up to the high sheriff. That was the last time Cross made any effort to talk to Pfeifer, who afterward occasionally dropped by the sheriff’s office and, with the secretary’s permission, sat at Cross’s desk and made a collect phone call. If the sheriff had studied his phone bill, he would have seen that periodic calls were being made to the FBI’s New Orleans field office.25
WHILE THE KICKBACK CASH poured in throughout 1966, Sheriff Cross also shored up his close relationship with the Klan. On March 19, in a field near the outskirts of Ferriday, the United Klans of America held a nighttime rally sponsored by the Louisiana and Mississippi Realms. An estimated one thousand people attended, mostly spectators, as well as fifty robed Klan members, including eight women and a number of children, plus a dozen UKA security guards. Cross assigned DeLaughter and five other uniformed parish deputies to assist Klansmen in parking their cars.26 Louisiana UKA grand dragon Jack Helm of New Orleans, nursing a bad case of laryngitis, along with Mississippi grand dragon E. L. McDaniel, were the featured speakers. Helm, who had recently lost his New Orleans Selective Service Board seat because of his Klan affiliation, claimed that homosexuals had corrupted the federal government. He also urged white citizens not to register their guns.27
At the UKA rally at Liberty Park on May 7, DeLaughter was among a handful of UKA dignitaries recognized by McDaniel, who had sworn the deputy into the Klan months earlier. McDaniel could turn to DeLaughter when he needed help in Concordia Parish.28 In February, McDaniel’s friend Jack Seale had been arrested in Ferriday after an officer spotted a car speeding and weaving through town. After pulling the car over and identifying Seale, the officer noticed a typewriter in the back of the car. Recalling that some typewriters had recently been stolen, the officer obtained a search warrant. While no typewriters were found inside the trunk, the policeman did find more than six hundred rounds of ammunition, four loaded ammo clips, a .38 snub-nosed pistol, two rifles, two traffic blinker lights, and two walkie-talkies.29 Before daylight, Ferriday mayor Woodie Davis heard a knock on his door. Outside was SDG Klansman James Scarborough, who wanted to pay Seale’s bond for DWI but couldn’t come up with the $250. A short time later, Davis was awakened again by DeLaughter and McDaniel. DeLaughter wanted Seale released without bond. The mayor refused, so McDaniel returned with the money a half hour later, and Seale was freed.30 Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton heard a few days later about Seale’s arrest. There had been rumors that McDaniel was keeping two sets of books, and Shelton, knowing his reputation for mishandling money, wondered if the second set had been in Seale’s trunk.31
After the rally at Liberty Park ended, two Louisiana UKA officers from Monroe stopped to visit DeLaughter at his home in Ferriday. Later, DeLaughter drove the Klansmen to the sheriff’s home, where Cross promised his continued cooperation. The Klansmen responded by providing Cross a card declaring his honorary membership in the UKA.32
Also on May 7, McDaniel convened the Mississippi UKA annual convention, held at the Natchez Eola Hotel. Shelton, recognizing that an anti-McDaniel faction was growing within the UKA, urged members to settle their differences and stop fighting. McDaniel reported that for the year 1965, the UKA in Mississippi had collected $19,800 from dues, rallies, and the sale of literature. He had been paid $4,800 in salary, amounting to a quarter of the state organ
ization’s reported total income for the year, and had spent $1,600 for office rent in Natchez. Many Klansmen had long contended that McDaniel was only in the Klan to line his pockets, and this report on spending set his opposition to yelping.33
By mid-September, anti-McDaniel sentiment had reached a boiling point. On the eighteenth, the UKA held an emergency state meeting at a shed in the woods near Natchez to elect a grand dragon. Thirty-two UKA units, totaling 120 men and 96 voting delegates, were represented. McDaniel and Durrell Fondren from Columbus, Mississippi, were nominated. (Fondren led the anti-McDaniel faction.) On the first two rounds of voting by raised hands, Fondren won by fifteen to twenty votes, but on the third round, McDaniel’s supporters claimed, their candidate won, fifty-seven to thirty-three. When the Exalted Cyclops from the Puckett, Mississippi, klavern, asked if the organization was to be operated “by lies,” McDaniel told the man to “hit the door.” That remark almost ignited a brawl. After McDaniel took the chair, several delegates complained that the election was rigged and walked out, including some members of the Natchez UKA klavern.34
On September 27, McDaniel and Fondren, along with Jack Seale and three other Klansmen, met with Shelton at the Airways Inn Motel in Jackson. Before anyone could make their case, Shelton advised that the state officers were not doing their jobs and was furious that McDaniel, on his own, had revoked the charters of seven UKA units whose Klansmen had walked out during the disputed election. Additionally, Shelton reported, he had learned that McDaniel, a married man, was “dating” prostitutes in Concordia Parish and had girlfriends. Shelton also said that L. C. Murray, an SDG Klansman and McDaniel’s UKA secretary, was rude to members who called the state office in Natchez.35
Then Shelton made a startling announcement: He was dissolving all state positions and would personally operate the Mississippi UKA from his office in Tuscaloosa. Shelton told McDaniel he couldn’t soften the blow by giving him the balance of UKA funds because there was no money in the state treasury. McDaniel was out of a job and without a Klan to call home. He had been booted out by the Original Knights, deceived the White Knights during his membership by secretly recruiting for the UKA, and now was ousted by the UKA. By December he was flat broke, unemployed, and had no money to buy Christmas presents for his family.36
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY in 1966, FBI agent Williams and Natchez police officers arrived on the scene of a fire at one of Mayor John Nosser’s stores. A group of Klansmen, including Jack Seale, had gathered there. Bone tired from months of dealing with Klan violence, Williams was in no mood for the usual banter with Seale.
“Where’s your camera?” Seale yelled as Williams walked by him.
“Jack,” he answered, “I came directly from home, and my camera is at the office.”
“Well, if this was a nigger joint you’d have it,” Seale smirked.
Without thinking, Williams punched Seale in the jaw. Seale struck back, but before the two could exchange many blows, police officers and Klansmen pulled them apart. Williams hated that he lost his cool but acknowledged that punching one of the Klan’s most brutal predators felt good.37
A few days later, Seale and other Klansmen were in Washington testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The committee had exposed dozens of local Klansmen throughout Concordia Parish and southwestern Mississippi, particularly those who worked at the International Paper Company. Their names were printed in the Natchez Democrat. Many were embarrassed and feared they might lose their jobs. As a result, Klan membership plummeted. Among the local men called to testify before the HUAC were McDaniel, Murray, Ernest Avants, Ed Fuller, Ernest Parker, and Clyde, Jack, and James Ford Seale. James Ford Seale reportedly chewed on a cigar during his testimony. All took the Fifth Amendment. Of the eight subpoenaed, only McDaniel and Murray were not implicated in a murder, but they were leading suspects (along with the Seale brothers) in the bombing of Mayor Nosser’s house in 1964.38
In many ways, 1966 marked the last stand of the traditional Klan in the region. Only the Silver Dollar Group remained firm and continued to attack. Some of the men who had spent all of their energy in fighting civil rights were having a hard time earning a living. Just as McDaniel’s Klan life was spiraling in 1966, so was Jack Seale’s. Seale’s record of trouble was longstanding. When he had enlisted in the Navy in 1944, he had immediately showed contempt for authority and a dependence on alcohol. He was convicted in June 1946 of failure to report to duty without leave, falsification of records, and abusing a private citizen onshore. Two months later, he was convicted of threatening masters-at-arms while onshore and insolence to a petty officer. Punishment was five days’ solitary confinement with bread and water.39 Years later, Seale bragged at the White Knights klavern that he had served prison time in the Navy for running over “some Chinaman in a jeep.”40
Since 1955, Seale had been charged with a number of offenses in Natchez, including public drunkenness, two charges of drunk driving, disturbing the peace, and speeding. He was prosecuted and convicted in 1959 for drunkenness and disorderly conduct at the G&J Lounge but not prosecuted for pointing a .22 caliber pistol at Ed Fuller and another man that same night. In 1962, his third DWI charge, involving an automobile accident, resulted in a $100 fine that was suspended.41
After Shelton ousted McDaniel from the UKA, Seale, the nighthawk, and Murray, the secretary, now were also without a traditional Klan home, although both remained in the SDG. Afterward, when Seale provided a few scant details on Klan activities and membership, the FBI considered paying him as an informant. But the bureau ultimately rejected him as a snitch because of his violent background and the continuing probes into the crimes in which he was believed to be involved. By November, as his garbage disposal business failed and he teetered on financial collapse, Seale went out drinking with Klan business on his mind. As an SDG member, he didn’t have to go through a channel of authority to commit a crime, as was required officially (but not always followed) in the traditional Klans. Now free of any binding oath or rulebook, Seale could act on behalf of himself and the SDG when and where he wanted.
At 1 a.m. on November 19, he threw a grenade on the lawn of June Callon, a member of the board of supervisors in Adams County. Although the explosive landed within six feet of Callon’s home, there was no damage. Twenty-seven minutes later, a second grenade exploded at Jerry Oberlin’s Ritz Jewelry Store on North Commerce. The explosion damaged goods and broke windows. Three witnesses, including two recently hired black policemen, observed a red Volkswagen without a rear bumper racing from the scene. The car was later spotted in the parking lot of the Fountain Lounge. Grenade fragments were embedded in the metal. When Seale came out of the lounge and got in the car, he was arrested on charges of public drunkenness and carrying a concealed weapon. On December 5, he was indicted by a grand jury on the charge of unlawful use of explosives in the jewelry store bombing. The MHSP believed that Oberlin was targeted because he had attended an NAACP meeting the week before.42 Seale pled guilty and paid a $16.50 fine on the charges of public drunkenness and carrying a concealed weapon. His trial for the explosives charges was set for early 1967.43
The FBI knew that Jack Seale would never be convicted in the jewelry store bombing. By the end of 1966, fifteen area Klansmen, including DeLaughter, had been arrested or indicted. In all but one case, however, the charges were either dropped or silently went away. Only two men faced jury trial, but neither was convicted.
CLAUDE FULLER WAS a Klansman without a home until he found shelter with Red Glover’s Silver Dollar Group. His welcome came after June 1966, when the forty-three-year-old mill worker, with two accomplices, committed a crime that made as much sense as a man stomping a puppy to death. Prior to that, Fuller had been booted out of the White Knights after months of marauding with the renegade Sligo klavern. Fuller was never implicated, but he was almost certainly involved in the shooting of Richard Joe Butler. Claude’s brother, Ed Fuller, Blackie Drane’s associate, had been considered a suspect, and the
re’s little chance Claude would not have been part of the attack. Klansmen had gone after Butler because they believed he was spending too much time with the Fuller brothers’ niece. After the White Knights hierarchy came down hard on the Sligo group for acting without authority, Fuller went through proper channels with a request to kill a black preacher. He was furious when permission was denied.44
In 1963, Fuller had made the runoff for constable of the Kingston area but lost. Two days later, Fuller reported to the sheriff’s office that six black males had passed him on the road and fired buckshot into the front fender of his 1958 Ford. Fuller claimed he was so terrified that he stopped and fled into the woods, then watched as the black men returned and torched his car. Then-sheriff Billy Ferrell reported to the FBI that his investigation had determined that Fuller had burned the car himself with two likely purposes: first, to collect the insurance money (Fuller was behind on the payments), and second, to create fear within the white community that gangs of blacks were indiscriminantly attacking white people. On the Saturday after the car was burned, Douglas Byrd, then the grand dragon for the Mississippi Realm of the Original Knights, asked Ferrell why he had not released news of the arson to the local newspaper. Byrd and Fuller wanted publicity.45
One of Fuller’s surviving coworkers at International Paper Company, speaking to the Concordia Sentinel in 2014 on the condition of anonymity, described Fuller as a frail, withered man who, when he wore a cap, looked like a rat peeking from beneath a collard leaf. To get attention, Fuller felt he needed to establish his own Klan, come up with a grand scheme, and kill a black man. He wanted to do in a big way, to prove himself and make his mark. In late May 1966, he found his target: Ben Chester White, a sixty-seven-year-old farmhand who worked for an Adams County government supervisor. White was known as a gentle, kind, timid man who would never challenge the authority of a white man, the perfect target for Fuller. Along with an IP coworker named James Lloyd Jones and two brothers, one being James Howard Jackson, Fuller went to White’s house with the intention of killing him. During the drive, Fuller gave Jones the oath into his Klan, which he called the Cottonmouth Moccasin Gang. Retribution for violating the oath, Fuller warned, would be as fierce as a bite from a cottonmouth.46
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