Within a few months of the murder, Leslie was “requested” to leave the Sturdivant plantation because many of the black laborers working there were leaving the farm out of fear of the man. He shortly found a new job on a plantation in the nearby town of Cleveland.75 Fifteen years later, in February 1971, he was arrested, and four months after that, convicted of illegally possessing over 500 methamphetamine pills, popularly known as speed. He was sentenced to one year at the state prison in Parchman. His defense attorney was J. W. Kellum.76
Despite his other problems, the biggest burden he carried throughout his life was his involvement in the tragedy that occurred in a plantation shed in August 1955. On Thursday, August 29, 1974, local minister Macklyn Hubbell received a call from Frances Milam, Leslie’s wife. Hubbell, who had been pastor of the First Baptist Church in Cleveland, Mississippi, since 1962, knew the family, and Frances asked him to come to the Milam home at Leslie’s request. Hubbell left his office and drove to the address at 201 Oakland Drive. Once inside, he was ushered into a room where he saw Leslie lying on a couch, near death. Frances left the room, and Hubbell pulled up a chair. Leslie, so weak that he could barely whisper, was nevertheless anxious to talk and immediately told Hubbell that he wanted to get something off his chest. He proceeded to confess that he had been involved in the murder of Emmett Till, which had occurred nineteen years and one day earlier. Leslie provided no details of the crime, but Hubbell could see that he was remorseful. Leslie Milam died the following morning at 5:45 A.M. Rev. Hubbell officiated at the funeral a few days later. Retired FBI agent Lent Rice, who was working with Killinger, learned of Hubbell and got the entire story directly from the minister. Because Hubbell was still living at the time Killinger issued his report, his name is redacted from the document. Leslie’s wife, Frances, who later remarried a man named Thomas Bryant (no relation to Roy Bryant), owned a beauty shop in Cleveland from 1963 until her death in October 2014. Her obituary said nothing about her marriage to Leslie Milam.77
Killinger learned about the involvement of others who were also deceased. Milam’s half-sister and Bryant’s sister, Mary Louise Campbell, told investigators that her husband, Melvin Campbell, had been with Milam and Bryant on the night of the kidnapping and murder, just as Milam told Bonnie Blue. The name of local black laborer Otha “Oso” Johnson Jr. never surfaced before or after the trial, but Johnson’s son learned directly from his father that he claimed to have driven Milam and Bryant around on the night of the kidnapping. The younger Johnson fully believed the confession of his now-deceased father. Efforts to find Joe Willie Hubbard, who was mentioned in 1955 accounts as having been on the truck, yielded nothing. Killinger learned that Levi Collins died in Mississippi in 1992.78
Black field hand Henry Lee Loggins, the only person living besides Carolyn Donham whom the press named as a possible suspect, suffered a stroke in 2005 and lay recovering in a nursing home. It is unclear from Killinger’s report if he talked to Loggins directly or spoke only with Loggins’s family members. However, in August 2005 Los Angeles Times reporter Ellen Barry visited Loggins in Dayton, where Loggins maintained his innocence to the journalist. “I wasn’t there. I know people say so, but I wasn’t there. I ain’t that kind of man,” he insisted. Loggins, who first heard about the FBI investigation from his son Johnny B. Thomas, told Barry that as yet, he had not hired a lawyer. Fifty-one-year-old Thomas, mayor of Glendora, Mississippi, had earlier asked state and federal authorities to award his father immunity from any prosecution.79
Killinger talked with others who had stories to tell, some more compelling than others. The town of Glendora held many memories of residents who lived near Milam’s home and saw blood dripping from the back of his truck on Sunday morning, August 28, 1955. In a few instances, people remembered Levi “Too Tight” Collins, Oso Johnson, or Henry Lee Loggins on or near the truck that same morning. In one case, Milam was said to have shown a curious black man what was underneath the tarpaulin in the back of the green and white pickup. Uncovering Till’s body, Milam said, “This is what happens to smart niggers.” One man claimed that Collins asked him and a friend to clean the blood out of the truck and paid each of them thirty-five cents.80
There were others, such as Peggy Morgan, who claimed that her father, Gene Albritton, and uncle, Bob Moye, both had a hand in Till’s death. Morgan also told Killinger that, as a child, she used to accompany her father to the Bryant store when he passed through Money on his way to go fishing. She said that on many occasions, she saw him “kissing and hugging” Carolyn Bryant and sometimes made Peggy and her siblings wait in the car for hours before he left the store.81 These stories could not be substantiated. Neither could the reminiscences of one man who said that Sheriff H. C. Strider was with Milam and Bryant on the Saturday night before Till’s kidnapping and that they went to a gambling spot in Glendora asking for directions to Mose Wright’s home. Although Killinger included this testimony in his report, he appeared to pay it little heed. Some stories he did not include at all and concluded his report by explaining why. “While there are other rumors regarding the murder of Emmett Till which have been expressed from time to time, there is insufficient corroboration, lead information or other evidence to warrant further investigation into any of these rumors.”82
Shortly before the fiftieth anniversary of the murder, Keith Beauchamp completed work on his documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. After spending much of the last several years trying to raise funds to finish the project, he was finally forced to use money his parents had set aside for him to attend law school. The costs of obtaining archival film and photographs was expensive, and Beauchamp went from one stock house to the other, dealing with Mississippi archives, Fox Movietone, and CBS. Fox Movietone held a large quantity of footage on the case. He had tried to secure funding from several sources over the years, including prominent civil rights leaders, but none would help. His law school money, taken with the blessings of his parents, finally saved the day. On August 17, 2005, the finished version of Untold Story began a two-week run in Manhattan at the Film Forum. It would be distributed nationally in theaters by ThinkFilm after that. The timing of the release seemed perfect. The fifteen-month-old FBI investigation looked promising, and significant progress, unthinkable only a few years earlier, was undeniable as the anniversary occurred on August 28, 2005. That evening, a special screening of Untold Story at the Film Forum featured appearances by Simeon Wright and Roosevelt Crawford, who had both been with Till at the Bryant store in Money.83
Two days later, the New York Daily News announced Beauchamp’s continued optimism that as many as five people could be indicted for Emmett Till’s murder. Three of them were white men “who are still alive that we’re trying to build a case on now.” Beauchamp’s “gut instinct” was that indictments against individuals would occur within a few months. Hallie Gail Bridges, assistant district attorney in Greenville, tried to remain circumspect in response. “We won’t know about indictments or anything else until we get a report from the FBI.”84
That report would be on its way to Mississippi prosecutors in just a few months. On November 24, 2005, the Chicago Tribune announced that after a year and a half, the FBI had finished its inquiry into the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till.85 Over the course of his investigation, Killinger talked to dozens of people. He traveled not only throughout the state of Mississippi, but to Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington, DC. Items once considered lost and probably gone for good—the murder weapon and the trial transcript—were filed safely away as evidence. The whereabouts of the ring found on Emmett Till’s finger remained a mystery, and although the gin fan that had been tied around Till’s neck was also nowhere to be found, Killinger at least learned of its fate. The fan had been stored in the courthouse basement after the trial but was tossed out when the building underwent renovations in 1973 designed by architect John Eldridge Decell III. A local man who knew the story behind the fan retrieved it and took it home. However, after
only three days, he concluded that “there could be no good that could come from me having this.” He, too, got rid of it.86
Mike Turner, legal counsel for the FBI in Jackson, Mississippi, told the press that he hoped to turn the report over to District Attorney Joyce Chiles in December. It would then be up to Chiles to decide whether to file charges against any possible suspects. Chiles, who had a small staff operating out of three offices in one of the most crime-ridden regions of Mississippi, said it would likely take her and her staff several weeks to examine all of the material and was even gearing herself up to working weekends. “The documentation is that extensive.”87
It took several months longer for the FBI to finish its report and prepare the documents for transfer. During this time, Killinger worked with attorneys and tied up a variety of loose ends that needed attention. The report was then sent to Washington, DC, where it received the approval of the FBI and then went through a final round of approval at the Justice Department. All of that took about a month. On March 16, 2006, three boxes containing twenty-eight volumes totaling 8,000 pages were transferred to Chiles’s office in an unmarked vehicle by US Attorney Jim Greenlee and two FBI agents. The report included the original FBI file kept on Emmett Till between 1955 and 1966, several newspaper clippings, the trial transcript, and the text of Killinger’s many interviews, among other items. Killinger then gave Chiles and her staff a full presentation of the case. Although Killinger made no public statements about his findings, Chiles told members of the Till family that Killinger recommended she take a closer look at Carolyn Donham. “She’s going to look at everyone involved,” explained Wheeler Parker, who talked directly with Chiles, “but Carolyn will definitely be on the list.” Once the transfer was made, the Till murder became a state case, and the FBI ceased commenting.88
With the files now in her hands, Chiles enlisted others to scour the documents with her. She had been briefed by Killinger periodically during the investigation, but now she would learn all the details. She put together a team of three prosecutors who each examined the report on their own, and by early July, three and a half months after getting the files, they were still reading, each at their own pace. “After everyone reads all the material, we’ll make our decision,” explained Chiles. Unsolicited advice meant to sway her one way or the other came from strangers, family, friends, and even her doctor. Surprisingly, Chiles received no threatening or racially charged mail. Most of those weighing in, however, encouraged her to prosecute. She remained tight-lipped about the report, saying only that it “dispelled a lot of myths, things I’ve learned through word of mouth.”89
Three months later, as Chiles and her team continued to work their way through the material, Untold Story, following its theatrical run, premiered on Court TV.90 It had already won an Audience Award and a Special Jury Award from the Miami Film Festival in 2005 and that same year received the Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review, USA. In 2007, it would be nominated for Best Documentary at the Twenty-Eighth Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards.91
Joyce Chiles, who oversaw three counties as district attorney of Mississippi’s Fourth Judicial District, had numerous other cases to deal with as she continued to study the FBI’s Emmett Till findings, and was preparing to prosecute several of those, including a murder, a kidnapping, and a sexual assault. As she dealt with the rest of her workload, she managed to keep herself detached from the pressures of dealing with such a historic case as the Till murder. “I know I’m going to do the right thing,” she assured a reporter in November 2006. “It’s not going to have anything to do with how bad the crime was or that it represents such and such.” In this case, as in all others, her decision would come down to “the law and the evidence.”92
If Chiles managed to keep herself focused and unaffected by the historical significance of the Till case, anxious observers still felt the pressure for her. “If the evidence is there, she’ll go forward with it,” said Alvin Sykes. “If it’s not there, she won’t go forward just to satisfy 50 years of anxiety and to appease the political considerations of people wishing her to do so.” Keith Beauchamp predicted correctly that “anything she does is going to be seriously controversial.”93
In December, Chiles, Bridges, Hailman, and others met at the courthouse in Greenwood with Charlie Maris, assistant state attorney general. Maris’s expertise in Mississippi state law put him in an advisory position with Chiles and her team regarding how to proceed. One course was to pursue charges against Carolyn Donham for assisting in the kidnapping by identifying Emmett Till at the scene. However, because at that time the statute of limitations on kidnapping was only two years, that charge alone would be impossible to prosecute.94 Within a few months, Chiles and her team finished the report and believed they could make a case against Carolyn Donham on manslaughter. A careful reading of the Mississippi code showed there was precedent for this. In the 1955 case of Gibbs v. State of Mississippi, the court ruled that “one rendering aid to another is presumed to share in the latter’s intent and this presumption will persist until overcome by the evidence.” In Smith v. State (1945), the court held that “it was not necessary to allege and prove that the killing was wilfully done, but it was incumbent upon the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty of such gross negligence as to envince [sic] a wanton or reckless disregard for the safety of human life, or such an indifference to the consequences of his act as to render conduct tantamount to wilfulness.” Such “reckless disregard for the safety” of Emmett Till would have occurred if Carolyn Bryant indeed identified him or even ruled out other youth that night as the right one, if she knew that her husband and brother-in-law would harm him. Also, “if it is shown that the accused was present pursuant to a conspiracy to commit some unlawful act, it has generally been held that his participation in the homicide was sufficient to make him liable for manslaughter.” The unlawful act that led to Till’s death was the kidnapping.
In an even older case, Wade v. State (1939), the court ruled that “there could be no accomplice to manslaughter, but several could act together in committing the offense and it was not error for the court to instruct the jury that the defendant might be convicted of manslaughter, although he did not inflict the fatal wound.” These cases helped pave the way for the 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen, who incidentally was not present when the three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964.95
Although Chiles refrained from making any formal announcements, the Chicago Tribune stated on February 22, 2007, that the district attorney had already planned to present evidence in the Till case to a grand jury the following month. Wheeler Parker heard the news and felt hopeful. “We have been waiting for a long time to get some closure to this and we hope this will give us the information we have been waiting on for years.”96
Little did Parker or the author of the Tribune piece realize, but Chiles’s grand jury had already met in Greenwood at the Leflore County courthouse on that very day. Even the grand jury members were not aware that they would be hearing evidence in the Till case until they left for their lunch break. When they returned, Chiles and assistant prosecutor Hallie Gail Bridges presented the evidence for a manslaughter indictment against Carolyn Donham to nineteen impaneled citizens of the county. The racial makeup of the group was nearly even between black and white members, seven being men, twelve women. Dale Killinger presented a full PowerPoint presentation of his evidence, which likely would have emphasized that Mose Wright heard what sounded like a woman’s voice in the car identify Till when Till was kidnapped from Wright’s home. Killinger also would have pointed out that Carolyn aided her husband and J. W. Milam on two other occasions in the hours prior to the kidnapping by confirming that a boy in the store and later, Willie Hemphill, who was walking up Money Road, were not the right boys. Evidence presented in the Till case took up most of the afternoon.97
The next day, February 23, the jury reported on several c
ases. They had deliberated for a little more than an hour on the Till case before they came to a consensus. Their unanimous decision was that the evidence against Donham was unpersuasive, and they quietly returned a no bill, essentially closing the case forever. They were not asked to consider evidence against Henry Lee Loggins.98
Jackson Clarion-Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell learned the news first and called Alvin Sykes, whose response was measured. “As painful as it will certainly be to many people around the world, if Carolyn Bryant is truly innocent or there was not sufficient evidence to indict her or anyone else for crimes associated with Emmett Louis Till, then all justice-seeking people should be proud that the grand jury had the courage to do the right thing.” Sykes had not been too optimistic anyway, as Chiles had recently confided in him that “knowing what I know now, if I were a juror on the grand jury, and I was going to follow the law, I would not indict.”99
Sykes called Beauchamp and broke the news to his friend and associate in this four-year endeavor. As expected, the decision in Greenwood was devastating to the young activist who had spent a decade dedicated to the case. When contacted by the press, he said he was “extremely shocked” by the decision. “I strongly believe that we should have gotten an indictment in that case. I know a lot of the things that we came across, and I’m questioning now how the case went in the grand jury, what was presented.” He was not about to give up. “Our next move is to get the documents to Congress, particularly to Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Rangel.” Juan Williams, correspondent for NPR, a contributor to Fox News, and author of the civil rights history Eyes on the Prize, took exception to Beauchamp and affirmed that the grand jury, which was racially mixed, did the right thing. Considering also the fact that the prosecutor was black, “I don’t know what he [Beauchamp] wants. It’s not as if this has been a whitewash by any means.”100
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