KLAN OF DEVILS-Stanley Nelson

Ernest Ray mc kelvin. They returned mc kelvin to Washington Parish, where he spent eleven days in jail before authorities released him. Afterward, the FBI sent its top inspector to Bogalusa, Louisiana to participate in the murder inquiry, the only Civil rights era FBI investigation into the killing of a black law enforcement officer by the KKK. Despite that assistance, lack of evidence and witnesses unwilling to come forward forced Louisiana prosecutors eventually

to drop all charges against mce calvin. The FBI continued its investigation, but could not gather enough evidence to filed charges, leaving the murder of an O'Neill Moore unsolved. Clan of Devils the murder of a Black Luisi The Anna Deputy Sheriff is Stanley Nelson's investigation of this case, which the

FBI probe from nineteen sixty five to twenty sixteen. Nelson describes the clan's growth and the emergence of black activism in Bogalusa and Washington Parish against the backdrop of political and social change in the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties.

With the assistance of two retired FBI agents who worked the case, Nelson also explores the lives of the primary suspects, all of whom are now dead, and points to the clansmen most likely responsible for the senseless and horrific attack. The book that were featuring this evening is Clan of Devils, the Murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff, with my special guest, journalist and author Nelson. Welcome, Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview Stanley Nelson.

Dollar group. And over the case, over the period of working on these cases, writing stories of stories over years, I met a number of FBI agents and retired agents who had worked on some of the crimes that I was working on, and over the course of that time, there was one particular retired agent named Ted Gardner who kept mentioning to me the horrendous murder of a black law enforcement officer in Washington Parish, which is in southeastern

Louisiana if you're familiar with it, but the state Louisiana is shaped like a boot. In Washington Parish is in the tip top of the toe of the boot, and the only parish in the state that's bordered on two sides by Mississippi. And so he began to talk to me about this murder and how it went down, and he had worked on the case during the nineteen sixties. I also had met or came to know another retired agent name Milton Graham, who had also worked on that case.

And between those two men, they sort of left me a trail to falla uh, and that's what I did.

sawmill in the parish in the early nineteen hundreds. And that sawmill and that industry by over the nineteen thirties and forties morphed into a paper mill and the paper mail became one of the largest employers in the parish. And Washington Parish is also a big dairy parish and had a huge income. A lot of people worked in the dairy industry. So Washington Parish was is not far

from New Orleans. During World War Two, when so many men were away in war, Louisiana became the parishes became many became homes to a lot of gambling and prostitution activities, and that was particularly true Washington Parish. This this was the result of work by the Mob in New Orleans to carl Us Marcello Mob who paid off sheriffs in some cases and operated houses of prostitution and lots of gambling. So consequently he had lots of violence that's always associated

with those type of activities. In the late nineteen forties, a man named Dorman Crowe who was a young man. He was the son of a lawger employed by the very industry that the Goodyear Brothers brought to life there. He decided that he wanted to throw his hat into the ring and run for sheriff. He went around the parish. He promised to do away with the gambling and prostitution. Influenced to run the Mob back to New Orleans and

he won. He beat a two term in come his first two or two re election bids, he was elected by huge margins. By the mid nineteen fifties came the Brown Versus Board of Education, which in the US was a big case that basically called for the u integration of public schools. As a consequence of that, we saw a rise of white segregationists in an organization known as the White Citizens' Council and the citizens' councils were m determined to stop integration at all courts and and keep

things just as they were. And this occurred in the fifties in Washington Parish. There was a big white citizen council that was born in Bogalusa and spread across the parish, and they decided that the sheriff was too friendly to black people. And the fact was the sheriff, Dorman Crowe, had always received good black support and there were about eighteen hundred black voters in the parish at that time.

And what the white citizens' council decided to do is, in order to beat the sheriff, we're going to have to remove some black voters from the rolls. And a man named Ernest Ray Mcalvin from Bogalusa was a white citizen Council member and he helped lead the effort to purge black voters from the pole from the rolls. And this was particularly designed for the nineteen sixty election when

what became the Klan ran its own candidate. And so by the time that election came around in nineteen sixty, mcelvin and others had successfully removed about eighty five percent of the black voters from the rolls wow, and it looked very likely that they were going to beat the sheriff. But the sheriff was a fighter, and he went out and campaigned hard, and when the results came, he won by one hundred and thirty seven votes, which astounded the

segregation as they could not believe that that happened. About two days after that election, a federal judge, in response to a lawsuit that had been found by the Justice Department, ordered that all of those voters removed from the polls from the voting rows to be put back on them.

So all those votes were restored. But two days after the election, and so what happened next In Louisiana, particularly in early in nineteen sixty late nineteen sixty, a klan group was formed in the Sreport Bowser area, which is in the northwestern part of the state, and that clan became known as the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and their constitution, and one of their leaders had been a member of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from the nineteen teens. In nineteen twenties, which by

some accounts had four million members. According to some accounts, and you might have many folks have seen pictures of these huge clan marshes through Washington.

workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi in nineteen sixty four. And so Bogalusa in Washington Parish became in Louisiana the home of the largest percentage of clansmen anywhere in the state, and their whole focus soon became that we are going. And keep in mind that during this election in nineteen sixty three, as it was, the election was sixty four, but the

campaign began the sixty three. All of the talk in the US and was centered on Congress and Talco passage of the Civil Rights at what became the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. There was talking late that year of sixty three of freedom writers coming into Mississippi so the Klan in bogalus in Washington Parish determined that we're going to ruin our same man against the sheriff, and we're not going to be able to remove the

black voters. We tried that before and that didn't work, and it became one of the most bitter elections in the history of Washington Parish. It did not look well for the sheriff in the first round. He owned his main challenger almost beating but there was a third candidate and it threw it into a runoff. And they went to the polls and on election day a huge turnout, absolutely a massive turnout lines in Bogalusa, and when the votes were counted, the sheriff had won by one less

vote than he did in nineteen sixty sixty. He won by one hundred and thirty six votes. And the Klan was absolutely absolutely furious because actually what they had done is they had run candidates, clan candidates for every office in the parish. Their goal was to take over the parish, but the one position that they wanted more than any

other position was sheriff. Sheriff in Louisiana particular at that time was particularly particularly strong and the Klan felt that if we can take over as sheriffs, then we'll have control of law enforcement. We will be able to run the civil rights agitators out of town, will be able to extinguish any local efforts for civil rights. We will

maintain segregation and therefore maintain white supremacy. But that goal was dashed when Crowe defeated their candidate in January of nineteen sixty four, And so now the Klan had to look at another way to fight.

He could see that blacks were going to have a role in government and things were going to change. And he realized that two black officers, particularly in patrolling black communities in the parish, would serve a good purpose. The black community would be better satisfied by that. And it's the way it usually started when black officers were hired for the first time. Well, Clynn heard these stories that the sheriff would do this, but they really did not

believe that he would. But when his fifth term began in the summer of sixty four, he did just exactly what he promised the white community, and he hired two black deputies. He was given a list of five people

recommended by the black community. He interviewed those candidates, and he chose only more early thirties father of four dollars wife Mavella, who's still alive and enjoying a good you know, enjoying healthy and doing well in Washington Parish, and Creed Rogers, who was in his early forties married and had one son who was older. Those men began their job on June one, nineteen sixty four, and when they took that job,

the Klan was absolutely just furious and vowed revenge. And it wouldn't take long for a few things to happen in which really things would go from bad to worse. But the two deputies begin their jobs were basically liked by many people in the white community, and the sheriff was proud of the way they were working. And so

here's what happened, basically is about a month. The one thing that the Klan did not want was and the thing that they feared because to understand how this rocked their world, they realized that when two black deputies were hired, that that badge that they wore, that behind that badge carried the full authority of the laws, local laws and the laws of the United States. And they realized that now a black man, for the first time ever in their lives, now had the authority to arrest a white

person that did something wrong. And this was something that the clan had a hard difficult. In fact, not only could they not stand the thought of it, they vowed that this was not going to happen. So immediately after those deputies began their work, and all of the Klan meeting houses, which were called claverings across the parish, all the talk began, what are we going to do about these deputies? What are we going to do about these deputies?

And then about a month later, the fueral grew even greater when owed him more and Creed Rogers were traveling down the road one night on patrol when they were jolted when another car bumped them in the back and both cars stopped. They got out and it was a white man in the other car, and he was intoxicated, heavily intoxicated. He no way that he could drive that car. He was a danger to society. They radioed in that they had this white man and they were told to

bring this man to jail. They brought him to the county, to the parish jail in Franklinton. The man was arrested. He was this was his third DWI driving while intoxicated, although he had been pulled over multiple times and not given a ticket. And as a consequence of his record, he was sent to the state prison in Angola. And so now you have a case where a white man, what's the biggest clan, fear that authority of the law

of these black men. And now a white man who was a relative and friend to several clansmen, now he is in jail because of what a black man did. And that's when that's when the determination became even greater that they were going to get those deputies.

He does not arrest him, but the deputies go and tell the sheriff what's happened, and the sheriff is infuriated. He writes to the head of the Louisiana Department Widlife and Fisheries and demands that that agent be sent out of the parish to someplace else. And the significance of the agent, his name was Lbert Strahan, was that Lbert Strahan was a clan official in Washington Parish. So things continue.

We now have passed the Civil Rights after nineteen sixty four, and now the thing to do is how do we get implementation of that act? How is it now enforced by the federal government. So during early nineteen sixty five, the local civil rights groups, with help from the Congress will Racial Equality in some other civil rights groups, began to hold marches throughout the spring of winter and spring of sixty five. Things are very very tense in Bogalusa.

There's a lot of fighting clansmen on the street to attacking marchers just for no reason whatsoever. The violence is

continuing to grow. And among the things that the active civil rights workers demanded was is that the city began to enforce the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty four, in other words, hire black people for city jobs, enforce the law that black people can go into restaurants and set at the counter and order something to eat, that the police in Bogalusa quit harassing black people, and just multiple really very simple, simple things, but back then they

were huge things. The mayor and the city council continued to deny these things until May of sixty four, when about mid May, I excuse mail of sixty five, about mid point of that month, he agrees to the demands, and the mayor has been influenced by Governor John mckiffyn. Mckiffen was elected in January of sixty four, at the

same time Crowe was elected to his fifth term. Mckiffen had run as a segregationist, but he soon became a moderate on race, and he soon began to realize that Bogalusa was nothing but a powder keg and the only thing standing in the way of Bogolusa in Washington Parish following the war the law was the ku Klux Klan. He knew how the clan was. Mackiffin was from North Louisiana. He knew that he had to do something because he feared all out war in Boglu and he feared the

loss of lives. So Mackifthin does something that really nobody ever knew about it until you know. I began researching this book and found some documents from FBI files that was really quite stunning. Publicly Mackiffin had had after the well he would later say that he had a secret meeting in gog Lusa, but he would not reveal what happened. But what he had done was he decided that I've got to go talk to some clan leaders. I've got to get them off the streets, and I got to

demand it. So he goes to Bogalusa about the in late May of May thirty thirty one of sixty five, and he goes to the home of a clansman who just incidentally lives next door to his moral enemy, the sheriff, and he goes out there and there's clan leaders there, and Mafiffin says to them, you're going to have to get off the streets of Bogolusa. I'm going to demand that you do that. You're going to have to let

this play out. And he told him that he supported the Bogalusa mayor in accepting the demands of the black community, and he also the Klan had immediately once the mayor had accepted those demands, the Klan began a recall petition against the mayor, and the governor said, stop that recall petition and get off the streets of Bogalusa. The Klan had one demand of Mackiffen to do it, and their demand was this, you get that white man out of jail that was put there in the state pen because

of those two black deputies. And Mackiffen refused to do it. So he thought when he left, however, that most of them eventually agreed that they would do that, and he thought that he had gotten through to him. And then forty eight hours later, O'Neill, Moore and Creed Rogers begin their final ride together through Washington Parish.

week the other deputy would be the driver. And it just so happens that on Wednesday night, June two, nineteen sixty five, that it was only Oleill Moore's week to drive. So later that afternoon, three or four o'clock they begin their shift. O'Neill goes and picks up Creed Rogers. So it's sort of a routine night. They drove drive to Bogolusa. They go to the substation there, the Sheriff's office substation, check in there, They go to Franklinton, the county seat

where the courthouse is. They check in there, do a little work there, and then they decide go on and make their night patrol. So they patrol up through the north end of the parish and then turn east to a little town called Angie, and Angie is in the northeastern corner of the parish. Below Angie south five miles is a little town called warner Doough where the two deputies live, and six miles below that is Bogolusa, the largest town in the parish. So it is about it

is about ten o'clock or so at night. A little later, and O'Neill and Creed are going to go to O'Neill's house where Mavella is cooking them a catfish supper. They're going to take their break to eat something, and they're both hungry and looking forward to that. But as they turn and head south at Angie, they notice kind of suddenly there's this black pickup behind them. There's nothing menacing about the truck. It just sort of seems to come

out of nowhere. And as they're traveling, they look to their left to the east and they see a looks like a trash fire or a debris fire. They drive past the fire, but Creed says to O'Neill, why don't we turn around and look make sure that fire is not going to get out of control. So they slow down to a stop, and that truck slows down to

a stop behind them, but slowly goes around them. And as it goes around it both definitely sort of lean over and look, and all they can see is the outline of the driver, and they don't have they don't see anyone else. They can't really see what the driver's face looks like. They can just see that outline, don't think anything about it, but they do observe that the driver goes ahead a little ways and just sort of

goes at a snail's pace. They turn around and drive back to where the fire was a couple of hundred yards, look it over, see there's nothing, doesn't look like it's going to spread, that it's contained. So they get back in the car and the truck they can still see it up ahead, so they speed on up and as they're about a mile or so outside of and they

pass the truck. And when they pass the truck again, Creed Rogers, who's on the passenger side, looks over and again all he can see is this very dim outline of a driver, and it appears to be a white male, but he can't tell much more than that, he doesn't see anybody else. They passed the truck and as they get to barn a Dough, O'Neill puts on his left blinker to turn east into barn Dough on Main Street.

somebody's shooting. Speed up. O'Neill floors it and when he does that, there's this volley of gunfire that that truck lights up like a Christmas tree. I mean, it's just light, just the just fire on fire. O'Neill is shot and killed instantly. He takes a devastating shot to the head. He loses control of the car and it crashes into a oak tree on the right side of the road. Creed is shot in the shoulder Creed Rogers, and he

sees that the car is going to crash. He tries to brace himself, but the crash is so hard his head actually breaks out the window on that side of the patrol car. He essentially will lose his right eye as a result of that crash. He is sitting there, O'Neill has slumped over onto him and he can tell that he's dead. He is da O'Neill is days for a few minutes, and then he eventually picks up the radio and he calls to the dispatcher been shot up

in Varnado. He says, we need help bath Immediately, dispatcher contacts other officers, the FBI is notified, and just quickly that town fills up with policeman. O'Neill provides a description of that pickup and it becomes a really one of the most crucial things of the case, and he is able to he has seen that truck as it passes while they're shooting. So he's seen that truck, gotten a pretty good look at it three times, and he offers

this description. He says, it's a dark colored pickup, maybe black, maybe green, maybe blue. I can't tell it's an old mid model Chevrolet pick up. It's got a white grill on the top. It has sideboards on the bike, and sideboards or these boards that people will put on the back of a pickup so you can have a higher load if you've got to load something up, if you have animals to put back there to keep them from falling out, and it would these sideboards that were somewhat small,

sixty eight inches high on both sides. And then he gets one of the clue. He says that there is a rebel flag embalm license plate on the front of the grill to the right of center, and that right of center will become a very very key description. About an hour later, in Tylertown, Mississippi, two officers are sitting in the car together. They had gotten this all Points bulletin. They're sitting there and all of a sudden, this black

pickup truck comes storming through town. They estimate sixty five seventy miles an hour. It runs a stop sign, they pull it over. Man comes out of the truck identifies himself as Ernest Ray Mcelvin Ogalusa, the man that you might recall and prior to the nineteen sixty election had led the purge of black voters in Washington Paris. They take him to the title of town jail. He will not talk. He says only a few basic things. The one thing that the officers noted immediately is the one

thing missing, or the sideboards on the truck. They ask mcelevin about his sideboards, and he won't answer. He won't say anything about the sideboards. He says, I've been to a secret meeting, That's all he will say. The officers, of course, they're waiting for the FBI to come in the city. Highway Safety patrol is there of state troopers

Louisiana come. But while they are holding mcevin in the sale, they hear him throw up three times, and they hear him wash his He washes his hands in arms three times, so that if there was any gunpowder anyway, he's probably

as washed all of that away. They hold him. Sheriff Crow a day or two later, comes from Washington Parish where a murder warrant for his arrest, take him to Frankrentton and books him in the jail there, where micalvin is held all together in jail for eleven days before he's released.

sees it from a slightly different angle. She sees both vehicles as well, but it's very dark, there are very few street lights. She hears the you know, the gunfire. She hears the car bricking through the oak tree. She sees a tire mounted on the left side of the truck, right behind the driver's side, and indeed mclevn's truck did have that on there, but they cannot identify seeing any person.

The problem that would develop through the years would be that in the prosecution of the case, among many things, but one very simple thing would be that Creed Rogers could not specifically identify mcelvin as having been the driver. But the interesting thing is that when the FBI began its investigation, they went looking for every black truck, dark colored truck in Louisiana, Mississippi. They eventually found two hundred that matched the general description of the truck. There were

similarities to mcalvan's truck. Some did have sideboards on them, white grills, some had white grills. But there was one very distinctive thing, one key thing that Creed Rogers had said had described, and that was that the Confederate flag license plate was to the right of center, and that was only on one truck the FBI discovered, and that was on ray Mcalvin's truck. That was another key thing.

The problem with the case would be, among other things, that none of the eyewitnesses, the two eyewitnesses, could not state specifically for sure that that was ray Mcalvin's truck. They could not even make out sideboards because of the distance from which they were from where it happened. So that was one problem. Creed Rogers could not specifically identify ray Mcalvin as the driver, and so the district attorney

had a real problem. He did form a grand jury, but he didn't have anything to bring to a grand jury. And one thing another problem was is that Creed Rogers was seriously injured and it would be quite some time before he could testify before a grand jury. So those were some of the initial problems. And then of course, as the FBI goes out and begins to search for suspects and criminals and people involved in the case, it became very apparent to them that everybody was scared to death.

Black witnesses, black people were afraid to talk. White people

were afraid to talk. They found one man along the route of the escape route of the truck who said that very night, passing by his house about ten thirty or so, just minutes after this crime occurred, that he saw Bray Mcalvin's truck pass The FBI asked him, well, how are you sure that it's mclelevin's truck, and a man said, well, about a month or two earlier, mcelevin had had a tire issue with his car with his truck right by my house, and I walked down there

while he was working on it. I'd seen that truck multiple times and he said, look, I know that truck. That's the truck I saw that night. The FBI will say things like, well, we might need your testimony, and people would constantly say, oh, no, I'm not testifying against the Klan. Are you crazy? They'll kill all my family

and the FBI. But soon, in their teletites to headquarters in Washington, d C. Would tell Jaegar Hoover and all the people working on the case up there that look, the Klan has taken a strong stance against the government here and people are afraid to say anything, and that would be just a major major problem for the FBI.

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Visit ritual dot com, slash murder and turn healthy habits into a ritual that's ten percent off at ritual dot com slash murder Now, Stanley, we were talking about that mcklvin is arrested. Ray McKelvin is arrested. What we didn't mention is some of the evidence, some of the interesting things that were found in his truck. Can you tell us about that.

Ray McElman was a military war veteran of World War II. He was shot and wounded at Saipan during the war. Thought he was going to die, but a man came and rescued him and saved his life. So that was always an interest in him, but they couldn't take it any farther. The other thing they found one fingerprint on his pickup truck that wasn't his. But through the years, through fifty one years, they were never able to identify who that print belonged to, even though they tried really hard.

So the main takeaway for Mcalvin to pick up was they didn't They didn't find anything other than that one fingerprint, but they did find that clip for a tanker in one Guaran.

In fact, Jimmy Davis was governor at the time, so it's hard to know if that had any specific meeting or not.

FBI did. So many of the agents that were there on the ground, many of them arrived that next day. The FBI set up a headquarters at a local hotel.

They brought in Joe Sullivan, who was a very famous FBI inspector that helped run the investigation into the murder of the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia that's fifteen sixty four, and the Justice Department sent John dor who was head of the Civil Rights Division, and Dora also was involved in those big Mississippi cases in the prosecution of those Both of those men were sent to the streets they you know, as I mentioned earlier, Governor mckiffin

was concerned of violence taking hold and being seriously getting out of control in Vogelusa. And of course, once those deputies were attacked that happened, the blacks were outraged. Civil rights organizations from the cross the country came, clansmen turned out, segregations turned out, and just day after day in Bogolusa,

it was just a mess. Door in Sullivan one day, was on the streets and he saw local Bogolusa policemen just standing watching and laughing as white men would run from a sidewalk into the crowd of marchers and just knocked somebody down. In fact, he berated the officers for that. Door saw this too. And Door also saw that that, you know, blacks could not go into white restaurants and order all these things that a year earlier, the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty four was supposed to to

bring right. So he took advantage of a couple of local suits from black black activists that had been filed, and Door decided that and mckiffin, the governor, had a month ago earlier, embraced this idea. Dor said, well, Bogalusa is just going to have to be our test on whether the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four has

any teeth or not. And so he went and fouled the federal government filed a lawsuit against the original knights of the Ku Klux Klan and sought had injunctions against them or not interfering with free marches, with not trying to intimidate people from going into flats, from going into white restaurants, and all the multiple things that the clan

was doing to intimidate the public. So this became the major test case of whether the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four was going to have any meaning and would also be a signal to other communities across the South, particularly in what you're going to be required to do. So he found that suit in July sixty five, and by September it came to court in New Orleans the Fifth Circuit, and the US government won, and the three

judge panel began to institute these rules. They were holding civil city officials would be held in contempt if these if this Act was not in force, that integration didn't begin in public facilities. And so it was a victory. But the other key victory for the FBI that maybe a few people realized was the FBI was able to lean on a couple of the head clan leaders and forced them to provide the court with a list of

clan members. And it was a list of about one hundred and fifty names, and that list devastated a lot of land members. And it also did one other thing. For months and months and months since its inception, the clan leaders had been telling its members, do not talk to the FBI, Do not tell them anything that we do here. You keep your mouth shut. Do not identify another member of the klan. If you do, you'll be drummed out of the klan and you may be hurt.

And so now our average clansman is sitting there, well, you know what in the world, our clan leaders just divulge our name. And it caused great dissension within the Klan. And consequently, as a result of that, the FBI was able to develop some really good informants that helped them figure out who the main suspects were and got a good feeling of kind of what happened and how this murder went down.

to pay dues, You're required to pay an initiation fee. Well, among the three founders of the Original Knights in Louisiana was a dry try cleaner from Sreeport named John Swinson, made of the robes and made the profit from the robe. So the money was always a big issue in the klan. The other thing was you always had this violent core that wanted to do violent things. When a good number

of klansmen. Men became klansmen because when they sell things, like James Meredith be enrolled at Old Miss. The thought was, well, look, our congressmen, our senators, our leaders can't stop it. I guess we're going to have to do it ourselves. So the Klan was attracted to a lot of white men that this is the way we can stop it. But most of those white men were not violent men and didn't necessarily believe in violence, even though they were in

an organization that promoted it. In what you had happened, by sixty three, you had sort of a purge of the Klan, and that the violent members began to take over, so that by sixty four mostly violent men were involved and a few just a regular clansmen with no violent

intent personally. When this trial happened in sixty September sixty five in the fifth Circuit in New Orleans, when this trial revealed everybody's name, you saw in sort of another mass excellence from the clan, so that all you were left with were these real hardcore, criminal minded men.

to get documents like these. I've been going through this for years, and you wait for for years to get documents in So I said, why don't we file suit against the Justice Department for because we had tried multiple means before they had rejected our FOIL request on getting you know, unredacted files. We were able to get O'Neill Moore's widow. They'velomore signed a privacy waiver, which is one thing that the government officer said, well, it's a lot

of private things that hurts the families. Well, when we got that waiver, Miss O'Neill, Miss Mabella wanted those files released. And so when we went to court in federal court in San Francisco, and we argued that this was an importance to the public to know what these files say, that it's important to justice, and it's been a long long time the case has been closed, it was closed in twenty sixteen. There would be no reason not to

release it in a timely, fast manner. And the judge ruled in our favor, and shortly thereafter we've again sent of receiving monthly document drops from the Justice Department. And as I began to review those files month after month after month, we clearly could sort of pick out the main suspects. And among those was a guy named Saxon Farmer, who was a very violent man in Voglusa. He ran he on some gas stations. He was a real proponent of violence. And they found one informant who was also

a suspect himself, but it wasn't really informant. He was a clansman and a suspect who said that about a short time before the deputies were shot, and o'neilmore was killed that Saxon Farmer had said that we're going to get them two inwards, you know, we're going to get them. In a short time after that, they did get them, So Saxon Farmer was certainly a suspect. Another key suspect out of Bogolusa was a man named rest who was the city attorney from Bogolusa and a member of the

Klan during that time. And Restor would tip off klansmen over termits that we would being sought from civil rights workers or groups to have marches and stuff. He would be alerting them as to who it was and when all of these seen would be happening. Restor later in his life became an alcoholic, and the FBI actually had tapes of him confessing that he was in the truck and involved in the shooting. Its rest is taken before Grandeury as others are in the nineteen nineties, but nothing

comes out of it. Why they couldn't prosecute Restor remains a mystery to me. It was a Justice Department decision, not a FBI decision. You had instances like this man confessed. There was a man named Elmo Breeman who was a who told people in North Carolina. He was a commercial painter, that he was involved in the murder of a black man black law enforcement office in Washington Parish. The FBI determined that he obviously had knowledge, but uh, the Justice

Department didn't feel that they could prosecute him. And then you had the most interesting thing to me of all were the widows or the ex wifs of clansmen. And un tell one story in the book, and it's just absolutely fascinating, was there was a couple named John and Irene Birch, and mister bur Birch was in the Klan at that time in Varnado where the deputies lived, and he was a suspect at the time, but he denied

any knowledge of the crime. And when Irene was interviewed in nineteen sixty five, she said, no, he was home with me all night long. So about twenty years later, in nineteen sixty five, this really strange thing happens. Uh A well, I said, eighty five, let's get down to say, uh uh year or so after that, the FBI gets a phone call or a message from Ivrene Birch, and Irene Birch tells the FBI to come see her and

this is what has happened. Irene, according to her family and according to what she told the FBI, had been the victim of terrible domestic abuse by her husband throughout their marriage. But in nineteen eighty five, her husband, James, had taken a barstool at their home one night and knocked her to the floor, knocked her out, and for Iverne, this was the last straw and she determined she wasn't going to accept this anymore. She filed complaint against him.

Her husband was arrested and the day of court came in nineteen eighty five at the Franklinton Courthouse. They're up on the second floor, is heard by the judge. The judge and rules, and the judge of rules against Irene, rules in favor of her husband. The case is dismissed. Irene is just distraught, devastated, can't believe this. She leaves

the court room and goes and leaves the courthouse. Her husband is escorted downstairs to the bottom floor and as he and his attorney are going into the Clerk of Court's office apparent to file some paperwork, Irene walks into the foyer of the court house, reaches into her purse, pulls out a revolver and shoots her husband dead, shoots him four or five times. Well, I say dead. He

lives for a few hours, but then he dies. Irene is convicted and sentenced to state prison at the women's facility at Saint Gabriel, and it is there that she contacts and ascid FBI agents come see her. She also makes contact with Kreed Rogers and tells him that she has something to tell. The FBI comes and Irene says, I lied to y'all in nineteen sixty five. She said,

my husband, I was afraid of him. That he had actually left that night in his truck that had and came back the next morning, walks in and tells me that those two black deputies didn't say it that nicely, but those two black deputies wouldn't be bothering anybody anymore. Apparently at that time, thinking that both of them had been killed. She said that like mc elvin, her husband had sideboards on the back of his truck, that he burned the sideboards that morning, and that he burned his

grand robe. And then he told her if you ever open this mouth your mouth about this, I'll kill you and Irene says she was afraid of her husband, and she was afraid of the clan, and as she told the FBI, she said, basically, I'm telling you this to clear my conscience. My husband's there, I killed him. Y'all won't be able to do anything to him. But I just wanted to know you to know that I lied

to you. And that's what he told me. One of Birch's daughters told me that before this happened, a year or so, that she had asked her daddy one day. He said, Daddy, did you kill did you help kill those that deputy? And first of all, she asked him did he know Mcalvin? Well, he did know Mcalvin, and she said did you kill those deputies? And he said no,

I was in the other truck. And that statement had great significance to me because it confirmed with the FBI had had long known, is that this was a This was a military type operation that involved two pickup trucks in a car. And my take on it was that whichever pickup truck got in position first would be one that shot at the two deputies, and it just happened

to be mcelvan's. We know a car was involved because a salesman from Florida who was traveling threw wanted to about that time, got stopped on the outskirts of town and held there for a minute or two by this man in his car. And he could tell the man had a whip an tunnel radio in the back of the car. Wasn't a police car. And he says, why that man stopped him to keep him. I guess passing on by town through town at that moment that salesman

heard those shots go off. He could hear the shots in which the deputies were being killed, which confirms the fact that there were three vehicles involved that night, including mister Burchess vehicle and Robert Rester, the city attorney, was in one of those two trucks apparently as well that night,

so the stories told by the wife. There's another similar example told by an ex wife of another clansman who was a key suspect, and she said basically she had lied to the FBI as well, telling them that her husband had been with her all night, when in fact he had not, and when he arrived he said something very similar about those two black deputies won't be bothering anybody anymore, and she literally left him the next day, and that man her husband also left town with another man,

and he was the other man said that this suspect was looking over his shoulder the whole time as they went to Oklahoma, and this man couldn't get out of town fast enough.

He just wanted to be violent all the time. Some of the suspects in Varnadoe Uh just never would tell the FBI the truth. Uh Uh. There were two different, two different, two or three different men in Varnade of Bobby Lane Archie roy Sel who were brothers in law.

was Ray Mcalvin's truck. I mean, I think that would have been strong, or if they had just recognized anybody else. And apparently, you know, as I mentioned those deputies when the truck passed them two or three times that night, I mean, when they saw the truck two or three times, Apparently the other shooters were hiding either laying down in the bike, which I would suspect that they were doing because that was a really small pickup truck that mcelvin had.

Obviously mcealvin would have been driving his own truck. I don't think it was an old pickup, kind of hard to handle. And obviously he could not drive that truck and fire a shotgun and a high powered rifle at the same time. So they know at least three people were in the truck that did the shooting. Could have been more, but at least three. But there was just never that one witness who could positively say, yes, I saw so and so fired this shot. Wilfrid More circumstantially.

There was a witnesses that said when Wilfrid was trying to get out of town doing everything he could, but day or two after this happened, he was he was ready to run that This man said, he came to my house. He was unloading possessions that he owned to try to raise money to get out of town. And the man said, I looked through the bathroom window and I saw Wilfrid take an M one tanker garn Ie

powered rifle and leaned against the tree. And he says the man inside the house said, I went back and did some other things, came back, looked out the window again, and that rifle was gone. Apparently he had sold it.

The FBI looked for those weapons, never find them. They looked for those sideboards that they suspect were possibly burned at some time that night, could have taken them and threw them into that fire that was burning on the highway there towards Angie, north of Vantage, I don't know where. They could never figure out what happened to the sideboards and to the creator of the FBI. Everything they looked for,

they looked for. They even in two thousand and seven after Wilford's Moore's wife told them what her husband had had left the house that night. She thought she mentioned that he had a cash of this hole covered by a concrete block on the back in the house that the weapons were stored in. And so in two thousand and seven, the FBI go to that house. Of course they're all they're gone, they're not there anymore. The new family's there, and they dig up that concrete block and

they find no weapons. So what I say is is that the men involved in this project were hardcore men that they had a lot of hatred in their heart, but they had one key thing that criminals have, and that's feel a good I would say good criminal or successful criminals have, and that is the ability to keep their mouths shut. And mc elvin through all of his life he may have privately had a conversation with family, he never would be interviewed by reporters. He never said

publicly anything about that. The only word he would put out that he didn't do it. And I always wondered what meaning that I didn't do it? Did that just mean that I didn't fire the shots that did it? Maybe I was driving the truck, so maybe you know, don't know, it's all speculation, but these were people, the people involved in this. Other than you say, well what about rest of the city attorney his alcohol is and

got him in trouble. It also became a problem for the FBI, who could say, this man, even when we gave him a lot of detective test that he failed, he's so drunk that we gave it to him. We can't really say this works. And how we going to get him on the you know, a defense attorney will tear us up. But I say that, in my opinion, I think the Justice Department should have rolled the dice on a couple of these men and just tried it anyway,

will take a chance to lose it. And you know, because they had some very compelling you know, confessions tape, confessions, ex wifs, widow. It's just too much good stuff there that I think could have resulted in a conviction.

of of of O'Neill moore. However, it was this constant bickering between he and Sax Farmer over control, and I think he wanted to get away from Farm and Farmer wanted to go even more militant. You know, Farmer was the kind of guy that accused him of something. He doesn't care, He'll do something else just to prove he doesn't fear you. You know that nobody's going to stop him. And that's what by sixty five, that's what you really had in Bobolus in Warshton Parish with nothing but these

hard hardcore men. I mean, sixty six and on, and the numbers just continued to dwindle, but Farmer was involved in the Klan through the nineteen seventies. He was constantly involved. Iving that Glad No, I was just going to say that, you know, he's just the example of the hardcore, hate filled, just willing to die preserve white supremacy and segregation. He just, by George is not going to live a life in which a black has any control or saying what he does.

And he doesn't want to mix with black people, and he doesn't feel that are qualified to serve an office in the United States, and the basically he feels that all blacks should be you know, shipped back to Africa. That's his attitude and he died by that.

how do we combat it now? And so there was this newer clan that was simply trying to figure out ways to keep the races separated, and you know, and they would use issues like bussing, which were divisive issues, to to keep their keep a white following intact. And again, you know, what does David do lived by He lives by being provocative and reaching out to that hardcore element or those people that support it silently, you know, for

money that they supported financially. And then politicians will like people some would like people like to because he takes that issue and helps get them to support so if they constantly a new issue, you know as time passes on. But yeah, white people, you know, people have to understand white people buy in large, were not violent and they didn't condone the violence, but their silence sort of was not a good thing because you know, they didn't get involved.

But white people were just as afraid of these clan criminals as black people were. And a lot of people don't know this, but the clan also targeted a lot of white men, mostly poor white men, many alcoholics, many of them had trouble sustaining their families, and you know, and so the clan was going out, these vigilantes, going out on these night time raids of homes and stuff

and hurting people. And in an era when there's no cell phones and in an era when there's no GPS is on your car, you could literally get by with things that you can't get by with today. And that's another reason when Washington Parish you have lonely dirt roads, graveled roads, forests, and you could literally you're literally the clan was literally invisible until they showed up at your door to Bernard Cronell's or to hurt you. So that's

a real fear. And a lot of people at that time didn't have phones in their home, many people didn't have cars, So very isolated time, a different time which a clan could work really effectively.

they're led by a man who does the recruiting. His name is Red Glover. And when he recruits someone to his underground clan within a clan, he gives them a silver dollar minute in the year of their births, and that becomes their token. They don't wear robes, they don't wear they don't have rallies, they don't crosses. They simply go out commit violence and their unity is through that silver dollar and it's about that book covers eight murders that I link to the silver Dollar group.