A team searches a Mississippi court basement for evidence of the execution of black teenager Emmett Till, finds an unconfirmed charge of a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and the victim's relatives want authorities to finally arrest him after nearly 70 years. .
Elmus Stockstill, a Lefor County clerk, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
He said the documents were kept inside the boxes by contract, but that there was nothing else to indicate where the August 29, 1955 note was.
“They cut it between the 1950s and 1960s and got lucky,” said Stockstill, who certified the note as original.
The research group included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two of his relatives: cousin Deborah Watts, the foundation's president; and daughter Terry Watts. Relatives want authorities to use the arrest warrant to arrest Dunham, who at the time of the murder was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was kidnapped from a relative's home, murdered and dumped in a home. River. .
"Feed her and charge her," Terry Watts told The Associated Press in an interview.
Keith Beauchamp, whose documentary Emmett Louis Till's Untold Story preceded a new Justice Department investigation that ended without charges in 2007, was also part of the research. He said there was enough new evidence to prosecute Dunham.
Dunham began the case in August 1955 by accusing 14-year-old Till of making inappropriate advances at a family store in Mooney, Mississippi. Till's cousin who was there testified that Till whistled to a woman, an act that went against the racist social mores in Mississippi at the time.
Evidence suggests that a woman, possibly Dunham, was identified until the men later killed him. Dunham's arrest warrant was announced at the time, but the mayor of Liveflower County told reporters he did not want to "harass" the woman because she had two young children to look after.
Now 80 and recently living in North Carolina, Dunham has not commented publicly on calls to sue her. But Terry Watts said the Till family believed the arrest warrant accusing Dunham of kidnapping was new evidence.
"This is what the state of Mississippi needs to move forward," she said.
Attorney General Dewan Richardson, whose office will handle the case, declined to comment on the memo but cited the Justice Department's December report on the Till case, which said no legal action could be taken.
The Associated Press called on Wednesday, and Liveflower County Mayor Ricky Banks said, "This is the first time I've heard of an order."
"Nothing about an arrest warrant was mentioned" when the former attorney general investigated the case five or six years ago, said Banks, who was seven when Till was killed.
"I'll see if I can get a copy of the memo and get the attorney general's opinion," Banks said. Banks said that if the warrant can still be issued, he will have to speak to law enforcement officials in the state where Dunham resides.
said Ronald J. Rechlik, professor of law at the University of Mississippi.
But with any new evidence, the "absolute" initial arrest warrant could be an important step in determining the likely cause of a new trial, he said.
“If you appear before a judge, you can say: Once the judge decided that there was a possible cause, and today there is a lot of information,” Reichlik said.
Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when she entered the store where Dunham, then 21, worked, on August 24, 1955. Dunham testified in court that Till grabbed her and made a lewd comment.
Two nights later, Dunham's husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother Jay Milam were armed at the home of Till's great-uncle, Moss Wright, in rural Lefour County, searching for young men. Teal's feral body, loaded with a fan, was recovered from a river a few days later in another county. His mother's decision to open the casket so mourners in Chicago could see what happened helped fuel the civil rights movement at the time.
Bryant and Milam were acquitted of the murder charge, but later admitted to the murder in a magazine interview. Although the names of the two men were mentioned in the same memo accusing Dunham of kidnapping, authorities did not pursue the case after they were exonerated.
Wright testified at the murder trial that the kidnappers pulled a person out of a truck with a voice "clearer" than the man's. Other evidence in FBI files indicates that on the same night, Dunham told her husband that at least two black men were the wrong person.
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