FBI Chief in civil rights era; Born 1914; Died October 5 2008.
ROY K Moore, who has died aged 94, was an FBI agent who oversaw investigations into some of the most notorious civil rights-era killings, including those depicted in the movie Mississippi Burning.
Moore, a former Marine, had established a solid reputation in the FBI when bureau director J Edgar Hoover sent him to Mississippi in 1964 after the disappearance of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. Two months later, their bodies were found. Mississippi Burning, released in 1988 and starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, was based on the case.
Bill Minor, a veteran Mississippi journalist who covered the civil rights struggles, said Moore established the first "fully-fledged FBI bureau" in Mississippi and set his sights on the Ku Klux Klan.
"Those who underestimated the bulldog determination of Roy Moore and the corps of agents he assembled made a mistake," Minor wrote in 1971. Nineteen men were indicted in 1967 on federal charges of violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Seven were tried and convicted and served six years or less in prison.
The federal trial ended in a hung jury for Edgar Ray Killen, a part-time preacher and sawmill operator. However, the case was reopened decades later and Killen was convicted of manslaughter in state court in 2005 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
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