Colorado brother of Klan victim denied redress

Thomas Moore, who lives in Colorado Springs, fought for years to rectify his brother’s death. In 1964 Charles Moore and a friend, both 19-year-old black males, were found dead in the Mississippi River. Decades later, Thomas Moore pieced together a painstaking narrative that named James Ford Seale, a Ku Klux Klan member, as responsible for the disappearance and ultimate death of his brother.

In 2007, Seale was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy in the decades-old crime and received three life sentences. The case garnered plenty of media attention, though the local paper, the Mississippi Franklin Advocate declined to write about the murder investigation when it was reopened in 2005; the editor described the murders as “1960s racial incidents.”

On Tuesday the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Seale’s conviction, saying that the statute of limitations in the case had expired.

According to news reports, in spite of the ruling, Thomas Moore still felt that the truth had been served.

“James Ford Seale has spent more than a year in jail,” Moore told the Associated Press. “I know I have disrupted his life.”

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