Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klansman who was sentenced to a 60-year prison term in 2005 for arranging the murders of three young civil rights workers outside Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964 during the Freedom Summer drive to register Southern black voters, died on Thursday night in prison in Parchman, Miss. The Mississippi corrections department said he was pronounced dead at the hospital at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at 9 p.m. No cause was given, but the department said he had been treated for congestive heart failure and hypertension. However, no foul play is suspected," the Mississippi Department of Corrections said in a statement. Mr. Killen was convicted of state manslaughter charges 41 years to the day after James Earl Chaney, 21, a black man from Meridian, Miss., and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, disappeared in a death trap set by a local deputy sheriff and a gang of his fellow Ku Klux Klansmen. The three Freedom Summer workers had been investigating the burning of a black church near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The sheriff's deputy who arrested them informed Klansmen of their detainment, and Killen then orchestrated a KKK mob to attack the men. Mississippi's then-governor claimed their disappearance was a hoax, and segregationist Sen. Jim Eastland told President Lyndon Johnson it was a "publicity stunt" before their bodies were dug up. The slayings shocked the nation, helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and were dramatized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.” The movie title came from the name of the FBI investigation. Killen, a part-time preacher and lumber mill operator, was 80 when a Neshoba County jury of nine white people and three black people convicted him of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, despite his assertions that he was innocent. Killen was the only person ever to face state murder charges, and even then, it was the lesser charge of manslaughter that put him in state prison. "It wasn't even murder it was manslaughter," David Goodman, Andrew's younger brother, observed on Friday. In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press inside the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Killen wouldn't say much about the 1964 killings. He said he remained a segregationist who did not believe in racial equality, but contended he harbored no ill will toward black people. Killen said he never had talked about the events that landed him behind bars, and never would. According to FBI files and court transcripts from a 1967 federal conspiracy trial, Killen did most of the planning in the ambush killings of the civil rights workers. According to testimony in the 2005 murder trial, Killen served as a kleagle, or organizer, of the Klan in Neshoba County and helped set up a klavern, or local Klan group, in a nearby county. Nineteen men, including Killen, were indicted on federal charges in the 1967 case. Seven were convicted of violating the victims' civil rights. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Killen’s federal case ended with a hung jury after one juror said she could not convict a preacher. During his state trial in 2005, witnesses testified that on June 21, 1964, Killen went to Meridian to round up carloads of Klansmen to ambush Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, telling some of the Klan members to bring plastic or rubber gloves. Witnesses said Killen then went to a Philadelphia funeral home as an alibi while the fatal attack occurred. The three bodies were found 44 days later, buried in a red-clay dam in rural Neshoba County. In February 2010, Killen sued the FBI, claiming the government used a mafia hit man to pistol-whip and intimidate witnesses for information in the case. The federal lawsuit sought millions of dollars in damages and a declaration that his rights were violated when the FBI allegedly used a gangster known as "The Grim Reaper" during the investigation. The lawsuit was later dismissed. In the 2014 AP interview, Killen repeated his contention that he was not a criminal, but a political prisoner. Of one thing he was certain: “I could have beat that thing if I’d had the mental ability.”

When she learned of Killen’s death, Chaney’s sister, the Rev.
Former Ku Klux Klan organizer and convicted murderer Edgar Ray Killen dies in prison at the age of 92.