Civil Rights Division Emmett Till Act (Cold Case Closing Memoranda)

On May 19, 1970, Donna Reason, a nine-year old Black girl, was killed after someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the home she shared with XXXX, stepmother, and XXXX. As explained more fully below, a federal prosecution of anyone responsible for Miss Reason’s death is not possible. The government has not uncovered evidence that the crime was motivated by Miss Reason’s race (or the race of her family). Even if such evidence could be developed, the statute of limitations has run on all potential federal hate crimes. Because the state has an open homicide investigation into this matter, referral to state authorities is unnecessary. For these reasons, the case is being closed without prosecution or formal referral to the state.

On November 20, 1970, James Cates, a young Black man who grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, attended an all-night dance on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (“UNC”) campus. The dance, organized by a UNC student organization to improve race relations, was instead the scene of a racially motivated fight in which Cates was murdered and multiple other Black men were injured.

The following is a Report issued pursuant to a Review and Evaluation undertaken pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.

On September 11, 1971, Margaret Ann Knott, a 19-year-old Black woman, was fatally injured during a sit-in demonstration in Butler, Alabama, when she was hit by a car driven by XXXX, a XX-year-old white man. The demonstration consisted of about 200 people who gathered at the streets surrounding the local courthouse on a Saturday morning to protest longstanding racial inequalities. Despite the tragic nature of this incident, this matter cannot be prosecuted or further pursued. The driver made two statements in which he claimed that as he was trying to escape protestors who were aggressively chasing and pounding on his car, he accidentally drove over the victim who was seated on the road.

Henry D. “Dickie” Marrow, Jr. was a 23-year-old Black man and Army veteran living in Oxford, North Carolina. On May 11, 1970, after Marrow allegedly said something that offended a white woman, three of the woman’s relatives shot Marrow from behind, severely beat him while he was on the ground, and then fatally shot him in the head. The men who participated in the assault that killed Marrow included: (1) the woman’s husband, XXXX; (2) XXXX Robert Gerald Teel (Robert) (deceased); and (3) Robert’s XXXX. At least two witnesses heard XXXX and Robert use racial slurs either during or shortly after their assault on Marrow.

Following Marrow’s death, the state charged two of the men, XXXX and Robert, with murder and aiding and abetting murder, respectively. State authorities also charged Robert with a felonious assault for firing his shotgun at XXXX, a bystander to Marrow’s death. XXXX and Robert were tried in state court in July 1970 on the murder and aiding and abetting counts. An all-white jury acquitted them. The acquittals followed a surprise declaration at trial by XXXX that, contrary to eyewitness testimony introduced at trial, he XXX, rather than XXXX, fired the fatal shot that killed Marrow. XXXX testified that he fired the fatal shot by accident after “someone,” whom XXXX never identified at trial, bumped his arm.

Dr. Elsie Jean Cowsert was a white physician attempting to aid in the desegregation of the local hospital, the Mobile Infirmary, where she worked. As part of her desegregation efforts, she covertly provided information to officials from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare concerning the Mobile Infirmary’s efforts to prevent patient desegregation in its facilities. On January 29, 1967, Dr. Cowsert was found shot to death in front of her home in Mobile, Alabama. She was shot in the chest at close range and broken glass from a side window was found in her pocket. Local newspaper articles and her death certificate indicate that local law enforcement ruled her death to have been self-inflicted and accidental.

The Department has examined the abduction and murder of Mack Charles Parker pursuant to its authority under the Emmett Till Acts.  As set forth more fully below, the statute of limitations has run on all federal civil rights charges.  The government has carefully examined whether the case could be prosecuted as a federal kidnapping case and has concluded that insurmountable legal and factual hurdles exist to such a prosecution.  Moreover, because key witnesses are deceased and because there is very little evidence linking the surviving subject to the crime, no prosecution on state charges would be viable.  The case is thus being closed without referral to state authorities.

On August 5, 1965, at about 10:30 a.m., the body of 34-year-old Alberta Jones was found floating in the Ohio River near Fontaine Ferry Park, in Louisville, Kentucky. Jones, a prominent Black attorney, whose private clients included Muhammad Ali, was the first female prosecutor in Louisville. Jones was also the Executive Director of the Independent Voters Association, Inc. (I.V.A.), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to enfranchising Black voters and providing them information on political candidates. Given Jones’s high profile as a Black woman prosecutor and her involvement in civil rights activities, there was, at the time of her death, speculation that she was killed because of her race, because of those activities, or both, and that speculation remains today. For this reason, her death was referred to the Cold Case Unit in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division, pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016 (the Till Act).

On January 26, 1969, Edwin Pratt, a Black man who served as the director of the Seattle Urban League, was shot and killed when he opened the door to his home to investigate a noise outside.  Witnesses reported seeing two men in Pratt’s driveway just before the fatal shot was fired, and they further reported that the men escaped in a getaway car.  In the immediate aftermath of the murder, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) worked with the King County Sheriff’s Office (“KCSO”) and Seattle Police Department (“SPD”) to investigate the matter.  The FBI reopened the case in 1994, and the Department of Justice (“the Department”) opened the case again in 2019.  Although these investigations resulted in a list of likely suspects, the identities of Pratt’s murderers and the motive behind the crime have never been confirmed with certainty.

     In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black youth visiting family in Mississippi, was murdered by white men after the wife of one of the men claimed that Till had propositioned her. Till, who was from Chicago, Illinois, visited relatives near Money, Mississippi, during the summer of 1955. On August 24 of that year, he entered Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market and had an interaction with Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the store’s owner. Accounts differ as to precisely what happened during that encounter. Black witnesses who had accompanied Till to the store reported—both near the time of the incident and more recently—that Till’s behavior was limited to whistling at Bryant as she left the store. Bryant, however, alleged that Till was physically aggressive towards her and that he propositioned her. What is clear from all accounts is that Bryant suffered no physical harm and that Till’s conduct was likely perceived by many in the white community to violate their unwritten code, prevalent in the Jim Crow South, that Black men were forbidden from initiating interactions with white women. Four days later, Till was forcibly abducted from his relatives’ home by at least two men. His brutally beaten body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Because there did not appear to be a basis for federal jurisdiction given the limited scope of the civil rights statutes in effect in 1955, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did not investigate Till’s murder at that time. Mississippi state authorities, however, arrested two men: Carolyn Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, and her brother-in-law, John William (J.W.) Milam. They were indicted for murder and tried by a local, all-white jury, which quickly acquitted them. Following their acquittal, the men admitted to a journalist that they murdered Till in part because of his earlier actions toward Carolyn Bryant. Both Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam are now deceased.

On January 16, 1965, Reverend Clyde Briggs, a veteran, church leader, and civil rights advocate, was admitted to the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Jackson, Mississippi for several underlying medical conditions. Briggs’ condition deteriorated over the course of his hospitalization and he was pronounced dead on January 18, 1965 following an emergency tracheostomy.

On November 6, 1978, the body of Anthony Adams, a 25-year-old African-American gay man, was discovered in his apartment in Salt Lake City, Utah.  After failing to hear from him for several days, two friends went to Adams’ apartment and discovered his body, naked and stabbed numerous times.  His apartment was in disarray and cash was missing from his wallet.