In 2009 John Safran, a controversial Australian journalist, spent an uneasy few days interviewing one of Mississippi's most notorious white supremacists. A year later, he hears that the man has been murdered by a young black man. But this is far from a straightforward race killing. Safran flies back to Mississippi in a bid to discover what really happened, immersing himself in a world of clashing white separatists, black lawyers, police investigators, oddball neighbours and the killer himself. In the end, he discovers just how profoundly complex the truth about someone's life - and death - can be. A brilliantly innovative true-crime story. Safran paints an engrossing and revealing portrait of race, money, sex and power in the modern American South. 'John Safran's captivating inquiry into a murder in darkest Mississippi is by turns informative, frightening and hilarious' - John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Few episodes in the modern civil rights movement were more galvanizing than the 1964 brutal murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. As we approach the 40th anniversary of the murders in June 2004, "Murder in Mississippi" provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if its ideals are to be fully realized.

The stunning true story of a murder that rocked the Mississippi Delta and forever shaped one author’s life and perception of home. “Mix together a bloody murder in a privileged white family, a false accusation against a Black man, a suspicious town, a sensational trial with colorful lawyers, and a punishment that didn’t fit the crime, and you have the best of southern gothic fiction. But the very best part is that the story is true.” —John Grisham In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home: stabbed at least 150 times and left facedown in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered. When Dickins herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted, signed, and circulated, and after only six years, the governor of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickins an indefinite suspension of her sentence and she was set free. In Deer Creek Drive, Beverly Lowry—who was ten at the time of the murder and lived mere miles from the Thompsons’ home—tells a story of white privilege that still has ramifications today, and reflects on the brutal crime, its aftermath, and the ways it clarified her own upbringing in Mississippi.

The compelling real-life story of the criminal investigation, indictment, and trial of Edgar Ray Killen, the preacher and former Ku Klux Klansman finally convicted in June 2005 for the deaths of three civil rights workers--forty-one years after their brutal murders. A stunning final chapter to the case immortalized in the movie Mississippi Burning.

What remained of the badly decomposed body of twelve-year-old Tina Marie Andrews was discovered underneath a discarded sofa in the woods outside of McComb, Mississippi, on August 23, 1969. Ten days earlier, Andrews and a friend had accepted a ride home after leaving the Tiger’s Den, a local teenage hangout, but they were driven instead to the remote area where Andrews was eventually murdered. Although eyewitness testimony pointed to two local police officers, no one was ever convicted of this brutal crime, and to this day the case remains officially unsolved. Contemporary local newspaper coverage notwithstanding, the story of Andrews’s murder has not been told. Indeed, many people in the McComb community still, more than fifty years later, hesitate to speak of the tragedy. Trent Brown’s Murder in McComb is the first comprehensive examination of this case, the lengthy investigation into it, and the two extended trials that followed. Brown also explores the public shaming of the state’s main witness, a fifteen-year-old unwed mother, and the subsequent desecration of Andrews’s grave. Set against the uneasy backdrop of the civil rights movement, Brown’s study deftly reconstructs various accounts of the murder, explains why the juries reached the verdicts they did, and explores the broader forces that shaped the community in which Andrews lived and died. Unlike so many other accounts of violence in the Jim Crow South, racial animus was not the driving force behind Andrews’s murder; in fact, most of the individuals central to the case, from the sheriff to the judges to the victim, were white. Yet Andrews, as well as her friend Billie Jo Lambert, the state’s key witness, were “girls of ill repute,” as one defense attorney put it. To many people in McComb, Tina and Billie Jo were “trashy” children whose circumstances reflected their families’ low socioeconomic standing. In the end, Brown suggests that Tina Andrews had the great misfortune to be murdered in a town where the locals were overly eager to support law, order, and stability—instead of true justice—amid the tense and uncertain times during and after the civil rights movement.

An examination of a noted civil rights case involving the murder of an NAACP official and his killer's three trials draws comparisons between the case and the racial climate in the Deep South

“For almost two decades, investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell doggedly pursued the Klansmen responsible for some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement. This book is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.” —John Grisham, author of The Guardians On June 21, 1964, more than twenty Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. The killings, in what would become known as the “Mississippi Burning” case, were among the most brazen acts of violence during the civil rights movement. And even though the killers’ identities, including the sheriff’s deputy, were an open secret, no one was charged with murder in the months and years that followed. It took forty-one years before the mastermind was brought to trial and finally convicted for the three innocent lives he took. If there is one man who helped pave the way for justice, it is investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell. In Race Against Time, Mitchell takes readers on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact. His work played a central role in bringing killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham and the Mississippi Burning case. Mitchell reveals how he unearthed secret documents, found long-lost suspects and witnesses, building up evidence strong enough to take on the Klan. He takes us into every harrowing scene along the way, as when Mitchell goes into the lion’s den, meeting one-on-one with the very murderers he is seeking to catch. His efforts have put four leading Klansmen behind bars, years after they thought they had gotten away with murder. Race Against Time is an astonishing, courageous story capturing a historic race for justice, as the past is uncovered, clue by clue, and long-ignored evils are brought into the light. This is a landmark book and essential reading for all Americans.

In Laurel, Mississippi, in 1935, one daughter of a wealthy and troubled family stood accused of murdering her mother. On her testimony, authorities suspected an equally prominent and well-to-do businessman, her reputed lover, of assisting. Ouida Keeton apparently shot her mother, chopped her up, and disposed of most of her body parts down the toilet and in the fireplace, burning all but the pelvic region, the thighs, and the legs. Attempting to dispose of these remains on a narrow, one-lane, isolated road, Ouida left a trail of evidence that ended in her arrest. People had seen her driving to the road. Within hours, a hunter and his dogs found the cloth in which she had wrapped her mother’s legs. Touted as the most sensational crime in Mississippi history at the time, the Legs Murder of 1935 is almost entirely forgotten today. The controversial outcome, decided by an unsophisticated jury, has been left muddled by ambiguity. With The Legs Murder Scandal, Hunter Cole presents an intricately detailed description of the separate trials of Ouida Keeton and W. M. Carter. Having researched trial transcripts, courthouse records, medical files, and vast newspaper coverage, the author reveals new facts previously distorted by hearsay, hushed reports, and misinformation. Cole pursues many unanswered questions such as what, really, did Ouida Keeton do with the rest of her mother? The Legs Murder Scandal attempts to provide the reader with clarity in this story, which is outlandish, harrowing, and intriguing, all at once.

A gripping true story of murder and the fight for civil rights and social justice in 1960s Mississppi. On June 21, 1964, three young men were killed by the Ku Klux Klan for trying to help black Americans vote as part of the 1964 Fredom Summer registration effort in Mississippi. The disappearance and brutal murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner caused a national uproar and was one of the most significant events of the civil rights movement.The Freedom Summer Murders tells the tragic story of these brave men, the crime that resulted in their untimely deaths, and the relentless forty-one-year pursuit of a conviction. It is the story of idealistic and courageous young people who wanted to change their county for the better. It is the story of black and white. And ultimately, it is the story of our nation's endless struggle to close the gap between what is and what should be.