{"id":9083,"date":"2025-11-01T08:53:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T15:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=9083"},"modified":"2025-11-17T21:30:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:30:27","slug":"doj-report-on-missburn-case-leaves-out-a-crucial-truth-the-identity-of-the-fbi-mafia-killer-who-broke-the-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=9083","title":{"rendered":"HuffPost: DOJ report on MISSBURN case leaves out key detail: I.D. of the Mafia killer who broke the case for Hoover&#8217;s FBI"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"HuffPost%3A%20DOJ%20report%20on%20MISSBURN%20case%20leaves%20out%20key%20detail%3A%20I.D.%20of%20the%20Mafia%20killer%20who%20broke%20the%20case%20for%20Hoover%27s%20FBI\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.25.51-PM1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-9089\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-21 at 7.25.51 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.25.51-PM1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"203\" \/><\/a>By Peter Lance <\/strong>June 27th, 2016<strong>.<\/strong>\u00a0<a title=\"HuffPost\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/peter-lance\/doj-report-on-missburn-ca_b_10617390.html\"><strong>HuffingtonPost<\/strong><\/a> The NYT <strong><a title=\"NYT\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/06\/21\/us\/mississippi-ends-inquiry-into-1964-killing-of-3-civil-rights-workers.html\">reported\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>June 20th<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>that a U.S. Justice Dept. inquiry into the notorious 1964 murders of civil rights workers, Goodman, Schwerner &amp; Chaney, has ended with a <a title=\"DOJ report MissBurn\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ago.state.ms.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/DOJ-Report-to-Mississippi-Attorney-General-Jim-Hood.pdf\"><strong>48 page report<\/strong> <\/a>sent to Mississippi\u00a0Attorney General Jim Hood. Based on that report&#8217;s findings Hood has announced that the 52 year-old case is now closed.<\/p>\n<p>The three young voter registration volunteers were kidnapped and tortured by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County during what civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, called &#8220;Freedom Summer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After they&#8217;d gone missing and their fire charred station wagon was later found, without their bodies, panic set in within the Justice Department of President Lyndon B. Johnson.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.13.11-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-9090 alignright\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-21 at 7.13.11 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.13.11-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"319\" height=\"178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.13.11-PM.png 399w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.13.11-PM-300x166.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 319px) 100vw, 319px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The incident inspired the film &#8220;Mississippi Burning,&#8221; which wrongly concluded that the case was solved after an African American FBI agent was sent to Mississippi and interrogated a KKK sympathizer.<\/p>\n<p>Although the DOJ report concludes that &#8220;The FBI conducted approximately 1000 interviews during the summer and fall of 1964,&#8221; the truth is that the location of the bodies, buried beneath an earthen damn on the farm of a Klan associate, was not discovered until <em>after<\/em> FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent Colombo crime family capo <a title=\"Salon.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/06\/30\/its_not_just_whitey_bulger_meet_another_mafia_killer_aided_for_decades_by_the_fbi\/\"><strong>Greg &#8220;The Grim Reaper&#8221; Scarpa Sr.<\/strong><\/a> down to Mississippi.<\/p>\n<p>As recounted in detail for the first time in my 2004 HarperCollins books <a title=\"Cover Up Missburn\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=32\"><strong>&#8220;Cover Up&#8221;<\/strong><\/a> and in more depth in <a title=\"Deal\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deal-Devil-Secret-Thirty-Year-Relationship-ebook\/dp\/B009NG0SIG\/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466562265&amp;sr=1-7&amp;keywords=%22Deal+With+The+Devil%22\"><strong>&#8220;Deal With The Devil,&#8221;<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0ten years later, the Mafia hit man &#8212; who had for several years been a &#8220;Top Echelon Informant&#8221; on Hoover&#8217;s payroll &#8212; kidnapped and tortured a local KKK-friendly politician into giving up the burial site.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.32.46-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9094\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-21 at 7.32.46 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.32.46-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"143\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a>Only then did the Bureau break the case.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s not a single word of Scarpa&#8217;s role in that 48 page report which merely notes that &#8220;in late July 1964, an informant provided accurate information about the location of the bodies.&#8221; The report otherwise attributes the discovery of the victims to good police work.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Scarpa&#8217;s Sr.&#8217;s mission in what the Bureau dubbed the MISSBURN case, was actually the first of two civil rights related interrogations he made at the behest of the FBI Director. The second took place in January, 1996 following the KKK firebombing and murder of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer.<\/p>\n<p>An Assistant FBI Director actually approved the mob killer&#8217;s assignment in a <a title=\"FBI Dahmer Airtel\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/FBI_1_21_66_Airtel_special_Dahmer_case.pdf\"><strong>January 21, 1996 Airtel<\/strong> <\/a>sent from Headquarters in D.C. to the Bureau&#8217;s New York Office (NYO). The heavily redacted communiqu\u00e9, in which Scarpa Sr.&#8217;s name was blacked out, approved expense funds for him and his common law wife to travel via Mobile, Alabama to Hattiesburg, Mississippi where they would link with Special Agents.<\/p>\n<p>Here now, is a full account of the way both investigations went down from <a title=\"Deal amazon link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deal-Devil-Secret-Thirty-Year-Relationship-ebook\/dp\/B009NG0SIG\/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466562265&amp;sr=1-7&amp;keywords=%22Deal+With+The+Devil%22\"><strong>&#8220;Deal With The Devil.&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>THE SPECIAL GOES SOUTH\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the hot summer of 1964 J. Edgar Hoover finally found a way to make some affirmative use of the Brooklyn hit man who had been on his payroll for three years. \u201cWhatever else he may have passed along in the way of intelligence,\u201d says Fredric Dannen of the New Yorker, who wrote a definitive profile of Scarpa in 1996, \u201cwe know from the work he did in Mississippi that he became a clandestine asset for Hoover.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The biggest crisis facing the U.S. Justice Department at that moment was the disappearance of three young civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney. Working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), they had traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 21 to look into the Klan\u2019s role in burning the Mount Zion United Methodist Church and disappeared that same night. <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.37.47-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-9093\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-21 at 7.37.47 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.37.47-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"239\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When their empty, fire-charred Ford station wagon was recovered a short time later, the FBI was called in to work the case. Evidence later presented at trial would prove that the local KKK kleagle, or recruiter, Edgar Ray Killen, had conspired with a deputy sheriff to stop the young men for speeding as they left town.<\/p>\n<p>After a chase, they were forced off the road, driven thirty-four miles to a remote location, and shot to death in cold blood. Their bodies were thrown back in the station wagon and driven to a nearby farm, where they were buried under fifteen feet of red clay in an earthen dam. The Ford was then set ablaze and dumped in a swamp.<\/p>\n<p>As detailed in my second book, <a title=\"Cover Up\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cover-Up-Peter-Lance-ebook\/dp\/B000UMVN1I\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466563194&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Cover+Up+%2B+peter+lance\"><strong>Cover Up<\/strong><\/a>, the disappearance immediately became a national news story and ignited a firestorm at the Justice Department. Dozens of special agents were rushed to Neshoba County to comb the fields, in what Hoover dubbed the MISSBURN case.<\/p>\n<p>The 1988 film &#8220;Mississippi Burning&#8221; dramatized how the agents located the station wagon. But weeks passed without any significant leads as to the fate of the three young men, and the investigation stopped dead.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.41.03-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-9092 alignleft\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-21 at 7.41.03 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.41.03-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"241\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.41.03-PM.png 331w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.41.03-PM-201x300.png 201w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBack then, a lot of local people feared the FBI as much as the Klan and nobody was talking,\u201d says Judge W. O. Chet Dillard, who was a state\u2019s attorney at the time. \u201cOld J. Edgar figured that if he was gonna break that [case]\u2014 and he was hurtin\u2019 to break it\u2014 he was gonna have to go to some extreme measures, and he did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sometime in early August, the Bureau enlisted Gregory Scarpa, the FBI\u2019s Top Echelon informant\u2014 who had earlier been contracted to murder the boss of his own crime family\u2014 to go to Mississippi to accomplish what the agents could not. \u201cHoover was getting a lot of pressure about the bodies not being found,\u201d Scarpa\u2019s common-law wife, Linda Schiro, testified in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey approached Greg to go down to find the bodies.\u201d \u00a0Schiro, who was seventeen when she and Greg were flown to Mississippi, testified that they went to a hotel and found \u201ceight or nine FBI agents\u201d waiting. Scarpa winked at the agents, Schiro testified; then one of them knocked on the door of their room and gave him a gun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreg changed his clothes,\u201d she recalled, \u201cand then he . . . left some money on the dresser. He told me that if he didn\u2019t come back to . . . go back home.\u201d An account of the story by Tom Robbins and Jerry Capeci, which ran in the New York Daily News in 1994, alleged that \u201cScarpa, according to sources, kidnapped [a] klansman\u201d who had knowledge of the burial site.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.12.45-PM1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-9095\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-21 at 7.12.45 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.12.45-PM1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"286\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.12.45-PM1.png 357w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-21-at-7.12.45-PM1-300x234.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 286px) 100vw, 286px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cArmed with an FBI-supplied pistol,\u201d they wrote, Scarpa \u201cput the gun in his mouth and threatened to \u2018blow his f\u2014\u2014 ing brains out\u2019 if he didn\u2019t spill the beans.\u201d But Judge Dillard, who interviewed a number of sources close to the incident, has a different account\u2014 one that suggests that Scarpa became even more violent during the interrogation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe man who knew where Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were buried was the mayor of a local town,\u201d says Dillard. \u201cAfter Scarpa grabbed him, they took him to an undisclosed location, and while the agents waited outside, Scarpa started working on the guy.\u201d Dillard says that Scarpa first \u201cput a pistol to [the mayor\u2019s] head, demanding to know where those boys were. But [he] told him a phony story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was only after Scarpa checked with FBI agents to confirm the lie that he \u201cput the barrel of the gun in the man\u2019s mouth and cocked it.\u201d Then, says Dillard, fearing reprisals from the Klan, the mayor lied a second time and the agents outside confirmed it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>INTERROGATION BY RAZOR BLADE\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was at that point,\u201d says Dillard, \u201cthat Scarpa took more drastic steps.\u201d Taking out a straight razor, he proceeded to unzip the man\u2019s fly. \u201cHe was threatenin\u2019 to emasculate him,\u201d says the judge. And that\u2019s when the terrified Klansman \u201cblurted out the location of the dam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ten years later, a lawyer who represented Scarpa disclosed that Scarpa, the so-called Mad Hatter, had admitted to the interrogation by razor blade. On August 4, 1964, the three bodies were recovered six miles southwest of Philadelphia. Goodman and Schwerner had each been shot once in the head. Chaney, the black man in the group, was shot three times and beaten savagely.<\/p>\n<p>Schiro testified that Scarpa later returned to the hotel and told her \u201cthey found the bodies.\u201d She said that an FBI agent came by to retrieve the gun and handed Greg an envelope with cash \u201can inch thick\u201d in a rubber band. After that, Schiro and Scarpa vacationed at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SCARPA&#8217;S NEXT MISSION<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Eighteen months later, Hoover used Scarpa in a second mission to Mississippi to extract a confession from another KKK member.<\/p>\n<p>In early 1966, Vernon F. Dahmer, an African American farmer and shopkeeper who had allowed his store to be used for voter registration, was targeted by the Klan. On January 10, in the dead of night, two carloads of hooded Klansmen, brandishing shotguns and carrying twelve gallons of gasoline, showed up at Dahmer\u2019s house and set it on fire.<\/p>\n<p>In the blaze that followed, the fifty-eight-year-old Dahmer held the attackers at bay while his family escaped. But he later died in his wife\u2019s arms.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.10.22-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-9111\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 10.10.22 AM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.10.22-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"296\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.10.22-AM.png 456w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.10.22-AM-300x252.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 296px) 100vw, 296px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As an indication of how seriously Washington reacted to the murder, President Johnson sent a telegram of condolence to the Dahmer family and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach issued a statement vowing to devote \u201cthe full resources of the Justice Department to catching the perpetrators.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce again, there were no leads,\u201d says Judge Dillard. Eleven days after the firebombing, the FBI\u2019s Criminal Investigative Division contacted the New York Office and dispatched Scarpa to Jackson, Mississippi, for what was referred to in an airtel as \u201ca special.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Again he abducted a Klan member and used violent means to extract a confession. But this time, according to Judge Dillard, he was directly \u201caided and abetted\u201d in the kidnapping by an FBI agent.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/FBI_1_21_66_Airtel_special_Dahmer_case.pdf\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-9115 aligncenter\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 10.12.44 AM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.12.44-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"404\" height=\"573\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.12.44-AM.png 449w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.12.44-AM-211x300.png 211w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 404px) 100vw, 404px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Bureau memo to the assistant director requesting Scarpa\u2019s help also asked for \u201cenough money to cover [informant\u2019s] expenses for hotel room and transportation for the SA, plus two individuals,\u201d indicating that Scarpa and Schiro were accompanied by an agent from New York.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI\u2019s preliminary investigation led to a Klan captain named Lawrence Byrd, who owned an appliance store called Byrd\u2019s Radio and TV Service in nearby Laurel, Mississippi.<\/p>\n<p>As Judge Dillard recounts in his book Clear Burning: Civil Rights, Civil Wrongs, Scarpa and another man, \u201cwearing wigs,\u201d arrived at the appliance store just before closing on January 26, 1966.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cScarpa and this agent bought a TV set from Lawrence,\u201d says Dillard. \u201cThey said they were going to pull around back and asked if he could bring it out to their car. When he came out they grabbed him, threw a blanket over him, and shoved him in the vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At that point, says Dillard, they drove to Camp Shelby, a military base in nearby Hattiesburg, where the interrogation took place. There, according to Dillard, who later interviewed Byrd in the Jones County Hospital, Scarpa proceeded to \u201cbeat him within an inch of his life. . . .<\/p>\n<p>They threatened to string him up and leave him out there naked in the winter, where the animals could get at him,\u201d says the judge. \u201cLawrence was a tough guy\u2014 a big, raw-boned country boy\u2014 but he was beat up so bad he was never the same after that,\u201d Dillard told writer Fredric Dannen.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, an FBI 302 memo dated February 2, 1966, suggests that Byrd was so terrified that he refused to reveal the details to the FBI agents who later questioned him, stating only that he had been the victim of \u201can armed robbery by unknown persons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The memo insisted that Byrd was \u201cstill in a state of semi-shock.\u201d On March 2, 1966, Byrd signed a twenty-two-page confession to his participation in the Dahmer firebombing, implicating himself and seven other Klansmen. Linda Schiro later testified that Greg \u201cgot the guy from the Ku Klux Klan . . . to admit that he was [the] one who burnt that house down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.50.55-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-9117\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 10.50.55 AM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.50.55-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"257\" height=\"383\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.50.55-AM.png 356w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-10.50.55-AM-201x300.png 201w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 257px) 100vw, 257px\" \/><\/a>MEN FROM TWO SECRET SOCIETIES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 1998, Samuel K. Bowers, the imperial wizard of a Mississippi KKK faction, was found guilty in the Dahmer firebombing murder. 26 The FBI later attributed nine murders and three hundred beatings, arsons, and bombings to Bowers\u2019s klavern, or local unit, of the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s White Knights.<\/p>\n<p>He had previously served six years for the Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney killings, which were executed by the same Klan cell. Edgar Ray Killen, who was the actual ringleader in the MISSBURN murders, escaped conviction in 1967 after an all-white jury deadlocked. But in 2005, when new evidence was developed, he was found guilty of manslaughter.<\/p>\n<p>At the age of eighty, Killen was sentenced to sixty years in prison. Then, in February 2009, Killen filed suit against the FBI, arguing that his civil rights had been violated\u2014 because of the Bureau\u2019s use of Gregory Scarpa Sr., a Mafia killer, in solving the Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney kidnap-murders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe information that Scarpa obtained by use of torture violates Killen\u2019s civil rights . . . [his] right to due process [and] the right to confront witnesses,\u201d his lawyer said.<\/p>\n<p>One former DEA special agent, Mike Levine, was astonished by Hoover\u2019s decision to enlist a known Mafia strongman to further the cause of justice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere the FBI uses a member of a violent secret society\u2014 La Cosa Nostra\u2014 to travel down to Mississippi on multiple missions to torture confessions out of two guys who were also members of a violent secret society\u2014 the Klan. Since when does the federal government have to stoop to levels like that to make cases? This was during the same era when the CIA was trying to get mob guys to kill Castro.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Levine notes, such behavior on the Feds\u2019 part was roundly denounced during congressional hearings in the 1970s, 31 and the popular assumption was that it stopped. \u201cBut the fact that the Bureau continued to use a multiple murderer like Scarpa right up into the early 1990s,\u201d says Levine, \u201cjust proves that it didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Anthony Villano, Scarpa\u2019s control agent from 1967 to 1973, also disapproved. In his 1977 memoir, <em>Brick Agent<\/em>, Villano wrote, \u201cWhen I heard the story [about Mississippi] and confirmed it was [Scarpa] I was ashamed that the people I worked for had to go outside the Bureau to find someone to perform their dirty work. An agent could have done what [Scarpa] did, but using him, of course, reduced the potential for scandal about the behavior of agents on the job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE FBI&#8217;S VERSION OF THE CASE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On it&#8217;s <a title=\"FBI on Dahmer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fbi.gov\/news\/stories\/2006\/january\/kkk_dahmer010906\"><strong>official website<\/strong><\/a> the Bureau describes the Dahmer investigation and subsequent arrests of Bowers and other Klansman this way:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Let the investigation begin.\u00a0At 3:15 that morning, an FBI agent in Meridian, Mississippi, got a phone call about the attack and quickly opened an investigation in concert with local authorities. Nearly 20 FBI agents began canvassing the area. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>They interviewed local Klansmen and Klan informants and gathered 120 pieces of evidence\u2014including tire tracks and shell casings\u2014that were analyzed by the FBI Lab in Washington. They also learned that the day before the attack, a Sunday radio program had announced that Dahmer would help blacks register to vote by making his country store one of the few spots in the area where they could pay their $2 poll tax.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Our agents soon identified a number of suspects and compiled a 1,100 page report outlining the case. On March 27, a complaint was filed against fourteen men. Thirteen were arrested by the next day. The 14th\u2014Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who had ordered the attack\u2014turned himself in several days later.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As with the FBI&#8217;s 48 page report on the MISSBURN investigation there is no reference to the Mafia killer whom J. Edgar Hoover flew down to Mississippi twice to get &#8220;justice&#8221; for The Bureau.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>At least three published descriptions of Scarpa\u2019s work for the FBI in Mississippi commingle the 1964 MISSBURN and 1966 Dahmer interrogations into one mission.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In Mafia Son, a 2009 biography of Scarpa\u2019s son Gregory Jr., author Sandra Harmon writes that in 1964, after receiving the gun from the FBI agent in the Mississippi hotel, \u201cGreg Sr. drove a rented car to a small appliance store owned by a Klansman named Byrd.\u201d In Harmon\u2019s account, Scarpa drove \u201csouth for several hours\u201d tailed by \u201ca second car filled with federal agents\u201d; rather than Camp Shelby, she gives the location of Byrd\u2019s interrogation as \u201ca lonely country cabin tucked deep in the Mississippi woods.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Supplying what purports to be actual dialogue from the incident, Harmon then mixes details from Scarpa\u2019s interrogation of the KKK mayor from the MISSBURN case and appliance store owner Byrd from the Dahmer case. She even furnishes details, purportedly from Byrd\u2019s mouth, about the abduction of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney\u2014an incident that took place eighteen months earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Jerry Capeci, a respected reporter on organized crime whose \u201cGang Land\u201d column appeared for many years in the New York Daily News and the New York Sun, is credited with being the first reporter to break the Scarpa connection to the MISSBURN story in that June 21, 1994, Daily News article he wrote with Tom Robbins. But in a subsequent column published in the Sun on January 12, 2006, Capeci also combines details of Scarpa\u2019s involvement in the Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney investigation with the mobster\u2019s subsequent role in the Vernon Dahmer murder.<\/p>\n<p>In that Sun column, Capeci writes that Scarpa was flown to Miami in the 1964 MISSBURN case before he went to Mississippi, then cites details that could only have occurred in 1966 in connection with the Dahmer firebombing investigation, which involved TV and appliance dealer Lawrence Byrd: \u201cScarpa stopped at his store,\u201d writes Capeci, \u201csaid he was new in town, and put down a deposit on a television set. He promised to pick it up by closing time. When he returned, he got the merchant to help him carry the TV to his car, slapped him over the head with a pipe, tied him up, and threw him in the trunk of the car. He drove to a prearranged location, a shanty deep among tall loblolly pines where FBI agents were hidden outside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like Sandra Harmon in Mafia Son, Capeci includes verbatim dialogue that purports to be from Scarpa\u2019s interrogation of Byrd: \u201cWhat happened to the three kids?\u201d he has Scarpa saying, adding the line he included in his 1994 story with Robbins: \u201cTell me the f\u2014\u2014ing truth or I\u2019ll blow your f\u2014\u2014ing brains out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, in a January 17, 2006, piece for the Village Voice, where he worked after leaving the Daily News, Robbins writes in reference to the MISSBURN incident that Scarpa \u201cwalked into a Philadelphia appliance shop owned by a Klan-tied merchant whom the FBI believed knew the fate of the missing civil rights workers. Scarpa convinced the man he had just come to town and wanted a new TV set. But when he returned to pick it up that evening, he slugged the merchant, tossed him in the trunk of a car, and drove him to a remote spot where bureau agents were standing guard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What makes Robbins\u2019s combination of the 1964 and 1966 Scarpa missions interesting is the fact that in his Village Voice piece he actually cites the January 21, 1966, FBI memo on Scarpa\u2019s recruitment in the Dahmer case. \u201cAn agent is seeking permission to use Scarpa \u2018on a special\u2019 again in Mississippi,\u201d writes Robbins\u2014proof that he knew of two missions, not just the one he and Capeci reported on in 1994\u2014the MISSBURN initiative that they confused with the Dahmer case.<\/p>\n<p><strong>These mistakes by Robbins and Capeci are worth noting because it was an interview they did with Linda Schiro in 1997 that led to the dramatic dismissal of murder charges against Scarpa\u2019s fourth major FBI contacting agent, Lin DeVecchio, in 2007. We\u2019ll examine the details of that case later.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But whatever conflicts may exist in published accounts of Scarpa\u2019s story, one thing is clear: He was a ruthless gangster with little regard for human life and we can now say with certainty that J. Edgar Hoover himself understood that. Nonetheless, the Director continued to encourage the Bureau\u2019s use of \u201c34\u201d as an informant.<\/p>\n<p>Testifying in 1986 before the President\u2019s Commission on Organized Crime, Marty Light, one of Scarpa\u2019s former lawyers, reflected: \u201cGreg was the type of guy who would arrange to have dinner with you. He would laugh, make jokes, ask about your family and then when dessert came, he would just whack you right on the spot.\u201d Years later, Scarpa crew member Joseph Ambrosino was asked at trial why they called his boss the Grim Reaper. \u201cHe was crazy,\u201d Ambrosino, replied. &#8220;He killed a lot. He was nuts.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"HuffPost%3A%20DOJ%20report%20on%20MISSBURN%20case%20leaves%20out%20key%20detail%3A%20I.D.%20of%20the%20Mafia%20killer%20who%20broke%20the%20case%20for%20Hoover%27s%20FBI\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance June 27th, 2016.\u00a0HuffingtonPost The NYT reported\u00a0\u00a0June 20th\u00a0that a U.S. Justice Dept. inquiry into the notorious 1964 murders of civil rights workers, Goodman, Schwerner &amp; Chaney, has ended with a 48 page report sent to Mississippi\u00a0Attorney General Jim Hood. Based on that report&#8217;s findings Hood has announced that the 52 year-old case is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[1079,1082,109,1085,1077,382,444,1083,1080,1088,1087,1084,406,1081,407,1086,1078,250],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9083"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16767,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9083\/revisions\/16767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}