The 1966 murder of a black man in Mississippi may have been aimed to stir up civil-rights protests that would lure the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the area for an assassination attempt, a news report reveals.
The FBI and the U.S. attorney in Mississippi plan to start a new investigation into the murder of Ben Chester White, a 65-year-old farmhand who was shot more than a dozen times and left dead in a creek near Natchez, Miss., ABC-TV’s “20/20” reports in a program to be aired tonight.
Three men were held as suspects in the murder but no one was ever convicted.
The trial of James Lloyd Jones ended in a hung jury, although he confessed to the crime, the show reports.
Jones told cops that two members of the Ku Klux Klan, Ernest Avants and Claude Fuller, helped kill White, “20/20” reports.
Fuller never went on trial because a judge threw out the charges against him.
Avants, the only one of the three alive today, was acquitted after a trial on a state murder charge in 1967.
In his confession, Jones told investigators that White was killed in the hopes that King would be drawn to the area – where an attempt could be made on his life, “20/20” reports.
“Mr. Fuller told me he had orders from higher-ups” to carry out the murder, Jones said.
“The deal was that they thought maybe they might get old Martin Luther King.”
The plan to lure King to Natchez did not work, however. King was killed in 1968 when James Earl Ray shot him in Memphis.
“20/20” reports that because White was killed on federal property in the Homochito National Forest, prosecutors could bring new federal charges in the case.
“20/20” reports that after his trial in the White killing, Avants was questioned in a separate case and shocked investigators by allegedly admitting he murdered White.
Avants, now in his late 60s, lives in Bogue Chitto, Miss., where he told ABC that he is innocent and never confessed to killing White.