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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
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A judge Friday revoked the bond that allowed Edgar Ray Killen to stay out of prison while he appealed his manslaughter conviction for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon ordered Killen returned to prison after a court hearing where District Attorney Mark Duncan said the 80-year-old Killen may have misrepresented his physical condition.

Defense lawyers had argued Killen was wheelchair-bound after breaking both legs in a logging accident. But a deputy sheriff reported he saw Killen last week walking around at a service station.

Read the JFP’s NeshobaBlog here, which covered the Edgar Ray Killen trial and aftermath.

Previous Comments

um, surprize, surprize.


Hallelujah! Now if authorities can just find him a horny, black, 350-pound cellmate to share his remaining years with… Cheers, TH


Tom, that’s beneath even you. I’m just happy to see him back in jail. Now if we can keep him there this time…


Argh! Where’d that word come from? Heat hasn’t been kind. “Tom, that’s beneath you.” Better.


Amen. And no offense taken on “beneath even you,” but I gotta say these old coots really get under my skin. I have no idea why, but I remember being something like 12 years old and seeing Byron de la Beckwith on TV and freaking my mother out by telling her that whenever I saw him on the tube, I kind of wished somebody would strangle him. (She was freaked out for a reason; I almost never used violent metaphors. Still don’t. It’s not in my nature.) The really nasty serial killers don’t have that effect on me, the drug market killers who make up the majority of convicted murderers don’t have that effect on me, but Beckwith and Killen both get my Irish up, and it’s not because they’re racists. I think it’s because they have palpable hate, palpable self-righteousness, a palpable sense that they are supreme, that they can do whatever they like because they’re entitled to do it. And it’s in their eyes, in their souls, in a way it isn’t in the eyes and souls of the 18-year-old murderers I see on TV, who just look like confused kids who need a hug. I think spending 40 years as an unrepentant cold-blooded racist killer can do something very disturbing to a man’s soul. I mean, at least with BTK you can say that he never fully appreciated the evil of what he did. But these boys do, and they like it–and you can see it in their eyes. No, I don’t really wish Killen spent the rest of his life being raped in prison. But you know, that man scares me. Totally harmless now, I realize; he’s old and weak and probably half-senile. But there’s something really sinister about him, and I’m glad they put him back behind bars, that they took this evil thing off the streets. Cheers, TH


Tom!!!


Good. It was a disgrace that he was out. Tom, ew! http://www.magnoliapolitics.blogspot.com/


hmmm…Killen may have misrepresented his physical condition. Wouldn’t that constitute PERJURY?


I’m sure someone will have questions for his lawyer, rather pointed ones. Isn’t that grounds for court action? Anyone know? I’m happy he’s back in jail.


Intriguing page on the MDOC Web site. Ran across it while looking for other stuff.


I didn’t recall he was out in Rankin County. Wow.


Who else got a sick satisfaction of that scroll down on the charges with the years listed beneath them? If you missed it…go back…scroll down…giggle.


Update: He’s got legs, and he knows how to use them.

Founding Editor Donna Ladd is a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss., a graduate of Mississippi State University and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was an alumni award recipient in 2021. She writes about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence, journalism and the criminal justice system. She contributes long-form features and essays to The Guardian when she has time, and was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press. She co-founded the statewide nonprofit Mississippi Free Press with Kimberly Griffin in March 2020, and the Mississippi Business Journal named her one of the state's top CEOs in 2024. Read more at donnaladd.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @donnerkay and email her at donna@mississippifreepress.org.