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Agent Who Led '64 'Mississippi Burning' Probe Dies

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The Associated Press

Published: October 14, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. - Roy K. Moore, 94, an FBI agent who oversaw investigations into some of the most notorious civil rights-era killings, including those depicted in the movie "Mississippi Burning," died Sunday in a Madison nursing home of complications from pneumonia.

Moore, a former Marine and native of Oregon, had established a solid reputation in the FBI when bureau director J. Edgar Hoover sent him to Mississippi in 1964 after the disappearance of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

Nearly two months later, their bodies were dug out of an earthen dam in Neshoba County. "Mississippi Burning," released in 1988 and starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, was based on the case.

Bill Minor, a veteran Mississippi journalist who covered the civil rights struggles, said Monday that Moore established the first "full-fledged FBI bureau" in Mississippi and set his sights on the Ku Klux Klan.

Nineteen men were indicted in 1967 on federal charges of violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Seven were tried and convicted and served six years or less in prison.

Moore retired from the FBI in 1974.

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