A federal investigation that reexamined the murder of Emmett Till concluded on Monday after the Justice Department failed to find proof a key figure in the case lied, a senior level law enforcement official told NBC News.
Till, a Black teenager from Chicago, was brutally beaten and shot in the head in 1955 after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, said the boy whistled at her and touched her in a Mississippi store. He was only 14 at the time of his death.
J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, Donham’s husband at the time, were acquitted of Till’s murder by an all-male, all-white jury in Mississippi who deliberated for just over an hour before returning a not guilty verdict. Both men, who have since died, told a magazine journalist they committed the crime, offering a detailed account of the gruesome slaying.
Till’s cousin, Deborah Watts, said in 2017 that investigators were looking into whether Donham admitted to lying about the incident. A previous federal investigation opened in 2004 and subsequent grand jury inquiry went nowhere, as prosecutors noted the statute of limitations for criminal charges had passed.
But Donham reportedly recanted her story to author Timothy B. Tyson, telling him she lied about the incident.
“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she allegedly told Tyson while describing her “sorrow” for Till’s mother.
But Donham denied to federal investigators that she lied in her testimony, a source with knowledge said, and there were inconsistencies with statements made by Tyson. Department of Justice officials plan to release a memo after briefing Till’s family in Chicago, the source added.
Tyson stands by his reporting, describing Donham as unreliable in an emailed statement.
“Carolyn Bryant denies it and avoids talking about it like it was the plague,” Tyson said in an email statement to NBC News. “I am standing in the public square telling the truth as I see it based on solid evidence.”
He added that his interview with Donham revealed nothing new because “we have long known she was lying.” Tyson noted that his book also contained dozens of pages of documented evidence, including evidence collected by the FBI when it reopened the case in 2004.
“Let us just look at the evidence as if I had never talked to Carolyn,” Tyson said. “That she lied in court does not depend on her admission of it to me, not at all.”
Till’s murder shocked the nation, acting as a catalyst for the civil rights movement. His funeral was attended by thousands and his mother insisting on an open casket to show the brutality of his killing.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
