James Ford Seale - Reopening of The Case in 2005

Reopening of The Case in 2005

In 1998 Thomas Moore, the older brother of Charles and a retired 30-year Army veteran, began to work on the case. Then living in Colorado, he wrote to the District Attorney Ronnie Harper "asking him to look into his brother's murder. He agreed." Various media journalists began to look at the story again, including Newsday, 20-20 and Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi). On January 14, 2000, Mitchell reported that the murders occurred on federal land. This spurred the FBI to take another look but some of their resources got diverted to the revival of the 1964 Neshoba County investigation of Edgar Ray Killen.

Contacted by the filmmaker David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Thomas Moore returned to Mississippi on July 7, 2005, to begin shooting the documentary Mississippi Cold Case, about the events of his brother's murder. Together they began a search for justice in the case. They were also going to be working with the journalist Donna Ladd and photographer Kate Medley from the Jackson Free Press, an alternative newsweekly in Jackson, Mississippi.

On July 8 the two men interviewed the District Attorney Ronnie Harper, who told them that James Ford Seale was alive, although his family members had reported him dead to the media a few years before. The pair confirmed this fact when Kenny Byrd, a resident of Roxie, pointed them toward Seale's trailer. The same morning, Moore and Ridgen met with Ladd and Medley. During this trip, the former Klansman James Kenneth Greer told Ladd and Medley that Seale was living in Roxie, Mississippi next to his brother.

The discovery of Seale helped to revive interest in the case; Moore and Ridgen visited the U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, who pledged to re-open the case. Two weeks after the trip, Ladd published the first of several articles in the Jackson Free Press about the investigation and the discovery that Seale was alive. Moved by the response of people he talked to, that July Thomas Moore formed the "Dee Moore Coalition for Justice in Franklin County."

Moore and Ridgen returned to Mississippi every few months to continue filming, making nine trips in total for Mississippi Cold Case; each time they visited Dunn Lampton, where Moore presented more of the data they had found. The Jackson Free Press continued its investigation as well, and has published a package of all of its stories on the case to keep local interest high. At the end of July 2005, the paper published Thomas Moore's response to an editorial that appeared in the Franklin Advocate, the weekly in Meadville, in which the editor said the case should not be re-opened. (Editor Mary Lou Webb did not publish Moore's response.)