Noah W. Cross - Deputy Frank DeLaughter

Deputy Frank DeLaughter

A Cross deputy, Frank DeLaughter (died 1997), received a sentence of one year in 1972 for racketeering and for violating the civil rights of Cliff Davis of Ferriday, who was beaten to death in the parish jail; the sentences were served concurrently. Known for his large physical size and his abuse of African Americans and his dealings with parish bars, houses of prostitution and gambling during the 1960s, DeLaughter claimed to have been reformed after his release, but he was never again allowed to work in law enforcement, in which he had fifteen years of experience, or to carry a firearm.

DeLaughter told FBI agents that Sheriff Cross sent him to the Morville Lounge brothel south of Vidalia to pick up an envelope, which he never opened but presumably contained cash. DeLaughter long claimed to have taken the fall for Cross. During the 1960s, the Marcellos, an organized crime family from New Orleans, controlled much of the gambling, prostitution, and liquor rackets in Concordia Parish.

DeLaughter sought a second trial in the Davis case when he claimed to have found a physician who treated Davis on the night of the incident and would testify that Davis had no life-threatening condition, only loosened front teeth and two lacerations on the scalp. Prosecutors claimed that DeLaughter had switched victims, and he never obtained a retrial. He also appealed the U.S. District Court conviction on the grounds that the trial judge gave erroneous instructions to the jury. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the motion. Cross's sentence was identical in time to that of DeLaughter but based on his guilty plea to perjury.

DeLaughter had close ties with the Ku Klux Klan. According to circumstantial evidence in FBI reports, DeLaughter may have been indirectly involved in the 1964 burning death of Frank Morris, an African-American store owner in Ferriday, and the torture/drowning death earlier that year of Joseph Edwards, an employee of the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia whose corpse has yet to have been found. These two cases, unsolved since in the late 1960s, were reopened by the FBI under the Emmitt Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.

In 1977, DeLaughter requested a pardon so that he could carry a weapon for hunting and resume voting. Many Ferriday residents objected, and the pardon never happened. He spent his last years in Ferriday, where he worked at various jobs and resided with relatives.