Murder and Suspects
On the night of January 10, 1966, the Dahmer home was firebombed. As Ellie and her children escaped the inferno, gunshots were fired from the streets and Vernon returned fire from inside the house. He was severely burned from the waist up before he could escape and died the next day. The Dahmer home, grocery store, and car were destroyed in the fire.
The Hattiesburg area was stunned by the attack. The Chamber of Commerce under William Carey College President Dr. Ralph Noonkester led a community effort to rebuild the Dahmer home. Local and state businesses such as the Masonite Corporation, Alexander Materials, and Frierson Building Materials donated materials, local unions donated their services, and students from the University of Southern Mississippi volunteered unskilled labor.
Authorities indicted fourteen men, most with Ku Klux Klan connections, for the attack on the Dahmer home. Thirteen were brought to trial, eight on charges of arson and murder. Four were convicted and one Billie Roy Pitts (Sam Bowers body guard) entered a guilty plea and turned states evidence. However three out four of those convicted were pardoned within four years. In addition, eleven of the defendants were tried on federal charges of conspiracy to intimidate Dahmer because of his civil rights activities. Former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, who was believed to have ordered the murder, was tried four times, but each trial ended in a mistrial.
Based on new evidence, the state of Mississippi reopened the case and in 1998 tried Bowers for the murder of Dahmer and assault on his family. The jury convicted Bowers and the judge sentenced him to life in prison. He died in Mississippi State Penitentiary on November 5, 2006.
Read more about this topic: Vernon Dahmer
Famous quotes containing the words murder and, murder and/or suspects:
“Anybody who’s been through a divorce will tell you that at one point ... they’ve thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn’t that major.”
—Oliver Stone (b. 1946)
““If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
“And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)