Why the investigation into the murder of 14-year-old African-American Emmett Till closed in 1955 – He was abducted and mutilated

The US Department of Justice announced yesterday Monday (6/12) that it has closed the flagship investigation for murder in the 1950s by a black teenager, Emmett Till, in Mississippi who became a symbol of the battle of African Americans for their civil rights.

The ministry had reopened the investigation into the case in 2018 after the release of the book “The Blood of Emmett Till”, written by Professor Timothy Tyson of Duke University, broadcasts APE-MPE. In this Tyson states that Caroline Bryant Donham, a white woman who testified at the Till murder trial in 1955 that a 14-year-old African-American man made sexually explicit remarks, recounted it in a 2008 interview. and stated that some excerpts from her testimony were false.

However, the Ministry of Justice, after examining the case did not find enough data to prove that Donham did indeed “tell the professor that part of her testimony is not true.”

“Closing the case without prosecution, the government does not take the view that the testimony given by the woman in 1955 was true or accurate “, stressed the ministry.

“It simply came to our notice then “For the credibility of her version of events, which is disputed by those who were with Till when the incident happened, as well as the testimony of a witness who remains alive,” he added.

His mother had left the coffin open for people to see what had happened

Till, who was visiting relatives in Chicago from Mississippi, was abducted, beaten, shot and maimed four days after the 20-year-old Donham incident. His body was found 72 hours after he was abducted in a river.

At first the woman had stated that Till whistled at her and later added that he tried to grab her by the waist and made sexually explicit comments.

Till’s mother had demanded that her son’s coffin be opened at the funeral so that people could see what he had suffered. Photographs of his mutilated corpse have gone down in history. Roy Bryant, then Donham’s husband, and J.’s half-brother. Ου. Milam was charged with killing Till, but the two men were acquitted by a jury of only whites.

The two later confessed in an interview with a magazine that they abducted and killed the teenager. The two men died in 1994 and 1998 respectively.

“I’m not surprised, but my heart is broken,” said after the announcement of the decision of the Ministry of Justice, Till’s cousin, 90-year-old Thelma Wright Edwards.

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