- Willie Edwards
Willie Edwards, Jr. (
1932 -January 23 ,1957 ) was a 25-year-oldAfrican American , husband and father, murdered by members of theAlabama Ku Klux Klan .Murder dismissed
Recently hired to drive trucks for Winn-Dixie, Willie Edwards left the afternoon of
January 23 ,1957 , never to return home. Three months passed before his body washed up on the shores of theAlabama River . Officials stated thatdecomposition made it impossible to determine the cause of death.In 1976, then State
Attorney General Bill Baxley re-opened the Edwards case. Four people were arrested and charged with Edward's murder: Sonny Kyle Livingston Jr., 38, Henry Alexander, 46, James York, 73 and Raymond Britt (Jr). Britt broke the long silence with his sworn affidavit (in exchange for immunity), datedFebruary 20 1976 . In the statement to Attorney General Bill Baxley, Britt describes how on the night ofJanuary 23 ,1957 , he along with three other men beat and forced Edwards to jump off theTyler-Goodwin Bridge into theAlabama River .Alabama Judge
Frank Embry dismissed the charges, even with Britt's sworn testimony because no cause of death was ever established. He concluded that "merely forcing a person to jump from a bridge does not naturally and probably lead to the death of such person." Edwards fell 125 feet (27 m), from the bridge into the Alabama River below.Case Re-opened
References
* [http://www.majorcox.com/columns/edwards1.htm "Justice Still Absent in Bridge Death", Major W. Cox, Montgomery Advertiser,
March 2 1999]
*"Suspects Bound In 1957 Slaying", Montgomery Advertiser,February 27 1976
* [http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/tv_guide/full_details/Crime/programme_1282.php "COLD CASE FILES: Episode 34", The History Channel,December 23 2004]
* [http://www.rickross.com/reference/kkk/kkk16.html "A Changing South Revisits Its Unsolved Racial Killings", Emily Yellin, New York Times,November 8 1999]
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