◆ SpookStack

LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE b. August 31, 1955. Fish Lake Landing, on the Tallahatchie River. north of Philipp, Mississippi: | | e B.L. Mims (deceased): Testified that on August 31, 1955, Mims was told about a body being found on the Tallahatchie River and he went down the river and found "him". Accompanying Mims, in Mims’ boat, was Deputy Sheriff Garland Melton. Accompanying Mims and Melton, in a second boat, was his brother, Fred Mims, and Robert Hodges. Mims observed, "Well, we saw a person - - from his knee on down and including his feet - - we saw that sticking up above the water. And we could tell by looking at it that it was 4 colored person..." The body was hung up and they sent one of the boats back to get a rope. Upon getting the rope, they pulled the feet together, tied the rope to the ankles and pulled the body loose from the bottom. They then towed the body downstream to a shallow bank, landed there, and pulled the body out. Mims observed a gin fan to be attached to the body at the neck with barbed wire. A Deputy Sheriff disconnected the weight [gin fan] from the body, they pulled the body out, and placed the body and the weight in an extra boat. The extra boat was | attached to Mims’ boat and Mims towed the boat with the body and the gin fan to a landing. Upon arriving at the landing, the boat was pulled out of the water onto the 4 river bank. '* « Note: During the course of the investigation it was determine | . that the gin fan had been disposed of during the early 1970s. 143 Appendix A - Transcript - State of Mississippi vs. J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, Second District of Tallahatchie County, Seventeenth Judicial District, September 1955 - Testimony of BLL. Mims, 110 to 115 , 73 LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE This document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the F@!. {tis the property of the FBX and is loaned to your agency, it and its contents are not to be distributed outside your agency.