Spinks and another man visited the woman’s house, where she declined to press charges against Edwards. According to the FBI files, the woman reported the incident to her boyfriend, who, in turn, reported it to Vidalia Police Chief Johnnie “Bud” Spinks. The FBI surmised that the Silver Dollar Group targeted Edwards after he kissed a white woman he worked with at the Shamrock Motor Motel in Vidalia one afternoon in July 1964. But weeks, months and years passed, and he never came. I had got disgusted with people.”ĭobbins said she would sit every day, waiting for her brother to come home to visit his 11 siblings, like he always had. “Everybody lied, from one person to the other. “I was really hurt that they never told us what really happened to my brother,” Dobbins said. Still, Thompson, Edwards’ sister Julia Dobbins and other family members remain hopeful that they may someday give Edwards a proper burial. More cold cases: Horrific 1960 Louisiana killing of 4 Black men leaves unanswered questions
His disappearance is the only Civil Rights-era cold case examined by the FBI in which a body has never been found. No arrests were ever made in Edwards’ case, but FBI files and tips from local residents suggest that members of a Ku Klux Klan organization known as the Silver Dollar Group - and sheriff’s deputies, including DeLaughter and Bill Ogden - were responsible for the disappearance and presumed murder of Edwards, who was in his mid-20s. 'Everybody lied, from one person to the other' He told the men that if any of them spoke about what happened the night before, they would meet the same fate as Edwards. But morning came, and the arrival of the regular office staff spared him the brutality the deputies reserved for the privacy of night.Īs deputy Frank DeLaughter drove the men to the parish jail in Vidalia that morning, he pointed out the green-white Buick, belonging to Edwards, on the side of the highway.ĭeLaughter, 6 feet 4 inches and 280 pounds, peered at Thompson through his rearview mirror.
As the night dragged on, Thompson felt his turn for a beating coming. Thompson had spent a night sitting in a Ferriday jail cell for a robbery he did not participate in, listening as sheriff’s deputies beat three or four other young Black men arrested for the crime.
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