United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speaks about the arrest of James Seale in Washington yesterday. - reuters

JACKSON, Mississippi (AP):

A former sheriff's deputy and reputed member of the racist Ku Klux Klan was brought to the federal courthouse yesterday, where he was charged in the 1964 slayings of two black hitchhikers.

The weighted, badly decomposed remains of the two black hitchhikers were discovered 43 years ago, during a search of the eastern Louisiana swamps for three missing civil rights workers. Two white suspects were arrested at the time, but the FBI consumed by the civil rights workers' case turned the case over to local authorities. A justice of the peace promptly threw out all charges.

Reopened case

On Wednesday, seven years after the Justice Department reopened the case, one of the suspects was arrested on federal charges of kidnapping Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19.

James Ford Seale, a 71-year-old reputed Ku Klux Klansman and former sheriff's deputy previously believed to be dead, was brought to the federal courthouse in Jackson. He was charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, according to a copy of the indictment that was released by the Justice Department. Prosecutors did not say why Seale was not charged with murder.

The second suspect, church deacon and reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, now 72, was not charged. Sources close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity said Edwards was cooperating with authorities that led to the discovery of Moore's and Dee's bodies.