I’ve just very gratefully received this email from Michael Rejebian:
Lotus, feel free to post if interested…
The following is an account of the day that the “missing” gun used to kill Medgar Evers was located and reported found, clearing the way for the 1994 re-trial of Byron De La Beckwith:
As a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger in the late 80s and early 90s, my final assignment was that of City Hall reporter covering Jackson politics. I was sitting in then-Police Chief Charles Newell’s office that day, getting an update on some new administrative policy at JPD that I have long since forgotten. During the previous weeks, stories had been written about the Hinds County DA’s efforts to re-open the Evers-Beckwith case and the supposed difficulty in locating the murder weapon. Without it, DA Ed Peters and his assistant, Bobby DeLaughter, insisted they could not re-try the case.
At the end of my conversation with Chief Newell (a longtime Jackson police officer), I just happened to ask him if he ever had heard of what became of the Beckwith rifle. I honestly don’t know what prompted the question. Yes, he said, he had heard the gun had long been in the possession of the late Hinds County Circuit Judge Russell Moore.
Later the same day, while at City Hall, I ran into Deputy City Attorney Matthew Moore (now deceased, but one of the truly genuine people I ever met.) Again, I don’t know why, but I asked Matthew the same question. His answer: “Bobby DeLaughter came and got it from my dad’s closet.” I asked, “Who is your dad?” Russell Moore, he said. And DeLaughter, at the time, was Russell Moore’s son in law.
Startled by that revelation and the fact that the DA’s office had lied about the rifle’s existence, I questioned Matthew further. I happened to have a tape recorder in my coat pocket and switched it on. As Matthew recounted, his father had kept the rifle after the earlier Beckwith trials as a “souvenir.” As a boy, Matthew had often gone into the closet to look at the weapon and asked his dad about its significance. “That’s the gun that killed Medgar Evers,” was his reply to his son.
I asked Matthew if he would go on the record with his story and he said only if I could get DeLaughter to first confirm he had the rifle. So that day, finally tracking down DeLaughter on a Little League baseball diamond, coaching his son’s team, I said, “Bobby, I know you have the gun.”
He looked flabbergasted and again denied the allegation. Finally, he said, “If your editors over there weren’t such a**holes, I would have told you all about it a long time ago.”
Well, for me, that was confirmation enough. I went back to the newspaper, called Matthew Moore and relayed DeLaughter’s quote verbatim. Okay, he said, you can use what I told you. Fortunately, I had it all on tape. But I still didn’t have DeLaughter actually saying he and Peters had the weapon. With Matthew’s information now on the record, I called DeLaughter on the phone and relayed Matthew’s tape-recorded story. DeLaughter then came clean.
My last phone call that night was to Myrlie Evers to tell her that the gun had been found. The story, co-written with Jerry Mitchell, ran the next morning. Beckwith, of course, was later convicted of the murder.
seems like taking and transferring (x2?) a rifle that was not yours to belong with, would run afoul of multiple Federal and State laws… Was the rifle ever reported stolen from the trial? The judge just kept a piece of evidence? Surely they can’t be “allowed” to do that??? I’m so confused.
Well….. I would say that paints an entirely different picture than the hollywood version of Bobby Delaughter, the hero and civil rights champion. Can’t quibble with the end result, however. A prosecution motivated by political pressure (no doubt due to the referenced CL story) is better than none at all. Very glad to see Beckwith finally convicted and sent to prison (as some may recall my pointing out here in the past, my family was threatened by this vile man when my father refused to join the citizens council).
Daisy chain of custody?
That makes me wonder 1) how long DeLaughter had been keeping the gun and 2) why he hadn’t said/done anything about it during that time.
Thanks for the story Michael.
What would Delaugher’s motivation be in hiding that gun? Pressure from someone else not to prosecute the most vile murderer of the civil rights era? Very confusing…..
This post is the first one on this gun business that has made perfect sense to me. I finally understand it. Thanks to Mr. Rejebian and to you Lotus, for putting it up.
Dee-lighted, 3dS.
I’m just a “suspended” civil lawyer from “Louseyanna”, but this post is most disturbing. I have no love lost for Mr. de la Beckwith. But I have “heard” a little too much BS about the “courage” of now-Judge DeLaughter. Now we hear that he only admitted he knew the whereabouts of the alleged murder weapon after a Reporter caught him “with his hand in the cookie jar”? Wasn’t there technology, even back then, to “transfer” prints to inanimate objects, like scopes? I mean, the gun WAS “his” by testimony from others, but how did his print stay on the scope after all those years? I’m just asking “admittedly after-the -fact” questions. If a guy like DeLaughter would do what he did in the Scruggs case for a Federal Judgship, then what might the same man have done to further his political aspirations? The man has a “character flaw” which the rest of us only recently have learned about.
I haven’t thought about Matt Moore in a long time. Was anyone ever arrested for his murder?
ARod….Just maybe we don’t know what we thought we knew, when we thought we knew it.
Don’t ever put yourself in a Mississippi Courtroom if there is any way out of it.
Last week family member had a courtroom education in a Criminal case that even lotus raised her eyebrows about that happens in Mississippi Courtrooms that makes one wan’t to give up lawyering forever and ever. It is what it is and appears it’s gonna stay that way.
I knew Matt Moore, too, Hambone, and never bought the story that he committed suicide – not with a .22 pistol shot to the head.
I wonder if Michael Rejebian can enlighten us about Matt’s death. I, too, never believed that he shot himself in the back of the head. There was no suicide note, and if I recall correctly, no one knew of any reason that he would have wanted to end his life. I’m not implying that there is any connection to the Beckwith trial, though, because Matt’s body was found on August 27, 1995, long after Beckwith was convicted in 1994.
2Alawyer @1: Nope … nothing wrong with passing guns hither and thither. No paperwork is required for private gun transactions. If you buy a gun from a licensed gun dealer, you have to fill out a questionnaire that asks for your name, DOB, SSN, address, and asks whether you’re a felon or have mental health “problems,” but not much more. The dealer is obligated to call a federal crime info telephone to ask whether your name is “on hold” or otherwise redflagged, but that’s about all. However, if you come over to my house and want to buy one of my pieces, we agree on a price, you hand over the $$ and I hand over the gun. No paperwork, no background check phone call, no nothing. Same for gun shows … buy or sell anything you want, no paperwork, no background check, etc.
I’m not suggesting you do this, but some people have been known to go to gunshows in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, etc., and buy a dozen or so guns for maybe $200 or $300 apiece, throw them in their cartrunk, drive to Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, etc., and sell them for $2000-$4000 apiece, cash money.
Kinda scary, ain’t it.
MS Lawyer, I wouldn’t say that Matt being murdered a year later was “long after” the conviction. In the Beckwith matter, all things — time included — seem relative. Heck, “time” in Mississippi seems relative too much of the time.
Plenix, it might have been the lack of a chain of custody, and the fact that he got it from his father-in-law. Pretty embarrassing, wouldn’t you say?
But Xenos, was it murder? The story in Jackson is that it was suicide. Of course, we know who the DA was at that time, don’t we?
MSlawyer, good point. As others have stated, it was a “suspicious” death, of which Jackson has many (look at the many associates/mentees of Frank Melton). The consensus among the Jackson legal community is that is was not suicide. You called it on the DA, chief asst DA and recall how closely the City PD was associated with the DA office at that time. Many have floated a link to adult entertainment, which was allegedly Dixie mafia at that time, which also allegedly had connections to Peters. Six (or less) degrees of seperation are lurking somewhere.
By the way, somebody was wondering the other day which Jim Kitchens was appointed to represent Beckwith. At MississippiPerspectives, Sam Hall confirms that it was now-Justice Kitchens. “There are some fascinating stories from that trial,” Sam adds.