He was drowned for having given Christmas cards to all his co-workers at the Van Priest Dime Store, including Cynthia Goff, a white girl, followed by a letter to her on New Year's Day.
[2] Goff, along with S. B. McCullers and Reg H. Scott, went to Willie's house and took the youth from his mother at gunpoint.
James Howard also signed the affidavit, but after selling his home and moving to Orlando, he recanted.
After a county grand jury failed to indict, Moore was able to get a federal investigation started, but no convictions followed.
[3] Cynthia Goff was stated to have been very distraught over the death of Howard, not "intend[ing] for that to happen".
[2] A documentary film on the murder, Murder on the Suwannee River, was produced in 2006 by Marvin Dunn, a historian, who tried to get Charlie Crist, then attorney general and later governor of Florida, to reopen the case, but to no avail; neither was his case investigated under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
[4] It is frequently cited as comparable to the case of Emmett Till, who was also lynched (at age 14) for allegedly making advances at a white woman at a grocery store.