As a result of the documentary and related investigations, state and federal officials re-opened the case, prosecuting James Ford Seale of Franklin County for the kidnappings and deaths.
Families of Dee and Moore filed a civil suit in 2008 for damages against Franklin County, Mississippi, charging that its law enforcement officials had been complicit in these events.
On May 2, 1964, Charles Eddie Moore, a college student, and Henry Hezekiah Dee, a millworker, both 19 and from Franklin County, Mississippi, were picked up by KKK members while they were hitchhiking in Meadville.
[1] Klan members, including James Ford Seale, beat them with beanpoles until they were unconscious, repeatedly asking the pair to identify who was behind the county's "Negro trouble".
They were locked in a trunk of a car, driven across state lines, chained to a Jeep motor block and train rails, and dropped alive into the Mississippi River to die.
[5] Moore and Dee's mangled torsos were discovered on July 12 and 13, 1964 during the frantic FBI search for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers who disappeared on June 21, 1964.
[6] When it was discovered that the bodies were those of two black men and not those of the civil rights workers, two of whom were white, media interest evaporated and the press moved on.
According to articles Ridgen read in The Clarion Ledger newspaper from 1999/2000, Don Whitehead's Attack on Terror (1970),[13] and the Southern Poverty Law Center's online memorial, Moore was killed by Klan members who picked up him and his friend Henry Hezekiah Dee while they were hitchhiking on May 2, 1964.
Previously, Moore and Ridgen had been told by a prominent Mississippi journalist that James Ford Seale was dead, as had been reported elsewhere in the media.
[16][17] Shortly after Ridgen and Moore arrived in Mississippi in July 2005, District Attorney Ronnie Harper told them that Seale was alive.
The prosecuting US Attorney brought the case before a federal Grand Jury, which voted to indict the alleged kidnapper and killer, James Ford Seale.
They were aided by Professor Margaret Burnham and the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at the Northeastern University School of Law.
[25] The suit claims that in Franklin County in 1964, Sheriff Wayne Hutto and his chief deputy, Kirby Shell, conspired with the Klansmen who abducted and killed Dee and Moore.
[3][26][27] On June 21, 2010, Franklin County, Mississippi agreed to an undisclosed settlement in the civil suit with the families of Charles Moore and Henry Dee.
[30] The film also won Best Social Political Documentary, Best Director (David Ridgen), Best Research (David Ridgen), and Best Editor (Michael Hannan) at Yorkton; the Investigative Reporters and Editor's (IRE) Top Medal for Investigative Journalism;[31] the Canadian Association of Journalism Award for Best Investigative Report Open Television; Best Director at the Canadian Geminis;[32] The English Television "Wilderness" Award for Best Documentary produced in 2007 by the CBC; a Bronze Plaque at the Columbus Festival; and a CINE Golden Eagle Award.