Emmett Till 1955 Murder Case Reopened By FBI

Federal authorities are reopening the investigation of the brutal 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, the black Chicago teenager whose killing in Mississippi helped spark the civil rights movement in the country. Although officially closed in 2007, the case is being reopened based on "new information," the U.S. Justice Department said in a report to Congress this spring.

Till, 14, had traveled to Money, Mississippi, to visit his great uncle when he was abducted from the relative's home after he was accused of whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Donham. Three days later, his bloated and disfigured body was found in the Tallahatchie River. Barbed wire was wrapped around his neck, and his body had weighted down with a cotton gin fan. Till's great uncle identified his nephew by a ring on his finger.

Till's mother insisted on holding an open-casket funeral to draw attention to her son's murder. He was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.

Although the Justice Department didn't identify the "new information" leading to the reopening of the investigation, revelations in the 2017 book "The Blood of Emmett Till" by historian Timothy B. Tyson could be the reason behind it, according to The Associated Press. In the book, Donham admitted she had lied about her claims that Till made sexual advances toward her in 1955, adding that "nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him."

Donham, who will be 84 this month, now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. A man who came to the door of her home would not comment to the AP about the reopened case.

"We don't want to talk to you," the man told the reporter.

Roy Bryant, Donham's husband at the time, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half-brother, were acquitted in Till's murder by an all-white, all-male jury. They later confessed in a 1956 Look magazine article that they kidnapped Till and beat him with a gun before shooting him. They then threw his weighted down body into the Tallahatchie River.

Deborah Watts, Till's cousin and co-founder of the Minneapolis-based Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, told the AP she wasn't aware the FBI was reopening the investigation but said it was "wonderful." She wouldn't discuss further details of the case.

"None of us wants to do anything that jeopardizes any investigation or impedes, but we are also very interested in justice being done," she told the AP.

In 2005, the Justice Department exhumed Till's remains for an autopsy and DNA analysis as part of a continued investigation into the slaying before the case was closed in 2007. He was later reburied in a new casket.

The Associated Press and Patch editor By Beth Dalbey contributed to this report.

A photo of Emmett Till is included on the plaque that marks his gravesite at Burr Oak Cemetery Alsip, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson | Getty Images)