Crime Immemorial

In early June of 1965, in Louisiana, there would be another racially-motivated killing that recalled the previous slaying of businessman Frank Morris from late 1964, as well as the Mississippi murders of Louis Allen and Clifton Walker from earlier in the same year.

Oneal (alternately spelled O’Neal) Moore was appointed the first black deputy sheriff of Washington Parish, Varnado, Louisiana in summer of 1964, an accomplishment for which he and his family were understandably proud. Oneal was an Army veteran, and he and his wife Maevella had four children. Though Oneal had been subjected to near-constant harassment since taking the position, he tried not to let the stress affect his duties.

June 2nd, 1965 was one day after Oneal’s one-year anniversary of his job posting. He and his partner, fellow African-American deputy David Creed Rogers, were on patrol at around ten-thirty that night, heading out to investigate a brush fire.

As they drove, they noticed they were being followed by what appeared to be a black Chevrolet pickup truck. As the vehicle tailing them grew closer, Creed Rogers noticed that the bumper of the truck bore a prominent Confederate flag decal.

The pickup sped past the patrol car, and as it did so, the two officers found themselves in the middle of a hail of gunfire emerging from the darkened interior (and perhaps the bed) of the truck. Deputy Sheriff Oneal Moore, who had been driving the police car, was shot in the head, and subsequently the car veered off into a tree and crashed.

Creed Rogers was hit in the shoulder and the right eye by a smattering of shotgun pellets, but managed to call for backup as the pickup truck disappeared into the night. He would survive his injuries, but thirty-four-year-old Oneal Moore was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators immediately suspected that the Ku Klux Klan was behind this brazen attack, and less than an hour after the shooting, they already had a man in custody: known Klan member Ernest McElveen, who was arrested in nearby Tylersville, Mississippi driving a black Chevrolet pickup truck which bore a Confederate flag sticker and contained several firearms, a large quantity of ammunition, and a length of rope tied into a noose.

McElveen claimed he had been at a meeting earlier and could not have been responsible for the shooting, but he would not give further details of his supposed whereabouts and was quickly arrested and charged with the murder of Oneal Moore, though he was released on bond only nine days later.

Though multiple sources claimed that the local Klan chapter had specifically called for the elimination of the two black deputies, investigators had a hard time getting too many witnesses to speak out against them, and likely for good reason, as Klan members were suspected of vicious retaliatory actions—such as killing people’s dogs or burning down their homes and businesses—against those who opposed them. Even a generous reward of twenty-five-thousand dollars offered by the FBI for information was no temptation for the cowed townsfolk.

Despite the fact that Ernest McElveen’s truck had been seen by various witnesses following the patrol car on the night of the shooting, and despite the fact that numerous firearms were found in his possession at his arrest, McElveen was eventually released due to lack of evidence. None of the bullet fragments or cartridge casings recovered from the patrol car matched the weapons in McElveen’s truck, and although the FBI searched every remote road and body of water between the murder scene and the spot where McElveen was apprehended, no trace of the rifle that had fired the fatal shot into Oneal Moore was ever found.

Other Klan-related suspects were interrogated as well, including three men—Ed Burkett, Rayford Dunaway, and Virgil Corkern—who had apparently been planning the assassination of Oneal Moore and David Creed Rogers for at least a month prior to the shooting, according to an unnamed source. All three men denied involvement, though admitted they had been Klan members or had attended Klan meetings in the past.

Klan leader Bobby Lang was also interviewed, after a source claimed that he and Ernest McElveen had conspired to commit the murder together, or that McElveen had agreed to be the fall guy for the crime, with the understanding that the Klan’s connections within law enforcement would ensure that he was not prosecuted. Lang likewise denied having anything to do with the killing, though detectives noticed that he was intensely nervous under questioning and refused to let FBI agents corroborate his alibi that he had been hunting in the town of Bogalusa with friends.

Because of the lack of definitive physical evidence and the stonewalling caused by the Klan’s secrecy and intimidation tactics against potential witnesses, the FBI’s case sputtered out, and they officially closed it in autumn of 1967, with no further arrests ever made. Like many other civil rights homicides of the era, the case has been reopened and reexamined several times—in 1990, 2001, 2007, and 2009, to be precise—but as all of the suspects and most of the witnesses are now deceased, it seems unlikely that the family of Oneal Moore will ever see justice for the Deputy Sheriff’s appalling execution.