HENRY SEXTON AND I sit facing each other in the tight U created by the worktables that line three walls of his “war room.” I feel like I’ve been transported to the hotel room of some obsessed FBI agent in Mississippi circa 1964.
“I’ve been working these cases on and off for twenty years,” Henry says. “Hard for the last ten. Have you read many of my articles?”
“Most of them, I think.”
“Do you feel you have a working knowledge of the facts?”
“I’m a former criminal prosecutor, Henry. Just tell me what you haven’t put in the paper.”
He nods with relief. “I’ve connected the Double Eagle group to at least a dozen murders between 1964 and 1972, but five cases mean more to me than the others.”
“Albert Norris and Pooky Wilson are the top two. Right?”
“They were until this afternoon. Those killings happened in 1964, and I’ve known what happened and why for damn near twenty years. I couldn’t print a lot of it, but everything I’ve learned since has borne out my theory. Proving it all is another matter, of course. Still, I’m a lot closer than I was two weeks ago.”
“And the other three deaths? Is one Dr. Robb? The guy in the picture with my dad, by the airplane?”
“Yes. Five years after Albert died, Robb was murdered because he knew who’d killed Albert and Pooky. Forget everything you ever heard about that midair collision. It’s bullshit.”
“Well, you’ve got me curious, I’ll say that. What about the last two cases? Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis?”
Henry smiled sadly. “Am I that obvious? Well … you know Revels and Davis were kidnapped in 1968 and never found. I’ve always been certain they were murdered, and they were. But I thought I understood the dynamic of that crime as well. This afternoon I found out that I was wrong—so wrong that my mind is still blown by the scope of it.”
Something in Henry’s voice quickens my interest. “Can we skip right to that case?”
“No. We need to start in sixty-four.”
“Which case was my dad most involved in?”
“All of them. All these murders are connected, Penn. First, because the Double Eagles carried them out. Second, because a far more powerful man than any Eagle gave the kill orders in almost every case.”
I start to interrupt him to ask who, but he waves his hand and says, “I’ll give you the name in sixty seconds. Third, your father is connected to all five of those critical homicides in some way.”
“I’ve never seen Dad’s name in any of your articles.”
“I leave a lot out of my articles, just as your fiancée does, I’m sure. Forget whatever you’ve read. I’m going to tell you what I think really happened in those cases.”
“Fire away.”
“Albert Norris was murdered because Pooky Wilson—one of his employees—was having sex with the daughter of one of the most powerful white men in this parish. When that man found out what his daughter was doing, he decided to have Pooky killed. He enlisted the Double Eagles to do that. Albert tried to protect the boy, and he died for it.”
“Is this powerful white man still alive?”
“Yes. His name is Brody Royal.”
The name takes my breath away. Almost no one else Henry could have mentioned would have surprised me more. “As in Royal Oil? The Royal Cotton Bank? Royal Insurance?”
“The same.”
“Jesus, Henry. Royal’s one of the richest men in the state.”
“He’s also a sadist and a killer. In 1964, he had the Klan and the Eagles comb this parish for Pooky Wilson, but they couldn’t find him. Royal knew that Pooky worked for Albert Norris, so he and Frank Knox went to Albert’s store and threatened him. Albert refused to give Pooky up. Later that night, they came back and burned him out, probably with a flamethrower.”
I’ve long known the details of this crime, but I can scarcely get my mind around the idea of Brody Royal being involved. But if his daughter was having sex with a black boy in 1964, anything is possible. “I didn’t hear my father’s name in there.”
“You’re about to. It took Albert four days to die. He was treated by Dr. Leland Robb, the man in the snapshot with your father. Norris was only really clearheaded for the first day. He told the FBI—and also his best friend—that he’d recognized his attackers, but he refused to name them. Dr. Robb confirmed this to the press, and he stuck to his story for years.”
“I remember that.”
“The day after the firebombing, Pooky Wilson vanished. I now know that he tried to reach the Brookhaven train station to flee north, but he was captured by Brookhaven Klansmen. They delivered him to four Natchez Klansmen who less than one month later would become Double Eagles. At that point Pooky was taken out into the woods—possibly the Lusahatcha Swamp—and either crucified or flayed alive.”
“Aw, man. Don’t tell me that.”
“I wish I didn’t have to. Even though most of the FBI’s attention was on Neshoba County, searching for the missing civil rights workers, the Bureau started working the Norris case. But on August fourth, the Neshoba bodies were discovered in that dam. All the FBI’s focus shifted north. Five days later, Frank Knox formed the Double Eagle group on a sandbar south of the Triton Battery plant. Within a year, the fledgling Eagles had murdered several people, among them an FBI Klan informant named Jerry Dugan—something no one ever confirmed was murder until today. Your father was the company doctor for Triton, and he signed Dugan’s death certificate.”
“That sounds like pure chance. Nothing you’ve said ties Dad to the Norris case.”
“Just wait. Let’s jump ahead five years. On November first, 1969, Leland Robb climbed into the airplane you saw in that photo to travel to Arkansas for a fishing trip. At least that was the story put out afterward. With him were a charter pilot and two young ladies of what used to be called easy moral disposition.”