88-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham, who triggered the 1955 lynching of a 14-year-old black boy named Emmett Till after accusing him of wolf-whistling at her, has gotten away with murder as the grand jury declined to indict her.
According to the Daily Mail;
A grand jury in Mississippi has declined to indict the white woman whose accusation set off the lynching of black teenager Emmett Till nearly 70 years ago, despite revelations about an unserved arrest warrant and a newly revealed memoir by the woman, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
A Leflore County grand jury considered evidence and testimony regarding Carolyn Bryant Donham’s involvement in the kidnapping and death of Till, Leflore County District Attorney Dewayne Richardson said in a news release.
The news that the grand jury had declined to charge Donham makes it increasingly unlikely that she will ever be prosecuted for her role in the events that led to Till´s death.
A group searching the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse in June discovered the unserved arrest warrant charging Donham, then-husband Roy Bryant and brother-in-law J.W. Milam in Till’s abduction in 1955.
The warrant was based on the Sheriff’s belief that Donham played a part in the kidnapping of Till, that she drove around the town of Money, Mississippi seeking him out and ultimately identified the terrified teen when he was brought to her on the night of Sunday August 28 that year, dragged from his bed, to be tortured and murdered by Bryant and Milam.
A police note on the back of the warrant says that she wasn’t arrested because she was not in the county.
Yet a local sheriff told reporters at the time that he didn’t want to ‘bother’ her since she had two little boys to care for.
While the men were arrested and acquitted on murder charges in Till’s subsequent slaying, Donham, 21 at the time and 87 now, was never taken into custody.
Till’s battered, disfigured body was found days after he was abducted, in a river, where it was weighted down with a heavy metal fan.
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