JACKSON, Miss. — Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram, who investigated Ku Klux Klan killings and violent acts across Mississippi in the 1960s, died Sunday at a hospice after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 77.
JACKSON, Miss. — Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram, who investigated Ku Klux Klan killings and violent acts across Mississippi in the 1960s, died Sunday at a hospice after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 77. Ingram’s son, Jim, confirmed his father’s death. He said funeral arrangements were incomplete Monday. Ingram worked on many high-profile cases, including the June 21, 1964, "Mississippi Burning" slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. He also assisted in the investigation of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana of more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones. In his more than 30 years with the FBI, Ingram headed the Chicago and New York FBI offices before serving as deputy assistant director in Washington. Retired FBI agent Robert Butler of Lewisville, Texas, said Ingram was "very well-loved by the agents. Everybody who knew him loved him. He was a wonderful friend and respected so much." In 1982, he retired from the FBI. From 1992 to 2000, he served as Mississippi’s public safety commissioner under then-Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice and on the state Ethics Board. Bobby Reed, past president of the Mississippi State Troopers Association, said Ingram was a good man. "It made no difference if you were the governor or the low man on the totem pole, he treated you with the same respect," Reed said. Reed said the first time he met Ingram he thought he was going to lose his job. "He probably could have fired me, and I wouldn’t have had any recourse," Reed said. "But he was willing to listen to what I had to say. After hearing everything, he said, ‘You may have done wrong, but you done wrong for the right reasons.’" The next time they saw each other, Ingram shook his hand, and the matter was forgotten, he said. "How can you not love a man like that?" In the past few years, Ingram helped agents in the revived investigation of the attacks on Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore on May 2, 1964. Thanks in part to his work, reputed Klansman James Seale was convicted in 2007 on federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges. He also worked with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to help prosecute reputed Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in the killings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Killen was convicted in 2005 on three counts of manslaughter for his role in orchestrating the slayings in east central Mississippi’s Neshoba County. He was sentenced to three consecutive 20-year terms. ______ Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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