Roy K. Moore, 94; FBI Agent Probed Civil Rights Killings

Roy K. Moore, 94, an FBI agent who oversaw investigations into some of the most notorious civil rights-era killings of the 1960s, died of complications of pneumonia Oct. 12 at St. Catherine's Village nursing home in Madison, Miss.

Mr. Moore, who had investigated the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls, was hand-picked by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to open the FBI's first office in Mississippi in 1964. Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman had disappeared, and Mr. Moore's job was to lead the investigation.

About six weeks later, the bodies of the civil rights workers were dug out of an earthen dam in Neshoba County. The 1988 movie, "Mississippi Burning," was based on the case.

"How close Mississippi stood in the 1960s to being taken over by the law of the jungle is still a frightening thought to many Mississippians," Bill Minor, a veteran Mississippi journalist who covered the civil rights struggles, told the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger last week. "There was only one reliable law enforcement agency in Mississippi at the time, and that was the FBI, headed by Roy Moore."

Hundreds of FBI agents flooded into the state. Many did not seek the assignment and a few did not want to do the work required, but Mr. Moore knew how to motivate the underachievers. He said they would be there until they broke the back of the Ku Klux Klan, reestablished the rule of law at the local level and enforced the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Jim Ingram, later the head of the FBI's violent crimes desk, was one of those agents assigned to the new Mississippi office. Mr. Moore, he said, set ethical standards for all of the agents, insisted on bringing the state highway patrol and local police into the operations, and ran a seven-day-a-week organization.

"He'd allow personnel to go to church on Sunday, take care of your laundry problems. . . . But by 1 p.m. on Sunday, you had to be back at the office," Ingram said.

"Those who underestimated the bulldog determination" of Mr. Moore and his agents, Minor later wrote, made a huge mistake.

The civil rights workers case was not the only act of violence the FBI investigated. Vernon Dahmer Sr., the head of the NAACP chapter in Hattiesburg, Miss., died after his home was firebombed Jan. 10, 1966, at the order of KKK Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers. Others were convicted in the crime but despite multiple trials, Bowers avoided prison until 1998 when the case was reopened and Bowers was found guilty. He died in prison in 2006.

Nineteen men were indicted in 1967 on federal charges of violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Seven were tried and convicted and served six years or less in prison. The federal trial ended in a hung jury for Edgar Ray Killen, a part-time preacher and sawmill operator. However, the case was reopened decades later, and Killen was convicted of manslaughter in state court in 2005 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Mr. Moore worked on many other high-profile cases. Hoover sent him to solve a series of killings on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the kidnapping of the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, the American Indian Movement siege at Wounded Knee, S.D., and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in San Francisco.

"Roy Moore had many death threats against him, but there were only two people he feared," Ingram said. "That was his wife, Lucille, and J. Edgar Hoover."

Mr. Moore retired from the FBI in 1974 and worked at Deposit Guaranty National Bank in Jackson, where he served as chief of security until 1981.

Mr. Moore was born in Hood River, Ore., and grew up in Harrisburg, Ill. He joined the Marine Corps in 1933 and trained new FBI agents in firearms. After he left the Marines in 1940, he joined the FBI himself. He graduated from the University of Miami while stationed in South Florida and rose through the ranks to agent and special agent.

His reputation was made in 1955 when he helped solve the midair explosion of an airliner over Colorado in which 44 people died. Within 13 days, he discovered that Jack Gilbert Graham had placed a bomb in his mother's suitcase before she boarded the plane in order to collect her life insurance.

Mr. Moore lived twice in the Washington area, in the late 1940s and from 1957 to 1962. He was transferred to Chicago in 1971, then asked to be reassigned to Jackson, Miss., in 1973.

His wife died in 1994.

Survivors include three children, Sandra Giglio of Burke, Carol Weston of San Jose and Roy K. Moore Jr. of LaBelle, Fla.; nine grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren. Both of his sons-in-law joined the FBI after meeting Mr. Moore.