Word: liuzzo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With no hope for an end to the deadlock, the judge declared a mistrial and sent the jury home. And so, last week, in the county courthouse in Hayneville, Ala., ended the murder trial of Collie Leroy Wilkins, 21, who had been charged with murdering Detroit Housewife Viola Gregg Liuzzo on the Selma-Montgomery highway in March...
Wilkins was the first of the three men accused of the Liuzzo murder to stand trial; the other two, Eugene Thomas, 42, and William Orville Eaton, 41, are scheduled to go to court on the same charges in the fall. The Wilkins trial was high courtroom drama with a rich cast of characters: the jury, all natives of Alabama except for one man, a transplanted Floridian; Circuit Judge Thomas Werth Thagard, 63, a gently humorous man with a long and respected record of public service; the soft-spoken prosecutor, Circuit Solicitor Arthur E. Gamble Jr., 45; the melodramatic defense attorney...
Overcome. Leroy Moton took the stand and told how he and Mrs. Liuzzo got into the Liuzzo car on March 25 and left Selma just after 7:30 p.m. At about 8 o'clock, Moton was "fiddling with the radio dial, and she was humming We Shall Overcome,'" when "a car pulled up beside us and shot into the car two or three times." When the car came to a stop down the road, Moton shut off the ignition, turned off the lights and waited for five minutes. Soon "a car came back," shone its lights...
Struggle with a Pistol. The Klan car trailed Mrs. Liuzzo's for about 20 miles. Finally, as it sped past, the man sitting next to Rowe fired the shots that killed the woman...
...this time, according to Rowe, he was under the impression that his companions intended only to frighten their victims or, at worst, to beat them up. When the killer began firing at Mrs. Liuzzo, Rowe struggled with his own pistol, but could not get it out of its holster in time, he told the jury. When the three tried-and-true Klansmen who were riding with him finally come to trial, Rowe will be the only eyewitness against them. The Negro youth in the car with Mrs. Liuzzo has said that he would have difficulty identifying the occupants...