Morris News Service
SAVANNAH, Ga. --- State Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta, said Thursday that prosecution is nearing in the notorious Moore's Ford lynching near Monroe, Ga., in 1946.
Mr. Brooks, the president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, said the "long arm of the law" is closing in on five suspects. No one ever has been arrested in the attack, in which a white mob pulled the victims -- all black -- out of a car and shot them to death.
Mr. Brooks discussed the case at a news conference while previewing the association's convention in Savannah.
The crime was investigated by the FBI in 1946 and the GBI in 1999, he said.
For years, the association has lobbied to get the investigation reopened. Based on its work and that of other groups, Mr. Brooks said, the FBI has assigned agents to the case from as far away as Washington.
"We have identified five suspects who live in the Monroe area," he said. "They are still living and breathing, walking around ... like we are. It appears to us that law enforcement officials are moving in on those five."
FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett appeared to be familiar with the case, but he declined to comment.
Old cases are difficult to pursue because potential witnesses have died and memories have faded. Walton County District Attorney Ken Wynne has said there is too little evidence -- and too few witnesses -- for a successful prosecution.
"There have been multiple investigations in this case, and not one of them has been able to come up with an eyewitness to the murders," Mr. Wynne said in a 2006 interview. "I don't even have a name to put on an indictment."
But Mr. Brooks has said the GBI found evidence that local law enforcement authorities helped the Ku Klux Klan and others involved in the lynchings.
He said local authorities will never act, calling Walton County a place run by "a close-knit network of people in a small town ... that covered up and protected each other."
He said he is more optimistic about the outlook for federal prosecution.
