About The Project

Cold Cases in Louisiana & Mississippi – LSU Cold Case Project

The Manship School of Mass Communication works to bring closure to the families and the nation for the unsolved Klan-related homicides in Louisiana and southern Mississippi during the Civil Rights era.

Featured Article

A man the FBI thought was dead recalls details of 1960 murders

Not a day has passed during the past 62 years that Willie Gibson hasn’t thought of Louisiana and the horrific shootings in Monroe that left four of his friends…

Featured Article

“TRUST YOUR DOG,” Louisiana Search and Rescue Dog team used in cold cases

Featured Case

James Ford Seale

James Ford Seale was a violent Klansman from Franklin County, Miss., who was convicted in 2007 in the 1964 murders of two Black teens. Seale was a member of the Silver Dollar Group… 

Featured Case

James Lee Scarborough

James Lee Scarborough was a member of the Silver Dollar Group and one of several suspects in the 1964 murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris.

Featured Article

Kenneth Norman Head

Kenneth Norman Head was a member of the Silver Dollar Group Klan and a close friend of Raleigh Jackson “Red” Glover, head of the SDG. Head was one of Glover’s early recruits in his Klan within a Klan

LSU Cold Case Project for Louisiana and Mississippi Unsolved Cases Hosts:

Over 175K Pages
of FBI Investigative Findings on Regional Cases
60+ Photos
160+ Cases
in DOJ Cold Case Initiative
36+ Stories



Bitter Jaguar Listening Event

BATON ROUGE — The LSU Cold Case Project, LSU Storytellers Lab, and Manship School of Mass Communication will host a listening event for a new podcast series titled Bitter Jaguar:…

Read More



Tommie Lee Jones

Tommie Lee Jones (1936-2007) was a Klansman from Natchez, Miss., who became one of the earliest and most violent members of the secret Klan cell known as the Silver Dollar…

Read More

The Disappearance of Joseph Edwards

Joseph Edwards disappeared in Concordia Parish in July 1964. FBI records, a lengthy investigation by the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, LA, a book by LSU Cold Case Project associate director…

Read More

Murder of Frank Morris

Frank Morris was 51 years old when Klansmen torched his shoe shop in Ferriday, LA, on December 10, 1964. He had been sleeping in a back room when he was…

Read More

Ernest Avants

Ernest Avants was a Klansman who was convicted in 2003 for the murder of Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old farmhand in Adams County, Miss., who was slain in 1966. The…

Read More

Browse Our Database

Louisiana Cold Case Gallery

The pictures we gather throughout the investigations.


Scroll to Top