He was instrumental in the murders of three civil rights workers who were slain because they were in Mississippi helping to register black voters. I knew that Killen was acquitted in an earlier trial in 1967, but I did not know the details of the acquittal. The linked story says that the acquittal by an all white jury was because a lone member of the jury said she did not believe that a man of God could have participated in such a crime. The worst part of the crime, IMO, is that after the group was arrested and jailed because the driver of their car was supposedly speeding, the sheriff, Cecil Price, called the KKK member, Edger Ray Killen, to let him know they were releasing the group during the night. The KKK was waiting for them as they left the jail and took them off to be executed.