The woman who'll likely prosecute anyone indicted in the 50-year-old Emmitt Till case said her office is waiting on information from the FBI's case file before moving forward.
Joyce Chiles, the district attorney representing Washington and Leflore counties, noted that her office had asked for the re-opening of the murder case.
Chiles spoke to the Greenwood Voters League on Wednesday. The issue of Till came up during a question-and-answer session.
"I thought I was going to get to go all night without talking about the case," Chiles quipped after Willie Perkins asked for an update.
Till, a 14-year-old Chicago youth, was lynched near Money in August 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman. Roy Bryant and J.T. Milam were tried for the Till murder, but the jury let them go.
Several months later, Bryant and Milam told their story to journalist William Bradford Huie, who published it in Look.
An FBI investigation is underway into information that Bryant and Milam might not have acted alone.
A year ago, Chiles and her team of prosecutors didn't know if someone remained who might have had a hand in the murder of the 14-year-old from Chicago. They began probing for the truth.
"We have all heard certain things about the Emmett Till case," she said. "I heard when I was a very young girl that Emmett Till was castrated and not only castrated but that his penis was stuck in his mouth. We are seeking the truth here. And if there is anyone out there who is still alive and was a participant in this crime, our office intends to prosecute that individual because it's never too late for justice in my opinion."
On June 1, as part of the U.S. Justice Department's reopening of the case, authorities exhumed the body from Till's grave in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., near Chicago. DNA tests from a recent autopsy positively identify Emmett Till's body, reports say. Authorities also found what appear to be bullet fragments.
Nothing in reports from the Justice Department indicated that Till was castrated, although his body was badly mutilated.
Chiles said Wednesday night that the FBI, which is conducting the investigation, hasn't given her office the entire case file.
"But I assure you when we do receive it," she said, "and I hope it will be soon, we intend to go over every piece of paper, every statement, every piece of evidence to review in that case. And if it is a prosecutable case, it will be prosecuted."
