The FBI has found a transcript of the 1955 murder trial of two Mississippi men accused of killing Emmett Till, one of the most infamous crimes of the civil rights era.
The transcript had been considered missing for several decades.
"We found a copy of a copy of a copy," Robert J. Garrity Jr., special agent in charge of the Jackson field office, told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger Monday. "We had to painstakingly go through it and retype it."
Garrity wouldn't say where the transcript was found.
An all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam in Till's Aug. 28, 1955, killing.
The defense suggested a group had planted the body. Several months later, Bryant and Milam confessed to Look magazine they had beaten and shot Till because the 14-year-old Chicago black youth had whistled at Bryant's wife at the family's grocery store.
Bryant and Milam have since died, and legal experts say a transcript is key to putting together the case against any living suspects.
Earlier this month, the Cook County, Ill., medical examiner made a request to exhume and perform an autopsy on Till's body, which is buried in the Chicago suburb of Alsip. No autopsy was performed before Till was buried.
In a letter mailed to media outlets last week, Garrity said the government's decision to exhume Till's body is vital to the investigation.
"The investigation has now progressed to a point where the exhumation and examination of Till's remains are essential," Garrity said in the letter.
He said the new investigation is expected to yield forensic evidence to use in court. District Attorney Joyce Chiles last year requested the FBI's help as the investigation was reopened.
"This is the first real investigation of the case," Garrity said Monday.
In four to six months, Garrity said he expects the FBI to submit a report to Chiles that will "recount our investigation and will be a summary of what all the individuals have told us. Any forensic reports will all be summarized. It will be an exhaustive report that we have done to try to bring this case to a position to her to make an informed decision."
The U.S. Justice Department reopened the 50-year-old murder case after a documentary by New York director Ken Beauchamp revealed new leads.
Garrity says the FBI has been looking for residents who had a connection with the killing and following up on eyewitness accounts.
Lent Rice, a Hernando private investigator, was poring Monday over back issues of the Greenwood Commonwealth that reported on the murder and subsequent trial in Tallahatchie County.
Garrity said Rice is one of several retired FBI agents who have been rehired to help with the investigation of the Till murder and the 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County. The FBI has assisted the state in the prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen, a reputed Klansman charged in the Neshoba County murders. That case is scheduled to go to trial June 13 in Philadelphia, Miss.
Garrity said the retired agents have been enlisted "principally because they have original knowledge of the investigation and many of the people who were involved in the original criminal acts are more of the age of these agents. They are able not only to establish a rapport, but because they have knowledge of what happened decades ago, they are able to get to the heart of the matter quicker."
The FBI said DNA tests done on the body of Till will be matched by swabs taken from family members. The tests hope to verify the identity of the body which his mother was only able to identify by a ring on Till's finger.
Authorities from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the Smithsonian will be present at the autopsy, which is expected to take place in the next few weeks.
