But for a lengthy article appearing Wednesday in The Concordia Sentinel, Mr. Nelson, 55, put together what he believes is a key piece of the puzzle. He names the last living person he says was there that night. In the article, both a son and a former brother-in-law of Arthur Leonard Spencer, 71, a truck driver from rural Rayville, La., say he admitted to being involved in the fire. Mr. Spencer’s ex-wife, Mr. Nelson reported, said she had heard the same story from another man who was also there.
Mr. Spencer, by his own admission, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. But in an interview with Mr. Nelson, he denied knowing or having been one of two men suspected of burning the shop in Ferriday, La., a small town near the Mississippi border that is the hometown of the famous cousins Mickey Gilley, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Rev. Jimmy Lee Swaggart. Mr. Spencer has not been charged, and the F.B.I. has not said whether it is investigating him. Mr. Spencer could not be reached at his home or at Jimmy Sanders, a farm supply store where he works. His co-workers said he had gone to the hospital for blood tests.
Bettye Spencer, 67, was married to Mr. Spencer at the time of the fire. In an interview Wednesday by phone from her home in Rayville, La., she said she had never heard anything about the alleged crime. The F.B.I. visited her a few months ago and she told them that she had been a young mother when Mr. Spencer left her for another woman. That woman and her son are both sources in the article linking Mr. Spencer to the incident. Mrs. Spencer is still close to her former husband and said she talked to him early Wednesday. He was surprised people were trying to connect him to the fire.
“I’m telling you he had nothing to do with this,” she said. “We’re just old country people and I don’t understand where this is coming from. This is 46 years ago and now people are digging up bones?”
Unlike many of the 110 civil rights murders being investigated by both the F.B.I. and journalists who operate under the umbrella group called the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, the story of Mr. Morris’s death stands out because it is one of a handful in which someone believed to be connected to the incident is still alive. “The big concern about all of this is time,” Mr. Nelson said. “The time to solve these cases is maybe another year, or another two years maybe. People are dying.”
The F.B.I. investigated the killing of Frank Morris, 51, twice in the 1960s, and took up the case again in 2007. After the most recent investigation, The Sentinel and other organizations have been critical of the speed with which the F.B.I. and the Justice Department have approached the civil rights cold cases. Cynthia Deitle, chief of the F.B.I.’s civil rights unit, told thenewspaper that federal officials were actively working on the case and that she believed people were still alive who knew who killed Mr. Morris. She reiterated her agency’s dedication to what she called “one of the most horrific and troubling of all the F.B.I.’s civil rights era cold cases.” The newspaper’s link to Mr. Spencer is based in part on interviews with the man’s son, William “Boo” Spencer, Mr. Spencer’s son. William Spencer said he was trying to turn his life around after getting out of prison and finding religion.
William Spencer said he heard his father recount on more than occasion the story of the burning. He was one of at least two white men who headed there in the early morning hours, intending to burn the shop as a message to the black owner who Klan members believed was too friendly with white women customers. The men didn’t expect the shop owner to be inside, the son told The Concordia Sentinel. “My dad said they could hear a stirring in the place, then a man came out,” the younger Mr. Spencer said. Mr. Morris was doused with gasoline and started to run. Burned so badly nurses couldn’t recognize him, Mr. Morris lived for four more days. He gave interviews to the F.B.I. but never identified his attackers.
“Son, it was bad,” the younger Mr. Spencer recalled his father saying. “I’ll never forget it.” Mr. Spencer’s former brother-in-law, Bill Frasier, told the newspaper that he, too, had heard the story from Mr. Spencer.
The newspaper reported that both the man’s son and Mr. Frasier have told their stories to the F.B.I. The agency would not comment on the case, but a spokesman pointed out that prosecuting an arson in federal court might pose challenges. The arson would have had to involve something that was a federal crime at the time, like interstate kidnapping or the use of a specific type of explosive, or it would have had to have happened on federal property.
It was Rosa Williams, Mr. Morris’ granddaughter, who moved Mr. Nelson to dedicate himself to this and the other cold cases. After he wrote his first article on the subject in 2007, in which he revealed that the owner of the shoe shop was on the F.B.I.’s list of unsolved civil rights murders, Mr. Morris’s granddaughter called. She told him she had never known what had happened to her grandfather, and she thanked him. And she asked Mr. Nelson to help figure out who killed him. “I told her I’m going to try,” he said.
From that moment on, Mr. Nelson reported on little else. He went on to file more than 150 articles on the subject, culminating in this one, which he hopes will lead to an arrest. But he is also motivated by the simple curiosity of a newsman.
“What kind of human being could set another man on fire?” he said. “I was just curious about something that happened in our community that I never knew about. I just wanted to find out who did it.”
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