Emmett Till's relatives want his accuser to be prosecuted in his 1955 kidnapping

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Carolyn Bryant Donham was named nearly 67 years ago in a warrant that accused her in Till's abduction, even before his mangled body was found in a river, FBI records show, yet she was never arrested or brought to trial in a case that shocked the world for its brutality.

Authorities at the time said the woman had two young children and they did not want to bother her. Donham's then-husband and another man were acquitted of murder.

Make no mistake: Relatives of Till still prefer a murder prosecution. But there is no evidence the kidnapping warrant was ever dismissed, so it could be used to arrest Donham and finally get her before a criminal court, said Jaribu Hill, an attorney working with the Till family.

"This warrant is a stepping stone toward that," she said. "Because warrants do not expire, we want to see that warrant served on her."

There are plenty of roadblocks. Witnesses have died in the decades since Till was lynched, and it's unclear what happened to evidence collected by investigators. Even the location of the original warrant is a mystery. It could be in boxes of old courthouse records in Leflore County, Mississippi, where the abduction occurred.

A relative of Till said it's long past time for someone to arrest Donham in Till's kidnapping, if not for the slaying itself.

"Mississippi is not the Mississippi of 1955, but it seems to still carry some of that era of protecting the white woman," said Deborah Watts, a distant cousin of Till who runs the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.

Now in her late 80s and most recently living in Raleigh, North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. She did not seem to know she had been named in an arrest warrant in Till's abduction until decades later, said Dale Killinger, a retired FBI agent who questioned her more than 15 years ago.

"I think she didn't recall it," he said. "She acted surprised."

The Justice Department closed its most recent investigation of the killing in December, when the agency said Donham had denied an author's claim that she had recanted her claims about Till doing something improper to her in the store where she worked in the town of Money. The writer could not produce any recordings or transcripts to back up the allegation, authorities said.

Till relatives met in March with officials including District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, the lead prosecutor in Leflore County, but left unsatisfied, Watts said. "There doesn't seem to be the determination or courage to do what needs to be done," she said.

Richardson has been in office for about 15 years and was the first Black person to serve as president of the Mississippi Prosecutors Association. He did not return phone messages or emails seeking comment about a potential kidnapping case."...