FBI Records Could Have Solved A Civil Rights Cold Case. Now It's Too Late

The murder of the Rev. James Reeb was unsolved for more than 50 years.

Then last month, using the FBI's case file, NPR identified a man who had participated in the attack on Reeb but was never arrested or charged. William Portwood died less than two weeks after reporters Andrew Beck Grace and Chip Brantley confirmed his involvement. At 87, Portwood was the last living person who could have been held to account for Reeb's murder.

Now, Alabama officials who might have pursued prosecution tell NPR that if the FBI had shared its case file with them, they would have investigated Reeb's murder years earlier.

It's impossible to say whether state and local officials would have been able to close the case. The Boston minister was killed during the 1965 voting rights campaign in Selma, Ala., and three men were tried for and acquitted of the crime. And the FBI has failed to solve Reeb's murder twice: once in 1965, and a second time in 2008, when it reopened the case as part of its Cold Case Initiative.