Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994                   TAG: 9407200024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                 LENGTH: Medium

KKK NABBED BY THE MOB?

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover pitted one adversary, organized crime, against another, the Ku Klux Klan. The ploy paid off.

Gregory Scarpa Sr., a Brooklyn mobster turned FBI informant, terrorized a Klansman into revealing the location of the bodies, the Daily News said, citing unidentified federal law enforcement officials.

In an account marking the 30th anniversary of the case, the newspaper said Scarpa put a gun borrowed from an FBI agent into the suspect's mouth and threatened to ``blow your ... brains out'' if he did not confess.

The slayings of two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, and a black Mississippi civil rights volunteer, James Chaney, 21, inspired at least four books and a movie, ``Mississippi Burning.''

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson refused to comment Tuesday on the Daily News story. Former FBI Inspector Joseph Sullivan, who led the investigation into the murders, denied Scarpa was involved.

Of the three law enforcement sources cited by the newspaper, Sullivan said, ``There is no federal official who can accurately make such a statement.''

Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney vanished in Neshoba County, Miss. They were helping a black voter registration drive.

Their whereabouts remained a mystery for 40 days, until FBI agents, reportedly using information from the terrorized suspect, an appliance dealer, found their bodies Aug.4 under nearly 20 feet of clay in an earthen dam not far from Philadelphia, Miss.

Four months later, federal agents arrested 20 men, among them the local sheriff, a deputy and Samuel Bowers Jr., an imperial wizard for the Klan.

In 1967, an all-white jury convicted Bowers, Deputy Cecil Price and five others of conspiracy to violate the three volunteers' civil rights. The seven served prison terms ranging from three to 10 years. The appliance dealer was not charged.

Many Philadelphia residents believed the FBI paid an informant as much as $30,000 to reveal the truth, the Daily News said. The FBI has never revealed its source.

The Daily News sources said Hoover, under pressure from President Johnson to crack the case, secretly and illegally recruited Scarpa's help.

Scarpa, who died June 8, was a captain in the Colombo crime family. He specialized in loan sharking and airport hijackings, the newspaper said. He saw himself as a patriot and was a paid FBI informant who provided information about other organized crime figures, the Daily News said.