Claiborne County officials prepared to leave a home in Port Gibson, Miss., on Thursday as they investigated a hanging. Credit Josh Edwards/The Vicksburg Post, via Associated Press
PORT GIBSON, Miss. — Approximately 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agents have descended upon this small Southern town to investigate the death of a black man whose body was found hanging from a tree. But two federal law enforcement officials said Friday that preliminary indications suggested that the man might have committed suicide, and the local sheriff said that there was no indication that racism had played a role.
“I don’t have any reason to even think that,†said the Claiborne County sheriff, Marvin Lucas, an African-American who was recently president of the local N.A.A.C.P. branch.
But officials emphasized on Friday that it was too early draw definitive conclusions about the cause of death of the man, Otis James Byrd, 54, a Claiborne County resident who had been missing since March 2. State wildlife agents who were participating in a search for Mr. Byrd found his badly decomposed body hanging from a tree in the woods near his home just outside town on Thursday morning.
At a news conference in front of the county courthouse in Port Gibson on Friday afternoon, Don Alway, special agent in charge with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said the state medical examiner had confirmed that the body was Mr. Byrd’s.
Mr. Alway described a vigorous effort by officials from the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to determine a cause of death.
He said the investigators “are out trying to identify friends and family that can gather additional information that might help us paint a picture as to the cause of death of Mr. Byrd.â€
Because the extrajudicial killing of blacks by Southern whites was often carried out by hanging in past decades, the discovery of Mr. Byrd’s body touches on some of Mississippi’s — and the nation’s — worst fears. When Mr. Byrd was found hanging by a bedsheet, the state conference of the N.A.A.C.P. requested that federal authorities intervene to help determine whether he had been the victim of a hate crime.
Mr. Alway said that a preliminary report on the cause of death would not be completed until next week. The agents were searching the house Mr. Byrd rented, as well as a storage facility, to help piece together his story, Mr. Alway said.
The two federal officials who suggested in interviews that the death might have been a suicide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was still in progress.
Mr. Byrd’s family filed a missing persons report with the sheriff’s office six days after his disappearance. According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, Mr. Byrd was convicted of murder for killing a woman in February 1980 during a robbery. He was released on parole in November 2006. Sheriff Lucas said he was a quiet presence in town, collecting an unemployment check and taking on odd jobs.
A small crowd gathered at the courthouse as officials updated reporters. A few people in the crowd held posters saying “Black Lives Matter.â€
Willie Smith, 66, who said he had taught Mr. Byrd eighth-grade social studies, was suspicious, given that Mr. Byrd’s victim in the 1980 killing was white. “Normally when a young man, black, goes to prison for killing a white person, they don’t return,†he said.
“Even if it wasn’t the Klan,†he said of Mr. Byrd’s death, “it looks like an act of the Klan.â€
But Sheriff Lucas urged caution in arriving at conclusions before the investigation was finished. From what he had seen, he said, it was “fifty-fifty†as to whether Mr. Byrd had been killed by others or had killed himself.
“I don’t want this to be another Ferguson, Missouri,†the sheriff said, adding, “Let’s wait until the autopsy comes in.â€
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