AP and staff reports

The only surviving suspect in the 1966 murder of an Adams County handyman confessed to participating, but his confession was never presented in court, according to an FBI report.

Ernest Avants who now lives in Bogue Chitto was acquitted of murder five months after he allegedly told prosecutors he took part in the killing of Ben Chester White, a black plantation caretaker, a Jackson newspaper reported Tuesday.

Avants, James Jones and Claude Fuller were charged with murder in state court. Jones confessed but a mistrial was declared, and Fuller was never tried. Jones and Fuller have since died.

Avants has refused to comment since a nationally televised interview aired in Nov. 1998 when he used racially enflamed language. Family members, contacted Tuesday, said Avants would not comment on the matter.

The White case remained closed until federal authorities recently learned he may have been killed on federal land in the Homochitto National Forest, raising the possibility of federal murder charges against Avants, who has maintained his innocence.

Prosecutors suspected the three white men shot White, 67, in Natchez hoping that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. be lured to Adams County in order to assassinate King. White was shot 12 times with a rifle and a shotgun.

A 1967 FBI report said Avants asked the Adams County sheriff to lock him up after White’s death because he ”was fearful that he would do bodily harm to someone.” Avants later admitted to authorities that Fuller had called him and told him ”he needed to whip a Negro,” the report said.

Avants said that days after the call, he and Fuller went to see White, but Avants insisted he only thought they were going to whip the black man.

At least some of the reasons prosecutors didn’t introduce Avants’ confession are contained in the FBI report.

Then-Adams County Attorney Edwin Benoist told an FBI agent that Avants’ statement couldn’t be used as evidence because Avants ”had not been advised of his rights against self-incrimination.” Also, Avants had been drinking – a factor that could have kept his statement out of court, Benoist said.

Prosecutors also didn’t introduce a confession signed by Jones that implicated Avants and Fuller, though the confession was used in Jones’ trial.

Malcolm Carter, a juror in Avants’ trial, said had those facts been presented, ”We’d have probably convicted the man.”

Another former juror, William C. Bell, agreed.

”I’m pretty sure we would have convicted him,” he said. ”I don’t know no reason why we wouldn’t have.”