Byron de la Beckwith

Byron de la Beckwith was born on November 9, 1920 in Colusa, California, USA. He was married to Thelma Lindsay Neff and Mary Louise Williams.

In January 1942, Byron de la Beckwith enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served as a machine gunner in the Pacific theater of World War II. He fought at the Battle of Guadalcanal and was shot in the waist during the Battle of Tarawa. He was honorably discharge in August 1945.

Ku Klux Klansman convicted in the 1963 assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Byron de la Beckwith was tried three times for the murder, but was finally convicted in 1994.

In January 1966, along with a number of other members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Byron de la Beckwith was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify on Klan activities. In the following years, he became a leader in the Phineas Priesthood, an offshoot of the Christian Identity Movement.

In August 1975, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of conspiracy to commit the murder of civil rights leader A.I. Botnick; he served nearly three years in the Angola Prison in Louisiana from May 1977 until he was paroled in January 1980.

Sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Medgar Evers, Byron de la Beckwith died at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 2001 in Jackson, Mississippi, having been transported there from Central Mississippi Correctional Center, aged 80. He had suffered from heart disease, high blood pressure and other ailments.