VISITING PREACHER KILLEN.(The Talk of the Town)

A sign on the narrow road that leads to Edgar Ray Killen's house, in the low hills southeast of Philadelphia, Mississippi, reads "If You Don't Believe in God, the Hellfire Awaits You." On the morning that I visited him, a few years ago, Killen, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was waiting for me, a shotgun in his sunburned arms. "I told you I ain't talking with you," he said, superfluously. Killen is known around Philadelphia as Preacher. He used to preside over a small church nearby, where he taught the inerrancy of the Bible and the superiority of the Caucasian race, but that day he was apparently caring for his weapons. "My gun's clean and ready," he said.

We had spoken by telephone earlier, and I had already come to his house once that day, but his dogs, their teeth bared, had surrounded my car. I returned an hour later with a bag of hamburgers from McDonald's. As the dogs ate, I quickly moved up Killen's walk, where he and his Remington intercepted me. He was leathery and bent over, but his arms were roped with muscle. He seemed to be living proof that time does not temper rage. He was seventy-six when I saw him.

"I told you I don't want to talk about those boys no more," he said. The "boys," Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney--"two Jews and a black," in the shorthand of the civil-rights martyrology--were Freedom Summer workers (Schwerner and Goodman were from New York; Chaney from Mississippi) who were executed by a posse of white racists. (Schwerner and Goodman were shot in the chest; Chaney was beaten to death.) The killings took place on Rock Cut Road, a short walk from Killen's house, and it has long been alleged that Killen, who, according to the F.B.I., was a founder of the local Klavern, organized the murder party. He was indicted on federal charges not long after the killings, but he benefitted at trial from a deadlocked jury. A holdout juror said she could not convict a preacher.

Killen escaped state charges until last Thursday, when Mississippi indicted him for the murders. (He pleaded not guilty on Friday.) Prosecutors promised that more indictments would be coming. There are eight suspects who ...