CHAMBER

Chapter 1: A Delicate Exercise

It began with a phone call on the night of April 17, 1967. Not trusting his own telephone, Jeremiah Dogan drove to a pay phone at a gas station to make the call. At the other end, Sam Cayhall listened to the instructions he was given. When he returned to bed, he told his wife nothing. She didn't ask.
Two days later, Cayhall left his home town of Clanton at dusk and drove to Greenville, Mississippi. There he drove slowly through the center of the city, and found the offices of the Jewish lawyer Marvin B. Kramer. It had been easy for the Klan to pick Kramer as their next target. He had a long history of support for the civil rights movement. He led protests against whites-only facilities. He accused public officials of racism. He had paid for the rebuilding of a black church destroyed by the Klan. He even welcomed Negroes to his home.
The operation had been simple to plan, as it involved only three people. Mississippi Klan leader Dogan provided the money, and enjoyed his role as organizer. The second man was Sam Cayhall, one of two men chosen by Dogan to do the actual dirty work. The Cayhall family's connections with the Klan went back very many years, but there was little Klan activity in Clanton so he was considered harmless by the FBI. He was a good choice.
At eleven, Cayhall drove to Cleveland, where he looked for a green Pontiac. He found the vehicle parked at a truck stop on
Highway 61, got in, and drove it out into open farming country. There he stopped on a lonely road and opened the trunk. In a box covered with newspapers, he found everything he needed. Then he drove back into town and waited at an all-night cafe.
At exactly 2 a.m., the third person in the team walked into the cafe and sat across from Sam Cayhall. This young man's name was Rollie Wedge. At the age of twenty-two, Rollie was already deeply committed to the struggle for white power. His father was in the construction industry, and had taught his son how to use explosives. Cayhall knew little about the young man, but they had done this kind of job together several times now and Rollie certainly knew what he was doing. They drank coffee together for half an hour. Sam's cup shook in his hand, but Rollie's was steady.
The two men climbed into the green Pontiac and, with Cayhall at the wheel, the car headed south on Highway 61. It was around 4 a.m. when they drove up to Kramer's office in Greenville. The street was very quiet and dark.
"This'll be easy," Rollie said softly. "Too bad we can't bomb his house, though."
"Yeah. Too bad," Sam agreed nervously. "But there's a guard at the house. And he's got kids in there, you know."
"Kill them while they're young," Rollie said. "Little Jews grow up to be big ones."
Cayhall parked the car in an alley behind Kramer's office. The men quietly opened the trunk, removed the box and Rollie's bag, and moved silently along to the door at the back of the office. Cayhall broke open the door and in seconds, they were inside. In the main hallway was a closet filled with old legal files. The perfect place for the bomb.
"Stay by the door and watch the alley," Wedge whispered, and Sam did exactly as he was told. He preferred not to handle the explosives himself.
Rollie quickly set the box on the floor in the closet, and wired the dynamite. It was a delicate exercise, and Sam's heart raced as he waited. He kept his back to the explosives, just in case something went wrong. They were in the office for less than five minutes.
In each of the bombings they had carried out before, Wedge had used a fifteen-minute fuse, lit with a match. The two bombers enjoyed being on the road, on the edge of the town, just as the bomb destroyed its target. With the car windows down, they had heard and felt each of the explosions at a comfortable distance.
But tonight was different. Sam made a wrong turn, and suddenly they were stopped at a railroad crossing as a long, slow train went through. Sam checked his watch. The train passed, and Sam took another wrong turn. The ground would shake in less than five minutes. Greenville was not a big city, and Sam guessed he must soon meet a familiar street. As he turned again, he realized he was going the wrong way down a one-way street.

He hit the brakes hard, and the car stopped. He tried the engine, but it wouldn't start. Sam was shaking with fear.
"Stay calm," Rollie said slowly.
The minutes were passing. They could not be very far from the lawyers office. When the bomb goes off, thought Sam, we might be too close for comfort.
He turned the key once more, and the car started this time. They sped away. More than fifteen minutes had passed since they had left the office. No explosion. At last, Sam found himself in a street he knew, and began to head toward the edge of town.
"What kind of fuse did you use?" Sam finally asked, as they turned on to Highway 82. Rollie didn't reply. That was his business.
They slowed while they passed a parked police car, and then gained speed out of town. Within minutes, Greenville was behind them, still quiet and at peace.
"What kind of fuse did you use?" Sam asked again, more loudly this time.
Rollie did not look at him. "I tried something new," he answered.
"What?"
"You wouldn't understand," Rollie said. Sam considered the possibilities.
"A timer?" he asked, a few miles down the road.
"Something like that."
The horror of the Kramer bombing actually began about the time when Sam Cayhall was leaving Rollie Wedge back at the truck stop cafe in Cleveland. Ruth Kramer's alarm clock went off around five-thirty in the morning, and she realized immediately that she was very sick. Her husband Marvin helped her to the bathroom and said he would take the five-year-old twins, Josh and John, to their nursery school. As soon as the boys were bathed, dressed, and fed, he said goodbye to Ruth, and he and the twins left the house. They were early, and as Marvin had some work to do before going into court for the morning, he decided to take the twins into the office with him before delivering them to nursery school.
The boys loved their father's office. When they arrived there around seven-thirty, they went straight to the secretary's desk, with its tempting pile of typing paper, scissors, and pens. Marvin looked in and began to lecture the twins about the mess, but they were running off down the hallway, not listening. Marvin smiled to himself.
At that time, none of the other staff had arrived at the office. Marvin's secretary, Helen, was on her way, just leaving the post office. His colleague, David Lukland, had just locked his apartment door three blocks away.
Marvin decided to go up to the third floor to find an old file, which might help him with the case he was preparing. As he climbed the stairs, he could hear the little boys laughing somewhere down the hall. At about a quarter to eight, the huge explosion shot upward and horizontally at several thousand feet per second. The fifteen sticks of dynamite in the center of the wooden building destroyed it in seconds. It took a full minute for the pieces of wood, metal, and glass to return to earth.
Josh and John Kramer were less than fifteen feet from the bomb and were killed immediately. Their twisted little bodies were found under the ruins by local firemen. Marvin Kramer was thrown against the ceiling of the third floor, then fell through the great hole in the center of the building. He was found twenty minutes later and rushed to hospital. He lost both his legs.
A number of pedestrians in the street outside were also hurt. One of these injuries was minor but very significant. A stranger called Sam Cayhall was walking toward the Kramer office when the ground shook so hard he fell over. He was hit by flying glass. His face turned pale with horror at the sight before him, then he ran away. In shock, and with blood still running from him, he climbed into a green Pontiac and drove off. Two police officers were speeding toward the scene of the bombing. When they met the Pontiac, it stopped still, frozen in its traffic lane, refusing to move and let the police car through. The officers ran to the car, pulled open the door, and found a man covered in blood. They secured his wrists and forced him into the back of the police car. The Pontiac was taken away.
At the jail, they almost decided to release Sam on the minor charge of blocking the road to emergency vehicles. But then Detective Ivy saw him, bloody and pale-faced, and decided to ask him a few questions. He took Sam into his office. How did Sam's face get cut? He said

that maybe he'd been in a fight. Where was the fight? Who was he fighting with? Where did it happen? Where did he get the car? Sam had no answers. His hands were shaking.
"Two little boys got blown to bits in their daddy's office this morning. A local lawyer by the name of Kramer... Jewish. Let me guess - you know nothing about it, right?" asked the detective.
"No. I'd like to see a lawyer," Sam said finally.
The piece of glass in Sam's face was removed and sent to the laboratory. It matched the glass in the front windows of the office building. The green Pontiac car was traced to Jeremiah Dogan. A fifteen-minute fuse was found in its trunk. Sam Cayhall was also found to be a longtime member of the Klan. The case was solved as far as the FBI was concerned. Rollie Wedge's name was not mentioned, and would not be spoken by either Dogan or Cayhall. They feared for their own homes and families if they did.
Sam Cayhall and Jeremiah Dogan were charged with murder on May 5, 1967. Their lawyer, Clovis Brazelton, made sure that the trial was held many miles away, in Nettles County, an area sympathetic to the Klan.
"You don't think I'll be found guilty?" Sam asked him.
"Of course not. You just deny everything." Brazelton patted Sam on the arm. "Trust me, Sam, I've done this before. We'll get an all-white jury. Your kind of people."
Outside the courthouse, the Klan set up camp. Supporters arrived from other states, and their leaders made long speeches calling Cayhall and Dogan their heroes.
Inside the courtroom, things went smoothly for the two men. Brazelton raised doubts about the prosecution's case. Most importantly, no one actually saw Cayhall putting the bomb in the office. In fact, no one could prove anything.
After a day and a half of hard discussion, the jury could not agree whether the men were guilty or not. The trial was abandoned, and Sam Cayhall went home for the first time in five months.
The second trial was held six months later, in another rural area four hours from Greenville. This area too was full of Klan members and people sympathetic to them. The jury again was all white and non-Jewish. They heard the same stories, the same lies.
This trial did have something new. Marvin Kramer was there, sitting in his wheelchair next to the front row. He watched the jury for three days. Most of them could not bear to look at him. However, one young woman glanced at Marvin repeatedly - Sharon Culpepper was the mother of twin boys. As Marvin looked back at her, his eyes begged her for justice.
When the jury went away to discuss the case, Sharon Culpepper alone voted the men guilty. For two days, the rest of the jury tried to make her change her mind, but she was firm. The second trial ended with the jury undecided, eleven to one. Again, everyone was sent home.
Rollie Wedge's name had been mentioned only once. During a lunch break, Dogan whispered to Cayhall that a message had been received from the kid. Wedge wanted them to know that he was in the area, watching the trial, and watching them.
Ruth and Marvin Kramer separated in 1970. He entered a mental hospital later that year, and in 1971, he killed himself. He was buried next to his sons.
Ruth Kramer returned to Memphis to live with her parents.
They wanted Cayhall and Dogan to go on trial for a third time. In fact, the whole Jewish community in Greenville was angry when it became apparent that the District Attorney was tired of losing. There was no new evidence, and a prosecution looked hopeless. Despite pressure from the FBI, the possibility of a new trial gradually faded.
By the late 1970s, many things had changed. Civil rights had arrived in Mississippi. Blacks were voting. Black children went to school with white children. The Klan had not succeeded in keeping Negroes where they belonged.
Then in 1979, two events occurred in the inactive Kramer bombing case. The first was the election of David McAllister as the District Attorney in Greenville. At twenty-seven he was the youngest DA in the state's history. As a teenager, he had stood with the crowd in front of the ruins of Marvin Kramer's office. Now he promised to bring the terrorists to justice.
The second event was an investigation by the tax authorities of Jeremiah Dogan's financial affairs. They produced eighty-six charges against him, relating to non-payment of taxes, which could lead to a maximum of twenty-eight years in prison. After much discussion, the

government offered Dogan a deal. They would not jail him for the tax avoidance if he gave evidence against Sam Cayhall in a new trial of the Kramer case. Dogan accepted the offer.
After twelve years of living quietly in Ford County, Sam Cayhall found himself once again on trial. Much had changed. All-white juries were now rare. There were black judges and black lawyers.
The trial began in February 1981, in a little courthouse in Lakehead County. The young and ambitious District Attorney, David McAllister, did a fine job for the prosecution. He looked good and spoke with feeling to the jury of eight whites and four blacks. He told them how, as a child in Greenville, he had grown up with Jewish friends and had played with black kids too. He told them how, one morning in 1967, he had seen the smoking ruins of Kramer's office. He saw the firemen finding Marvin Kramer, then the bodies of the boys. Tears had run down his cheeks as they slowly carried the little bodies to an ambulance. When McAllister's speech finished, the courtroom was silent. Several members of the jury had tears in their eyes.
On February 12, 1981, Sam Cayhall was found guilty of murder. Two days later, the jury decided he should be put to death. He was taken to Parchman prison to begin his long wait for the gas chamber. He was now on death row.

Part 2

Carla is going to leave the shop. But where is her umbrella?
There is one umbrella near the door. It is not a red umbrella. It is not Carla’s umbrella.
This umbrella is old and black. It has a pattern of yellow ducks. It is not smart. Carla takes the umbrella. “This is not my lucky day!” Carla says.
Carla walks to the town square. A young man speaks to her.
Hello!
He smiles.
Carla does not know this young man. She walks away quickly.
The young man is following Carla. She walks into a crowd of people. The young man follows the black and yellow umbrella. “Hello! Wait!”  A young man says.

Part 3

Carla turns. She looks at the young man. She is angry. “Go away!” she says.
The young man is sad. “Marisa, I’m sorry!” he says.  “I’m very late.”
“I’m not Marisa,” Carla shouts. “You are not Marisa?” says the young man. He points at the black umbrella with yellow ducks. “That’s her umbrella.” “Oh,” says Carla. “Who is Marisa?” “I don’t know Marisa,” says the young man. “I’m going to meet her. We are going to have coffee. It is my cousin’s idea. Marisa works with my cousin.” “I am not Marisa!” says Carla again.
 “My cousin has a photo of Marisa,” says the young man. “She’s tall. You’re tall. Her hair is short and dark. Your hair is short and dark. In the photo, she has an umbrella.
It’s a black umbrella with yellow ducks. You have a black umbrella with yellow ducks!”
Carla looks up at the old umbrella. “Marisa is a thief,” she thinks. “She has my new red umbrella.” Carla is angry again. “Please don’t be angry,” says the young man. He looks at his watch “It’s three o’clock. Marisa goes to work at 2.30. I can’t meet her now. It’s too late.” He smiles at Carla. “Let’s have coffee together,” he says.
Carla thinks for a moment. “OK,” she says. “Let’s go to my aunt’s café.” The young man smiles again. “That will be great,” he says. “My name is Paul. I’m a law student - third year," a young man says. “I’m Carla. I’m a student too. I’m studying science,” Carla says.

Part 4

Carla sits in the café with Paul. They drink coffee. They talk. They laugh and talk.
Suddenly Carla jumps up. “Oh, no!” she says. “It’s late. I must go home. I must study. I’m going to have an exam tomorrow.” “Good luck! Will you meet me again?” Paul says. “Yes. That will be nice.” Carla says.
It is almost dark. The town square is quiet.
Carla sees a tall young woman. The young woman has short dark hair. She has a smart umbrella. It is a red umbrella.
The young woman is Marisa!
Marisa sees the old black umbrella with yellow ducks. She is worried. Suddenly, her face is red. “Don’t worry, says Carla. “Keep my red umbrella. I like this umbrella. It’s a lucky umbrella. This is my lucky day!” The rain falls on the umbrellas. Carla smiles. Then she runs home.