MONROE, Ga. — Federal and state agents swarmed the backyard of a modest white house along a windy stretch in rural northeast Georgia this week in search of clues that could be linked to living suspects involved in the unsolved 1946 lynchings of four people.
Agents from the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation finished searching the property in Walton County on Tuesday as they probed the deaths, which are some of the nation’s most notorious unsolved lynchings. Authorities said they received “recent information” about the killings.
Activists in the area have long said that some of the culprits in the lynchings of Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dor sey are still alive.
A white mob of as many as 30 people dragged the two black couples from a car and tied them to trees July 25, 1946. The mob fired three volleys of bullets at the couples, leaving their bodies slumped behind in the dirt. Dorothy Malcom was seven months pregnant.
An outraged President Truman dispatched the FBI to the town of Monroe, about 45 miles east of Atlanta, but the feds were met with a wall of silence. The FBI identified 55 possible suspects after the killings, but no one was ever arrested, partly because of a lack of witnesses.
