Part 62, page 155

Transcript

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Suspect in Evers Murder Waives Extradition to La.

By Toni House Washington Star Staff Writer

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BYRON de la BECKWITH White Supremacist

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Byron de la Beckwith, the white supremacist twice tried but never convicted of the 1963 ambush killing of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, yesterday waived extradition to Louisiana on a fugitive-from-justice charge.

According to papers filed with D.C. Superior Court, Beckwith was arrested early yesterday in a Northwest Washington home by officers of the D.C. Police Fugitive Squad. They acted on a Feb. 28 bench warrant issued by a New Orleans judge after Beckwith failed to surrender to begin a five-year sentence for transporting explosives over a state highway.

He had been free on a $10,000 bond pending appeal in the case, and his Washington attorney said Beckwith came here because he believed he was permitted to travel.

BEFORE SUPERIOR Court Judge William E. Stewart Jr., Beckwith waived an extradition hearing and agreed to return to Louisiana.

Beckwith was arrested about 2:30 a.m. yesterday at a private home in the 2200 block of Observatory Place NW, where he had been a houseguest for less than a week.

While police refused to reveal how they learned Beckwith was in Washington, sources close to the investigation said the first law enforcement agency to have contact with Beckwith was the U.S. Secret Service, the agency charged with protecting the President. The Secret Service in turn called D.C. police.

A woman who identified herself as his hostess, but refused to give her name, said Beckwith had come to Washington to try to convince government officials to purchase a perpetual oil filter he was selling.

According to court papers, Beckwith, a former fertilizer salesman, has been the Mississippi representative of the Southern Resources Co. of Little Rock, Ark., for the past seven months. The woman said Beckwith was inspired to come to Washington by President Carter's energy speech last week because he believed the oil filter would save fuel.

WHILE THE Secret Service had no comment on

Beckwith or his arrest, sources suggested someone he contacted on business may have telephoned the Secret Service. Beckwith's hostess said Secret Service agents stopped Beckwith and talked with him in front of her home Wednesday afternoon. Lt. Raymond Comstock of the New Orleans Police Department, said that department's first notion Beckwith was in Washington came from a Secret Service inquiry.

In May 1975, a New Orleans jury convicted Beckwith of bringing a live bomb into Louisiana from his native Mississippi after he was found not guilty on similar federal charges.

The prosecution at the time alleged Beckwith planned to plant the bomb, composed of seven pounds of dynamite, at the home of a New Orleans Jewish community leader.

Beckwith was subsequently freed on bond while his case was appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court and apparently returned to Mississippi. In February, the state supreme court upheld the conviction and, when Beckwith failed to surrender, a bench warrant was issued.

Beckwith's two trials for the Evers murder both ended in mistrials.

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