Wright Thompson

Roy Bryant and J.W.

Milam have the same mother, have different fathers, but have the same, I believe, paternal grandfathers.

Like, this is like wild.

Wild stuff.

So Leslie Milam was never charged.

The reason the killers made up this whole fake story in Luke magazine was because they didn't want to indict him or didn't want to like point the finger at him.

And on his deathbed,

His wife called their preacher, Macklin Hubble, in Cleveland, Mississippi, and said, Leslie would like to see you.

He drives out to this house on this road on the outskirts of Cleveland, Mississippi, like going toward Dockery.

The dead ends into a cotton field.

There's no shade.

It's just hot.

And the preacher goes in, and Leslie Milam is stretched out on a couch.

in the front room, and he's there because he wants to confess to his preacher that he was one of the people who killed Emmett Till.

And I talked to the preacher just before he died.

He was an incredible man.

It was his late, late 90s.

So he sat there and he prayed with him, and then he left, and the preacher said he had such a bad taste in his mouth because he felt like the guy was trying to lawyer his way to heaven.

Like it didn't feel sincere, but he's like, it's not my place.

I like preachers who understand they're not God.