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Retired Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich died Tuesday. He was 72.
Helfrich was known best for his role prosecuting Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in the 1966 killing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr. in Hattiesburg.
The White Knights was the most violent white supremacist organization in the 1960s.
Before Bowers went to trial in 1998, Helfrich told reporters, ‘‘Justice was never served the first time. It’s time justice was done.’’
The first trial had led to a few convictions, but the klansmen didn’t stay behind bars long because governors pardoned them, commuted their sentences or released them early. Most of the killers walked free, including Bowers.
Thirty-two years after the fact, Bowers went on trial for ordering the killing of Dahmer, who died after defending his family from klansmen who fired into the family home and set it on fire.
Dennis Dahmer was 12 years old when the attack took place on Jan. 10, 1966. That same year, Helfrich watched his dad die from lung cancer. He, too, was 12.
“That’s why I feel close to the Dahmer family,” Helfrich said then. “I was there when my dad died, there till his last breath.”
Days before the August 1998 trial began, his voice broke with emotion as he spoke about the family. “I cannot imagine the thoughts that go through their minds,” he said.
Dennis Dahmer described his relationship with Helfrich as a close one. “We both talked about our shared experience of losing our fathers during adolescence,” he said.
In his closing statement, defense lawyer Travis Buckley claimed that Bowers was being persecuted, comparing it to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda campaign against Jews.
Helfrich told jurors that Bowers ordered klansmen to kill Dahmer, just like Hitler ordered his henchmen to kill millions of Jews. “Did Hitler do it? No. Was Hitler responsible? Yes. And what do we have here?” Helfrich said as he pointed at Bowers. “Let’s talk about Hitler. Let’s talk about an evil genius sitting right there.”
A jury convicted Bowers, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison, where he died in 2006.
“The Dahmer family will always be grateful for the decision made by District Attorney Lindsay Carter and then-prosecutor Bob Helfrich to reopen the civil rights murder case of Vernon F. Dahmer Sr.,” Dennis Dahmer said.
Yes, he said, it was “a risky political decision to make, but it was the right thing to do. Justice delayed is better than justice denied!”
Five years after that conviction, Helfrich was sworn in as a circuit judge. Dahmer’s daughter, Bettie, declared, “It’s a new day for justice in Forrest and Perry County.”
Helfrich became one of the first group of judges to utilize drug courts in Mississippi. Those courts make it possible for those battling drug problems to reverse convictions after completing a recovery program.
In 2006, he threw out the burglary conviction of Black Korean War veteran Clyde Kennard, who was railroaded in 1960 after he tried to enroll at the then-all-white college now known as the University of Southern Mississippi.
Kennard was sentenced to seven years in prison and was released in 1963 after officials at Parchman prison discovered he was dying of cancer. The lone witness recanted his testimony, saying Kennard had done nothing wrong.
“Because this matter did begin here, it should end here,” Helfrich said. “This is not a black and white issue; it’s a right and wrong issue. To correct that wrong, I am compelled to do the right thing.”
Helfrich retired last year, and Gov. Tate Reeves appointed Hattiesburg attorney Thomas “Michael” Reed to take Helfrich’s place until the term expires in 2028.
Devery Anderson, author of the book “A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard,” said the passion and resolve that Helfrich “mustered in prosecuting the mastermind behind the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer tells you everything you need to know about him.”
His exoneration of Kennard demonstrates that Helfrich “was always willing to do the right thing — let the consequence follow,” Anderson said. “He will long be revered in Mississippi law for these and a host of other reasons.”
