The latest investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago who was lynched in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white teenage girl, has been closed by the Department of Justice after recent allegations could not be substantiated, Politico reports.

Till was kidnapped, tortured and killed after Carolyn Bryant claimed the boy whistled and groped her.  Presumably Till was kidnapped by local white men angered by the alleged impertinence of a Black boy.  To demonstrate the brutality of the murder, Till’s mother insisted his son have an open casket at public viewings and at his funeral.  A photograph of the boy’s disfigured face and body were published in Black-oriented magazines.  When Look magazine published a photo of the dead boy’s face, many in the white population expressed horror and outrage.

Bryant, who was around 19 at the time of the murder, reportedly told author Timothy Tyson that Till never grabbed her or said obscene words to him, as she initially claimed.  Though Tyson used a tape recorder to memorialize the interview, Tyson claims that Bryant made the statement while he was changing cassettes, and instead, Tyson relied on his handwritten notes to support his claim.  A relative of Bryant’s who sat in on the interview said Bryant never recanted her story.

After Tyson’s book was published in 2017, the Justice Department reopened the investigation based partially on the account in Tyson’s book.  After field investigations and interviews with multiple people, including Bryant (who is still alive and goes by the name Carolyn Bryant Donham, the DOJ determined it would not be able to support additional charges in the case.