A draft memoir written by the woman who set off the events that ultimately led to the torture and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 details that she likely lied to state and federal investigators who looked into the murder over a half century, CNN reports, a fact that may open up the woman to prosecution, something that didn’t happen in 1955 because of the privileges of being a white woman in the South.

Carolyn Bryant Donham’s sealed memoir was given to the University of North Carolina to be released in 2036, and a University historian, Timothy Tyson, interviewed Donham in 2008 to provide historical context to her writing.

In the draft, Donham claimed Till was defiant when Donham then-husband, Roy Bryant, brought Till to their house to have his wife identify him as the “Negro” boy who wolf-whistled at her while she was at her job in a retail store.  Donham writes that after she told Bryant that Till was not the boy who whistled, Till wryly smiled at her and proclaimed, “Yes, it was me.”

The story Donham tells in the memoir differs greatly from the official accounts at the time, in which Donham claimed she told Bryant that she couldn’t identify who whistled at her.  Donham said at the time, and in interviews as recently as 2008, that Till never said anything when kidnapped by Bryant.

Donham, who is now in her 90s and believed to live in North Carolina, has not given any interviews to the media in decades.  Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted by an all-white jury in a Mississippi trial for torturing, mutilating and shooting Till in the head before dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River.  Till’s mother demanded that his casket be kept open during his wake so people could see the brutality inflicted on her son.

The idea that a 14-year-old Chicago boy kidnapped and threatened by rednecks in Mississippi would be openly defiant to white men in the Jim Crow South of the 1950s contradicts accounts of people who knew the boy and who witnessed the events.  It also contradicts accounts made by Bryant in interviews after he was acquitted and safe against prosecution due to double jeopardy.

Tyson, the historian, had given copies of the sealed draft to the FBI, who re-investigated the case in 2005, but found no cause to pursue charges against Donham.  However, the recent discovery of a warrant by a different team of historians prompted Tyson to release copies of the memoir to news organizations.  “I decided that if there was going to be a re-investigation, that criminal justice outweighs the archival agreement,” Tyson said.

The warrant for Donham’s arrest, issued in the 1950s doesn’t have an expiration because it deals with the federal crime of kidnapping, a crime which doesn’t have a statute of limitations.  Donham claimed at various times that she didn’t know about a warrant being issued, a claim which other details in the book also seems to contradict.

“Decades later, when I was being interviewed by the FBI, I found out that there was also a warrant for my arrest, but they didn’t arrest me[;] in fact, at the time [in 1955], they didn’t even tell me that there was a warrant,” Donham wrote.  “The FBI told me the warrant was for kidnapping. I was surprised when he showed it to me. The person that filed the kidnapping charges said there was a soft voice in the truck, but they didn’t see who it was. I guess the sheriff thought it was me. I was never arrested or charged with anything.”

Now appears that Donham not only knew what happened to Till after her husband and brother-in-law left the house with the boy, it appears that she misled law enforcement on her actions and knowledge of the events.  Donham may have been spared charges because she was a white woman in the South, where women were typically not held responsible for their actions and whites were rarely charged–let alone convicted–of violence against Blacks.