Samuel Bowers, 82, Was KKK Wizard

Former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, who was serving a life sentence for the 1966 bombing death of a civil rights leader, died yesterday Sunday in a Mississippi penitentiary. He was 82.

Bowers was convicted in 1998 of ordering the 1966 assassination of Vernon Dahmer, a civil rights activist who had fought for voting rights in Mississippi.

Bowers' lawyers claimed he was "sacrificed to the media" to further the political ambitions of then Attorney General Mike Moore.