They decided to kill the boy and throw the body in the Tallahatchie River. What Milam needed most was a weight. There was a cotton gin nearby where they had just brought in some new equipment, and he remembered some workers carrying out the old gin fan, about three feet long: the perfect anchor. They drove over to the cotton gin and found the fan. By then it was daylight and Milam boasted to Huie, for the first time, that he was a little nervous. “Somebody might see us and accuse us of stealing the fan,” he said. Then he and Bryant took Till to a deserted bank of the Tallahatchie. Milam made
...more
