KKK Victims Recall 1966 Murder

In the deep South, an old man and a new Mississippi face the past, CBS News Correspondent Byron Pitts reports.

Sam Bowers, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, is being tried for a fifth time for the racially-charged murder of a black activist in 1966.

Prosecutors say that Bowers, now 73, ordered the murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. This time, a jury of mixed race will hear new evidence, in a case that ended in four mistrials before all-white juries in the '60s.

Then, Bowers wielded power in dark places as Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan for all Mississippi. The group has been linked to the murders of civil rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the NAACP's Medgar Evers.

Bowers served six years in prison for one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era: the 1964 Mississippi Burning slayings of three civil rights workers.

In 1966, Bowers allegedly gave the order for his men to firebomb Dahmer's home and store because he was registering other blacks to vote. Dahmer died defending his wife and children that night.

Billy Roy Pitts, a former Klansman who stood in the front yard of Dahmer's home but claims he didn't anything else that night, will help prove Bowers was the mastermind behind in the firebombing 32 years ago. He was scheduled to appear before court Wednesday.

Billy Roy Pitts, who served a federal conspiracy sentence until 1971 but never served time on a murder charge, was a key witness in trials that led to the convictions of four Klansmen.

In court Tuesday, Dahmer's wife, Ellie, and then his daughter, Bettie, took the witness stand and relived their nightmare. They told how they were awakened at 2 a.m., their home doused with gasoline and peppered with gunfire.

After the Klansmen set the building on fire, Dahmer stayed behind, shooting at the attackers while his family escaped out the back. Dahmer's wife acknowledged that she didn't see Bowers during the attack.

Bettie Dahmer, who was 10 at the time, told the jury that she later saw her father "with his skin hanging from his arms. He never complained. He just wanted to know if we were all right."

A bullet-riddled pickup truck still sits in the Dahmer's yard, as a reminder of what happened a little more than three decades ago.

As for Bowers, he faces life in prison if he's convicted of planning Dahmer's murder, a crime committed in the old Mississippi that still haunts the new one.