William Henry Lee

William Henry Lee was last seen leaving his job at the Storkline Factory in Jackson at 11:30 p.m. on February 24, 1965, during a night of rain and snow, on his way home to Goshen Springs roughly an hour away. He never arrived; his body was found beside a road the following afternoon, fully clothed with only a small amount of blood on his lip and no other visible injury. A flashlight matching one Lee normally kept in his car was found nearby. The Rankin County Sheriff's Department moved his car before it could be examined for evidence, and his body was embalmed after only a 15-minute coroner's inquest, before any autopsy could be performed. A civil rights organization later complained that a second autopsy, conducted after embalming, listed the cause of death as strangulation, likely from inhaling gasoline — a finding that conflicted with the original examiner's report of no visible injury. The complaint also noted that Lee had attended civil rights meetings. Neither the original local investigation nor a later FBI inquiry found evidence of a civil rights violation, and the case was closed without identifying a suspect.

Goshen Springs, MS · Rankin County

• 1965: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity and the February 24–25, 1965 timeline, per the DOJ's public case file.
• A civil rights organization's contemporaneous complaint alleged investigative failures, including the car being moved before evidence collection and embalming occurring before a full autopsy, per the same file.

• The cause of death itself is disputed between two conflicting post-mortem examinations.
• No suspect was ever identified in the case.

• U.S. Department of Justice — Notice to Close File
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs