Grand jury in Greenville declined to indict Carolyn Bryant

LEFLORE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – – For more than 70 years, there has been controversy surrounding the woman at the center of the Emmett Till lynching.

Tuesday a grand jury in Greenville declined to indict Carolyn Bryant on kidnapping charges and on manslaughter charges.

Dewayne Richardson, Leflore County District attorney says the grand jury cited insufficient evidence.

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old visiting the Delta from his home in Chicago during 1955.

Carolyn Bryant, 21 at the time, claimed Till whistled at her and made sexual advances at a grocery store in Money.

Till was kidnapped and tortured and killed.

Bryant’s former husband, Roy, and his brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, were prosecuted. The trial ended in an acquittal, although the two later confessed.

The Till lynching case was re-opened several years ago when Bryant changed her story in a 2017 book.

She told the author that the incident never happened.

In June an arrest warrant with Bryant’s name on it was found among papers in the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse.

She was never taken into custody. And now a federal investigation and two grand juries have declined to indict her.

Bryant left Mississippi and is now living in Kentucky.