OurTupelo

Mafia hitman Gregory Scarpa Sr. pocketed millions from drug dealing, donned a seven-carat pinky ring and shot to death so many people that he stopped counting at 50.

Oh, and he helped the FBI solve who killed Mississippi NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr.

Hollywood plans to release a movie next year on Scarpa’s role in the Dahmer case, “By Any Means,” starring Mark Wahlberg as the mobster.

The film’s producer, Alex Lebovici, who attended the 100th birthday of Dahmer’s widow, Ellie, in June, said the filmmakers are portraying Dahmer as the family man and brave NAACP leader he was. 

Dahmer’s daughter, Bettie, cooperated with filmmakers and watched them shoot scenes in Georgia. “The way the movie is portrayed, it’s not about Vernon Dahmer, it’s about Gregory Scarpa,” she said. “I have no problem with it.”

Her brother, Dennis, worries that audiences will wrongly associate his right-thinking father with the rotten mobster. “His legacy deserves to be told truthfully about who he was,” he said, “and not intermeshed with fictional characters and a vigilante justice storyline that did not happen.”

The Dahmer family regularly meets with students on the Sojourn to the Past tours to tell Vernon Dahmer’s story. Sojourn Executive Director Jeff Steinberg said he hopes publicity surrounding the film will encourage people to learn more about Dahmer. “He’s a true American hero who belongs in our history books,” he said. “He and his family inspire us all.”

On Jan. 10, 1966, a day after Black citizens learned they could pay their poll taxes at Dahmer’s store north of Hattiesburg, Klansmen firebombed his store and home north of Hattiesburg. Dahmer grabbed his shotgun and fired back at the Klansmen so that his family could escape. 

The flames seared his lungs. That night at the hospital, as he neared death, a reporter asked why he had continued to push for voting rights, knowing it might cost him his life. Dahmer replied, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

A few weeks later, his voter registration card arrived. He had fought his whole life for the right of all Americans to be able to vote, but he had never been able to cast a ballot himself.

In 1964, Joseph Sullivan, known by fellow agents as a by-the-book inspector, headed up the FBI’s investigation into a different Mississippi case, the KKK’s killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, which became known as the “Mississippi Burning” case or MIBURN for short.

But as agents closed in on members of the White Knights of the KKK in 1966, they became targets. Armed Klansmen shot out agents’ windows, and one agent found a rattlesnake in his car.

Roy K. Moore, the former Marine and head of the FBI in Mississippi, decided to fight fire with fire, according to former agents. He sent in a request to the FBI to use informant NY-3461 for his operation in Mississippi. 

That informant was Scarpa, who carried the nickname, “The Grim Reaper,” because of how many people he killed for the Colombo crime family.  He had managed to dodge a bank robbery charge by becoming an FBI informant.

In January 1966, Scarpa and an FBI agent entered Byrd’s Radio & TV Service in Laurel, Mississippi. Inside they found the bug-eyed owner, Lawrence Byrd, a suspect in Dahmer’s killing. Scarpa and the agent bought a TV and asked for Byrd’s help loading it.

Once there, Scarpa and the agent shoved Byrd into the car and hauled him to a remote area, where the mobster pistol-whipped him. After that, Byrd gave the FBI a 22-page confession, which identified Cecil Sessum as an exalted cyclops in the White Knights.

Sessum confessed, too, describing how he and other armed Klansmen pumped gasoline into a dozen jugs before heading to the Dahmer home. He said the only reason he confessed was that agents beat him, made him kneel on Dahmer’s grave and put a pistol to his head. The FBI denied the claim, and the court upheld his conviction.

Juries ultimately convicted four men — Sessum, Byrd, William Thomas Smith and Charles Clifford Wilson — on murder or arson charges. Mississippi governors freed them early.

It wasn’t until 1998 that Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers was convicted of ordering the attack on Dahmer. Bowers died in prison in 2006 while serving a life sentence.

As for Scarpa, he remained a top FBI informant for much of the rest of his life. He ratted on rivals while rubbing out mob foes.

The new movie opens with Scarpa beating KKK leader Edgar Ray Killen with a baseball bat to learn the location of the bodies of the civil rights workers.

Scarpa told a similar story before his death that ABC News and other news outlets have published.

Except former FBI agents say it isn’t true. They say the revelation of the bodies’ location actually came from Mr. X, a Mississippi highway patrolman who knew the Klansmen and told Inspector Sullivan that the bodies were buried in the Old Jolly Dam. Four days later, agents found the bodies there.

In 2007, Scarpa’s girlfriend, Linda Schiro, repeated his claim, but the details she shared — Scarpa tracking down a Klansman who sold TVs, buying a TV set and threatening to kill him — describe what Scarpa did in the Dahmer case.

As for the new movie on Scarpa, Lebovici said the script by Sascha Penn and Theodore Witcher, based on the book “Deal with the Devil: The FBI’s Secret Thirty-Year Relationship with a Mafia Killer” attracted him to the project.

The screenplay appeared on the Black List, a compilation of “most-liked” scripts by film executives that had yet to be produced. “We fell for the material,” Lebovici said. “We thought it was extraordinarily compelling, such a phenomenal story.”

Dahmer’s son, Dennis, had a different reaction. He finished about a third of the script before stopping, he said. “It’s fiction. They’re creating a Black FBI agent that didn’t exist.”

After J. Edgar Hoover began directing the FBI in 1924, he fired what few female special agents there were and kept the FBI Academy from admitting Black men until 1962.

Lebovici said the Black agent portrayed in the film is a composite character, who grew up in Mississippi before moving to Chicago. When the agent returns to Mississippi, “he’s relegated to the file room, but he’s got a relationship with the Dahmers.”

In the script, the FBI assigns the agent to work as a driver for Scarpa, and the two team up to work on the Dahmer case.

Lebovici said producers plan to show the film to possible distributors next year.

Through the movie, he said he hopes viewers can glimpse the hatred of these days and wrestle with the moral question: “Is violence justified in moments like this?” 

Over the past few years, this nation has seen an increase in assassinations and other political violence, he said. “Things are getting out of control. It’s very relevant to what’s going on right now.”

Mississippi will receive nearly $206 million in the 2026 fiscal year as a part of a federal program that aims to transform rural health care and offset budget cuts that could harm rural hospitals.  

Awards were made to all 50 states as a part of a five-year, $50 billion federal investment into rural health care. The amounts average $200 million and range from $147 million to $281 million. Texas and Alaska will receive the largest shares of funding, while Connecticut and New Jersey were granted the smallest amounts. 

“Today marks an extraordinary milestone for rural health in America,” said Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in a Dec. 29 press release. “Thanks to Congress establishing this investment and President Trump for his leadership, states are stepping forward with bold, creative plans to expand rural access, strengthen their workforces, modernize care, and support the communities that keep our nation running.”

The funding program was tacked on to President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending law passed this summer, which is expected to result in significant losses to federal Medicaid spending in rural areas. Congressional Republicans added the one-time money for rural health to soften the blow associated with the cuts. 

Half of the $50 billion program is to be distributed evenly among all states with approved applications. Awards for the other half of the funding were determined based on a formula that calculated states’ rurality, the quality of its application and implementation of several policies aligned with the White House’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Mississippi has recently taken steps to adopt policies that receive higher scores, including reestablishing the Presidential Fitness Test in schools and seeking a waiver to restrict purchases of sugary foods and drinks through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in October.

An estimated $137 billion in cuts to federal Medicaid spending are expected in rural areas over 10 years, meaning Rural Health Transformation Program funds will offset roughly a third of those cuts, according to analysis from KFF. 

More than half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing, according to a recent report by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Hospital leaders have warned that the federal cuts could force more rural hospitals to stop some services or close their doors altogether. 

In Mississippi, cuts to state-directed payments, which help hospitals offset low Medicaid payments, will amount to a loss of $160 million a year statewide beginning in 2029, Mississippi Medicaid Director Cindy Bradshaw told lawmakers in September. 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released application summaries on Dec. 29 submitted by each state.

According to the summary, Mississippi’s plan consists of six initiatives: 

A statewide rural health assessment will refine investment strategies and align critical rural health needs with funding after a review of data and stakeholder input.

To improve emergency response, coordination of care after discharge and access to behavioral health services, the coordinated regional integrated systems initiative will integrate emergency medical services, hospitals, public health and social services into regional healthcare districts.

A workforce expansion initiative includes retention awards, residency expansion, preceptor development, early-career outreach and “Earn While You Learn” programs to recruit, retain and train clinicians, allied health professionals and support staff.

The health technology advancement and modernization and telehealth adoption and provider support initiatives will modernize health internet technology and advance telehealth infrastructure, cybersecurity and consumer-facing tools to improve efficiency, coordination and access.

The building rural infrastructure for delivery, growth and efficiency initiative will address capital investments, psychiatric emergency services and care gap closure. It will include pilot programs for early intervention, Autism Spectrum Disorder-focused, care management and value-based care programs, and capital investments will be aimed at expanding facility capacity and specialized services.

No subawardees have yet been awarded as a part of Mississippi’s plan, according to the summary. Agreements will be established when the project is implemented and may be formed with rural hospitals, federally qualified health centers, primary care clinics, community health centers, technology and telehealth vendors, universities and professional associations. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, whose office oversaw the development of Mississippi’s plan, unveiled the state’s plan at a Nov. 4 press conference but did not release its application or application summary to the public, like most other states. Mississippi is one of four states that did not publicly release documents pertaining to its plan, and many states released full or partial application documents, according to data from KFF last updated on Dec. 23. 

Reeves’ office denied Mississippi Today’s public records request for the application, saying the requested records “appear to be confidential under Federal law” until awards are made, citing the same document that says states may post plans to their websites at their discretion. 

It also pointed to a state law that exempts public bodies from the Mississippi Public Records Act’s deadlines during procurement. The law does not bar the state from releasing the records, but says it is not required to meet the usual deadlines until contracts are awarded.

On Jan. 15, Adam Ganucheau, then the editor-in-chief of Mississippi Today, announced the inception of Mississippi Today Ideas. On that same day, Mississippi Today Ideas’ inaugural guest essay, written by Civil Rights icon Myrlie Evers, was published.

The calendar is close enough to the anniversary of the announcement and Evers’ inaugural essay to proclaim that Mississippi Today Ideas has been in existence for a year.

And while in many ways we are just getting started, what a first year it has been for MT Ideas. We have heard from famous Mississippians, such as former governors, Mississippi-born music legend Marty Stuart and from everyday Mississippians who we believed had important information to share.

Just in the month of December as Mississippi Today Ideas closed out its first year in existence, we published essays from acclaimed Mississippi-born movie director Tate Taylor about the rededication of a historically significant church in southwest Mississippi and from central Mississippi middle school teacher Brandy Richardson who is toiling to improve the educational outcome of her students.

The Ideas section publishes opinion pieces from both Mississippi Today staff and from guest writers. We look for essays that inform the readers about our state and about the communities where we live and hopefully the writers on occasion suggest solutions to the issues facing our state and communities.

“Mississippi Today Ideas will serve as a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future,” Ganucheau wrote in announcing the inception of Mississippi Today Ideas on Jan. 15. “Rather than following a traditional newspaper opinion section format, the section will strive to focus on creative, constructive solutions that address Mississippi’s unique challenges and inspire progress.”

We also strive to publish quality writing. People who read the MT Ideas section will be impressed with the quality of many of the essays.

In a very real sense, Myrlie Evers had to write the first essay for Mississippi Today Ideas. She, better than any person, bridges the state’s bad and good. No one has more reason to despise her native state than her, who lost her husband, Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers, to a racist assassin who for decades Mississippians refused to punish despite overwhelming evidence. The assassin was finally convicted in 1994. Myrlie Evers wrote about her native state and proclaimed in the essay in 2025, “I still believe in Mississippi.”

How powerful.

Mississippi Today has published 94 guest essays – an average of nearly two per week. We also have published 70 staff written pieces for MT Ideas.

The most read Mississippi Today Ideas offering for the past year was an essay by Ole Miss quarterback legend Archie Manning.

Manning, who has spent his adult life living in nearby New Orleans where for most of his professional football career played for the Saints, wrote about how he has throughout his life maintained his love for Mississippi and remains involved in various entrepreneurial endeavors in his native state.

The realization that Manning’s guest essay was the most read Mississippi Today Ideas’ submission resuscitated a memory of watching a first college football game, the nationally televised Ole Miss-Alabama game in 1969. Manning set multiple Southeastern Conference records in that epic contest, producing legions of long-time Manning fans.

Manning in many ways bridges the state’s past and present.

Read the most read essays of the past year below and sign up for the MT Ideas newsletter to get essays in your inbox on the last day of each month.

Archie Manning: Despite New Orleans roots and broader legacy, Mississippi is still home

Archie Manning writes: “As I go from place to place in Mississippi both in my travels and in my mind’s eye, I realize what I love most about my home state. It’s the people. There’s no place like Mississippi and no people like the folks in Mississippi.”

How Jim Barksdale’s $100 million gift to the state 25 years ago led to ‘The Mississippi Miracle’

Twenty-five years ago, Jim Barksdale and his late wife Sally gifted the state of Mississippi $100 million to create a program aimed at boosting public school reading. Here’s the behind-the-scenes story on the return on investment, since dubbed “The Mississippi Miracle.”

Attorney questions state Auditor White using his post to attack private citizens

Attorney: Auditor Shad White – the first millennial to serve in statewide office in Mississippi – chose to weaponize his platform and power against two women for expressing their views on their personal social media accounts.

Ex Madison resident ran from Mississippi but is now pulling for Lane Kiffin and the state

Despite a bad Mississippi childhood, writer says, “I find myself rooting for Lane Kiffin to stay, and in a strange way, rooting for the people of Mississippi.”

Marty Stuart: Showcasing my love for country music with a new hometown museum

Marty Stuart: “The Congress of Country Music, an endeavor born out of passion, dedication and an abiding respect and admiration for the roots of country music, is now under construction in my hometown.”

Policy analyst: Income tax elimination risks significant harm to Mississippi’s future

If the income tax is fully eliminated, the state’s wealthiest residents would receive a $41,000 tax break, close to the state’s average annual salary. 

Derrick Simmons: Monday’s Confederate Memorial Day recognition is awful for Mississippians

State Sen. Derrick Simmons writes that Mississippi officially celebrating Confederate Memorial Day is bad policy, bad governance and a deep stain on the values we uphold today.

Mississippi still officially celebrates Robert E. Lee on MLK Day. It’s beyond time to stop.

Column: On Jan. 20, Mississippi officially commemorates both Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s beyond time the state stops celebrating Lee, a Confederate who chose treason and human bondage over country.

My grandfather’s law firm just bowed to Trump. It goes against his and America’s values.

Essay: My grandfather’s New York law firm just bowed to the Trump administration. That decision goes against what my grandfather — and our nation’s founders — stood for.

Attorney: 1970s Air Force DEI training ‘changed my life,’ but is now illegal in Mississippi

Professor says, “Important lessons the Air Force taught my father would be illegal today, 55 years later, if presented in any Mississippi school or university.”

Mississippi Today journalists this year provided in-depth coverage that holds public officials accountable, shines a light on issues affecting people’s everyday lives and provides a sense of place in this complex state we call home.

Our justice, politics and health teams have continued to expose conditions in state prisons and county jails, including problems with medical care. 

The politics reporters dug beneath the surface of legislative coverage, reporting on how companies that want to spread sports betting in Mississippi paid for the state House speaker and his staff to attend the Super Bowl.

Our health team examined Mississippi’s rate of C-sections, reported on the impact of the federal government shutdown and provided in-depth coverage of how state and local governments have spent opioid lawsuit settlement money.

Our education team reported on teacher pay, Jackson State University’s presidential search and the cultural traditions of high school homecoming in the Mississippi Delta.

Journalists covering Jackson created an in-depth voters’ guide before elections and explained challenges for the capital city, including blight and water billing.

Our environment reporter wrote about the impacts of climate change in Mississippi, including on the insurance market. 

Mississippi Today’s sports coverage provided thoughtful insight about something important to so many people — college football.

Through our Mississippi Ideas section, we have provided a forum for a wide range of people to write interesting, thoughtful essays.

Our video team has ramped up this year, opening our work to millions of people, both on our site and on social media.

As always, we are grateful for your support, whether it is through financial contributions or through reading our articles, looking at our photos and videos and listening to our podcasts.

Nate Rosenfield and Brian Howey examined the power of sheriffs’ offices in Mississippi as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. Jerry Mitchell is an investigative reporter who has examined civil rights-era cold murder cases in the state for more than 30 years. This article was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Pulitzer Center.

For months, Chancellor Berrong, a 26-year-old in prison for assault and kidnapping, has been trying to tell authorities that he killed a man in a Mississippi jail seven years ago.

He told a prison guard that he had information about the crime, attempted to confess to a detective and gave a written confession to a prison warden, he said, but agents with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the state agency that typically investigates in-custody deaths, took no action.

In interviews, Berrong said that he attacked William Wade Aycock IV at the request of a guard in 2018. That allegation is disputed by a former inmate, who told reporters he overheard Berrong and others planning the assault to stop Aycock from implicating a member of their gang in an unrelated crime.

Previous reporting on the Rankin County Adult Detention Center, where Aycock died, revealed that for years, guards relied on some inmates as an attack squad to help keep order and to retaliate against trouble‌-‌makers.

A review of the initial investigation of the death reveals that authorities took steps that could have hindered a full accounting of what happened. Guards and inmates cleaned the cell where Aycock died with bleach before the state investigators arrived, according to four witnesses. In addition, the MBI’s investigation file contains no photos of the cell, no security camera footage and no notes from interviews with inmates.

Days after the death, MBI agents and the state medical examiner determined that Aycock died by accident after falling off ‌his bunk bed — without documenting the evidence that led them to this conclusion.

Mississippi Today and The New York Times have uncovered evidence that supports Berrong’s confession and suggests that the authorities ignored or destroyed evidence that could have helped solve the case. His account is the latest allegation of wrongdoing by law enforcement in Rankin County, a Jackson suburb where sheriff’s deputies have been accused of torturing suspected drug users.

Jason Dare, the spokesperson and attorney for the sheriff’s department, said he had forwarded reporters’ request for comment to the MBI. He declined to comment further.

The commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, Sean Tindell, said that the MBI would reopen the case based on the new information.

Berrong, a member of the Latin Kings street gang with a long criminal record, said that in June 2018, he yanked a sleeping Aycock off the top bunk in his cell, slammed him to the floor and stomped on his head. He said he never intended to kill the man, just to send him a message to keep his mouth shut.

Berrong said he has come forward out of a sense of guilt.

For seven years, he said, he had gotten away with the crime, in part because of missteps in the investigation. Shortly after killing Aycock, he watched a group of inmates and guards soak up the blood, which had spread past the cell door, and douse the cell in bleach.

A former inmate named John Phillips said he cleaned the cell before the MBI arrived and compared the scene to a horror film. Two former guards who spoke on the condition of anonymity witnessed the cleanup and confirmed the former inmates’ accounts.

When the investigators arrived, they were “angrily talking with each other about the fact that the whole cell has been bleached,” Berrong said. “They said, ‘There’s nothing here.’”

The MBI’s investigative report on Aycock’s death, provided by Tindell, makes no mention of the cleanup.

Tindell said he spoke with the agent responsible for the report, who said he did not recall the cell being cleaned or seeing men enter Aycock’s cell in security camera footage. Tindell said the footage was not preserved by the MBI.

The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department declined to release investigative records related to the case, citing a state law that allows police agencies to withhold such materials.

The MBI’s file on the case amounts to a two-paragraph summary of the investigation and the autopsy report. There are no photos ‌or security camera footage and no interview descriptions, even though several inmates said they were interrogated by investigators.

“The reporting at the time obviously left some things to be desired,” Tindell said in an interview.

In the years since he took over the department in 2020, the agency has improved its record-keeping practices by “making sure that we had witness lists, that we had narratives, that there was a narrative for everybody that you interviewed and that supervisors had to review their work,” he said. “In this report, there’s none of those things.”

Two days after the MBI filed its report concluding that Aycock had died from an accidental fall, the Mississippi state medical examiner ruled his death an accident.‌‌

Three pathologists who reviewed the autopsy at the request of reporters said that while it was reasonable to conclude he had died accidentally given what the authorities knew at the time, Berrong’s account aligned with the injuries recorded in Aycock’s autopsy.

Dr. Thomas Andrew, the former chief medical examiner of New Hampshire, said that he would have told the agents assigned to the case to investigate further before he could reach a determination.

Details missing from the report, like pictures of Aycock’s cell and security camera footage, could have led examiners to a different conclusion, he said.

The MBI had an opportunity to reopen the case in 2022, when an inmate eyewitness told a Rankin County Sheriff’s Department detective that he had seen Berrong and another inmate leave Aycock’s cell moments before guards found him lying in a pool of blood.

The witness, who was being held in the jail in 2018, spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retaliation from Berrong’s associates.

The detective relayed the information to an MBI agent, the eyewitness said, but the authorities never contacted him again. The witness said that he also wrote a letter to the MBI detailing what he had seen, and that his son called the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office to report the information, but they never heard back from the agencies.

The district attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Aycock’s parents said they have long suspected that their son was killed. They described him as a jokester and as a loving father to his two daughters.

While grateful to have more answers about their son’s death, they said they were left with questions about how the sheriff’s office and the MBI investigated the case.

“ We’ve gone seven years wondering what happened,” Aycock’s mother, Laurenda Provias, said. “I’m ready for closure.

Berrong said his guilt over the killing has been eating at him for years.

“All I could think about was the fact that nothing was ever done,” Berrong said. “ What if it was me in a county jail that had been stomped to death and killed and nobody was ever charged?”

Over the past five months, he has tried to confess to the authorities on several occasions, he said.

While incarcerated at a state facility in Kemper County this year, Berrong said, he told a sheriff’s detective, Steve Windish, that he wanted to share information about Aycock’s death.

Windish said that he contacted an investigator at another agency to share that there might be new information on the case, but that the investigator said they had no interest in speaking to Berrong because they had spoken to him previously.

Berrong said that he and the other inmates in his cellblock were interviewed by MBI agents the day after Aycock’s death, but he did not confess at the time.

Windish said he could not remember whether the investigator who declined to interview Berrong worked for the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department or the MBI.

Berrong said that he also began confessing to a Wilkinson County Correctional Facility guard, but that the guard interrupted him and said it was above his paygrade.

Berrong’s most recent attempt to confess came a few months ago, he said, when he gave a written statement to a deputy warden at the prison where he is serving a 20-year sentence.

Two law enforcement officers visited him afterward and gave him paperwork detailing his confession, he said, but he lost it when guards searched his cell for contraband.

Tindell said that the MBI has no record of these interactions and that if agents had received these tips, he was unsure why they would not have responded.

“ When people contact us,” Tindell said, “ if there’s a stage in our organization where it’s just not being documented, then we need to address that.”

After repeated attempts to get the attention of the authorities, Berrong described Aycock’s death to reporters this month.

Berrong said several of his associates in the Latin Kings street gang assisted in the fatal assault by leading Aycock’s cellmate away from their cell and keeping watch while Berrong slipped inside.

After slamming Aycock to the floor, Berrong said, he stomped on his head as blood poured from his nose and ears. He could hear Aycock struggling to breathe as he fled the cell, a sound that still haunts him.

The former inmate who witnessed the encounter said that when Berrong and another inmate fled the cell, one of them had blood on his clothes.

After the attack, Berrong said, he returned to his own cell, showered and used the sharp edge of his bunk bed frame to cut his uniform into strips that he flushed down the toilet.

When guards found Aycock, they called paramedics, who took him to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The account of the former inmate who witnessed the events largely aligned with Berrong’s, but it differed in one significant way: the motive for the attack.

Berrong said that the jail guard who recruited him to attack Aycock did not explain why. But the former inmate said that he overheard the men involved, including Berrong, plan the attack because they believed Aycock was cooperating with investigators who were pursuing a case against one of them.

Rankin County jail records show that after Aycock was arrested on a burglary charge, a detective separated him from other inmates so that he could be questioned.

During that time, at least three other people were arrested in connection with the same burglary. Jail records show that one of them was housed in the same cellblock as Aycock. Three former guards said this violated a standard practice at the jail of separating inmates arrested together to prevent them from fabricating alibis or harming each other.

The witness said that after the authorities ignored his attempts to report what he had seen, he wrote to Aycock’s mother from prison about witnessing her son’s murder. Those letters were reviewed by reporters.

“It’s really weird that no one of the Miss. Bureau of Investigation has come to speak with me about your son’s murder,” he wrote in November 2022. “Your family deserves to know the truth.”

 Mukta Joshi contributed reporting.

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and its incumbent junior U.S. senator filed paperwork to run for reelection in 2026, according to news releases from the state Democratic and Republican parties. 

Twenty candidates qualified to run in the party primaries, which will take place on March 10. The party nominees will compete against one another in the general election on Nov. 3. 

Here is the list of Republican candidates running for Congress: 

United States Senate

• Sarah Adlakha 
• Cindy Hyde-Smith, incumbent 

U.S. House of Representatives – District 1

• Trent Kelly, incumbent 

U.S. House of Representatives – District 2

• Ron Eller 
• Kevin Wilson 

U.S. House of Representatives – District 3

• Michael Guest, incumbent 

U.S. House of Representatives – District 4

• Mike Ezell, incumbent 
• Sawyer Walters 

Here is the list of Democratic candidates running for Congress: 

United States Senate

• Scott Colom
• Albert R. Littell
• Priscilla W. Till

U.S. House of Representatives – District 1

• Kelvin Buck
• Cliff Johnson

U.S. House of Representatives – District 2

• Bennie G. Thompson, incumbent 
• Evan Littleton Turnage
• Pertis Herman Williams III

U.S. House of Representatives – District 3

• Michael A. Chiaradio

U.S. House of Representatives – District 4

• Paul James Blackman
• D. Ryan Grover
• Jeffrey Hulum III

A volcanic explosion 2,900 feet beneath Jackson forged the capital city’s very own superhero, Captain Jackson. 

The immortal man – born 1822, the year Jackson was founded – wears a green suit inspired by the city’s flag and takes to the skies in the inaugural issue of Jackson Comics. He fights fire with fire to defend the city from flamethrower-wielding villains who seek the downfall of Jackson. 

“He’s protecting not just the people of Jackson, but also the idea of Jackson,” said Blake Barnes, the writer behind Captain Jackson and the founder of Jackson Comics. “The villains show up in Jackson and they want to just burn the whole place down. They’re like, let’s just start from scratch, let’s burn it all up.” 

Barnes said he wanted readers to be able to imagine their own villains, so he gave the antagonists stormtrooper-esque outfits to mask their identities. 

“But I like to think they’re from Rankin County,” he said jokingly.

Barnes, a Mississippian who has lived in Jackson about five years, wanted to give local writers and artists a space to create comics about their home. Since launching in 2022, he’s published two issues of Jackson Comics so far, featuring short illustrated stories that explore a perennial topic for Mississippi writers – the relationship between the state’s past, present and future. A third installment is due to publish this spring. 

The stories also consider Jackson’s relationship to the state of Mississippi.

“Faulkner was the one who said to understand a place like America you have to first understand a place like Mississippi, and I think it can be said on a smaller note to understand Mississippi you have to understand Jackson,” he said.

When Barnes envisioned Captain Jackson, he knew he wanted the superhero to be a Black man in his mid 40s. He teamed up with local comic book legend Steven Butler, who has drawn for Marvel and DC Comics, to bring the character to the page.

While Jackson is a city so often associated with the issue of access to water, Barnes turned to another key element in Jackson’s past: Fire. He drew inspiration from the dormant volcano beneath Jackson, the Civil War-era moniker “Chimneyville,” a reference to Union troops burning Jackson to the ground, and the fires that so many abandoned homes succumb to today. 

Barnes wanted Captain Jackson to be able to use this element to protect the city. 

A television producer at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Barnes said he was also inspired by an oft-repeated description of civil rights icon Medgar Evers. 

“We just kept hearing all these people say that Medgar Evers had this fire inside him and he wanted to keep going,” he said. “I liked the idea of fire being a motivator and not necessarily something that was destructive.”

Captain Jackson belongs to the city in more ways than one: When Barnes held an exhibition at the Municipal Art Gallery in October last year, he donated a character sketch, created by Butler, to the city.

For the second issue, Barnes turned the clock forward, curating stories from students of all ages about the future of Mississippi. 

“Most of it was dystopian,” he said. “But they all ended on some good note. … They haven’t lost hope, so that’s good.” 

The stories contain imaginative plots: A bomb has fallen on the state, and a young boy discovers a ragged state flag among the ashes. Magnolia trees come to life and attack. The end times have come, but a biker and the owner of a home cooking restaurant still make conversation over a biscuit. 

For his contribution, Barnes imagined Captain Jackson accompanying a group of students to a museum, where they encounter a man from the future who has traveled back in time to punish people for their historical wrongdoings. 

The villain was inspired by Barnes’ own complicated feelings about Mississippi’s history. He challenged himself to embody that idea in a character. 

“That’s something I have felt for some time,” he said. “We’re always having to pay the dues of people who came before us, and I wish we could just restart with every generation, have it be our own way.” 

But Captain Jackson teaches the students that they can’t change the past. 

“They go off with this idea that they can change the future and that’s really what they have to work for,” he said. 

This year, Mississippians tuned into news about how federal funding cuts would affect child care and colleges. They also continued to follow news on the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and the death of Jimmie “Jay” Lee. Read the top stories of 2025 below.

Mississippi libraries ordered to delete academic research in response to state laws

The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a March 31 internal memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows. One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”

Mississippi 2025 special elections: See the results

Democratic candidates on Nov. 4 gained three Mississippi legislative seats, which included toppling a Republican incumbent in a special general election.

First Jacksonian exiled under new ‘squatters law’ claimed she’d scored one of the city’s many forfeited fixer-uppers

Latasha Chairse has a bizarre story. Equipped with a copy of someone else’s property deed, some elbow grease and a deluded interpretation of the state’s tax forfeiture process, Chairse claimed she thought she was acquiring one of Jackson’s many abandoned homes. Instead, the mother of three became the first squatter in Jackson exiled under a 2025 state law.

Three killed in UMMC helicopter crash

Three crew members aboard an AirCare helicopter from the University of Mississippi Medical Center died in a crash in remote Madison County near the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Trump once hailed WWII vet Medgar Evers as a ‘great American hero.’ Now the US Army has erased him from a section on the Arlington National Cemetery website

The U.S. Army purged the section that had lauded the late Army sergeant and civil rights leader, who was assassinated by a white supremacist in Jackson in 1963. The decision to erase Evers came after an executive order by Trump to eliminate all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programs.

Jimmie ‘Jay’ Lee’s remains believed to be found

A gold necklace with Jimmie “Jay” Lee’s name on it was found with human remains in Carroll County, but authorities did not publicly confirm if the remains belonged to the missing University of Mississippi student and well-known member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

‘You’re His Property’: Embattled Mississippi sheriff used inmates and county resources for personal gain, former inmates and deputy say

In Rankin County, incarcerated trusties allegedly cleaned chicken houses, fixed cars and installed flooring for the benefit of Sheriff Bryan Bailey and his associates.

Mother drives 45 minutes for day care. Another pays more than her rent. Welcome to Mississippi’s child care crisis

A dozen parents from across the state told Mississippi Today about summer child care plans for their toddlers and elementary school-aged children. They shared a mix of anxiety about finding care and frustration with existing options.

‘We should all be worried’: Trump order threatens funding for Mississippi’s colleges cultural centers and programming

For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University. 

Leaders at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University warned of funding risks as Trump targeted the Institute of Museum and Libraries.

FBI arrests multiple law enforcement officers in sprawling Mississippi Delta drug conspiracy takedown

Twenty people, including 14 law enforcement officers, across the Mississippi Delta and Tennessee were arrested Oct. 30 by the FBI in a drug conspiracy takedown after a sprawling years-long investigation, federal authorities announced.

Mississippi Today reporters Gwen Dilworth and Michael Goldberg recap some of the findings from their series “Behind Bars, Beyond Care,” which uncovered widespread accusations of lack of adequate health care in Mississippi prisons and the suffering it causes. They discuss the potential for passage of reform in the upcoming 2026 legislative session.

As you solidify your New Year’s resolutions, it’s a great time to start having a conversation with your kids – whether they’re in elementary school, high school, or college — about smart ways to navigate finances. Starting the conversation earlier on will help to create healthy money habits as they grow, ultimately benefiting their financial future.

To help you get started, here are tips that make it easier for kids of all ages to learn how to save, budget and begin managing their finances more independently:

1. Start the conversation

It’s never too early to start talking about money in a realistic way so kids can understand how it’s used to support your lifestyle and help you achieve your goals and dreams. Begin the conversation in an age-appropriate way that highlights ideas, such as knowing the difference between needs and wants, saving for something special, and tracking the money you earn, as well as the money you spend. For example, young children can understand the idea of saving up money from their allowance or lemonade stand to buy something they want in the future.

2. Take notes and use tools

As your kids get older, explain the budgeting basics – even as simple as listing what you earn and what you spend, so you can ensure you won’t spend more than you have. Any leftover money is best put in savings first, then they can consider working toward items or experiences they might want to buy. There are many budgeting resources out there, so you can find the one that works for you, including budget worksheets to track spending.

3. Get organized and go digital

Financial confidence starts with getting organized. You can find easy-to-use budgeting tools that work for kids and parents both, with different levels of parental oversight and management suitable for different age groups. Whether it’s a first banking account, or an account geared towards a high school or college student, there are multiple options that can help students of various ages with firsthand digital transactions and account balances, assisting with budgeting and saving.

4. Plan for the future

According to Bankrate, 59% of Americans are uncomfortable with the amount of emergency savings they have, and 27% have no emergency fund at all. It’s important for kids of all ages to know that unexpected events in life can happen, so planning ahead may help reduce stress and better cope with whatever may occur. For this reason, building an emergency fund or saving for a rainy day is a crucial skill to learn.

Your kids can start learning and practicing vital money skills now that will stay with them for life, as well as how to use financial tools so they will be able to stay on top of their finances and achieve their goals.

Learn more about all the options available to get your kids started on the right financial footing at chase.com/studentbanking.