ALSIP, Ill. (AP) – Nearly 50 years after Emmett Till’s mutilated body was found in a Mississippi river, federal investigators Wednesday unearthed the Chicago teen’s casket in hopes of finding clues to his slaying, a flashpoint in the civil rights era.

Mississippi prosecutors and the FBI have said DNA or other evidence might help determine who killed the black 14-year-old and whether anyone still alive should be prosecuted.

Till’s body was found by fishermen in the Tallahatchie River in August 1955, three days after he was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., reportedly for whistling at a white woman.

FBI agents Wednesday loaded the mud-caked concrete vault containing Till’s casket onto a flatbed truck and hauled it from a suburban cemetery to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office in Chicago for an autopsy. None was ever performed.

Investigators hope to determine the cause of Till’s death and to “see if any further evidence can be looked at to help Mississippi officials bring additional charges if warranted,” FBI spokesman Frank Bochte said.

Two white men charged with the murder – store owner Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam – were acquitted by an all-white jury. The two, now dead, later confessed to beating and shooting Till, saying in a magazine article that they killed the teenager because he had whistled at Bryant’s wife.

During the trial, defense attorneys suggested the body was not Till’s and that the boy was still alive.

Simeon Wright, a cousin who was with Till the night he was abducted, said he hopes the autopsy will dispel that notion.

“A lot of people still swear it’s not Emmett in that grave, so hopefully this will break down the attitude that we’re wasting our time,” he said.

Wright and two other relatives attended a graveside prayer service before investigators dug up the casket using a backhoe and shovels. The body is to be returned to the grave within a week, FBI officials said.

Till’s slaying helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

His mother, who died in 2003, insisted her son’s body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral, forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the South at the time.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday questioned why it took the federal government so long to reopen the Till case. He said 100,000 people saw Till’s body in the casket. “The open viewing was a civil rights demonstration. It showed the horrors of bigotry.”

The Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, saying it was triggered by several pieces of information, including a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.

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Associated Press Writer Don Babwin contributed to this report.

AP-ES-06-01-05 1821EDT

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