Cecil Price, 63, Deputy Guilty In Killing of 3 Rights Workers

Cecil R. Price, who as a deputy sheriff arrested three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and was eventually found guilty of delivering them into the hands of their killers, died on Sunday in Jackson, Miss. He was 63.

The cause was a skull fracture that Mr. Price, a truck driver, suffered last Thursday when he fell from a lift at an equipment rental store in Philadelphia, Miss. He died at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the same hospital where in 1964 he helped to transport the bodies of the three victims for autopsies.

The slaying of those three men -- Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both of New York City, and James Chaney of Meridian, Miss., all in their early 20's -- was among the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era.

Mr. Goodman and Mr. Schwerner, who were white, and Mr. Chaney, who was black, had gone to Neshoba County to investigate the burning of a black church that was to have been used as a base for registering blacks to vote. On Sunday, June 21, 1964, Mr. Price, the Neshoba County deputy sheriff, arrested Mr. Chaney on a speeding charge and took him and his passengers, Mr. Goodman and Mr. Schwerner, to the jail in Philadelphia, a town of about 5,500.

Released six hours later, the three rights workers drove off into the sweltering darkness. Investigators later established that Mr. Price followed them, pulled their car over again, then turned them over to a mob. The three men were taken to an isolated country road, shot, then buried in an earthen dam. The bodies were discovered on Aug. 4 after federal agents, pushed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to solve the case, got a tip from a paid informer.

Well before the bodies were found, Mr. Price's friends and neighbors talked openly among themselves about his likely involvement in the disappearance of the three men, investigators determined. Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey was also rumored to be involved, as were a number of men known to belong to the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr. Rainey, Mr. Price and the others talked and acted as if they had nothing to fear, and indeed they did not seem to in the Mississippi of that time. State authorities never brought charges.

But a federal inquiry was pursued, and by early 1965 Mr. Rainey, Mr. Price and 16 other men had been charged with conspiring to violate the civil rights of the three victims. In October 1967, Mr. Price was convicted, as were six others. Sheriff Rainey and seven others were acquitted, while the jury was unable to decide on the remaining defendants.

The stiffest sentences, 10 years in prison, were imposed on a Klan leader and one other defendant. Mr. Price got a six-year term, of which he served four and a half years.

Released from prison, Mr. Price returned to Philadelphia and worked as a watchmaker in a jewelry store, a market manager and a truck driver. He is survived by his wife, Conner, and a son, Cecil Jr.

The Mississippi attorney general, Mike Moore, and the Neshoba County district attorney, Ken Turner, have been considering whether to bring murder charges against the suspects who are still alive, about half the original 18. The officials have pored over yellowing court records and interviewed dozens of people.

The Clarion-Ledger, the Jackson daily, reported yesterday that Mr. Price had given the authorities a statement in which he discussed his role in the killings. The newspaper said Mr. Moore had declined to comment about the statement but had expressed disappointment over Mr. Price's death.

''If he had been a defendant, he would have been a principal defendant,'' Mr. Moore told The Clarion-Ledger. ''If he had been a witness, he would have been our best witness. Either way, his death is a tragic blow to our case.''

Nancy East, a spokeswoman for Mr. Moore, said yesterday that he had no further comment.

In a 1998 interview, an elderly black minister, the Rev. Clint Collier, recalled that in an exchange several years earlier, Mr. Price had told him of being ''brainwashed'' by the Klan.

''Have you repented?'' Mr. Collier asked.

When Mr. Price said yes, Mr. Collier replied: ''That's good. That's all you can do.''