Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram died Sunday

Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram died Sunday

Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram died Sunday after a long bout with pancreatic cancer.

The 77-year-old retired agent also had headed the Mississippi Highway Patrol under the Fordice administration.

On his death bed, Ingram remarked he’d been praying for God to take him. “I’m ready to go soar with the eagles,” he said.

Retired FBI agent Robert Butler of Lewisville, Texas, said Ingram was “very well-loved by the agents. Everybody who knew him loved him. He was a wonderful friend and respected so much.”

Ingram investigated many Klan killings and violent acts that took place across Mississippi in the 1960s, including the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Butler helped with the arrests of Klansmen in 1964.

Ingram worked on other famous cases, including the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy, the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana of more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones.

Jerry Mitchell
8/3/9

RED/BLUE – Jim Ingram, who, among other key roles of public service, formerly served as Mississippi’s Commissioner of Public Safety under Governor Kirk Fordice, died this past weekend.

Commissioner Ingram was at the same time one of the kindest and toughest men I ever had the privilege of knowing. An FBI hero during the civil rights era, a diligent and even-handed law enforcement administrator later in his career, and a devoted husband, father and friend, Jim Ingram was the kind of man any father would want his sons to grow up to emulate.

This father certainly does.

Andy Taggart
8/3/9