Joseph Edwards was 25 and working as a porter at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia, Louisiana, when he vanished on the night of July 11–12, 1964. The motel was known as a gathering place for Ku Klux Klan members and a violent offshoot called the Silver Dollar Group. In the days before his disappearance, Edwards reportedly tried to kiss a white motel clerk; that incident was reported to local authorities and is believed to have made him a target.

Edwards was last seen leaving the Shamrock around midnight on July 12. His recently purchased 1958 Buick was found a few days later abandoned near a bowling alley on the Ferriday‑Vidalia Highway. Some accounts say there was a possible bloodstain in the car and a necktie tied like a noose on the steering wheel; others describe a belt looped around it. A witness later said a car matching Edwards’s was stopped by a white Oldsmobile and two white men stood at the Buick’s driver side.

The initial local inquiry was limited. Edwards’s mother reported him missing to local police and the FBI, and a larger FBI inquiry began in 1967.

Did anyone in the Vidalia or Ferriday area in 1964 know Joseph Edwards, his routes that night, or remember the vehicles described?