A Mississippi man accused of coordinating the slayings of three civil-rights workers half a century ago is still as mum about the killings as the day he was convicted in 2005, the Associated Press reported.

Edgar Ray Killen, an 89-year-old who does not believe in racial equality, is currently serving a 60-year sentence for the 1964 murders of a black man and two white men near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The Civil Rights Act was passed later that year. 

The separatist was accused of sending Ku Klux Klan members to kill black Mississippi native James Chaney and white New York natives Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, whose bodies were dumped in a red-clay damn.

It wasn't until 44 days after the murders when the bodies were found buried deep in the clay. Killen was tried for their deaths in 1967 but it resulted in a mistrial.

In his first interview since his 2005 manslaughter trial, brought after advocacy groups called for the case to be reopened, Killen made it clear to the AP he would not talk about the infamous "Freedom Summer" killings.

Killen, who is serving his sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, was the one who first reached out to the AP in March 2013.

"That is not where I am coming from after 50 years of silence," Killen wrote to the AP. "I have never discussed the 1964 case with anyone - an attorney, the FBI, local law nor friend - and those who say so are lying."

At his trial witnesses said Killen was the one who told the Klansmen where to locate the victims, who were outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, investigating the burning down of a black church.

Killen told the AP he knows some people in the KKK but did not comment on the allegations that he is a Klan organizer. However, the prisoner did have something to say about those who testified at his trial, including Mike Winstead, who said he was 10 years old in 1967 when he overheard a conversation between his grandfather and Killen. 

"My grandfather asked him, did he have anything to do with those boys being killed," said Winstead, who was serving a 30-year rape sentence. "He told my grandfather yes, and he was proud of it."

Killen said he never knew Winstead and that he never visited the grandfather.

"I think I would remember if I did that," Killen told the AP.

At his 2005 trial, testimony presented from the 1967 trial claimed Killen told the Klansmen to drop him off at a funeral home before they went after the civil rights workers, so he could create an alibi for himself. Killen also remained silent about that accusation, claiming he is not a convict but a political prisoner, the AP reported.

He says he has no ill will towards black people. Other black prisoners have previously threatened his life, Killen said, but he said nothing has happened.