The contents of Silas Groom’s suicide note remain undisclosed. But in a macabre touch, the Examiner has learned that a rare twenty-dollar “Double Eagle” gold piece that served as the group’s membership badge was found atop the bloody note that reportedly confessed some of Groom’s crimes. Like all authentic Double Eagle badges, that gold piece was minted in the year of the holder’s birth, in Groom’s case 1933. According to the diary of journalist Henry Sexton, the only exceptions to this practice were that Double Eagle members born after the gold piece was no longer minted carried original JFK half-dollars minted in 1964. This is supposedly the badge still carried by Snake Knox.

Rumors linking the Double Eagle group to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy remain unverified. All efforts to identify the evidence being carried from Vidalia to the Washington crime lab on the downed Bureau plane have been stymied by the FBI. The Bureau has said only that this evidence pertained to its recent investigation into the Double Eagle murders that occurred in the Natchez-Vidalia area in the 1960s. The aircraft involved was a Cessna Citation II, and it burned before fire and rescue personnel could reach it. The Bureau has not disclosed whether all or part of the evidence on board survived the crash.

Thirty-six years ago, a different small plane crashed at the Concordia Parish Airport after supposedly colliding with another aircraft flown by Snake Knox. Four people died in that incident, but Knox, an experienced crop duster, walked away unharmed. This alleged midair collision occurred while Concordia was still an unattended airfield and was witnessed only by the young nephew, now deceased, of Snake Knox. The diaries of Henry Sexton have cast doubt on the FAA report made at the time, but unless Knox is apprehended and alters his original story, this earlier crash will remain a closed investigation.

As for the downing of the FBI jet, a local Vidalia man who requested anonymity said: “Nobody in this area knows more about small planes than Snake Knox. Nobody knows more about bombs, either. But that’s all I’ve got to say about that. Snake Knox ain’t somebody you want to get on the wrong side of, even if he has run off to Costa Rica or wherever. Sooner or later, he’ll be back. You watch and see.”

Chapter 2