Officials with the FBI and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation pack up their gear following Thursday’s investigation on Rodney Road near Port Gibson, where the body of Otis James Byrd, 54, was found hanging from a tree. The FBI has take over as the lead agency in the death investigation. (Josh Edwards | The Vicksburg Post)

PORT GIBSON — The body of a man reported missing since early March has been found hanging from a tree in a wooded area west of Port Gibson, Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas has confirmed.

The body, believed to be that of Otis James Byrd, 54, has been turned over to the Mississippi State Crime Lab for an autopsy, Lucas said Thursday. The FBI is leading the death investigation.

A Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks game warden, who had been called in to help with the search for Byrd, discovered the body behind a house at 1091 Rodney Road just outside Port Gibson.

FBI Special Agent Jason Pack said the body was found behind Byrd’s residence.

“He was hanging from a tree,” he said. “We’re trying to determine whether it’s a suicide or it was a homicide, and that’s where we’re at right now.”

The body appeared to have been hanging in the tree “for some time,” Jim Walker, a spokesman for MDWFP said.

Claiborne County Coroner J.W. Mallett confirmed Byrd’s identity, but declined further comment, citing the FBI investigation.

Witnesses said the body was hanging approximately three feet off the ground by a sheet.

John Baker, who owns the property where the body was found, said Lucas came to his house Thursday morning asking for access to his 47 acres of land, which stretches back behind the house Byrd rented in Claiborne County.

The land was leased for hunting, Baker said, but no one to his knowledge had used the land for more than a year.

Family members reached Thursday in the Hermanville community, about nine miles east of Port Gibson, declined to comment on Byrd’s death. No one answered the door at Byrd’s home on Rodney Road.

His longtime friend Sylvester Green said he wanted answers in Byrd’s death.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but they need to find out what’s going on,” he said. “That’s not right. That’s not right.”

Green said he attended school with Byrd beginning in first grade.

“I loved him,” he said. “That man didn’t bother nobody. He was a hard-working, honest man.”

Byrd was reportedly last seen when a friend dropped him off at Riverwalk Casino, Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong said.

“Our involvement was assisting Claiborne County and we in fact found out he had been at the casino and we had been in communication with Claiborne authorities and the Mississippi Gaming Commission,” Armstrong said. “We verified that he had been at the casino and that he had indeed headed back to Port Gibson.”

The family had not seen Byrd since March 2. Authorities reported Byrd was last seen March 8.

Nearby neighbors said they did not know Byrd well and stopped seeing his maroon and gray truck in early March.

Byrd was convicted of capital murder in 1980 in Claiborne County in the slaying of 51-year-old Elizabeth Trim. Prosecutors at the time said Byrd killed her and stole $101 cash from her in order to pay $10 restitution he owed from a previous crime. He was sentenced in 1980 and paroled in 2006, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement, the organization was calling for an investigation of Byrd’s death.

“We are calling on federal authorities to immediately investigate the hanging death of Mr. Otis Byrd to determine whether or not his death is the result of a hate crime,” Johnson said.

Anyone with information in the case is encouraged to call the FBI at 601-948-5000.

 

Vicksburg Post reporters Danny Barrett Jr., Josh Edwards and John Surratt contributed to this report.