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STATES-ITEM
RED COMET
OF PROGRESS
Second-Class Postage Paid at New Orleans, La,
PRICE 10c
ses Reported Gulf Coast Toll
By TOM GREGORY and BILL LYNCH
(States-Item Staff Writers)
GULFPORT — The Mississippi Highway Patrol’s chief inspector today cast doubt on the huge death toll reported from Pass Christian when he revealed a number of the bodies found were corpses from a storm-unearthed cemetery.
Seabees and other searchers combing Pass Christian yesterday turned up so many bodies—reportedly 100 to 150— they stopped counting. It was first believed this would push the Hurricane Camille death toll on the Mississippi Gulf coast well above the 230 officially reported so far.
But today, Patrol Inspector H. C. Slay said searchers found “a great many” bodies in the same place but thought they "looked odd.”
FURTHER INSPECTION showed the bodies had already been embalmed and a survey of the area indicated the force of Camille’s winds and waves had unearthed a graveyard and thrown the bodies out of their coffins. Several shattered caskets were found nearby.
Slay said he could not determine immediately how many such bodies were found. He stressed that “a great many” authentic storm victims were found in Pass Christian yesterday, but was unable to say how many.
Thus, it remained unclear today how the official death toll would be affected by the bodies found in Pass Christian. The nearest thing to an official statement indicated most of them probably were already included in the 230.
EARLY TODAY, Nap Cassibry, a state senator and coastal area Civil Defense coordinator, put the death toll in Harrison and Hancock counties at “approximately 235.” His figures, he said, didn’t include Jackson county, whose coroner said he has signed two official death certificates.
“We may never know, actually, how many were killed,” said Cassibry. “Some will be carried as missing for a long time before 'they’re declared officially dead.” He estimated the final figure would be around 315.
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than 40 persons, then regained tropical storm status in the Atlantic.
AT 6 A. M. TODAY, the U.S. Weather Bureau said Camille was 350 miles south of Newfoundland with winds 55 miles an hour. Weathermen said she would weaken today and lose her tropical character tonight.
Meanwhile, Camille’s sister storm, Hurricane Debbie, was located 250 miles east of Bermuda with highest winds of 110 mph. She was moving northeast and also expected to wane.
Another bizarre aspect of the Pass Christian cleanup came with the finding last night of a cache of weapons.
A Border Patrol official said at least two trunks of foreign-made pistols and revolvers were unearthed at the site of a destroyed beachfront residence. A third trunk, he said, contained carbines, helmets and bullet-proof vests, vests.
THE OFFICIAL SAID the foot lockers were discovered accidentally when someone found one of them broken open. The weapons and other paraphernalia were wrapped in plastic and covered with grease.
The guns were wrapped in newspapers dated 1961, and one official theorized they may have been unloaded by boat at that time and buried on the beach for someone to pick up, but were never found.
There was much anti-Castro Cuban activity in 1961, culminating in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Gov. John Bell Williams continued io head up the coastal operations.
HURRICANE CAMILLE has crippled the economy of Mississippi, Gov. Williams said in assessing the hundreds of millions of dollars in damage wrought by the killer storm.
He said state officials now are trying to pull together a badly uncoordinated situation that has plagued recovery efforts.
“We lost one of the best revenue production areas,” Williams said in reference to the effect on the state’s econ-omy.
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