Later, her husband, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, took Till from his bed and ordered him into the back of a pickup truck and beat him before shooting him in the head and tossing his body into the Tallahatchie River. They were both acquitted of murder following a trial in which Carolyn Bryant testified that Emmett grabbed and verbally threatened her.

The white woman at the center of the Emmett Till saga, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died. Megan LeBoeuf, chief investigator for the Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office, confirmed Donham’s death. The 88-year-old was suffering from cancer and was receiving end-of-life hospice care.

Donham had been accused of setting off the 1955 lynching of the 14-year-old. Her death comes after a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict her in August last year over Till’s death.