Now I have mixed emotions about this investigation -- and let me explain why.

There is, of course, an outside chance that someone involved in committing this heinous at is still alive -- though at the very least, said individual would have to be in his/her late 70s. More than likely, none of the perpetrators are alive -- making continued investigation by law enforcement a futile gesture.

On the other hand, it is important from a historical standpoint to learn, if we can, who perpetrated this grievous act of hatred and violence at Moore's Ford Bridge.

State and federal investigators said Tuesday that they spent the past two days gathering evidence in the last documented mass lynching in the United States: a grisly slaying of four people that has remained unsolved for more than six decades.

In a written statement, the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said they collected several items on a property in rural Walton County, Georgia, that were taken in for further investigation.

On July 25, 1946, two black sharecropper couples were shot hundreds of times and the unborn baby of one of the women cut out with a knife at the Moore's Ford Bridge. One of the men had been accused of stabbing a white man 11 days earlier and was bailed out of jail by a former Ku Klux Klan member and known bootlegger who drove him, his wife, her brother and his wife to the bridge.

The FBI statement said investigators were following up on information recently received in the case, one of several the agency has revived in an effort to close decades-old cases from the civil rights era and before.

"The FBI and GBI had gotten some information that we couldn't ignore with respect to this case," GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.

Let me say it rather bluntly -- unless there is credible evidence that one or more of the evil bastards that committed this crime is still walking the earth, this is a matter for historians and not the FBI. Yet reading between the lines, I can only assume that there must be some living individual who the authorities view as culpable for this heinous act -- or at least I hope there is, for otherwise we are witnessing a waste of law enforcement resources.

Also of note in the article is Rep. John Lewis' effort to create an FBI "Cold Case" division. That might not be a bad idea -- provided it is intended to look at cases in which there is a realistic chance of prosecution, not merely to investigate historical incidents in which the criminals have long since been dealt with by the judge of a higher court than any constituted under the US Constitution.