Discussion:Opera

@@@ The body of a man found hanging by a bed sheet in the Mississippi woods was identified Friday as Otis James Byrd, a 54-year-old ex-con who'd been missing for two weeks.Whether his death was a suicide or a homicide won't be known for another week or so, authorities said.The circumstances of the discovery 鈥?Byrd was black, and his hanging from a tree evoked old images of Mississippi's history of race-based violence 鈥?prompted local authorities to call in the FBI. The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is also involved, to help determine whether Byrd's death was a hate crime. At this point we're trying to determine what happened, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told MSNBC in a phone interview Friday. He said the FBI, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi are looking into the matter to determine if there are any violations of law that occurred. If it's a potential hate crime 鈥?we simply don't know enough facts. We're still in the process of trying to gather those facts, but we do have a substantial federal presence to determine what the facts are, Holder added.Byrd went missing on March 2, and local officials began searching for him a few days later. Searchers discovered his badly decomposed body Thursday morning, about a half-mile from his home in rural Claiborne County, authorities said.A law enforcement source tells NBC News authorities are looking into multiple casinos he may have frequented before he disappeared.Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas told NBC News that it remained unclear whether the death was a homicide or a suicide, but he confirmed that the victim had a bed sheet tied around his neck. He also had some sort of cap on his head, Lucas said.An autopsy will reveal if he died by his own hands or those of another, Lucas added.