Emmitt Till Accuser Seen Publicly for the First Time in Decades

Carolyn Donham, who accused Chicago teen Emmitt Till of whistling at her, setting off a chain of events leading to his 1955 lynching in Mississippi, has been spotted living in Kentucky. 

The Daily Mail reports

Her accusation provoked an act of violence so unspeakable, its barbarity has resonated, undiminished, through the years.

Unseen for close to two decades, Carolyn Bryant Donham has evaded curious eyes and, some would say, justice.

Now, a DailyMail.com investigation has led us to the woman whose claims led to the brutal lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.

The case has been brought to the fore once again after an unserved warrant for Donham's arrest almost 70 years ago was discovered by a team led by Till's relatives early last month.

Seen in these exclusive pictures, Donham presents a stooped and frail figure to a world that has dwindled to the confines of the home she shares with her son, Thomas Bryant, 71, and her pet shih tzu.

Then, she was a 21-year-old mother-of-two, a so-called 'crossroads Marilyn Monroe.'

Today, Donham is 88 years old and, DailyMail.com can reveal, living in a small apartment community in Kentucky.

She suffers from cancer, is legally blind, and is receiving end of life hospice care in the small, shared apartment - the exact location of which DailyMail.com has chosen not to disclose. Tubes delivering oxygen loop over her ears and into her nose.

Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi during the summer of 1955, when he entered a rural grocery store where Donham was working on August 24.

Donham, who is white, accused Till of whistling at her and grabbing her - a violation of the South's racist societal codes at the time - prompting her then-husband Roy Bryant to brutally murder the boy in return.

Bryant, who died in 1994, was ultimately acquitted of murder. Donham, however, managed to evade charges or any consequences in a case that shocked the world for its brutality.