PHILADELPHIA, MISS. ? An 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was taken from courthouse on a stretcher and hospitalized with high blood pressure Thursday, the opening day of testimony at his murder trial in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers.

Edgar Ray Killen was taken away in an ambulance just before the widow of one of the victims led the jury through the events that sent her husband to Mississippi during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964. A few in the courtroom wiped away tears during the testimony.

Rita Schwerner Bender, 63, recalled the moment she learned that authorities had found the blue station wagon that her husband, Michael Schwerner, and the two other men were in when they disappeared. The burned car was abandoned in a swamp.

“I think it hit me for the first time that they were dead, that there was really no realistic possibility that they were alive,” the Seattle woman said, occasionally looking as though she was fighting back tears.

The trial later went into recess until at least today, depending on Killen’s ability to attend.

Dr. Patrick Eakes, director of the intensive care unit at Neshoba County General hospital, described Killen as “alert and pleasant” but said he would remain there overnight. He said Killen arrived at the hospital with elevated blood pressure and complained of a headache and discomfort in his chest. Eakes said Killen would be examined early today.

Killen is on trial in the killings of James Chaney, a black Mississippian, and Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, white New Yorkers, who were investigating the burning of a black church. They were stopped for speeding, jailed for a few hours, then released, after which they were ambushed by Klansmen.

Atty. Gen. Jim Hood said prosecutors intend to prove that Killen planned the murders and helped round up Klansmen to chase down and kill the three.