Samuel H. Bowers Jr., the imperial wizard of a Ku Klux Klan faction who was found guilty in 1998 in the firebombing murder of a Mississippi shopkeeper 32 years earlier, died yesterday in a prison hospital in Parchman, Miss.

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Rogelio Solis/Associated Press

Samuel H. Bowers Jr. in 1998.

He was 82. The cause was a heart attack, according to Tara Booth, the spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Mr. Bowers had been ill and in the Mississippi State Penitentiary Hospital in Parchman, in the Mississippi Delta, for some time before his death, which was recorded at 11:30 a.m.

Mr. Bowers was the charismatic leader of the most violent and secretive division of the Ku Klux Klan, the Mississippi White Knights, which at its peak had up to 10,000 members by law enforcement estimates. The F.B.I. attributed nine murders and 300 beatings, burnings and bombings to Mr. Bowers and the group.

He was convicted eight years ago for the 1966 firebombing of the home of the shopkeeper, Vernon F. Dahmer Sr., 58, who had allowed fellow blacks to pay their poll taxes and register to vote in his store.

Mr. Bowers sent two carloads of Klansmen with 12 gallons of gasoline, white hoods, and shotguns to the Dahmer house near Hattiesburg, Miss., on a cold January night. The burning gasoline was tossed into the house; Mr. Dahmer, whose lungs were seared, held attackers at bay so his family could escape, then died later in the arms of his wife.

Mr. Bowers was brought to trial five times in the Dahmer killing. The first four trials ended in hung juries, but in 1998 he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Previously, he had served six years in federal prison for the killings of Andrew Goodman, Michael H. Schwerner and James Earl Chaney, the civil rights workers who were murdered in Neshoba County, Miss., in 1964.

“Sam Bowers lived a life consumed with hate for African Americans,” said Mr. Dahmer’s son, Vernon Dahmer Jr., in a telephone interview from his home in Hattiesburg. “He caused a lot of pain, suffering and death for many individuals and families in my race. During his life, he never apologized or asked for forgiveness for his actions. Apparently, he felt justified in what he did to his many victims. Now that he has passed from his life, God will be the judge.”

Mr. Dahmer was stationed in Riverside, Calif., with the Air Force when he got the phone call about the firebombing. When he arrived at home at 9 a.m. the next day, his father was dead and the house was still smoking.

“His life was taken because he was involved in getting local black folks to register to vote,” said Mr. Dahmer of his father. “He went to his grave and never had the opportunity to vote.”

Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was born in New Orleans on Aug. 6, 1924, to Samuel Bowers Sr., a salesman from Gulfport, Miss., and Evangeline Peyton. He was the product of educated, affluent families; one grandfather, Eaton J. Bowers, was a four-term Congressman from Mississippi and the other a Southern planter.

On Feb. 15, 1964, he coaxed 200 Klansmen assembled at Brookhaven, Miss., to join him in the founding of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that defined itself in its unhesitating willingness to use violence.

“The main thing about the White Knights was that it was just a terrorist organization, more so than any other Klan that I know about,” said Jack Nelson, a Los Angeles Times journalist who followed Mr. Bowers’ activities for decades. The organization grew in strength under the tall, hazel-eyed leader until he was convicted on federal civil rights charges for the Neshoba murders and went to prison in 1970.

After his 1976 release, Mr. Bowers worked as a Sunday school teacher.

He never married.