Authors: Thomas H. Cook
Blood Echoes
Blood Echoes
The True Story of an Infamous Mass Murder and Its Aftermath
Thomas H. Cook
A
MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media ebook
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, the author wishes to express his abiding gratitude to Ernestine, Patricia, and Nancy Alday for their invaluable assistance in the writing of this book. The reliving of these events was understandably difficult and painful, but they never relented in their determination to see the task through to its conclusion.
In addition to surviving members of the Alday family, many others gave unstintingly of themselves, devoting many hours to the completion of this book.
Ronnie Angel, formerly of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, worked tirelessly in helping me reconstruct the investigation that followed the murders on River Road. Others involved in the apprehension and early questioning of the suspects were equally forthcoming in detailing events from their particular perspectives, notably, Larry Good, L. D. Townley, F. E. Thomas, and Wade Watson. In addition, Robert Ingram, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, was vital in providing information regarding the prison breaks in which Carl Isaacs was involved.
Peter Zack Geer, Charles Ferguson, and Daniel L. Ricketson helped detail the prosecution of the Alday defendants.
Bo McLeod and the staff of the
Donalsonville News
were most generous in providing space, as well as access to their extensive file on the murders and the trials, with particular reference to their impact upon the community.
Numerous local officials in Donalsonville gave unsparingly of their time and services, notably John Godby and Hurbey Johnson of the Seminole County Sheriff's Department, and Sylvia James, County Clerk of Seminole County.
At the Georgia Bureau of Corrections, John Siler and Fred Steeples arranged for inmate interviews.
Susan Boylen of the Georgia Attorney General's Office provided critical documents which pertained to the later appeals process and was always available to be of assistance in leading me through its thorny byways.
Tom West proved a devoted advocate of his client, Wayne Carl Coleman, and his willingness to assist a writer whom he knew to have a different perspective from his own will serve as a testament to his own self-confidence and certainty of purpose.
Starr Holland and others on the staff of the
Albany Herald
were painstaking in their efforts to provide me with articles and photographs pertaining to the long history of the case.
And finally, in New York, my editor, Michaela Hamilton, leveled a keen eye on the manuscript, providing not one suggestion that did not substantively strengthen and improve it.
To all these various individuals I offer my sincere appreciation.
Author's Note
This is a work of nonfiction. Although much of the dialogue in it is taken directly from court and police transcripts, there are numerous instances in which it has been reconstructed on the basis of the author's interviews with relevant individuals.
The real names of the people involved in this story have been used, except for Charlie Bowman, Steven Dennis, Tom Fitzgerald, Willie Flynn, Sarah Foster, Sam Hall, Theodore Hall, Bill Maddox, Eddie Phipps, Sylvester Pitts, and Judy Powell, whose names have been changed in the interest of privacy. Any similarity between the fictitious names used and those of living persons is, of course, entirely coincidental.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Thomas Gray
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Chapter One
River Road
Seminole County, Georgia
B
y five-thirty in the afternoon, the smell of scorched gunpowder was thick in every room. No one knew exactly how many shots had been fired, only that the old man had required more than anyone else, rising determinedly from the bed, one side of his forehead already blown open, but rising anyway, as the bullets rained down upon him until he slumped back finally, still breathing, but only for a few seconds more.
Another body lay beside his, thick and husky, the arms made strong by the rigorous farm labor he'd done all his life.
In the next room, a third body sprawled facedown across the small sofa, the legs hung over the side so that the feet touched the floor. In the opposite bedroom, two more men lay on a tiny bed, the blue smoke from the pistols still curling out the half-closed door.
With five men dead, the only question that remained was what to do with the woman.
She lay on her back beneath the kitchen table, whimpering softly, but entirely conscious, her blouse pulled over her breasts, her panties in a crumpled mass beside her.
The four men who moved about the trailer hardly glanced at her as they rifled through the drawers and cabinets and closets, looking for guns and money.
From her place on the floor, it would have been hard to keep track of the men. The tiny windows of the trailer let in very little light, and that was further constricted by the curtains which hung over them. As for the lights inside the trailer, the men had not turned them on, preferring to skulk through the rooms in a gloomy shadow, muttering to each other about their next move, their eyes averted as if they did not want to remind themselves that she was still there, still alive, that there was one to go.
In the end, it was a topic that could not be avoided, however, and they discussed their options quietly while she continued to lie beneath the kitchen table, her eyes combing its low ceiling, or crawling along the walls and windows, lighting from time to time on some little knick-knack she'd bought across the border in Florida or in one of the small shops of nearby Donalsonville.
She'd married her husband, Jerry, only a few years before in a ceremony at the Spring Creek Baptist Church, a small, wood-framed sanctuary that sat on a shady hill a few miles from the trailer. All Jerry's relatives had crowded into the church that day, the whole Alday clan. Among them: Ned, Jerry's father, dressed in his Sunday best; Aubrey, Ned's brother, beaming from the front pew; Shuggie and Jimmy, the two brothers who kidded Jerry mercilessly, their faces grinning over their roughly knotted ties. All their bodies were with her now, their feet dangling from the beds or off the sofa, their shoes still encrusted with the rich topsoil of their farm.
The strangers told her to get up, and one of them stepped over and jerked her roughly from the floor. He was a short man, hardly more than a boy, with long dark hair that swept over one eye. Earlier, he'd called her a bitch and slapped her while the others looked on, waiting their turn. Then he'd forced her down, first to her knees, then on to her back, ripping at her clothes, his hands all over her, his teeth sinking into her breast, breaking the skin, leaving a jagged purple mark.
“Get dressed,” he barked.
She'd worn turquoise pants and a matching sweater to work that day, and she put them back on slowly, already exhausted, standing completely still, except for the trembling, while the blindfold was pulled tightly over her eyes, then another cloth stuffed into her mouth.
A few seconds later she was outside, the last light of afternoon pouring over the undulating rows of freshly planted corn and beans and peanuts as they pushed her toward the waiting car.
Once in the car, she crouched down in the back seat floorboard, moaning softly, her knees against her chest, while the one black man among the three white ones held the gun on her, staring silently from over the barrel, his brown eyes wide and bulging behind the thick black-framed glasses.
The car moved in a zigzag pattern for a time, then turned off the road entirely and headed into the woods, its wheels bumping across the rutted ground, weeds and branches slapping noisily at its sides until it finally came to a halt.
In a moment she was outside again, first perched on the hood of the car, like an ornament for the men to gaze at, then on her knees, dragged to them by her hair, and finally on her back again, with the dark-haired man on top of her, the black man watching from above, while the other two moved quickly around and inside a second car, wiping it with brightly colored bits of cloth.
Soon the other two returned to the car, one of them sucking at a bottle of whiskey. The other one, blond and lanky, the youngest of them all, stood away, slumped against the back of the car, as if keeping his distance from the others.
She felt the dark-haired man pull himself off her, his eyes now trained on the others. He laughed and nodded toward her, his gaze still fixed upon the other men. “Any of you want some more of this?” he asked casually, as if offering his companions one last sip from the nearly empty glass.
Chapter Two
Mc Connellsburg
,
Pennsylvania
S
everal days before, on May 11, at approximately two o'clock in the afternoon, Riley Miller walked into the headquarters of the McConnellsburg Police Department and worriedly filed a Missing Persons report on his nineteen-year-old son, Richard Wayne Miller, a senior at the local high school.
Police officials asked Miller the usual questions. Had the boy acted strangely in recent days? Was he having personal problems? Had conditions deteriorated in his home life? In other words, was it possible Richard had run away?
Mr. Miller was adamant. His son was a good student, a member of the Future Farmers of America. He held down a job at the local Exxon station. He was an all-American boy.
But he had not come home the previous night, and Riley Miller wanted to know why. “I thought he might have gone to stay with a friend,” he told police.
But he hadn't, Mr. Miller went on, his voice darkening with each passing second, a gloomy apprehension now rising in the faces of the policemen who surrounded him. As they listened, Richard Miller began to take shape in their minds, no longer a name on a form, but a young man with an easy smile and helpful manner, friendly, modest, a perfect son.
“I called all of Richard's friends,” Mr. Miller insisted. “But none of them have seen him.”
Mr. Miller had also called the Exxon station where Richard worked, but none of his coworkers had seen him since his departure the previous afternoon.
“When did he leave the station?” one of the officers asked.
“Around the middle of the afternoon.”
“What was he driving?”
“A green Chevy Super Sport,” Mr. Miller answered. “He was going into town to buy some auto parts.”