THE MAN NO ONE BELIEVED

Carefully reported account of a double murder in south Georgia, and of justice long delayed.

In March 1985, writes investigative journalist Sharpe, a white man, whom witnesses described as having long blond or light-brown hair, came to the door of a Black church and, when it was opened, shot a deacon and the deacon’s wife to death. That there were witnesses left alive suggested to investigators that it was a hit, but the witnesses’ description of the killer didn’t help much; as Sharpe quips, “You could’ve brought in entire Southern rock bands for questioning.” As details emerged, race entered into the picture, though at first the detectives “didn’t think racism made much sense as a motive.” Complicating the case was barely disguised corruption in the local sheriff’s department and pressure to put someone in jail quickly. In the end, as Sharpe chronicles, the wrong man went to prison, even though the prosecution, as that man lamented, had misplaced key artifacts of evidence and witnesses for the prosecution offered accounts full of discrepancies and contradictions. Working with the Georgia Innocence Project, Sharpe helped gather enough evidence—especially DNA evidence, not usable then—to call for a new trial, with the wrong condemned man freed and the likely killer arrested “four months shy of the forty-­year anniversary of the murders.”

A skillfully constructed spiderweb of a true-crime, cold-case narrative.