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The murder in Coweta County was an April 1948 murder committed in Coweta County in the U.S. state of Georgia. A wealthy landowner in Meriwether County was pursued by the sheriff of neighboring Coweta County, Georgia. The events were the subject of two acclaimed works, both titled Murder in Coweta County: a 1976 book by Margaret Anne Barnes and a 1983 television movie on CBS starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith.
John Wallace, a wealthy landowner, had virtually unlimited power in Meriwether County, Georgia. Even the sheriff, Hardy Collier, was under his control. Wilson Turner, a sharecropper tenant, attempted to do extra bootlegging work without Wallace's permission and was fired as a result. Turner retaliated by stealing two of Wallace's cows.
Turner was found and arrested in Carrollton, Georgia, by Chief of Police Rada Threadgill but was transferred from the Carrollton jail to the Meriwether County Jail in Greenville. [1] Turner was later released from jail, purportedly because of a lack of evidence. As he left the jail, he discovered John Wallace waiting outside with his men. Realizing that he had been set up, Turner attempted to escape in his truck, with Wallace and his group in pursuit, two men each in two cars. [1]
Turner's truck, drained of its fuel earlier, stopped running just past the county line at the Sunset Tourist camp in Moreland, Coweta County, Georgia. Multiple witnesses reported seeing Wallace pistol-whip Turner so hard that the gun discharged, then Turner going limp and being put in one of the cars. [1] The group then returned to Meriwether County, where Turner's body was first hidden on Wallace's property, then burned in a pit, the ashes and bone fragments scattered in a nearby stream. Wallace forced two black field workers, Albert Brooks and Robert Lee Gates, to assist him in destroying the victim's body.
Since witnesses testified that the murder took place in Coweta County, the crime was under the jurisdiction of Lamar Potts, the Coweta County Sheriff. [2] Potts and his deputies searched for days and then an informant told them that Wallace burned the body and implicated Brooks and Gates. Potts persuaded the two men to take him to the burn site. There were bone fragments found that the crime lab identified as human. Brooks and Gates also took the sheriff to the well where Turner's body had originally been deposited. Ruptured brain tissue was found that was also identified as coming from a human being.
Wallace's trial received wide press coverage in the rural community. It was reported that Wallace's eccentric testimony led to his conviction. After several appeals, John Wallace was executed in the electric chair in 1950. His case was unusual, because he was one of the richest men ever to be given the death penalty and his case was the first in Georgia where a white man was given the death sentence upon the testimony of two black men. Mayhayley Lancaster, a local "seer" from nearby Heard County, also testified against Wallace.
Murder in Coweta County (original ISBN 0-88349-064-1; re-issued in 1983 and 2004) was a 1976 book by Margaret Anne Barnes, originally published by Simon & Schuster in 1977. Though the book is generally considered accurate, Barnes' website has quoted the El Paso Times as calling it "the new fictionalized style of recording historic events". [3]
No Remorse: The Rise and Fall of John Wallace (hardcover ISBN 978-1-58838-264-1), by Dot Moore, explores not only the fateful murder but also the events that brought Wallace to that point—the death of his father and his early exposure to making moonshine, among other events. It includes letters to and from Wallace in prison. [4]
Murder in Coweta County is a 1983 television movie produced by Dick Atkins and Michael Lepiner, directed by Gary Nelson, and written by Dennis Nemec based on Barnes' book. Andy Griffith played landowner John Wallace and Johnny Cash played Sheriff Lamar Potts of Coweta County. Cash's wife, June Carter Cash, played the local seer, Mayhayley Lancaster. Noted Watergate-era attorney James F. Neal played one of the lawyers during the trial.
Harris County is a county located in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia; its western border with the state of Alabama is formed by the Chattahoochee River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 34,668. The county seat is Hamilton. The largest city in the county is Pine Mountain, a resort town that is home to the Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. Harris County was created on December 14, 1827, and named for Charles Harris, a Georgia judge and attorney.
Coweta County is a county located in the west central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is part of Metro Atlanta. As of the 2020 census, the population was 146,158. The county seat is Newnan.
Brooks County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia, on its southern border with Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 16,301. The county seat is Quitman. The county was created in 1858 from portions of Lowndes and Thomas counties by an act of the Georgia General Assembly and was named for pro-slavery U.S. Representative Preston Brooks, after he severely beat abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner with a cane for delivering a speech attacking slavery.
Newnan is a city in and the county seat of Coweta County, Georgia, United States, about 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Atlanta. Its population was 42,549 at the 2020 census, up from 33,039 in 2010.
Sam Hose was an African American man who was tortured and murdered by a white lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia, after being accused of rape.
John Peters Ringo was an American Old West outlaw loosely associated with the Cochise County Cowboys in frontier boomtown Tombstone, Arizona Territory. He took part in the Mason County War in Texas during which he committed his first murder. He was arrested and charged with murder. He was affiliated with Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton, and Frank Stilwell during 1881–1882. He got into a confrontation in Tombstone with Doc Holliday and was suspected by Wyatt Earp of having taken part in the attempted murder of Virgil Earp and the ambush and death of Morgan Earp. Ringo was found dead with a bullet wound to his temple which was ruled a suicide. Modern writers have advanced various theories attributing his death to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Frank Leslie or Michael O'Rourke.
William Brocius, better known as Curly Bill Brocius, was an American gunman, rustler and an outlaw Cowboy in the Cochise County area of the Arizona Territory during the late 1870s and early 1880s. His name is likely an alias or nickname, and some evidence links him to another outlaw named William "Curly Bill" Bresnaham, who was convicted of an 1878 attempted robbery and murder in El Paso, Texas.
William Yates Atkinson was an American politician who served as the governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1894 to 1898.
Mayhayley Lancaster was an American lawyer, political activist, midwife and teacher best known for having participated in two of Georgia's most high-profile murder trials, involving defendants Leo Frank in Marietta and John Wallace in Coweta County. She was involved in Leo Frank's defense and in the Wallace case as a witness for the prosecution.
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt which resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hazel "Hayes" Turner and his wife, Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day, his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.
Gary Nelson was an American television and film director. He directed many television series, including Get Smart, Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Patty Duke Show, Gilligan's Island and Happy Days. In addition, Nelson directed five feature films, including Disney's Freaky Friday (1976), and many television movies, including Murder in Coweta County starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith.
Feuds in the United States deals with the phenomena of historic blood feuding in the United States. These feuds have been numerous and some became quite vicious. Often, a conflict which may have started out as a rivalry between two individuals or families became further escalated into a clan-wide feud or a range war, involving dozens—or even hundreds—of participants. Below are listed some of the most notable blood feuds in United States history, most of which occurred in the Old West.
The Bisbee massacre occurred in Bisbee, Arizona, on December 8, 1883, when six outlaws who were part of the Cochise County Cowboys robbed a general store. Believing the general store's safe contained a mining payroll of $7,000, they timed the robbery incorrectly and were only able to steal between $800 and $3,000, along with a gold watch and jewelry. During the robbery, members of the gang killed five people, including a lawman and a pregnant woman. Six men were convicted of the robbery and murders. John Heath, who was accused of organizing the robbery, was tried separately and sentenced to life in prison. The other five men were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang.
Margaret Anne Barnes was an American writer born in Newnan, Georgia.
The lynching of Marie Thompson of Shepherdsville took place in the early morning on June 15, 1904, in Lebanon Junction, Bullitt County, Kentucky, for her killing of John Irvin, a white landowner. The day before Thompson had attempted to defend her son from being beaten by Irvin in a dispute; he ordered her off the land. As she was walking away from him, he attacked her with a knife and she killed him in self-defense with a razor. She was arrested and put in the county jail.
The 1968 United States presidential election in Georgia was held on November 5, 1968. American Independent Party candidate George Wallace received the most votes, and won all twelve of the state's electoral college votes.
On April 13, 1937, Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, two black men, were lynched in Duck Hill, Mississippi by a white mob after being labeled as the murderers of a white storekeeper. They had only been legally accused of the crime a few minutes before they were kidnapped from the courthouse, chained to trees, and tortured with a blow torch. Following the torture, McDaniels was shot to death and Townes was burned alive.
The Jenkins County riot of 1919 took place on Sunday, April 13, 1919, a black man killed two white police officers in an altercation during a traffic stop. In response, a white mob burned several buildings in the black community and killed four black men.
The lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato occurred in Statesboro, Georgia on August 16, 1904. Five members of a white farm family, the Hodges, had been murdered and their house burned to hide the crime. Paul Reed and Will Cato, who were African-American, were tried and convicted for the murders. Despite militia having been brought in from Savannah to protect them, the two men were taken by a mob from the courthouse immediately after their trials, chained to a tree stump, and burned. In the immediate aftermath, four more African-Americans were shot, three of them dying, and others were flogged.
Murder in Coweta County is a 1983 American made-for-television drama film starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith. It originally aired on February 15, 1983 on CBS. It is based on actual events of a murder in Coweta County in April 1948 committed in Coweta County in the U.S. state of Georgia.
Written with the suspense of a who-dun-it, Murder In Coweta County is the new fictionalized style of recording historic events.