Matt Kessler: The Wiregrass, Gebunden

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The search for the truth behind the murders of two young women in a little-known corner of the Bible Belt exposes a chilling underworld of police corruption in this propulsive true crime narrative saturated with the complex dynamics of the Deep South .

In 1999, in the rural Alabama town of Ozark, two white teenage girls, J. B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, were found shot in the trunk of Beasley's car on her 17th birthday.

Months passed and the murders remained unsolved, with no clear motive for the crime. Whispers circulated in the town: in this historically poor, religiously conservative region, cut off from the interstate highway system, the police had a reputation for dating high schoolers, and their investigation was shoddy from the start, arousing suspicions. But after a baffling series of missteps, the case went cold.

Fifteen years later, a whistleblower claimed an officer had confessed to the crime at a party, spiking tensions in the community as old wounds reopened. Then, out of the blue, the police made a sudden arrest: a devout Black man in his forties, never before associated with the crime, named Coley McCraney. Many locals, including one of the girls' fathers, harbored doubts that he was the killer. But in a region ripe with corruption, and dense with the cobwebs of a violent racist history, was there any chance of finding the truth?

Populated by an eccentric, Southern gothic cast of crooked cops, showboating lawyers, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, 90s jocks and Bible kids, The Wiregrassis an atmospheric and utterly compelling account of what happens when a place---and a nation---cannot outrun the traumas of its past.