Murder in Magnolia

A few minutes later after the three of them had explained what had transpired, the old doctor screamed into the phone, "I don't give a damn! I want his ass dead! He killed one of us. I don't care how it happened. Do you understand? Make it happen! Loose the knife if you have to. But make it happen!"

"But we can't!" said the attorney into the speakerphone. "He's innocent. Besides, if it ever got out that I withheld evidence from the defense, I'd be disbarred."

The old man bellowed back, "Listen to me Randal, you want to be governor some day don't you? How do you think you are going to get there without my help? If you don't do this, I'll ruin you! When I'm done with you, you won't be able to be elected dogcatcher! Am I making myself clear!"

Just then Johnny spoke up, "Well count me out! He's my friend and I'm not going to see him die for something he didn't do!"

There was a long silence and the two men in the room looked at the deputy in shock for nobody challenged Doc.

"Didn't your wife just have a child? How are you going to feed them when Jack fires you? And where are you all going to live when I have him show up the next day and evict you from that brand new house of yours? Have you forgotten boy who's paying for it?" Came the voice of the old man from the phone.

"Go ahead you old bastard, but I still won't let him die!" Replied the young lawman, rage in his voice.

There was a much longer silence this time. Finally the doctor's voice was heard once more from the phone, "Suppose I had Randal take the death penalty off the table and guaranteed you Jack's job when he retires? Would that ease your guilty conscience boy and give you some piece of mind? Before you answer that, think about this... whether you go along with this or not, I promise you that knife will never see the light of day. You can either keep your job or you can be unemployed and homeless! Is it really worth it?"

Now it was Johnny's turn to be silent. The two men in the room were looking at him expectedly. "Alright, but I want something in return. I want a clear title to my house. I don't want you hanging this over my head in the future."

The old man agreed.

From that day on, unless it was part of his work, Johnny never talked to his Uncle, grandfather or Randal again. What respect he had for them he completely lost along with most of the respect he had for himself. It was also the beginning of a lifetime of sleepless nights!

With the knife missing and the two brothers testifying that Ethan had shot Jimmy in cold blood, poor Ethan didn't stand a chance when he went to trial.

The jury came back with a guilty verdict in less than twenty minutes. To make matters worse, with no one except Becky to testify on his behalf, the judge was prepared to sentence him on the spot. He through the book at Ethan and gave him twenty years to life.

Upon his conviction, the Army discharged him ending his military career. His DD-214, discharge form, had indicated that he was Unfit For Military Service. As far as Ethan was concerned, at twenty-five years of age, his life was over.

Chapter Five -- "The Woman"

But Becky Daily didn't give up on him.

At first, she remained in the tiny little town of Magnolia. But it became quickly apparent to her that she would never make a decent living there. Even if she did, it wouldn't be enough to provide her the financial resources to both survive and mount a successful fight to see Ethan go free.

After the trial, Becky had started saying quite publicly that it sure did seem odd how the only piece of evidence that would have backed up Ethan's story mysteriously disappeared.

She must have said it in front of the wrong person, because that Friday she was called into her boss's office in the middle of her shift. He told her that she was being laid off from her job at the hatchery.

Doc had told the man that she was developing carpal tunnel syndrome and her days were numbered. When she pointed out to her supervisor that she hadn't even been to see the physician! His reply was, "Sorry Becky, but if Doc says you don't work, you don't work!" As she was leaving, when she got to her car, she found that all four tires had been cut! It became obvious to her that someone was trying to run her off.

Two years before when her mother died, Becky had inherited what could laughably be referred to as 'the family farm'. It wasn't a real farm any more, only about fifty acres of land, and only about a third of that was cleared and fit for farming, the rest being wooded. But it was just too small to produce enough crops for anyone to live on any more and she realized it was time for her to leave Magnolia.

Becky thought about where she would go and there seemed only one logical choice, Columbus Georgia.

There she might find better employment with which to finance her fight for Ethan's freedom. It was the largest city in the state of Georgia by area, if not by population, and was located near one of the country's largest military bases, Fort Benning. It certainly didn't escape her mind that the move to Columbus provided the added bonus of putting her closer to Ethan as the state prison was conveniently located just at the edge of town.

She had a cousin, Joni, living in there who was working as a secretary for one of the local real estate brokers. Her cousin had had the good sense to get out of Magnolia two years earlier. Becky was pretty sure that Joni would put her up for a couple of weeks.

So Becky called her, just to make sure she would and then, sold what wood there was on the land to Georgia Wood and Logging for $10,000. A week later, after the company had cleared the land of all its timber, she sold it to one of the local farmers for about $700 an acre. She went out of her way to choose one of the few men who openly despised the Doc because she knew the farmer would never let the old bastard buy the land from him.

With her few meager belongings loaded in her car, she headed off to Columbus, stopping only in town long enough to fill her gas tank for the long trip. The store had a policy of prepaying and when Becky went inside to give the cashier twenty dollars, she realized that she had been in such a hurry she had left her purse in the car. As she walked back to her car, she discovered that all four of her tires had been cut once again.

Furious, she left the car where it was sitting and walked to "Doc's" office at the other end of town. When she got there she walked right past the receptionist, and began looking around until she found him in an examination room with the Mayor's wife. From the looks of it, she must have caught him in the middle of giving the woman a pap smear.

When he heard the door open, he turned around to look at her. With sweat dripping from her, she said, "Look you old bastard, I'm trying to leave this fucking town. If you want me to leave, tell your boys to stop slicing my tires!" Then on inspiration, she glanced over at the woman and said, "Otherwise, I'm going to tell everyone you were giving her more than a pap smear!" Without waiting for a response, she turned around and stomped out leaving the old man sitting there with his jaw wide open."

When she got back to her car, it was to find that there was a note stuck with something stapled to it under the left windshield wiper. There were four brand new tires on her car. Shocked, she picked up the note and read it, "Don't come back! Doc". She looked at the paper stapled to the note, it was a receipt for four tires, one tank of gas, one oil change and a new fuel filter, all paid in full!

As she pulled off onto the state highway, a road with a name that only those poor unfortunate souls who were misfortunate to live in Magnolia ever seemed to remember, Becky thought to herself, "This town hasn't seen the last of me you old fool!"

Chapter Six -- "The City"

The almost two hour drive to Columbus gave Becky time to cool off and it occurred to her, as she passed an especially pretty grove of Magnolia trees, that she was going to miss living in the small rural town. No, she wouldn't miss the people. With her mother dead and gone, she didn't care if she ever saw anyone from the town of Magnolia again. What Becky was going to miss was the landscape.

She decided to enjoy the drive to Columbus, realizing that it would probably be the last time she would get to see in one place so much of the beauty that nature had to offer. Becky allowed her mind to think back of the pleasanter things she had seen, like how old man Nelson's peach trees looked when they were in full bloom.

Becky remembered fondly how much the old man and his wife must have love those trees to get up at five o'clock on mornings when there was frost on the grounds just to make sure that heaters in their front yard were lit so the trees stayed warm. The old couple only had hand-full of them; and, the trees certainly did not produce enough to make a profit. Nonetheless, every day for six months, the couple would tend them as if they were children in need of care. Becky believed they loved the trees very much. Perhaps the trees even returned their love by giving their caretakers the largest, sweetest, most beautiful peaches she had ever seen.

Despite herself, it occurred to her that she would even miss crying sound of those awful little birds that would wake her from their tree branch perches in the woods outside her bedroom window every morning. For months she had tried running the little buggers off without success until finally one day, she realized that she gotten used to them.

Why is it when you are enjoying something it seems to go by fast, Becky wondered? Have I driven that far? She had just started enjoying the drive and was already passing a sign reading "Columbus City Limits".

The city of Columbus Georgia is located almost dead center of the state's western border. On the other side of that border lies the small town of Phenix City Alabama and together they form the Bi-City area. You would think that two municipalities so close together would be virtual mirror images of each other but nothing could be farther from the truth. The town of Phenix City was small and economically depressed while Columbus was large and very prosperous.

In some ways Columbus was very similar to Magnolia. Just a lot less of those similarities were visible. But, most of those similarities were geographical. For example, both municipalities had magnolia trees, but then, it's hard to find a place in the state of Georgia that doesn't have magnolia trees. And of course, as did Magnolia, Columbus also had an abundance of the red clay and pine trees. The big difference between the two cities was not geographical. It was, that in Columbus, the corruption was hidden far better to the point you could actually live with it!

She was lucky enough to find a loft apartment for about two-hundred dollars a month in the area of the business district of Columbus known as Uptown. For most of the city's existence, the locals used to refer to it as 'Downtown' until someone advised them to rename it to the more politically correct, upbeat Uptown. Then again, because of the numerous fountains running along Broadway, Columbus used to be a known as the 'Fountain City' until a developer tore them all out the last time the business district was remodeled.

The apartment, conveniently located directly across from the Federal Courthouse / Post Office, was actually the entire 2nd floor of a two story building. The bottom floor of the building was occupied by a small sandwich shop and was probably the only one of its kind in the business district. It had three massive glass windows that were about six feet wide and eight feet tall, ten feet high ceilings and was almost 1800 square feet in size. Except for a bathroom, it was all one really large room. As it was just two blocks away from the Government Center with its massive law library it was perfect for her.

Becky's first order of business after finding a place to stay was to enroll in the nursing program at the local technical college, Columbus State Technical College.

She had neither the time nor financial resources for college and then law school. So she enrolled in the schools nursing program.

Becky had always been interested in nursing and there was the added bonus of the fact that there was a shortage of nurses, which meant that it would pay well.

Becky was aware that if she were to have the enough free time to devote to Ethan's appeal, she could not take a job working for one of the local hospitals. So, when she graduated and became an LPN, she accepted a job working for a local family practice physician. In her spare time, she started studying law and became quite an astute paralegal.

It became obvious to her that between school work and the legal research she was going to have to do quite a bit of writing and information gathering so Becky started shopping the pawn shops for a used computer.

She was lucky enough to find one for about five hundred dollars and after spending two days trying to figure out how it worked it finally dawned on her to call her cousin and ask for help. Developing computer skills wasn't the easiest thing for her but at least she didn't have to learn how to type; she had acquired that skill in high school.

Within two months she had learned enough Word Perfect to type out her homework and was already working on dBase so she could start storing the vast amounts of legal information she knew she would be accumulating.

Over the next several years, Becky spent a great deal of money consulting lawyers and hiring private detectives for Ethan. Almost every one of them would take her money, work a few days on the case, and then come back and tell her that nothing could be done. Once in a while, one would string her along trying to milk her for every penny he could until she figured out what they were doing. Then, they would tell her that his case was hopeless and all the leads they were working on had gone dry.

In 2006, the doctor she worked for changed her hours, working longer days but closing the office on Fridays. Which suited Becky just fine; it gave her more time to spend on Ethan's case.

By the winter of 2008 she was almost broke for the third time and the trails were as cold as ice. Half the people involved in the case were dead and the only ones left alive were the deputy, who had became sheriff a few years back and the two brothers, Bert and Sammy.

In the several attempts made to talk to him, the deputy never talked about the case with anyone. The two Oglethorpe brothers were now in prison and even if they chose to talk, and they wouldn't, no judge was likely to consider their testimony credible. To make matters worse, without some evidence to back up Ethan's story, no appeals court was ever likely to listen to them.

Even to Becky, it was beginning to look as if she and Ethan were never going to be together and she knew that something had to break soon, she didn't know how much longer she could stand the awful loneliness of waiting for him. A few years ago she had had to have a full hysterectomy, and she wondered if he would still want her now that she would be unable to give him any children. She had to hope. Her youth dwindling, all she had left was her hope. That, and her love for him.

Chapter Seven -- "The Prisoner"

They say that prison is hard on a man, and even harder on an innocent man. A guilty man can resign himself at some point to the fact that at least in some way he deserves his fate but a truly innocent man never can. It takes a strong man to keep his sanity and not be tempted to take his own life under such circumstances.

Ethan knew that it would take every bit of his strength just to keep prison from changing him into the kind of man he did not want to be. Locked up or not, he refused to become what they had accused him of even if never saw his freedom again. He convinced himself that Becky would be better off without him and he didn't want her to cling to any false hopes.

And so, the last thing Ethan did before he left for the state prison at Columbus was to call Becky and tell her not to come and see him. "Forget about me," he told her as he struggled hard to fight back his own tears, "there's nothing you can do for me. Don't come see me, don't call, and don't you dare waste your time waiting for me." Then he hung up abruptly before she could protest.

In prison, no one believed him when he proclaimed his innocence. The other prisoners laughed at him saying "Everyone's innocent in here!" Some even tried beating him, thinking they might get him to say otherwise. And for the next ten years, whenever a particually hard case would arrive at the prison and hear about the "Innocent Man", the new prisoner would brag that he was going to be the one to get Ethan to admit he was guilty.

He started working out and lifting weights and it became an almost religious routine for him. He did it partly to have something to do, but mostly to keep his body in shape just so he would survive the beatings. As his body became more muscular and developed, the other prisoners thought that he was preparing to fight back; then when he didn't they became confused.

At first, they thought he was a coward, then they thought he was just plain stubborn and eventually they thought he was crazy. A few speculated that it was because he was really guilty and the beatings had become some form of penance for him.

Through all the beatings and trips to the infirmary, Ethan never fought back.

No one, not even the guards understood why. How could they? The fact is that Ethan had changed the day he killed Jimmy Oglethorpe. Ethan wasn't afraid of the men that beat him, far from it, he was afraid he might kill one of them. Ethan had killed once and he never wanted to do it again, even if it meant loosing his own life. He had taken a human life and he hated himself for it. In the deepest part of his soul he felt guilty about it. His mind was tortured, torn between the guilt from what he had done and the reality of knowing that he had been given no choice.

But it all changed the day Bert and Sammy Oglethorpe showed up one cold December day at the prison. Both men had been convicted of running a methamphetamine lab and each had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

Thinking that it might gain them prestige, the first thing they did was to brag how they had helped railroad Ethan for killing Jimmy. It didn't have the results they expected. When word got around that Ethan was actually innocent, Bert and Sammy were visited by a few of the 'lifers' and ended up spending two weeks in the infirmary. Both brothers learned then that prisoners have their own sense of justice.

Two things happened after that, no one ever beat Ethan again and the Oglethorpe brothers were moved for their own good to the maximum-security section of the prison! It seems the two brothers began showing up every day at the infirmary with various bruises and minor cuts and contusions. For reasons unexplained, it took the warden six months to make the decision to move them there. Maybe the warden had his own idea of justice too?

After everything that had happened to him, Ethan was surprised when every 'jailhouse lawyer' in the prison began coming to him one-by-one offering to help him with his appeal, even the ones that had beaten him. And for the first time, he began to have hope that he might see his freedom again.

But even with their help, his case looked hopeless. Ethan and his new found friends spent the next five years trying to find some angle for an appeal but there just wasn't one. You either had to show that the judge had made an error, a witness had committed perjury, or that the defense had been denied access to either a key witness or piece of evidence.