First published 2025
In 1985, Harold and Thelma Swain were gunned down in their South Georgia church by a white killer who disappeared. The case went cold for fifteen years until police arrested Dennis Perry, a local carpenter. Perry was convicted on flawed evidence and sentenced to double life in prison. Award-winning journalist Joshua Sharpe grew up in South Georgia and decided to examine the case. His investigation led him through courthouse records, rural back roads, and difficult interviews. Sources slammed doors in his face, but Sharpe persisted. He uncovered evidence pointing to Perry's innocence and identified a white supremacist who had boasted about the killings. When a key figure in the case died under suspicious circumstances, Sharpe's editors warned him he might be in danger. Local officials fought to keep Perry imprisoned even as evidence mounted in his favor. Sharpe's reporting eventually forced the state to reopen the investigation thirty-five years after the murders. This book chronicles both the original crime and Sharpe's determined effort to expose the truth, revealing how corruption and incompetence nearly destroyed an innocent man's life.
Genres: biography, non-fiction, true-crime, investigative-journalism, american-history
Vibes: compelling, gritty, suspenseful, thought-provoking, urgent
Tropes: persistence-against-odds, truth-uncovered, unreliable-justice-system
Setting: South Georgia, Georgia
Period: 1985, 2020
280 pages · Paperback · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: murder, racism, violence