Yet, during the late 1990s and early into the new millennium, for some bizarre reason few could ever discern, this same area of the state became a dumping ground for the dead, especially those who had been brutally murdered. There was an elderly woman, abducted and beaten with a tree branch, left there to be found by the animals; two teenage runaways who kidnapped a newspaper girl and left her mutilated body just off the interstate; and three teens who tortured and eventually killed a runaway.
Strange happenings, indeed.
Dead bodies popping up every now and then was no reason for alarm, locals knew. And law enforcement would say the same thing when asked why this area of the state had become such a refuge for murder victims: because it was between two major American cities, and the woods were easily accessible on and off the interstate.
It was either that, or Morgan County had the ghastly luck of being a quasi-burial ground for the murdered souls of the region.
Deputy Williams rustled up his jacket. Headed quickly out the door. Hopped into his Crown Victoria. Took off.
The Morgan County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) is located on Athens Highway. That’s about twenty minutes from the fire scene. Hawkins Academy Road is in Madison, actually, a mere rock toss east of Social Circle, just north of Rutledge. Looking at the road on a map, you can easily see why one might drop off Interstate 20 and onto Route 11 (Covington Street), follow the train tracks toward Rutledge, then take that turn onto Knox Chapel Road and head toward Hard Labor Creek State Park, stopping off somewhere along the way to set fire to a vehicle. From a bird’s-eye view you can see how one might be drawn to this area; that is, of course, if burning a car or dumping a body is in your immediate plans. The area is remote and yet effortlessly reachable, both in and out. The terrain is dense and thickly wooded and settled. If you wanted to cause mischief and not be seen, this would be an ideal place to get it done and get the hell out without anyone seeing you.
“There’s very few houses on it,” Williams said later, referring to Hawkins Academy Road. “It’s fairly isolated.”
As Williams drove, dispatch confirmed the call.
A 10-code. 1070. Vehicle fire.
From the main road, Williams turned onto Hawkins Academy, a gravel road, heading toward a vast farming area. It was about 3:50 A.M.
When he arrived, Williams was pleased to see that the Rutledge Fire Department (RFD) was already on scene. Not only that, but to the deputy’s great relief, they had extinguished most of the fire. It was under control. The ground smoking and hot. Trees blackened and bare. The car hissing, casting off an unhealthy smell of burned plastic and chemicals.
Chief Jerry Couch greeted the deputy as he pulled up and got out of his vehicle.
“Anybody in that vehicle?” Williams asked.
It was hard to tell by looking at it all burned up like that, but the car was a 2001 red Pontiac Grand Am. It had turned white, this after every last bit of paint had bubbled like blisters and melted from the vehicle due to the excessive heat and flames. Parked nose-first toward what looked to be a gate to let cows or horses into the acreage, a solid thirty years of the forested carpet in a circle around the charred vehicle was burned apocalyptic-like to the ground. Everything in that same area around the vehicle had turned to nothing but ash and black soil. Those skeletonized trees were just standing there, naked and charred like kindle wood.
As Williams walked toward the scene, he could see it was now nothing more than a smoldering mess of melted plastic and metal. Most of the rubber and plastic from the vehicle was gone. Liquefied. Cars didn’t just catch fire like this and burn themselves unrecognizable. Williams was no rookie cop. He knew better. An accelerant had to be involved. Hell, you could smell some sort of fuel. A car fire will generally burn itself out without much help. But this: the entire inside and outside of the vehicle was completely destroyed, blackened and charred. Smoldering. There were no seats left. Inside and out, the vehicle was nothing more than a carcass, same as a frame at the beginning of an automaker’s line in Detroit.
Having the fire under control, and more or less settled, was one less problem Williams had to contend with on what had turned into a frosty, excessively windy February night in the South.
Williams asked again: “Anybody inside?” There was the outside chance someone had torched the vehicle and a person along with it. Everyone had seen at least one episode of The Sopranos or a Martin Scorsese film. Burning bodies was a common way to get rid of evidence.
“No,” the chief said. “Ain’t nobody in there, but it . . .”
“Good . . . ,” Williams started to say. Again, one less problem to contend with in the middle of the night.
“. . . but it looks like somebody just slaughtered some beef or had some deer meat or something in the trunk,” the fire chief finished spitting out.
“Well,” Williams said, “let’s have a look.”
Poachers? Out here? What the hell? Someone trying to steal a darn cow in the trunk of a Pontiac Grand Am? The sheriff had seen people try to get away with more stupid things throughout his career. But this would be a first.
Williams could smell burning flesh himself as he approached the back area of the Grand Am. Waves of it wafted with the wind. Overtook his senses.
Indeed. Cooked meat had a very distinctive odor. Very potent. Very gamey.
To the sheriff, there was no mistaking what it was.
He walked over to the trunk. The plastic light housings on the rear end of the vehicle were gone, melted like candle wax, sponged into the black soil below his feet. The trunk was propped open with a halogen tool, a fireman’s crowbar. The car’s license plate had fallen off, but was on the ground, still intact, upside down. That was good to see. Identifying whose vehicle it was would be easy enough.
The sheriff went in for a closer look.
The backseat of the car had burned into ash, spring coils popping up. This gave the sheriff a clear view from the inside of the trunk into the hub of the vehicle’s backseat. There was definitely something bulky and large, all burned up, inside the trunk. There looked to be a blanket, or comforter of some type, underneath.
Williams leaned in for an even closer look. He knew right away what he was dealing with now. It was not going to be an uncomplicated night, after all.
The fire chief was off—but not too far.
“These are human beings,” Williams said to the fire chief, “not an animal.”
Both men stared at the mound of charred remains before them. It was hard to make out, but the cop was right. If you focused on the bulky entanglement of what looked to be two large animals coiled up together, you could clearly see the outline of two dead human beings, and what was left of the arm of one person. Williams believed, he said later, he was looking at a male and a female, or a man and a child. He didn’t know which.
“I knew one was a male,” he recalled, “but I couldn’t tell if the other one was a female or a child. [It was] much smaller.”
Either way, Williams was looking at the remnants of a heinous crime. A double murder. The vehicle was, obviously, the cover-up.
The crime scene.
Williams needed to clear the area. With help from several fire officials, he ran yellow crime-scene tape in a circular pattern extending to about thirty-five feet in diameter around the vehicle. He warned that nothing was to be moved or removed from the scene. Nobody should touch anything. Williams said he needed to get the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) out to start investigating. They needed to sift through what were the charred remains of two badly burned bodies and find out what had happened. It appeared a double homicide had been committed.