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4/27/10
I have given Charley a deadline…
I have given Charley a deadline…
Much like those who are working with me to help solve the mystery of Charley’s death, I have given Charley some homework to do as well. So much information floods my notebooks when I meet with R that it becomes almost impossible to filter what is worth mining immediately and what may simply be peripheral information that will plug holes later. Yet, I continue to trust that if Charley is going through the trouble to get this information to me—whatever it is warrants my attention. Lately though, deciphering the clues is somewhat easier than assigning the common thread that will bind them all. But like a spoiled child I continue to task him for more clarification. Like a parent… he continues to teach and not enable, disregarding my plea. Thus we are at odds, with me banging my head against the screen of my computer and him, banging his head against the veil of eternity that separates us. Together we are becoming a perfect set of bookends for the purgatory shelf!
My most recent meeting with R was a phenomenal experience and you cannot imagine the tremendous impact this kind of an experience can have on you. As for Charley, he continues to show me who he is through his answers and his omissions. It is like a maze. Some days I am a mouse; blindly following a piece of cheese which has been tied to his finger by a string. Each day he tugs in this direction or that, and I am off on another diatribe. Perhaps it is this that frustrates my advance. But this time patience has paid off. I have information. I now know who the man who works with the wrought iron is. I have a photo of the road- but this time it bears the mark of the exact location of the car. I have arrows that are pointing the way to persons of interest. Events that are narrowing the field of discovery. I am researching a rape case reported near a lake that took place in 1966 around the time of Charley’s death. I am searching for the name of a man in his 60’s who died from a heart attack in his bed a week after Charley passed. The possible identification of a general store that sold both meat and cheese– one that required a cheese slicer as described by Charley and used by G to inflict lacerations on his skin. And even more curious, the name of a man who called the house the night Charley died who coincidentally shares the same last name as one of the witnesses.
The facts of this crime are as flawed as the people who have committed it and the players are many and conspiratorial. My question is… What the hell was so important, or valuable that a small group of people felt they had the right to manipulate a crime scene in order to hide it from the public eye? Many have speculated that Charley’s death was suicide. That he killed himself over his alleged mistress G. But it’s got to be bigger than that. If Ward Cleaver had cheated on June Cleaver back then, it would have been news… but mostly only to Wally and the Beaver. A local ATF sharing starry eyes and sugared coffee with another woman is scandalous–yes. But life threatening? No… it just doesn’t quite rise to the bar created by such a complicated cover-up. There has to be more to it.
A law enforcement friend of mine recently said a murder is always committed over one of three things:
A woman.
Money.
And … a woman.
Ok, so we have a woman- G. G was a ‘good girl, gone bad’ and she figures into this thing up to her eyeballs. Next is money. While that’s got to be part of the equation, it can’t be the sum of it all. What produced that kind of money back then? Bug tickets, moonshine, prostitution and drugs. Take your pick. Valdosta was a kaleidoscope of debauchery back then. So which one of these was connected to the woman? The money? The drugs? The porn or the numbers racket? Or… was it a combination of several of these things that helped the shooter fire the fatal shot into Charley’s head that night? What was so necessary to keep submerged, that that many people rushed the dyke to keep the water level from going low enough to expose it?
Our man with the crooked teeth called this a crime of passion and while I believe that was part of it… I believe information was and is still the real currency in this ordeal. Names, dates, dollars and deaths. You choose which one… each one will come with a price. Charley has already paid, but there’s somebody out there still alive who knows exactly what happened that night. For you I have a personal message:
You can run and you can hide… but Charley can walk through walls, I have a friend who can talk to the dead and now we both have a deadline!
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