Brownstonelit's Blog

8/29/2013

Ahhhhhh… rumor has it you do read the blog, Grim!

Now ask yourself…how does she know? Who is talking and who is watching?
Questions, questions.

Here’s a riddle for you:

How many people can you ask about this book and about me before people put 2 and 2 together and realize why? How many of them will stare at your weathered face and search for the scar from Roxanne? How many will see through your false honor and wonder how you could live with yourself after the things you have done and helped orchestrate? How many of them would now come to your rescue… knowing what they know?

Tough one.

You have painted yourself into a very tight corner, Grim, but maybe that’s what the fates have planned all along. Maybe they have placed you in such a vice to help you see you have only one choice to make.  Remain silent and you cannot defend yourself or correct my errors. Come forward to accuse me of liable and they will all know it’s you. How does it feel to stand at the gates of indecision and know that before you lay only fire and behind you – nothing but disgrace and regret? What an awful way to spend your golden years. Each day waking–wondering–will this be the day they come to knock on the door? Will this be the day my loved ones can no longer hide what they suspect and see me different? Is this the day when even the grocery store becomes a landmine of suspicious stares and you know that from this point onward there will be no safe harbor for you to grow old in?  Old friends will begin to remember old deeds…old cronies will decide to defend themselves and not you. You have become liability and no longer asset. Not enough left to protect and hide what you have done and no rat wants to go down alone. They CAN and they WILL take you with them. Think…the crime scene photos tell one story…the ballistics another and now we know that several witness statements were coerced. The tapestry of lies begins to unravel…publicly.

CONFESSION is your only out at this point and they are waiting to hear from you. Each day, another box of books flies off the shelf and gets mailed to points unknown and very known. Each day, people begin to search the local records, ask questions and piece it together. Try not to think of this not just as a time of Karma- for in truth, Karma is neither good or bad- it just is. Think of this rather as a chance for Charley , Roxanne, Jessica, and the MOT to be released from their eternal hurts and a time for you to clean the slate before you meet your maker. Ask G on the other side. She can tell you about Hell…and the endless parade of ‘what ifs’ that will plague after you have gone. She can tell you about  the gates of heaven which remain closed to you until you repent and make amends. It is an empty void of endless pain and regret that binds you to other souls just like you who thought they ruled their fates on earth and after.

Do some homework, Grim. Dabble in a little new age consciousness before you try to convince yourself that  there is nothing after death- but death. Read…educate yourself and then stand naked before a mirror and see yourself and the rot of guilt that thins your skin and eats away at your insides.  You are no longer younger and protected, but merely the a shell of a man forever condemned to haunt himself. Your hair no longer _______ in color, your limbs no longer lithe and limber…what is left but a crooked smile and a constant reminder of your misdeeds carved beneath your eye by a young woman who haunts your dreams?

The universe does not do bravado, Grim. There will be no  “attorney” on the other side to represent and defend you. There is no such thing as “fraternal protection” from the truth. All of you need to belly up to the bar and tell what you know before the great equalizer of death befalls you and eclipses your voice in the matter.  The time has come to weigh your next move very carefully. Remove ego from the equation and think about eternity. Do you remember what happened to the shooter? Remember how he now washes his hands in an endless pool of blood that will not rinse clean? Or G, who screams like a banshee at the gates of an earthly cemetery that tether her to a place of hopelessness and despair.

Contrition is the first step to confession. In order to receive forgiveness- you must first forgive others- including yourself. But before that, you must come to heel and tell the truth of what happened to Charley that night and why. Remember, someone  talked to Charley just hours before you met him out on that road with the others…can you survive the stress of not knowing what they have  shared or what they are about to share?

Your choice, Grim.

Go big or go home. You are being offered a chance the others were not smart enough to take. Tell the truth before you fade and nobody cares to listen to your reasons or remembers you otherwise. You have lived 47 years in a lie; time to let the genie out of the bottle, before others do it for you. You decide, but remember… if you do not confess, this is your lot.

If you ask too many questions– they will want to know why you care.

If you don’t ask enough–they will wonder what else you are hiding.

So, which is it Grim?

Either way, the truth will come out in the end, so wouldn’t you rather be at the helm of your ship as she goes down?

Questions, questions…

8/24/2013

Yesterday was a huge turning point…stay tuned!

Here is a free excerpt from the book!

“…10/9/10:
Just like in my dream… the road bent and bowed with little
illumination once we made it out of town. The stars were thin and
the crickets thick as they played backup to the whispers from the
trees as we sped along the Clyattville-Nankin Road. There we
were, counting the miles and adjusting the minutes, retracing his
steps from that night each mile at a time. Only this time Charley
wasn’t at the wheel; I was. It was a pilgrimage necessary for us
both. She ─ the daughter, I ─ the writer. Both needing to be there
at the hour appointed to know and see for ourselves how black the
night, how still the heart, and how deafening the silence. All day
long we had made distractions of our own: research at the
Historical Society, interview after interview, conversations upon
conversations ─ all to fill the anxious hours before tonight.
Jules read from Kaye’s journal before we headed out as a
reminder that there was more at stake than just the rumor of a girl
and a cup of coffee. It was 8:58 pm when we got on the road for the
second time to where Charley spent his final moments. Mustang
revved, top down, and nothing but the wind to keep us company, we
drove quiet for the better half of the drive, passing a fence that now
appears to be of special interest as it has been mentioned twice in
Spencer’s readings. As we reached the spot, we slowed to a crawl
and turned off the lights. The deep velvet of the night folded in
around us, and I could not imagine a more hopeless setting. Even
with the stars above, the earth swallowed itself whole and you
could not see two feet in front of your face. Fearful as we
approached the second bridge, we cut the lights back on and
inched our way forward to a stop. Jules got out of the car and
walked in front of me down the side of the road, navigating the slim

shoulder and then asked that I turn the lights out once more to
embrace what her father must have experienced.
Checking both side and rear mirrors for other vehicles and finding
none, I complied. Again, even once your eyes adjusted there was
nothing but the unrelenting pitch. In silent vigil we each cast our
prayers into the void and bid her father freedom from pain. “He
would have been dead by now, I think,” she said. Neither star nor
human blinked a tear at the statement. No ghost exercised…or
demon fought. Just the night, the two of us, and the endless
silence.
I do not know what I expected of such a trial or that I expected
anything at all. But there we were, the three of us, caught
somewhere between 2010 and 1966 and there was nothing but the
night to act as segue and nothing but the dawn to look forward to.
It had been a long day filled with introductions and unexpected
blessings and information. We spent many hours talking and
listening, trying to engage others in our cause. I thought about
Charley throughout it and Rox too, not trying to forget that Kaye
too shared these last hours with him, not knowing if the marriage
would last or fail, not knowing if the coffee would still be warm
when he returned. And the children, how they slept in their beds
unaware that the world would come crashing in all around them
before the last raindrop fell.
It is now 11:53 pm and approximately the same time of night that
the second set of witnesses (boys from Florida who had passed the
crime scene) made the infamous phone call to the Lowndes County
Sheriff’s Department. They might stand at Sam Daily’s store
waiting for the call back to rejoin the Deputy Sheriff at the scene. It
is also not long since J and I have returned from forty-four years
ago. The minutes will continue to click by as we recount the hours
and the events that carried the beginning of lies through the night
and decades beyond. We could have easily stayed away, returned
to the hotel, dug in for the night, and let the moment pass from
where we were. But that would not have made either of us happy.
We each had made a promise, for better or worse, to be there for
that hour when Charley’s world had come to an end and taken with
it the infrastructure of a family.

May this trip and his death not have been in vain. I read something
on a church sign as we drove back from the spot earlier in the day
I wanted to share with you. I thought it poignant: “Nothing ruins
the truth like stretching it.” I will bear that in mind as I strive to
tell his story without interjecting too much of my own…”

Grim, do you have your copy of the book yet? Send me your address and I will forward a copy. No wait! Silly me…I already know where you live!

Have a nice day Grim. You know, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department is open on Saturdays if you are finally ready to make that call.

8/20/2013

So many people are stepping forward to help with new information!

You go Valdosta!!!!!!!!!

Remember- this is for Charley and Jessica and Roxanne, the MOT and countless others who were compromised or killed to keep this conspiracy alive! Let’s do what we can to make it necessary for the courts to finally take action and do what’s right. Keep contacting me folks- we will get this back on the front pages of your Times yet! BTW’s…perhaps we should start looking at putting a chapter or two out here on the blog, to wet your whistles …at least those of you who have not read the book! Here are a few highlights to get you involved.

How do you feel about a former member of the court obstructing justice? Isn’t that what you call it when a judge or an attroney knows this so-called suicide was not a suicide and yet never tells a soul he saw evidence or heard testimony to the otherwise???

Isn’t that  a serious viiolation of his oath to uphold justice? Murder has no statute of limitations in the state of Georgia! Should he, if not an entire nation be reminded of that and his offenses brought to light? And where is the law on this thing? Have I not given them every oppportunity to step to the plate and finsih this themselves? Charley was a Federal Treasury Agent who died in the line of duty and yet…his Death Certificate still reads SUICIDE. Why?

Dear, dear readers…

You have witnesses that have given testimony about evidence… original witnesses who claim their statemets were delayed, not honored or recorded correctly…crime scene photos that tell the truth about blatant negligence and manipulation of evidence…witness testimony who knew intricate details about the murders of these two girls…and the reasons why a man was beaten to death in one of your hotels.

What more do you need Valdosta? Demand that this case be solved! Write the newspaper and call your local authorities- buy them a book if you have to, but get the word out that this case deserves to be solved and the legacy Covington family rewritten. Do your civic duty.

If he were your father…

If they were your daughters, or sisters…

READ:

THE THIN GRAY LINE by TA Powell

Available now at Amazon.com in paperback and digital.

8/17/2013

Someone has stepped forward…

Someone who saw Charley just hours before he died. Someone who watched a conversation between Charley and somebody else in law enforcement take place.

Someone who saw what he meant to folks and now that person is prepared to help me.

Someone else who saw a second weapon.

Somebody else who saw the swirling lights.

Someone else who saw a body being rolled into a swamp.

Somebody else who saw the bloody shovel and compass.

Be brave and step forward too– together we can get local and federal law to bring this case to trial!

8/16/2013

Thus far I am happy to sit quiet with coffee and pen this day…to listen to the steady pelting of rain and the occasional gust of wind that seems hell bent on brushing away each wayward branch from the forehead of the horizon before me. Even though it is a false start to autumn, I am grateful for the premature segue as it feeds my soul. With a freshly sharpened bouquet of pencils and such glorious intrusions from this awkward weather– I ease into another chapter in my life. The end of summer brings another production and the onslaught of academic endeavors and I am once again thrust to the helm of scholarly and creative pursuits. It suits me and I find the carnival of intellectual gymnastics brings a chaotic peace to my existence.

This morning I have already viewed the making of the book trailer for The Thin Gray Line, and confirm it will do justice to the story of Charley’s murder. These past few months have been hard on the soul to find balance between desire and destiny…obligation and avoidance…fear and fortitude. For once completely outside the incestuous box of creation, it was difficult to observe my work with absolute objectivity and equnimity. Because this is such a public and private tragedy… it made it hard to find proper boundaries for promotion. I felt paralyzed by seen and unseen responsibilities that blinded and hindered me unnecessarily. But this last month has brought all sorts of revelations and wonderful connections and lifted me from a haze of misguided obligations. All that was unclear is gone now and blessed by virtue of a recent contact; I again appreciate and acknowledge the peripheral impact Charley had on other’s lives. Finally outside the shell of introspection and this all-consuming fear of consequence –I am indebted by experience to grant and promote others their right to equal  emotional remedy. You see,  I knew that the entire community suffered right along with the immediate family- academically understood that others were deeply touched and scarred by the shift in their personal cannons because of Charley’s demise…I just forgot about how  this book might be of help to heal those wounds as opposed  to only re-opening them. Thanks to several concerned citizens, It has become clear to me that this book is essential to moving everything forward and what an injustice it would be to walk softly amongst the tenured living when the dead  have done all they can to be heard. So, odd as it may sound…I will no longer take the perceived higher road of contrived silence, having learned that its mission was false. I wrote the book to speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves and balance the scales of injustice- not to avoid it so that others could remain comfortable with their beliefs. While one might interpret the soft sell approach to be the sign of observant reverence – it has become obvious that 47 years of soft-shelled everything has garnered the victims nothing!

Four people were murdered in your town and the surrounding countryside in the months between July and October of 1966. Four murders have been hidden and both socially and legally tolerated for 47 years.

To walk the path of tolerance-is to walk the path of acceptance and while that is oft times a good thing… it is not always the best thing. Acceptance implies surrender, but true surrender implies it only agrees to submissive delay- while it vows to fight another day! Surrender honors immediate bias and places collective welfare above ambitious challenge. Again, most times that is best. But what happens when collective welfare denigrates into collective lethargy when that is not the desired outcome? What if collective welfare lies fallow in the field and is not used to generate anything else? It becomes little more than foolish fodder- true and horrific waste. It is no longer ballast-but dead weight. If it does not generate action and evolution- it is but a personal accommodation of anerexic achievement and little more. After hearing about certain unsavory activities, I now see that the afore was perhaps the wrong approach. Blind honor can sometimes lead to self-reproach.

So after more than half a year of intellectual cocooning- the time has come to set a new course. Charley’s Death Certificate has not been changed and if it has not happened thus far with respectful patience– than it shall have to do so with calculated abandon. Quiet observance has not lead to effectual conveyance and that is no longer an acceptable set of terms for me.

Today’s blog is to remind all VALDOSTANS that the time has come to collectively wake up the dead and tell all above and below that the period of mourning is over. We can no longer count on the conscience of the damned to confess and tell their tale-we must pound the pavement with sandwich boards of our own and shout from the hilltops the name and intent of this book, until all have heard about what happened to Charley Covington that fateful night out on the Clyattville-Nankin Road.

End game…time to make a move Valdosta!

Buy the book.

Review it.

Share it.

I know where you live Grim. Want me to mail you a copy so you can better help Valdosta come to grip with what you have done?

Dear readers, what happened to Charley needs to be heard by anyone and everyone williong to stop and listen. It could have been your father… your brother… your sister… your mother that suffered the same. What Charley and his family experienced needs to be validated and what needs to happen to those who have gotten away with MURDER for 47 years, requires catalyst for their remedy and that it the mission of this book. Help me move this forward and back into the sunlight of justice!

THE THIN GRAY LINE by TA Powell

8/8/2013

Dear Valdostans,

I cannot tell youhow many feathers have crossed my path of late or the number of times I have heard my angel song in the last few days.  That being said, you can rest assured that there are a great deal of things going on behind the scenes.  I cannot tell you everything here. Remember, even though the book is out there now- it is still an open investigation for me and with the book’s publication, many are stepping forward with more information to help me close the gaps between what I know to be true and what I can prove ina court of law. For all of you I am grateful.

I can tell you to look to the coming season for events and movement on this case.

The leaves will begin to turn next moth, people will begin to focus on things other than their summer vacations and one by one they will begin to return to the book for clues…clues about the murders. They will both question and notice things they had overlooked before. Places that the book talks about are simple enough to figure out. Specific locations where bones of certain folks may be still subdued by silt or soil. Memories will surface just like their suspicions about local lords that ran roughshod over the simpler folk back then. Relatives who went missing, or relocated for no apparent reasons and they will scratch their heads. Could the book be true?

Everything that was written in the book was experienced or shared by those who either experinced it or knew those that did. My truth is my truth- their truth is your evidence. So ask yourself a few questions before you pass the book on to others to read, or dismiss the supposition that brings this all to light.

What were you doing in the summer of 1966?

What were others doing in 1966?

Who were your friends?

Who were your parents friends?

What did they whisper about after you went to bed at night?

Who hid the newspapers from you after the law had , had their say and ditated their truth as fact?

What names were hushed between Friday night bar rooms and Sunday morning vespers?

Who was sleeping with who and who never had the guts to call them out for it?

How many days does it take to investigate a murder and who in the Sam Hill ever beleived it was a suicide? How do you shoot yourself twice in the head? Isn’t a little hard to die…twice?

More importantly- how does law eneforcement explain why all the witnness statements were taken two weeks after the death/murder and why did they all read the same thing? I can’t get 4 people in a room to identify the same shade of green on my curtains… but ATF, GBI, FBI, VPD and LCSD in 1966 could get everyone involved on a rainy night to see the same thing, at the same time, in the same way and still agree to what was written after all this time? I have a clue for you my dear readers…they don’t!

Your first clue begins with the fact that nobody ever talked about the rain that night. You get a speeding ticket now-a-days and the Judge knows what color underwear and perfume you had on while driving that day or night. Yet- only in Valdosta can you find a dead man in the middle of the road with two bullet holes in his head; photograph the two large pools of blood near his head and yet not notice that they are neither connected to the body- nor to each other and yet still have the audacity to call it an obvious suicide and clsoe the case in 18 days.

I can’t get the cable company to come out to my house in 18 days and yet they could canvas an entire county and declare this man’s death as suicide?

It is everything I can do not to call you out by name Grim… you and your fellow henchmen. But I will bide my time and wait. Eventuall y it will get so uncomfortable fo ryou to live in your house or go to the store that CONFESSION is your only option. So I ask you this Valdosta- don’t believe me? Don’t believe the book? Start asking the papers and the law enforcement departments about the folks who were involved that night at the scene of the crime. Hind sight is 20-20 baby and the last 47 years have afforded these men and woman the chance to show their true colors. Don’t let latent good deeds fool you. Tigers don’t change their strikes, but they can change their locations after a kill. Ask questions of your neighbors… your grandparents… your local officials. Go to the Hitorical Society and ask them about what they know… or don’t know. But don’t stop there- some names of folks involved never made it in to reports or papers…but you may have heard them either drun k or sober talking a blue streak about their being first responders to the scene that night.

And what about the 2 girls?

Who enjoyed the hamburgers, booze and 2 very socially flexible waitresses at the American Legion Club back then? Badges loved them…

Who worked at the Daniel Ashley Hotel in 1966? Were dead bodies in the hotel really that common that nobody took note of the 61 year old man beaten to death in a bed? Wonder why I called him the MOT? Wonder why you can’t recall his REAL name? Let’s look at his DEATH CERTIFICATE too.

Many people went missing in Valdosta in 1966, but I am only interested in 4. Well, actually 5 but you will have to read the book to figure out the fith one.

So who murdered Charley Covington?

And who murdered Jessica?

And who murdered Roxanne?

And why did they murder the MOT?

Valdosta… the answers and the killers are still alive and flourishing within your streets. Do not wait any longer to tell what you know, or what you suspect? Let law enforcement figure out what to do with your information, after the fact- but TALK now.

I got this case re-openend  and I intend to keep it alive until it is finally settled!

Buy the book: THE THIN  GRAY LINE by T.A. Powell and find out what murderers from 1966 still live among you in 2013.

Best Regards,

T.A. Powell

8/4/2013

Heard something today:

“Revenge is not the same as justice.”

Will start sending out Press Releases for the book this week to every newspaper, radio and television station in and out of the area…

This book is not about revenge… it is about justice!

8/2/2013

So many feathers…

And what’s this? Pictures of Einstein…everywhere I go! What does the cosmos know about the fourth in flannel they are keeping held close to their vest? Is someone speaking out of turn about what they know? Has someone told them about the book? Maybe they are one of the hundreds who have bought it already?

If not, how about a bedtime story fellas? It’s all about Fraternal Protection and young women who liked men in badges.

Einstein? The Farmer in the Dell? Grim?

Care to write a review?

Hmmmm. The whispers are getting louder! Was it him? Was he there that night? Why are they all in hiding?

Be brave Valdosta! Somebody died because of these men- do something about it today.

Stay tuned…