1/4/2014
As always, I am amazed at the energy and the excitement that ensues when I am engaged in the pursuit of information and secret agendas. In a recent interview for my next book, I asked many questions and then listened to the responses- hoping to align with a greater truth or newer insight. True, there were a few nuggets here and there that tugged at my radar- but nothing that told me why I had made the trip. Never has spirit guided me somewhere for naught. So bearing that in mind, I allowed the conversation to wander without border or badger. In releasing the margins of the topic to find a new path–suddenly, a random comment was made. So random and almost unrelated, it was barely peripheral at best… but in that instant, I had an “Ah-ha moment” about what was said that re-lit the fires of obsessive curiosity.
Having asked for months for guidance on this next project- spirit suddenly gifted me a new map to follow!
So, do we think there can be connections between Charley’s story and the next? Yes! Quite possibly there is more than mere geographical and political segue from Charley’s murder to my next person of interest. Guidance is now coming through spirit and Charley to other peripheral characters introduced to me through the first case. As people read the book, so many questions are asked. Who was this? Who was that? How did you know? Do they know that you know? Have they read the book and are they afraid or are you now afraid, because they are afraid and feel trapped or revealed?
Good questions- but I will not dwell on them for now. Rather, I use them as catalyst for securing new information or finding new ways of looking at old information. Take for instance…
Charley once told R to tell me to look for a specific white envelope with writing on it and open it. Of course, there were many white envelopes with writing on it, but eventually after almost a year– I found the right one and I did open it and eventually it told me great things! There was a name that was mentioned in this letter to Charley, that involved information about some very nefarious local activity.
Is it possible that this quasi-illegible signature was interpreted one way and not the other? That I saw one thing that in truth, now reveal something else? I will look again at this original letter again and the signature under magnification to be sure. In fact… I will also send this letter to a wonderful forensic psychologist who profiled another letter for me recently, for a specific profiling of this letter and signature to see what she has to say.
This letter talked about secret things involving secret people and their illegal agendas back in 1963- June of 1963, to be precise. Interesting, yes? Why you say? Because 1963 was a very volatile year. The Kennedy assassination happened that year in November and one of the main person’s of interest in a larger circle of person’s of interest was found and questioned in the Valdosta area then and even later on in another local area as well. Why was he in Valdosta?
Aside from that huge event, this person’s last name is possibly the same as the last name of a ruthless key player in the Dixie Mafia who sponsored so many murders in the middle portion of the state of Georgia in the later 60’s and 70’s. This key player in the Dixie Mafia, or “Cornbread Mafia” as they were bucolically monikered… was vile and powerful. This person had many associations with high ranking folks. Folks potentially connected directly or peripherally with the illegal activities that Charley discovered and was murdered for.
One of these key players was also involved in huge real estate manipulations and profits when the infamous Highway 316 was first proposed. A group of people, in particularly one main character of a notoriously corrupt group of people who had shady dealings with a certain now ex-governor of the state of Georgia. Together and/or separately, this involved large plots of land that were being purchased right and left just outside of Atlanta in the Barrow and surrounding counties, well ahead of the final land grab rush for the prospective Highway 316 project that now connects Atlanta proper to the city/county of Athens. So what ex-governor would have been interested in that? Who would have enjoyed access to that kind of information? Who could understandably and more importantly, expected to be a part of those initial DOT thoughts and negotiations? Who could have known about the fledgling projections for major intentions of a state or local government…including speculations of land and roads and real estate requirements coming down the proverbial pike to accomplish these huge evolutions years in the making?
Ahhhhh… you see where I am going?
Charley’s murder was not the end point of this evolving investigation- he was only the intriguing introduction to an even greater investigation!
You understand now that profits from illegal gambling, moonshine, drug and gun running, prostitution and pornography were not the only ways to make big, big money in our beloved state in the 60’s and 70’s. Think about it.
Here is a riddle!
What other activity is illegal that looks legal, because the process of corruption and deception is so slow that you forget to focus on the money trail?
Think!
If you had prior, inside information about where roads and major thoroughfares were about to begin–think how much money could be made if you bought up small farms and rural patches of land years before the public knew what was about to happen? What if you had close and advantageous relationships with folks in those areas who could make things happen- for both of you? Folks who knew how to manipulate by force or by fear, those who were weaker, or in the way of their making money and grabbing more power? Folks who lived by another set of rules, because the law was agreeably blind to their…social and moral deficiencies?
Now, doesn’t this sound like a plausible segue from the death of Charley to the death of another man who bucked the ‘good ‘ole boy’ system? A man who fought for justice and a man who pissed people off in high and low places? A man who lived a similar simple life in a rural location further north of where Charley was murdered. A man who was slain for his intimate knowledge of the greedy and powerful in a different way? A man who walked out of his house one morning on his way to a courthouse to prosecute a known henchman of the Dixie Mafia and found that when he turned the key in the ignition…instead of his engine turning over, the car exploded and caught on fire instead. A man who was literally impaled by the steering wheel of his car and trapped inside this molten vehicle as his children and wife, watched in horror as his body twitched and smoldered on the front lawn of their modest home?
Let’s follow the highway of death out of Valdosta to the halls of the state capital… to the rural fiefdoms outside the city of Atlanta… to the dirt-packed backroads just outside of Winder … to the tiny town of Jefferson, Georgia.
Let’s follow the money together and see where it leads us.
Remember, murder is usually committed over one of three things:
1. A woman
2. Some money
3. And a woman!
This next book is about that too.
1. A woman
2. Money
3. And a woman!
THE DEAD LINE: True Confessions of a Dixie Mafia Assassin by T. A. Powell
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