My dear readers…
I know you must feel as though I have abandoned you and in a sense I have—but for good measure.
For five years as I was writing and researching my last case, I wrote constantly and kept you informed and included in what I was learning–even as I was learning it.
This next novel, LORDS OF THE HARVEST will do much the same and will provide you with every nuance and detail and much, much more. But there is a difference with this case…a huge difference. Charlie Covington was 1 victim and even though I found another 3 or 4 to complement his murder—it was well below the masses involved in this epic venture.
Masses, you might ask? Yes.
My job with Charlie’s case was to learn on the job-cut my teeth and polish up the rough edges of an investigative process which has now become uniquely my own. The tenure of that case was to teach me patience…real patience. The kind of patience that says we will give you the clue today and you will figure out its meaning, but it may take months- even years to discern. That’s the kind of patience that solves mysteries my dear readers– not perpetuates them.
You want to understand the impetus behind the murder of Mary Sue Ogletree…the undeclared 8th victim of the Stocking Strangler? To do so, you must then understand why Kathleen Woodruff was murdered…why Ferne Jackson and Janet Cofer were murdered. And what about poor Florence Scheible? This and much more will be gifted you…but patience…patience.
In order to understand why she was murdered we must go back even further than 1980…or 1978….or even 1977. We must go all the way back to 1945 and a derailed train in Chicago that led me to a monogram on a handkerchief, tucked in the corner of an apartment building basement.
Intrigued?
You should be, because it is a fascinating and twisted series of segues that connects your Columbus kills to a barrel full of burning documents….men dancing naked in the moonlight…purple capes and chloroformed children being moved throughout sewer tunnels to places you visit, but never stay. Local games of cops and robbers who share not only their secrets, but their spit and seeds as well.
This case may have begun with 8 elderly tortured and murdered women in Columbus, Georgia, but it has metastasized well beyond its bucolic borders to a national series of unsolved murders, which have now a simple corded rope that binds these victims to inhumanities committed by not 1 man…but several.
How is this possible you say, when the man they sent to prison for these crimes sits on Death Row waiting to die? Because just like ‘dead men who tell no tales’—dead women tell no lies and they have much to say on this matter.
I know that some of you have been ever so patient; gnawing at your nails and beating your chests behind closed doors, begging me to hurry…demanding that I rush to get your section of the story publicized, so that you can see all the intricate details and lies that have befallen your little burg …but there are other cases in other burgs and victims as well. They too demand and deserve the same rights as yours, for your cases are not isolated incidents. It is within those cases that some final details must be worked out. It is to those victims and those details that my silence now speaks and must be maintained to affect the most radical of outcomes.
Know this—your patience is appreciated and will be well rewarded.
I ask only that you allow me the time to vet the last remaining information, so as to provide you with every evidentiary tool you will need to demand the justice they all deserve. So that when my pen finally falls silent and the torch then becomes yours to carry… you will not fail!
For yes, when at last I am all but spent in ink and release this to the cyber winds, it will become each of you who will be responsible to follow through and see these truths to fruition. You will be the ones who will recall the clues, remember the lies and attest to what I have found. It will be then, that having nothing left to protect or stall for, all will finally see the truth and bring to light those who have buried your women with the weight of their false and sanctimonious legacies.
Many pillars of the community will fall and you will be asked to pick up the pieces and create from their filth something new and pristine. Though some may say, the men who committed such crimes sit in prison or lay rotting away in the ground beneath you…do not think that a truth in paper is a truth in fact. A papered death is not the same as a real passage, so do not assume safety where there is none.
When you read this book, you will come to understand the innuendo…till then…silence.
Silence be damned. Hurry you say…hurry!
But would you want me to come to the table with having prepared only half a meal? To bait you with a simple tease of dessert and yet not the dessert itself?
The heft of this book—this literary tome of justice and supposition cannot be reduced to outlines to calm your anxieties and satisfy your demand for immediate gratification. It needs to contain what it needs to contain, in order to achieve its goal and its goal is for the victims…not the murderers or the voyeurs who stood by silent and watched as they killed their way through your quaint and superficial history. This book needs to provide you with the details, the evidence and the supportive information you need to make the leaps of faith I made… into the walk of legitimacy and validation it must become.
This is what you, the reader deserves…that is what I, the author deserves for my efforts and for those who have suffered under the weight of a hundred clandestine communications and a handful of Non-Disclosure Agreement contracts that have bound so many of you to my side for the duration of this adventure. Rest assured every legal precaution has been taken, every word already saved and legally documented by those who have as much desire to share as I.
Think my dear readers…
What do you suppose lies between its covers? What truths will come clean as lies…what lies will come through as truths? How many souls will be saved…and how many more, condemned by their own deeds? Who will be placed upon the altar of your justice system and who will you find out, have already been placed upon another altar, still hidden amongst your beautiful boulevards?
The killers know and now you will too.
Nothing is being held back, so be clear about why you want to read this book. If it is for artificial titillation…then walk away now. If it is for the truth and the integrity of victims everywhere–then read on, but be warned. It may show you people in another light; as someone either more or less than what you thought before–but that is for you to judge.
Because I can never know everyone who will come to read it and do not live among you, I can tell you what I have learned—show you what I have found and pray you finish the job of identifying other victims. But be forewarned; you then will have to live with the knowledge of what has been unearthed. For just as I…once you turn the page…you cannot un-see something you have seen…un-hear something you have heard or un-know something you now will never be able to forget!
Those of you who have read my prior novel, “THE THIN GRAY LINE; A TRUE CRIME INVESTIGATIVE MEMOIR” and understand my process, already know that information from spirit cannot be rushed. If you have not read it, order it from Amazon now. Understanding how I do what I do is just as important and what it is I find. The two go hand in hand and cannot be separated.
In the very beginning of this next book, you are cautioned to use your intellect. Do not assume that you can skip from this page to that or this chapter to another and be able to piece it all together. It must be consumed in the same fashion that it was disgorged to me…one clue and one murder at a time. In the end, you will thank me for the diligence and dedication to detail and deconstruction.
Above all…trust my process.
Unorthodox as it may be and as many times as my faith is challenged by its unwavering demands for adherence, it produces results. This book, while consumed with murderous deeds and despicable acts of inhumanity…teaches that the veil of death can be pierced by the true of heart. That our loved ones, even though they have passed– have much to share with us. Just as spirit and the angels live and breathe in the air about me, so too do they live and breathe in the air about you. Blessed as we are to be amongst those still walking the earth–we each have a duty to help one another heal and move forward from our personal and collective tragedies to transformations of our souls.
UNDERSTAND…every piece of the puzzle is being provided for you in this book. Take your time as you turn its pages. Let it speak to you about the victims and how they passed. Help them move from where they are, to where they are meant to be and remain ever grateful for the joys you share in every day here on this side of the veil.
LORDS OF THE HARVEST will draw you in and undoubtedly leave you a very different person. From page to page, victim to victim…their pain will become your own, but their eternal triumph over evil…everyone’s.
Sometimes it take decades before we are ready to recognize what it is that truth needs us to see…
Are you ready?
Prepare yourself…
LORDS OF THE HARVEST by T. A. POWELL
Coming to Amazon soon…
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