“Proof of a sexual encounter is not proof of murder and rape.” — Matt Kessler
Ah, the American South. So romantic. A few days ago we were in Clayton, Georgia, hearing about the dissident Lillian Smith, whose house was burned down for telling the truth about Jim Crow. Today we go south-west into Alabama, to Ozark, in the Wiregrass, the boondocks of the boondocks — a region named for a scrub that grows where nothing else will. Except for murder.
The Wiregrass, as the Birmingham, Alabama–based journalist Matt Kessler explains, has poor soil, no cotton, almost no plantations, and therefore, none of the southern decorum either. He has spent nine years there researching The Wiregrass, a new true-crime investigation into a case nobody has satisfactorily explained.
On 31 July 1999, JB Beasley turned seventeen. She and her friend Tracie Hawlett set out from the Alabama town of Dothan (peanut capital of the world) to go party-hopping in the Wiregrass. Searching for a field party with a keg, the two young women got lost. They stopped at a closed filling station in Ozark to use the payphone, and someone gave them directions that didn’t sound suspicious.
“Right out of the lot, left at the McDonald’s.”
The surveillance tape shows them leaving in the right direction. Their car was found by the roadside the next morning. At two in the afternoon somebody finally opened the trunk. Both girls were inside, shot in the head. Southern gothic murders most foul.
So what happened? The bodies sat in that trunk for five hours in a steaming Alabama summer, before an officer from out of town had the smart idea to open it. Trained officers then searched the car without gloves. A lead investigator tried to tow it back to Dothan, which would have destroyed the crime scene. Years later the car was quietly released and resold, with no paperwork stating who authorised it. A man named Johnny Barrentine confessed and was let go when the DNA did not match. And when Kessler rang the Ozark police for the file, he was told that everything before 2000 had been “accidentally” destroyed. Oops.
Twenty years on, a genetic genealogy search matched semen from the scene to Coley McCraney, a married preacher with no criminal record. He was convicted on four counts of capital murder in 2023 and is now serving life without parole. McCraney admitted to the sex, but denied the killing. The DNA is the only material evidence since nobody found a weapon. Kessler believes in his innocence, and suspects the police are implicated, though the officer he calls a person of interest will stay unnamed until you buy the book. Ah, the South.
FIVE TAKEAWAYS
1. The reporting is stronger than the theory it supports: the Klan collecting on the town square, families carrying “driving around money” for bogus stops, locals pressing guns on a reporter they feared for. It shows a department incapable of investigating anything.
2. The investigation failed at nearly every point. Five hours before anyone opened the trunk, and then only an officer from out of town. Locals searched the car without gloves. Years later it was sold, with no record of who authorised it.
3. A pattern of police sexual coercion runs underneath. A high-school Explorers programme shut down because officers slept with students; pupils trading bogus tickets for favours; a chief forced out over officers’ wives. AK asks whether these two refused to play along.
4. The conviction rests on DNA and little else: no weapon, no other material evidence. Kessler accepts the DNA is Coley McCraney’s, argues the encounter was consensual, and says DNA is read as guilt without anyone asking what it actually shows.
5. He accuses the police and cannot finish the sentence, naming an officer as a person of interest and then declining to identify him. Note what goes unmentioned: Rena Crumb later recanted, and the 2024 appeal found her account hearsay.
THE BOOK
The Wiregrass: A Tale of Murder and Retribution in the Deep South (Grand Central, 2026) — https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/matt-kessler/the-wiregrass/9781538786376/
ABOUT KEEN ON AMERICA
Keen On America is a daily conversation about the ideas, books and arguments shaping the United States, hosted by Andrew Keen, author of The Internet Is Not the Answer and How to Fix the Future. New episodes every day.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Intro
00:31 — Back in the Deep South, after Lillian Smith
04:39 — The murders of JB Beasley and Tracie Hawlett
10:03 — The Klan on the town square
15:01 — Five hours before anyone opened the trunk
17:31 — “Driving around money”
18:03 — The Police Explorers programme
25:28 — Searching the car without gloves
29:57 — Jon Carroll, Rena Crumb and the genealogy match
42:54 — Why Kessler believes he is innocent
43:59 — His case against the police
46:39 — The only material evidence is DNA
49:59 — DNA accepted prima facie
51:29 — Closing