Blood Echoes: The Infamous Alday Mass Murder and Its Aftermath

by Thomas H. Cook Narrated by Kris Koscheski

Overview

Edgar Award Finalist: A true-crime account of a vicious massacre and the legal battles that followed.



It was not a clever killing. On May 5, 1973, three men escaped from a Maryland prison and disappeared. Joined by a fifteen-year-old brother, they surfaced in Georgia, where they were spotted joyriding in a stolen car. Within a week, the four young men were arrested on suspicion of committing one of the most horrific murders in American history. Jerry Alday and his family were eating Sunday dinner when death burst through the door of their cozy little trailer. Their six bodies are only the beginning of Thomas H. Cook's retelling of this gruesome story; the horrors continued in the courtroom. Based on court documents, police records, and interviews with the surviving family members, this is a chilling look at the evil that can lurk just around the corner.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Probably the most famous crime in Georgia history was the 1973 cold-blooded slaughter of six members of the religious, law-abiding Alday farm family by four drifters from Baltimore: brothers Billy and Carl Isaacs, their half-brother Wayne Coleman and friend George Dungee. Forensic evidence and confessions left no doubt of the killers' guilt; the youngest, Billy Isaacs, turned state's evidence and the other three were sentenced to death. Then the appeals process took over and, after 12 years, the death penalty convictions were overturned. In later trials Carl was resentenced to die and is now on death row awaiting further appeals. In the meantime the surviving Alday women (five of the victims were men) were unable to carry on the work of the farm, and the land passed to outsiders. The trials, hearings and appeals have cost an impoverished rural county and the state hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars. Psychologically the survivors have never recovered. With this scorching indictment of the legal and court systems, Cook ( Early Graves ) portrays a case in which justice was both delayed and denied. He is most persuasive. (Mar.)

Library Journal

After ten novels, Cook follows his first foray into true crime, Early Graves ( LJ 10/1/90), with this account of the 1973 murders of six members of one Georgia family. Cook's narrative of the senseless, sadistic rape and murder is vivid enough, but the bulk of the book deals with the crime's aftermath. In what amounts to an indictment of the criminal justice system, Cook contrasts the suffering of the innocent victims and their families with the legal maneuverings of the unrepentant murderers who, through numerous hearings and trials, have (so far) avoided their initially imposed death sentences. Less sensational than Clark Howard's Brothers in Blood ( LJ 2/15/83), this entry could attract readers looking for social commentary as well as murderous thrills. For true crime and law collections. Illustrations not seen.-- Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet, Hammond, Ind.

Kirkus Reviews

Alternately horrifying and deeply moving, this fast-paced true-crime report by Cook (Early Graves, The City When It Rains—both 1990, etc.) focuses on the murder of six members of the Alday family of rural Seminole County, Georgia, on May 14, 1973. The slaughter was the work of three brothers—Carl and Billy Isaacs and Wayne Coleman—and of a slow-witted black man, George Dungee. The quartet were on the lam from Baltimore, where Carl, Wayne, and George had recently escaped from prison. Billy, the youngest, was along for the excitement. Spotting the trailer home of Jerry and Mary Alday, the four men, short on cash, pulled into the yard and began rifling the place. In the midst of the burglary, Jerry and his father arrived home and were promptly shot to death. A while later, other family members arrived: each was murdered. The last to appear was Mary, who was killed after being raped repeatedly. Then the murderers took off in her car and began roaming the South, staging holdups and stealing cars. Eventually arrested in West Virginia, they were returned to Georgia to stand trial. Billy turned state's evidence, and the three others were given death penalties—but the sentences were appealed, with two overturned. Today, a totally unrepentant Carl is apparently still manipulating the system and issuing statements such as, "What did [the victims] ever do? No one would have ever paid any attention to them, if I hadn't come along and killed them." In Cook's capable hands, the cumulative effect is shattering. And when the author writes of the sufferings of surviving Alday family members—the loss of their farm, or their reliving of the tragic events with each new judicialmaneuver—his words prove sensitive and resonant. An immensely involving work that shifts from the repellent to the heartwarming and back and asks important questions about the clash between criminals' and victims' rights. (Eight page photo insert—not seen.)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172799488
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	05/19/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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