A vital and propulsive true crime narrative set in a little-known corner of the Bible Belt, The Wiregrass tells the story of the 1999 murders of two young women, exposes a chilling account of police corruption, and offers a window into the complicated interplay of race and class in the Deep South.
In 1999, two white teenage girls, J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, were found shot in the trunk of Beasley's car on her 17th birthday. Months passed and the murder remained unsolved, with no clear motive for either death. Locals suspected a police coverup; Ozark's police force had a reputation for dating high schoolers and had butchered the investigation in crucial ways, including destroying the crime scene during the course of the investigation. Suspicion of the police rose to a fever pitch fifteen years later, when a local blogger released leaked FBI documents and interviews with those involved, including one from a woman who had worked in multiple police departments that revealed officer Keith Cauthen had confessed to the killings. Soon after this came to light came the surprise arrest of Coley McCraney, a devout Black man in his mid-forties, in 2019. Many in the community, including Beasley's father, harbor doubts that he was the killer, but McCraney was convicted of both murders in 2023 and sentenced to serve two life sentences.
The Wiregrass is an atmospheric and utterly compelling true crime narrative, populated by an eccentric and sometimes frightening cast: crooked cops and politicians, showboating lawyers, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, whistleblowers, obsessive detectives, and 90's jocks, preppies, Bible kids, and wanna-be thugs. It is the story of a region that cannot escape the traumas of its past, and a chilling account of police corruption that runs rampant across the region. Matt Kessler is a journalist, essayist, teacher, and scholar, with a background in politics and American literature. He has reported justice, race and iniquity stories in Mississippi for The Guardian, where his work was commended by the Mississippi ACLU, and environmental stories for The Atlantic. His radio work has been broadcast on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Illinois Public Media. His cultural essays have been published in Pitchfork, MTV News, Dazed and Confused, Vice, and The Rumpus.
