Murder Creek The"Unfortunate Incident" of Annie Jean Barnes (Audible Audio Edition) Joe Formichella Suzanne Hudson Waterhole Branch Productions Books
Download As PDF : Murder Creek The"Unfortunate Incident" of Annie Jean Barnes (Audible Audio Edition) Joe Formichella Suzanne Hudson Waterhole Branch Productions Books
On a chilly evening in fall of 1966, Annie Jean Barnes left her home in East Brewton, Alabama, to spend time at a secluded fishing camp owned by a local doctor. Less than 48 hours later she was hospitalized - beaten and abused. Within a week, she was dead. And, it would seem, willfully forgotten by the citizens of Brewton - the more prosperous area on the west side of Murder Creek - who soon came to refer to the fate of Jean Barnes as an "unfortunate incident."
The 2003 publication of Suzanne Hudson's novel In a Temple of Trees raised the ghost of Annie Jean. Present at Hudson's premiere book signing in Brewton, Joe Formichella met Barnes' surviving children and became moved to tell the story in full. Who was culpable for their mother's death? The town physician who owned the camp? The authorities who mishandled the subsequent investigation? Had there been a cover-up? With so much evidence either contradictory or mysteriously missing, was there now any way to bring anyone to justice?
Formichella, in seeking those answers, found instead a larger question what would justice mean for a community built as though it were a functioning social model for certain principles set down in the deeply flawed Alabama state constitution - a document penned in 1901 by wealthy land-owners and politicians, seeking to keep the riff-raff at bay? Systems of justice, in Alabama, and throughout America, should be designed to protect precisely those citizens too poor to wield any kind of influence. This is the story of a breakdown in that system, a clarion call for its correction, and a ray of hope for those who have waited too long for the answer to the simple question who beat Annie Barnes?
Murder Creek The"Unfortunate Incident" of Annie Jean Barnes (Audible Audio Edition) Joe Formichella Suzanne Hudson Waterhole Branch Productions Books
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Murder Creek The"Unfortunate Incident" of Annie Jean Barnes (Audible Audio Edition) Joe Formichella Suzanne Hudson Waterhole Branch Productions Books Reviews
This book confirmed what I suspected for many years--that the wealthy folks in Brewton looked upon folks in East Brewton as trash. Being from East Brewton, it was of interest to me to see how there is still a cover up to this murder that took place in 1966. Since most people involved in this "incident" are dead, and the few living still won't talk about it, there is no definite conclusion as to who killed Annie Jean. Therefore, the author has produced a work that shows how poor people have not received justice in Alabama, as the wealthy are protected, and even traces this injustice back to the Alabama Constitution that was enacted at the beginning of 1900.
If you are expecting to find out about the death of Annie Jean Barnes after reading this book, don't waste your time. You won't know anymore about what happened after finishing this book than you did after reading the dust jacket. It could be argued that Annie Jean, 42 years after she died is still being used. One must wonder if contact was lost with the victim's children because they had similar feelings about the author's project. A large percentage of the book is irrelevant and unnecessary political commentary. Mr. Formichella while I agree that Alabama needs a new constitution, Mrs. Barnes life and death is not the proper situation to debate the point.
Instead of bouncing all around trying to educate the readers on Alabama's constitution he should have stuck more to the story.
Murder Creek has a lot of potential. Ostensibly, the book is about the mysterious 1966 death of an Alabama woman, Annie Jean Barnes. The alleged perpetrators in her death were wealthy, and no one ever brought them to justice. Enter author Joe Formichella, who decides to re-open the case.
The book has its virtues. The case is interesting and Formichella uncovers some intriguing leads on what might have happened. He also provides the reader with a good sense of place when he describes Brewton, Alabama.
Unfortunately, Formichella ruins his book. He devotes about half of the pages in Murder Creek to complaining about the State of Alabama's 1901 constitution. Try as he might, Formichella provides no convincing link between Barnes' death and Alabama politics. At its worst, Murder Creek reads like a bad blog - the rantings of a political partisan.
Murder Creek should not have been a book. It is one long story (about Ms. Barnes) and one opinion piece (on the Alabama Constitution). I can't understand why anyone published this mishmash.
Joe Formichella (Twilight Unlimited; Here’s to You, Jackie Robinson) typically fills his non-fiction with the narrative pull of fiction, and his non-fiction investigation Murder Creek is no exception. From the opening two pages—an imaginary closing argument delivered by an imaginary prosecutor in the “unfortunate” murder of Annie Jean Barnes—to the book’s end, the reader is impelled with the tracking of this forty-year-old mystery. And track it the author does, interviewing witnesses willing and unwilling, relatives of the primary suspect (if such a word can even be used in a case that never made it past a grand jury inquiry), relatives of the victim (such a word can most certainly be used), lawyers and law enforcement officials at both local and state levels, and forensic specialists.
And what tribulations Formichella underwent to obtain public records! Herein lies the rub, the counterpoint that the author uses throughout the—I nearly wrote novel—throughout his investigation. For just as he did in his gathered recollections of the Prichard Mohawks, Formichella elevates a local issue into something much larger. In the case of the Mohawks, it was the ongoing battle of racism that infiltrated professional and semi-professional baseball. In the case of the “unfortunate” incident of Anne Barnes, it is the pervasive and evidently ongoing push against impoverished Alabamians as evinced by the gargantuan and tax-oppressive state constitution. Formichella, with help from generous quotes from Wayne Flynt’s Alabama in the Twentieth Century and the Official Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama, uses the history of conglomerate and baron trader control of Alabama’s politics to mirror what went on locally in the Barnes’ case—a case that never became a case, because as her attending physician reportedly told her mourning family members, “you’ll never know how much money was spent” in making sure the case didn’t materialize.
Formichella’s writing is easeful and enjoyable. Here’s his opening look at Brewton from an approaching highway lined with pines “An occasional trunk is snapped halfway up and folded over on itself, like a nearly closed switchblade, the tuft of needles at what was the crown gone brown.” As does any good mystery writer, Formichella knows how to create mood. And he also knows how to end chapters with an absolutely eye-opening hook to carry the reader on. One such chapter’s ending that sticks out for me comes halfway through the book when the author at last gets to interview the son of the doctor who was having an affair with Barnes and who would have surely served as the main murder suspect, had the case ever made it to court. “ ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ he [the son] stopped me, leaning over the table. ‘You really think she was still alive when they found her at the cabin.’” Well, yes, up until now, all testimony has indicated such, has indicated that she died in the Brewton hospital (whose medical records were burned in a mysterious ‘fire’ that no one in Brewton can ever remember occurring).
And that revelation just skims the surface of contradicting testimony coming from everyone involved—and I’m sure author Joe Formichella must have been constantly shaking his head, because everyone means just that from very close relatives to the victim to law enforcement officials at all levels.
If you want a mystery that twines and doubles back, if you want rich anecdotes about Alabama’s history from pre-constitution days onward (“Railroad Bill,” you may have heard the song, but did you know that he was a Robin Hood bandit killed and displayed on a flatcar all up and down a railroad line in Alabama?), if you want all this, Murder Creek is the book for you.
I picked this up after passing through Brewton AL recently and crossing Murder Creek. Brewton has been a place I've been thru many times over the year and I have distant relatives there. I was curious about its name and lead me to this book. Probably not for everyone unless you have some; even fleeting connection to the town!
I enjoyed learning about an aspect of Brewton I never heard when I was growing up. The reactions don't surprise me at all. Brewton is all about the good-ol'-Southern-boy mentality and the people there will go down fighting to protect it.
Everything that I hoped for
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