Murders in the Wiregrass: Matt Kessler on DNA, Doubt and the Deep South

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everyone. We are back in the Deep South. Few days ago, we did a show about the American dissident, Lillian Smith, the subject of a wonderful new biography by a guest, Keri Leigh Merritt, an inconvenient woman, and the extraordinary life of Lillian Smith, the southerner who defied Jim Crow. She was from Clayton, Georgia, in northern Georgia.

And she was the subject of much vilification and violence. They burned down, the racists burned down her house several times. She lost a lot of papers. And we are continuing the theme of the South, perhaps racism and certainly violence. Rather than Clayton, we're going down to Ozark, a city in southern Alabama, in the Wiregrass region. It's not that far from northern Georgia, certainly both parts of the South. It is deep, deep South. With my guest today, Matt Kessler, who has a new book out called The Wiregrass. And it's about a terrible crime that was committed in Ozark and his attempt to make sense of it. Matt is joining us from Birmingham, Alabama, where he lives and writes. Matt, congratulations on the book. It came out a few days ago. Tell me a little bit about the Wiregrass region. It's the title of your book, The Wiregrass. What is the Wiregrass region of Southern Alabama like?

Matt Kessler (2:11)

It's the Southeast part of Alabama. Historically, it was a really poor area, and Wiregrass was a derogatory term, like boondocks.

Initially, hog farming, and then that turned into peanut farming, and that's been their big cash crop. I would say that it's different than the rest of the Southeast, or different than the rest of Alabama, because most of Alabama is known for its Southern decorum, but in the Wiregrass, you really don't have that. It's more of a ranchers mentality. And I think this offers like a really interesting perspective of Southern perspectives without this kind of veneer of decorum. It's very religious.

Andrew Keen (3:02)

So it doesn't have the Gone With The Wind decorum.

Matt Kessler (3:06)

No, no, it's definitely not Gone With The Wind. There were few plantations, very few plantations. I mean, it's bad soil.

So there was no cotton in the region, and it's really kind of developed after the Civil War. And then fertilizer is when at the turn of the century, when fertilizer comes, that's what helps the region prosper. But it's never rich. It's never, never, it's never rich.

Andrew Keen (3:33)

You're from Mobile, Alabama. Of course, the subject of a great Bob Dylan song on the coast.

How coastal is Wiregrass? Did it have a lot of association with a port city like Mobile?

Matt Kessler (3:48)

It doesn't. It's close to Panama City Beach, but you feel, you see that you are close to the coast because it's really unique. I've traveled, I've lived in a lot of different parts of the country and what strikes me about the region is it's agrarian. You have a lot of farming, but you also have these kind of fluorescent skies, big thunderclouds, massive storms that I only really associate with coastal living. So you are close to the coast, but you have to drive to a beach and it doesn't feel like a beach town. It's very much a farming community.

Andrew Keen (4:31)

Yeah. I've actually been to Panama City, which is on the panhandle, right? I mean, it's not exactly it's I'm not sure if it's in Florida. It's certainly on the Florida border. So we're talking fairly obscure. I mean, your book, The Wiregrass, for better or worse, is not a travel book. It's not really about the wiregrass. It's about this terrible crime that took place.

The murders of JB Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, a double child murder in August 1999 Tell me about this murder, Matt, or this double murder.

Matt Kessler (5:11)

So JB and Tracie, they were 17 It was actually JB's 17th birthday.

It was the weekend before school started, their senior year of high school. It was a really hot, hot day, really hot weekend.

Andrew Keen (5:29)

And to say that in Southern Alabama, it's got to be pretty hot.

Matt Kessler (5:34)

Like you can see the humidity type of heat. And what they were planning to do, it was her 17th birthday, Saturday night. And so they wanted, Tracie worked at the JCPenney. She got off around nine. And the idea was that they were going to go party hopping. So like for your listeners, if you think of suburban American teenagers party hopping, that usually means, you know, driving from one house and 10 minutes to a different subdivision, you know, to another party. It's not at all what that means here in the Wiregrass. What was popular at that time were field parties, which are just big parties out in abandoned or cropped fields. And so they would, people would bring a keg. I mean, I went to these myself as a teenager.