Editorial Content for The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders

In March 1985, 12 people were attending a Bible study in Rising Daughter Baptist Church. A young white man walked into the southern Georgia place of worship. One of the ladies there asked if she could help him. He said he wanted to talk to someone and then pointed at Deacon Harold Swain. A church is supposed to be a welcoming place, so Deacon Swain didn’t hesitate to see what he could do for the man. But the conversation went all kinds of sideways, and it ended with Swain dead, along with his wife, Thelma, when she came to his aid.

Hearing the gunshots, chaos broke out inside. In the seconds it took for this tragedy to occur, several ladies witnessed the attack, while others heard it from the other room. But their stories --- as with many who survive traumas like this --- varied, even down to the color of the shooter’s hair. A manhunt was launched immediately, but Georgia law enforcement spent years pursuing leads only for the case to eventually go cold. Some in the community would say that it might have been handled better. But two officers who worked it, Butch Kennedy and Joe Gregory, ended their careers haunted by their inability to bring the killer to justice. They couldn’t get anyone to listen to them.

"THE MAN NO ONE BELIEVED is Sharpe’s recounting of how his dogged pursuit of righting a terrible wrong --- perpetrated on one man not once but several times over --- gave Dennis Perry back the rest of his life. Bravo!"

Mike Ellerson, a young Black man who was 14 at the time of the murders, had been visiting his girlfriend across town when news of the killings rang out. Fearing for his own life, he raced back home in a full-blown panic. Years later, all grown up, he joined the ranks of law enforcement and did the hard work to become a detective. At one point, he found himself thinking about the case again and took it upon himself to review the file, which consisted of nine hearty three-ring binders.

One day, Ellerson asked Sheriff Bill Smith --- a man with a reputation that included all kinds of corruption --- if he could officially look into the case. He gave Ellerson the go-ahead. But it wasn’t long before he assigned a former deputy, Dale Bundy, who had no familiarity with the case, to head the investigation. Again, it went through many stages of mishandling. When Bundy and Smith were finished, they had arrested Dennis Perry, a man Kennedy and Gregory had cleared early in their investigation. Ellerson argued against arresting Perry, but his vote got thrown out.

With little real evidence, it seemed unlikely that Perry would be convicted. Even the District Attorney worried he would lose at trial, so he offered Perry a sweetheart deal. Perry refused, fiercely claiming his innocence. When it came time to hand the case over to the jury, the “evidence” presented had been so weak, it was felt that the judge had every reason under the sun to dismiss the case. But she didn’t. The jury misunderstood some of the evidence to the point that they convicted Perry. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And without the right to appeal.

The Georgia Innocence Project decided to get involved. They contacted journalist Joshua Sharpe, who worked for Georgia’s largest newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, covering crime and public safety. Were it not for Sharpe, Perry might have rotted in prison forever while other, more viable, suspects continued to roam free. Sharpe worked tirelessly and at considerable personal risk to help a man he’d never met. But he saw a terrible miscarriage of justice and simply couldn’t let it stand.

THE MAN NO ONE BELIEVED is Sharpe’s recounting of how his dogged pursuit of righting a terrible wrong --- perpetrated on one man not once but several times over --- gave Dennis Perry back the rest of his life. Bravo!