Page 7 - MIN JUS 12 SEPT 2015
P. 7
PEOPLE & ARTS A31
Saturday 12 September
Alabama murder mystery: What happened to Harper Lee’s book?
KIM CHANDLER ander City. Radney had In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015, near Dadeville, Ala., Robert Burns discusses his deal-
Associated Press successfully defended the ings with author Harper Lee about a true-crime book she researched nearly 40 years ago.
ALEXANDER CITY, Ala. (AP) preacher, Will Maxwell, in
— Pulitzer Prize-winning his homicide case and then Associated Press
novelist Harper Lee politely defended Burns, the man
knocked on truck driver who shot Maxwell. Radney even in the woods as his him,” Burns said. “He was reports. Radney had rep-
Robert Louis Burns’ door turned over all of his case oversaw his crews— and a strange man. They said resented Maxwell in his
in rural Alabama one day files to Lee to help her with he preached on the week- he would kill chickens and previous troubles, but this
more than three decades her research, his widow ends. He was indicted for tie them up around his time when Maxwell called
ago and asked him about said. They communicated the murder of his first wife house and take the blood Radney for help, the lawyer
the preacher he killed. about the book off and on Mary Edward Maxwell, who and put them on his door- decided he’d had enough,
The plainly dressed writer for years. was found beaten and step, said that would keep his widow recalled.
wanted to meet the man “She promised him she was strangled in her car in 1970. people away,” Burns said. Burns, who was Ellington’s
who had stood up in a going to write this book But after Maxwell married “And the chickens tied up uncle, said the girl had tried
crowded Alexander City about the case,” recalled the woman who was to be around his house in trees to run away from home
funeral home in 1977 and Madolyn Radney, the wid- a key prosecution witness and stuff would keep evil before she died, because
put a bullet in the brain of ow. she feared her stepfather.
a preacher who was ru- “She had this cute wit This photograph taken Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015, in Alexander A Vietnam veteran later
mored to have dabbled in about her,” she remem- City, Ala., shows the front page of the town newspaper following diagnosed with Post Trau-
voodoo and suspected in bered. “It was obvious she the slaying of Willie Maxwell in 1977. matic Stress Disorder, Burns
a string of deaths in this riv- was brilliant,” she added. said he has only vague
erside county. “I think she smoked a lot, Associated Press recollections of killing Max-
“She came up out of the drank a lot and cussed a lot well. He got up to view El-
blue. She said I’m Harper and was completely and against him he was acquit- spirits away.” lington’s body in her casket
Lee. She said I’m interested utterly charming.” ted, according to AP re- Authorities were particular- and saw that Maxwell was
in writing this book about The Radney family has one ports. ly suspicious after Maxwell’s sitting on the pew behind
the reverend.” Burns, now tangible bit of evidence Others in his family also stepdaughter, Shirley Ann him. It felt like Maxwell was
74, recalled. that Lee’s book was real: died, including that sec- Ellington, 16, was found taunting him, he said.
Lee, the famed author of four typed pages, the ond wife, a nephew and a dead under his car. She “That really burnt me up. I
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” opening of the novel that brother. Maxwell was nev- appeared to have been was so angry that I couldn’t
came to the textile town Radney’s wife and daugh- er charged in any of the crushed when a jack col- hardly control myself,”
beside the Tallapoosa Riv- ter say Lee sent to the at- deaths, but that didn’t stop lapsed as she was chang- Burns said. He spun around,
er, about 70 miles southeast torney. It begins with an the whispers and rumors ing a tire. But state investi- pulled a small .25-caliber
of Birmingham, in the late early morning phone call that insurance money was gators suspected she may Beretta that he always car-
1970s to research a true- from the accused black somehow involved. have been killed earlier ried since returning from
crime novel based on the preacher to his white law- “People was afraid of and placed at a scene, Vietnam and shot Maxwell
bizarre tale of possible se- yer. Names have been him, very much afraid of according to newspaper three times. One bullet hit
rial murder, the occult and changed, a sign that Lee him square in the forehead.
courtroom drama. Her vis- maybe planned a slightly Maxwell slumped down on
its were reminiscent of her fictionalized account. a pew and died as blood
trips to Kansas in the early Hand-scrawled at the top ran down his face and
1960s, when she helped her is the title “The Reverend.” screaming mourners fled
childhood friend Truman The text is dotted with the church.
Capote research his ac- handwritten b’s, filling in Radney defended Burns in
claimed murder story, “In where a typewriter key ap- the death of his former cli-
Cold Blood.” parently stuck. Radney’s ent. A jury deliberated for
Lee worked on the Ala- granddaughter, Madolyn five hours before finding
bama book for months, Price, said the family con- Burns not guilty by reason of
maybe even years, but it firmed that the stuck “b’’ insanity, according to The
never materialized. Now was consistent with the Alexander City Outlook.q
even her notes are no- typewriter Lee used at the
where to be found, giving time.
rise to another mystery: The Radney family showed
What became of the novel a copy of the pages to The
she had tentatively titled Associated Press with the
“The Reverend”? agreement that the mate-
The publication of Lee’s rial not be quoted.
recently discovered manu- Lee sent Tom Radney only
script, “Go Set a Watch- those four pages, but told
man,” described as a him many times that she
first draft of the story that had written more, his fam-
evolved into “Mocking- ily said.
bird”, has renewed interest “She would say, ‘It’s in the
that Lee’s true crime novel first draft,’ or, ‘The publisher
could still be out there, wants this,’” Madolyn Rad-
somewhere. ney said.
That Lee put serious effort The real-life case certainly
into the project is undisput- offered enough drama
ed. and color for a novel.
She worked closely with Maxwell was a charming,
“Big Tom” Radney, a go- thrice-married pulpwooder
to defense lawyer in Alex- who always wore a suit —
