All Titles

Upstate South Carolina is a scenic region of business centers, farms and textile towns. But it has a dark side. In 1924, a local resident was convicted for poisoning a neighbor in a case that went to the state supreme court. One resident aided a prisoner in a daring outbreak in the name of love. Fairfield County had its own version of witch trials. Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist's eye to the Upstate's real crime stories and the international headlines and the little-known tales that define the sinister--and quirky--side of her home state.

Murder leaves no decade unscarred. In 1903, the lieutenant governor of South Carolina shot dead a local newspaper editor, in full view of witnesses. In 1944, George Stinney was marched to the electric chair, at age fourteen. In 1994, a mother made national news pleading for the return of her kidnapped sons, when in truth she had driven them to a watery grave herself. Jones spares no chilling detail in describing each of these crimes; all make for fascinating, and terrifying, reading.

Author and crime writer Mark Jones presents the stories, and criminal minds, of nine serial offenders who terrorized South Carolina during the latter part of the twentieth century. The Super Christian"? who turned a small beach community into a terrified town. The "Gaffney Strangler"? who taunted police with the message, "Stop me or I will kill again."? The schoolteacher-turned-rapist who eluded authorities for more than thirty years. And of course, the horrifying and tragic life of South Carolina's most successful serial killer, Pee Wee Gaskins. All are revealed here in chilling detail."

The city of Georgetown, South Carolina, is situated along the Atlantic coast where the Sampit River feeds into Winyah Bay. The early wealth of the area through 1865 was derived from an agricultural economy built on the backs of slave labor. This economy and the institution of slavery collapsed with the emancipation of the black population after the Civil War. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, Georgetown remained marred with inequalities between blacks and whites despite efforts to achieve a racial and cultural balance.  In Trial and Error, Tom Rubillo explores the volatile case of John Brownfield—a black man tried for shooting a white policeman in the 1900s—and the Jim Crow mentality that was imbedded in the turn-of-the-century South. The result is a stirring narrative that examines the history of race relations in Georgetown, the trial of John Brownfield and the impact of the trial through the twentieth century to the present day. With meticulous research and engaging prose, Rubillo reconstructs the case and trial that became a watershed for race relations in Georgetown. Trial and Error is an essential volume in the history of Georgetown, the South Carolina Lowcountry and indeed the South as a whole.