Word: sylacauga
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This is not the type of place where this happens," city council president George Carlton told a reporter, after the horror became public in his hometown, Sylacauga, Ala. He echoed what was said in Jasper, Texas, a year ago. Few people then had ever heard of Jasper. A week ago, even fewer could have pointed out Sylacauga on a map. A tiny city of 13,000, halfway between Birmingham and Montgomery, Sylacauga was known for its white marble quarries, textile mills and ice-cream factory. But last week Sylacauga, like Jasper, became a chapter in the recent history of hatred...
According to police, Steven Eric Mullins, 25, and Charles Monroe Butler Jr., 21, plotted for two weeks to murder Billy Jack Gaither, 39. On Feb. 19, they arranged to meet him at a Sylacauga bar and lured him to a secluded area. There they beat him and dumped him into the trunk of his car. They then drove about 15 miles to Peckerwood Creek in Coosa County. There, says Coosa County Sheriff's Deputy Al Bradley, "they took him out of the trunk, took an ax handle and beat him to death." They set two old tires aflame, says Bradley...
...beaten and left to die on a fence in Wyoming last October, an incident that sparked national outrage. Even Wyoming failed to pass hate-crime legislation in the wake of the Shepard lynching. Like Shepard, Gaither did not hesitate to admit being gay, though he adhered quietly to Sylacauga's Southern dispositions. And friends dispute Mullins' and Butler's allegations that a sexual proposition incited the murder. Gaither's brother Randy told CNN: "Regardless of his personal life or anything, he doesn't deserve to be killed for this...
...been investigating this story on and off since November 1996, when he heard about a series of travel-agency burglaries. As he dug deeper, he says, the story "shifted from fraud to a real public concern." Monroe also reports in this issue on the recent hate crime in Sylacauga...
...Laramie, Wyo. and left to die because he was gay. Then there was James Byrd Jr. of Jasper, Texas, a man who was tied to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death because he was black. And now there is Billy Jack Gaither, a man from Sylacauga, Ala. who was clubbed to death with an ax handle and thrown onto a pyre of burning tires because...