[tense music]
- In a corner of the bible belt,
An innocent night out ends in terror and tragedy.
- You just think, what kind of animal could do this?
- I threw that phone,
And I screamed bloody murder.
- In pursuit of a cold-blooded killer,
Authorities close in on sinful characters
In this alabama town.
- Everybody was a suspect.
- Every rumor that came in, police were tracking it.
- He was telling somebody he'd gotten away with it.
- And when the truth is finally revealed,
It rattles all of dixie.
- He was just a ghost that showed up.
- It was hell to listen to him say these things.
- I just sat back and I thought,
Are you kidding me?
♪ ♪
["just another ghost"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ oh, child ♪
♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
[country music]
- Nestled in the piney woods of southeastern alabama
Lies a little gem of a city called dothan.
- Dothan, we always referred to it
As the garden spot of alabama.
The peanut crop plays a major role.
There are more peanuts grown in this part of alabama
Than anywhere else.
- But faith and religion,
That's what holds dothan together.
- You know, the joke is,
You can't swing a cat without hitting a church.
- Everybody goes to church on Sunday
And go to mama's house for lunch.
It is the most important thing.
- It's the kind of place where folks can feel safe
Leaving their doors unlocked and letting
Their kids out of sight.
And in the scorching hot summer of 1999,
One of those kids is a teenager named jb beasley.
- When jb was born,
I couldn't believe god gave that beautiful thing
To me.
[soft music]
I had her in christian school.
She always made a's,
And she danced and cheerleading
And was in beauty pageants.
- Contestant number 30, it's jb beasley.
- In the south, they love their beauty pageants.
Everything she ever did-- everything--she blossomed.
- Jb has a kindred spirit in her friend tracie hawlett.
- She met tracie that spring.
It was a quick friendship.
She was beautiful and sweet and cute
And fun and all that too.
You know, they'd hang out at the mall.
- Tracie was 17 years old, loved to dance.
She wanted to do missionary work
When she got out of high school.
She was just a good girl.
- Saturday, July 31st is jb's birthday,
And she turns 17.
To celebrate, jb heads to tracie's house
For a sleepover.
- That night, jb was spending the night with tracie,
And they were going to a field party.
- A field party is where you're out in a field.
There might be a bonfire.
Maybe people have a guitar or something.
It's just a place to hang out.
- Around 10:05 pm, the duo sets out from tracie's house
In jb's black mazda 929.
Tracie's mom, carol roberts, bids them goodbye.
- They were supposed to be back at tracie's house
By 11:30.
I had told her before,
Nothing good happens after 11:00, 12:00 at night.
♪ ♪
[crow cawing]
- The next morning, I was at home.
[phone ringing]
Tracie's mother, carol, called me.
We were close friends.
And she told me that tracie and jb had not come home.
That was a little bit unusual.
Tracie didn't normally come home late.
- Carol tells chief white that the last time
She spoke to her daughter was around 11:30 last night.
- Tracie called her mother, carol, from a payphone
At a convenience store in ozark.
- It's about 30-minute drive to get there from town.
- Tracie said, we got lost
And never made it to this party.
But we kind of know where we're going now.
I'll be home in just a little bit.
- Carol tells chief white she went to bed.
But come this morning, when she woke up,
There was no sign of the girls.
- The vast majority of the time, it turns out ok.
They come home.
But carol was worried.
- In a panic, carol tells chief white
She's already contacted the dothan police department
And filed a missing persons report.
He assures her he'll take it from there.
- So I told the com center to assign it
To a juvenile detective
And put a lookout on jb's vehicle.
- Within an hour, authorities locate jb's vehicle
23 miles away in ozark.
- Ozark police department first spotted the car
Between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning
In a secluded area near a couple of acres of woods.
- The car is unlocked,
But the girls are nowhere inside.
- This is the spot that jb beasley
And tracie hawlett's vehicle was found.
The windows were down.
The girls' purses and personal effects
Were still inside the vehicle.
- But there's no keys.
That kind of indicates that they're close by.
Nobody's gonna leave their car very long
And not lock it up, take their belongings.
- The hope was that they were gonna come back to the car.
But we also put out what we call
A close patrol, really saturated the area,
Just searching.
- The officers thought maybe
They're in the woods doing something
Or somebody was gonna drop them back off.
But after a while, that didn't occur.
And they yelled for them, looked in the woods.
But they didn't find them in the woods.
At that point, they didn't feel real good about it.
[dramatic music]
- In this close-knit southern community,
Word of the missing girls quickly spreads
Beyond law enforcement.
- That Sunday morning,
I was listening to my police scanner.
And I heard two girls were missing
And they had found the car.
This may be something.
So I ride up there because they're gonna need a photo
For the newspaper.
As soon as I roll up, I could see
A lot of officers around the car.
So I was like, hmm, something's up.
- Meanwhile, jb's mother, cheryl,
Has no clue that her daughter and tracie are missing.
But late in the morning,
She receives word from jb's dance teacher.
- I was working at the tennis shop
At the country club in dothan.
The police had been looking for me.
I didn't know that.
And patty got on the phone and said, jb's missing.
And they found her purse in her car on the side of the road.
♪ ♪
I started screaming and heaving,
And grabbed the trash can.
I just knew something was bad.
- Back in ozark, several hours have passed.
And beyond jb's car,
Investigators still see no sign of her or tracie.
- It was decided at that point that we would
Go a step further and open the trunk of the vehicle.
- They didn't need a key because there's
A trunk release in the 929.
You just touch a button under the driver on the door.
♪ ♪
Bang, there it was.
- And I can see a knee--
Excuse me.
Cut.
Just for a second.
[voice breaking] I'll get it.
- Two young, beautiful girls stretched out like cordwood.
It's one of those visions that will occupy
A piece of your brain that you'll never get rid of.
- Coming up...
- People were scared. They wanted this monster found.
- He was telling somebody that he had done this.
He was just really anxious.
I'm going after him.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Six hours after 17-year-old best friends jb beasley
And tracie hawlett were reported missing,
Police open jb's trunk
And make a horrifying discovery.
- With a wallet, purse, id,
We knew it was tracie and jb.
Gut punch.
Just terrible.
- They had been
Both shot in the head.
Brutally murdered.
You just think, what kind of animal could do this?
♪ ♪
- I was calling all of jb's friends
That I knew of to see if they had seen her
Or knew of her whereabouts.
And so I called tracie's mother.
[line ringing]
Somebody answered, and I heard screaming in the background.
I said, tell me, what's going on?
And he said, they're dead.
They're murdered.
I threw that phone, and I screamed bloody murder.
Oh, my god, why?
Why?
I don't remember much after that.
♪ ♪
- At the crime scene in ozark,
Officers begin to take stock of the evidence.
- By the time I got up there, it was 103 degrees.
The gnats were terrible.
You worry about decomposition of the bodies.
I said, let's leave them in the trunk.
Let's get the trailer, load up the car,
Take it to the morgue in downtown dothan,
Where it's air-conditioned, and process the car there.
♪ ♪
- When I looked at jb in the trunk,
I noticed her hands were up,
And I could see stippling on her hands.
And stippling is basically when you have a firearm
That's used close to a person's skin,
It's gonna leave black tick marks that look like dirt.
And then when you look back at tracie,
And it was the same thing.
Her hands were up as well.
♪ ♪
Jb had a shell casing laying on her abdomen area.
It was a 9 millimeter.
But the other shell casing, we couldn't find it.
- But some smaller wounds on the girls
Seem to tell another part of their story.
- There were several scratches on both jb and tracie.
You leave the side of the road in alabama
And you step off in the woods, you're probably gonna
Get in what they call briars.
And you're gonna get scratched up.
Also, there's mud on their pants.
So it appeared that they had been in the woods.
♪ ♪
- Then special agent tucker takes a closer look
At the car itself.
- There was blood under the trunk.
So I crawled up under the car and took a flashlight,
And I could see where it was dripping out of the plug holes.
But I could also see blood had blown back up under the car.
If you've got blowback, the car was in motion
After they were killed.
♪ ♪
It was a pretty good indication that where
The murder took place was somewhere other than
Where the car was found.
At that point, I said, let's get forensics down here,
Let's make sure we get everything we can get
From these girls and get them to the lab.
- As investigators evaluate the evidence,
They begin to ponder why someone would
Commit such a heinous crime.
- The first question you're gonna ask is,
What is the motive?
I noticed the purses sitting there.
There's still money in the wallet.
It didn't appear to be theft of any kind.
And it didn't appear, at first glance,
That it was anything sexual in nature.
So what was it?
[dramatic music]
- Away from law enforcement, news of the girls' murders
Blows through dothan like a hellacious tornado.
- You just didn't have something like this
Happen in dothan.
People were scared.
Crime stoppers offered a $1,000 reward for it.
Then the community came together
And they started donating money.
And it ended up being about $35,000.
People wanted this monster found.
- As pain reverberates throughout dothan,
Detectives head to the girls' last known location,
The gas station in ozark.
- We went straight there to that gas station.
It was within a mile of where the car was found.
- Investigators spy the payphone
And speak with employees, who specify
That no one was on duty when the girls
Rolled in late at night.
- But the gas station had video of the girls' car
At that parking lot of that store.
They pulled up at approximately 11:20 pm.
They were just off camera,
But you could see portions of the car.
- Investigators study the video,
Looking for anything or anyone remotely suspicious.
- You can see two ladies that they were talking to.
And you can see one of the ladies pointing
On how to get back to the major highway,
But we didn't know them.
- But before police can track down these two mystery women,
The next day, one of them comes forward.
- I heard on the news that the two girls
That we saw at the convenience store
Had been found murdered.
So I went to the police station to give a report.
That night was very hot.
My daughter picked me up so that we could go
To the store to get something to drink.
And jb came to the vehicle, talking to my daughter.
And very shortly thereafter,
Tracie came into the conversation.
They seemed very concerned that they were running late.
They missed their curfew.
They were lost, seeking directions
To get back to dothan.
I made sure that they understood
How to get to dothan.
And that went on for no more than 15 minutes.
There was no sense of they were in danger
Or anything like that.
But being a mother myself, maybe we should have
Followed them to make sure that they had arrived home safely.
- Realizing the significance of the gas station
In jb and tracie's final hours,
Police begin searching around it,
As well as the spot where jb's mazda was found.
- We're checking the surrounding areas,
Doing some knock-and-talks on close houses.
Have y'all seen the girls?
Things of this nature.
Also, is there anything that this murderer left us?
We searched that whole area, but we never did find anything.
- But soon, special agent tucker receives
News that changes everything.
- In the autopsies report,
The big thing was semen found on jb.
It was located on the shirt and in the underwear.
That was very important.
I felt pretty confident that whoever did this
Did not have consent.
- This was not some consensual act of sex.
This was a rape.
- Once we got that sample of the semen,
We put it into the dna database.
And we're sitting there with our fingers crossed.
If I find out who deposited that semen on that girl,
Then I'd have my murderer.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[ominous music]
- Days after the shocking double homicide
Of jb beasley and tracie hawlett,
Police await dna database results
From a profile collected at the crime scene.
- You had semen, but you didn't know who it belonged to.
- There have been several cases solved through just an entry
Into the database.
Maybe we get a hit.
Maybe we get a match.
But we did not.
- Then authorities chase down teens
From the field party jb and tracie
Sought to attend and investigate whether or not
Any of them had a hand in the girls' demise.
- This particular party, we talked to everybody there
To see if they had anything to do with it.
- Law enforcement also look into
Either of the girls' friends, people they had dated,
Acquaintances.
- Talking to some of their other classmates,
All of them were really upset.
Nobody knew anything.
- They all were cooperative.
Their friends gave their dna.
We had 40 to 50 individuals for whom
Dna samples were submitted,
But it always came back negative.
And no one believed they were anywhere
Close to being involved.
[somber music]
- Away from the investigation, the families of the victims
Lay their loved ones to rest.
- I covered both funerals.
Tracie's funeral was first.
Mrs. Hawlett, her husband,
And they were just grieving heavily.
I had never seen...
[crying]
So much grief.
It was just unspeakable.
[crow cawing]
- Jb's funeral was at first methodist
Where I raised my girls.
We were devastated.
I almost fainted at the foot of my daughter's casket.
I can't believe I have to plan my baby's funeral.
I should be planning her wedding.
♪ ♪
We go to the grave site.
And everybody got a daisy to put on her casket.
This is where we had to say our goodbyes.
And they were getting ready to lower the casket,
And I said, no, you cannot throw dirt over top of my baby.
You just-- you just can't do that.
I was just sick.
- As the families continue to mourn jb and tracie,
Authorities persist in their hunt for clues.
But a month out from the murder,
With no dna match or new leads,
The investigation stalls.
Then an ozark resident comes forward with something
To get off his chest.
- Johnny barrentine came into the ozark police department
And said, I was there when it happened,
But I didn't do it.
And he told us about picking up some guy
Walking down the side of the road,
And they rode around a little while
And met the girls at the gas station.
And the guy took them out into the woods.
And barrentine never got out of his car.
I was surprised.
I didn't know this guy.
- But during the time that they're talking to him,
His story keeps changing.
- What's the guy's name?
"I don't know."
Where does he live?
"I really don't know."
- Like, does this guy either know something?
Did he do something?
- But he had made an admission that he was part
Of what happened to these girls.
- The da said, we gotta arrest him.
So the arrest was made.
[dramatic music]
- Prosecutors charge barrentine
With two counts of capital murder.
- And then they did the swab on him.
And when they got the dna report back,
He was not a match for it.
- They found out he, in fact, had not done it.
He later said, I made it up
So I could get the reward money to my family.
- He came in thinking he'd tell us this cockamamie story
And then collect on some reward money.
So he was cut loose.
It was very frustrating.
♪ ♪
- Detectives express disappointment
But remain resolute in finding the killer.
And soon they receive a new lead about a man
Exhibiting suspicious behavior.
- During the canvass, some of the agents knocked on a door
Two or three blocks from where the car was found in ozark.
Then there was this group of kids that lived there.
I'm talking late teens, early 20s.
- The ozark teens tell police
They were having a party of their own
The night jb and tracie were murdered.
- And when we interviewed the kids,
Several of them remember this guy leaving the house.
And he got into a small pickup truck with somebody
That nobody knew.
And they left around 11:30.
And when he came back, he was just really anxious.
The next day,
This same kid buys a bus ticket to michigan
And he gets out of town.
So we're all over it.
Then you start talking to people.
I'm gonna find out everything I can find out about this guy.
- As detectives quickly dig in to learn more about him,
They see no prior connection to the girls,
But do get wind of even more damning information.
- Somebody in michigan told us he was telling somebody
That he had done this
And that he had gotten away with it.
We felt really good that we might be on to something.
The mother lived in ozark,
So we got an address from the mother,
And we drove to michigan.
I'm going after him.
- Coming up...
- He said, we got a match.
- It floored everyone.
- How could he kill these two beautiful girls?
And why?
And for what?
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- After receiving a tip from some local teens,
Investigators head to battle creek, michigan,
To interview a man who has allegedly confessed to friends
That he killed jb beasley and tracie hawlett.
- We find him and bring him in.
His father lived in michigan and requested
To watch the interview of his son,
Even though his son was of age.
And we agreed.
Then we sat down and started talking.
Tell us about, where did you live in ozark?
Who did you live with?
Just generalities.
I could tell he was nervous.
This guy knew why we were there.
He wasn't surprised.
I said, that night, where were you?
He said, I didn't go off with anybody that night.
I was at home all night.
- But investigators press him about previously having
Bragged about the crime.
- Did you tell anybody that you did this?
He said, nah, I didn't say that.
I didn't do that.
As we got deeper into the interview,
He started getting a little irritated.
And then out of nowhere, it was over.
His dad put an end to it.
He said, y'all don't need to talk to him anymore.
So we just stopped it.
But he gave us his dna.
We took it straight back to alabama and had it tested.
But he didn't match.
♪ ♪
- The man's actions leave detectives
Scratching their heads.
- Any time you have a big case like this,
You got people that want to insert
Themselves into the case.
And it's unreal how many people will try to do that.
But we had to move forward.
- As investigators move on from the michigan man,
The case begins to cool.
- We don't have anything yet.
And everywhere you turn, you've got
The pressure I was getting from other people.
What's happening in that case?
Who do you think did this?
- And as time progressed, as a parent,
You're going, why aren't we getting our answers?
But no matter what we tried, it all rolled back
To the same thing: Find out who owns that semen.
♪ ♪
- In the absence of an identified killer,
Citizens attempt to fill the void on their own.
- There's a lot of rumors.
It's being talked about in barbershops
And in hairdressers and when people are going to lunch.
There were rumors that there was a judge's son
Who must have been involved in this.
There were things like, oh, it was a drug deal
Gone bad that the girls came up on.
Every rumor that came in, the police were tracking it.
But nothing came of it.
- Amid the fog of gossip, dead ends, and other cases,
Months turn into years,
And years stretch into decades.
- I retired in 2013, and I went to work
For the sheriff's office.
But we agreed that at least once a month,
I'd go meet with the chief
Of the ozark police department, marlos walker.
We would ask, what else can we do with that?
What else can we do with this?
There's got to be an answer.
- My mind's going 24/7 every day,
What could have happened that night?
[dramatic music]
I couldn't go to the grocery store.
I couldn't go get gas.
You're the murderer. You're the murderer.
You could be the murderer.
You know, your mind just goes crazy.
I didn't sleep a wink for many years.
- Then in 2019,
20 years after the murders of jb and tracie,
One of the investigators' regularly scheduled meetings
Goes from routine to significant.
- We discuss this company that came up with this idea
Of how to break down dna
Until you get family names
That strand of dna was most closely associated with.
We didn't have a lot of semen to work with.
But marlos made a comment, how long are we gonna wait?
So marlos sent it in to them, and they started working it.
- The dna laboratory runs the profile through
Public genealogy databases, full of families
Whose members have previously submitted their dna
For ancestry research.
The lab then develops a list of alabama families
Whose genetic material bears some resemblance
To the foreign sample.
- And so they give marlos the report.
It was up to the chief
To look through these names real quick.
It just so happens that one of the last names,
The chief went to high school with a guy with that last name.
And that name was coley mccraney.
Marlos said, I think he's still in ozark.
So marlos called him and said, hey,
Can you come in, let me talk to you?
You're not a suspect, but you are
In these blocks of last names.
Well, mccraney and his wife came in.
Marlos told them, this is what I need from you.
I need your dna, and we can branch out
From there and get closer and closer to our suspect.
- But as coley mccraney hears more
About the double murder investigation,
Police detect some hesitation.
- Mccraney wasn't big on the idea.
Didn't like it.
- But his wife makes the statement,
You don't have anything to hide.
Give them your dna, and I'll give them mine too.
- So at that point, mr. Mccraney gave the chief
A sample of his dna.
And chief sent the sample in.
♪ ♪
A couple of months after, we discussed it,
I happened to go to ozark.
The chief, he and I had been working
A couple of leads in georgia.
When I walked in the chief's office,
He just sat down in his chair and he said,
We got a match.
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- Twenty years after their deaths,
Police investigating the murders of jb beasley
And tracie hawlett have finally found
A match for the dna profile recovered from jb's body.
- Chief walker said, we got a match.
I said, who is he?
He said, coley mccraney.
I was just shocked.
- He was simply a surname on a list
That we knew that we hoped to be able
To narrow that list to the eventual person
That committed these crimes.
And so when it turned out that he came back as that match,
It floored everyone.
- Chief walker briefs his colleague on his old friend.
At the time of the murders, mccraney was 25 years old.
But now he's their 45-year-old prime suspect.
- He went to high school with the chief.
He was a local guy.
He's married and got kids.
- When we confirmed the match,
He was a long-haul truck driver and a preacher.
- But one piece of his biography
Also serves as possible evidence of his guilt.
- When jb and tracie were murdered,
The guy lived two blocks from the store
Where they were last seen.
We did a canvass.
We did every house.
But by the time we got to doing canvasses,
He had already moved,
So he slipped through the cracks.
But now, with regards to the dna,
We felt like it's him.
- Then chief walker reveals that investigators have
Already tracked mccraney via his cell phone
And have him in their sights.
- And marlos told me, he's actually
Coming back from his route.
And he'll be in daleville at a certain time today.
So I'm on the phone, I'm getting troopers set up.
Find this guy.
This is what he's driving.
And when you get to daleville, you watch him like a hawk.
That young man's got some explaining to do to me.
- Special agent tucker races 16 miles
To mccraney's location.
Soon, authorities make their move.
- We catch up with mccraney, and we arrest him.
I don't think he really understood what was going on
At that point, because all he was told
Was he was under arrest.
Then we took him to the ozark police department.
- Investigators quickly inform the victims' parents
That they have a suspect in custody.
- They're telling me that his dna is a 100% match.
I didn't know who he was.
All I could think was, wow,
He killed these two beautiful girls.
And why? And for what?
♪ ♪
- Back at the ozark police station,
Authorities bring mccraney into an interrogation room.
- And we all sat down.
Right off the bat, do you know jb beasley
And tracie hawlett, yes or no?
Have you ever had any sexual contact
With jb beasley or tracie hawlett?
He said, no, no, no.
I don't know them, only what I've heard on tv.
I said, you said you didn't know them.
You said you never had sexual contact with them.
Then you explain why your sperm is on jb.
And then shortly thereafter, he asked for an attorney,
So we just stopped it.
- In June, a grand jury indicts coley mccraney
On four counts of capital murder.
He pleads not guilty, and the judge denies him bail.
- No one even knew who coley mccraney was.
His name had never been even mentioned.
I don't think any of the families knew him.
He was just a ghost that showed up.
- Despite the evidence against mccraney,
In comments to the media, his loved ones
And members of the community offer support.
- The family maintains his innocence.
And people had good things to say about him.
That he was a man of faith.
And it's just hard for anybody down here to imagine
A man of faith doing something like that.
- But as the case moves toward trial, in early 2020,
Covid brings proceedings to a halt.
- Most cases get worse over time.
Delay is never a good thing for a prosecutor.
- Then finally, over four years after his arrest,
With the state attorney general
Leading the prosecution,
The capital murder trial of coley mccraney begins.
- When he comes in, oh, my god, I lose it.
I am so angry.
I'm fixing to explode.
You don't know how hard that was.
- In their opening statement, the prosecution
Highlights the evidence that led them to the defendant.
- It was important for that jury to understand,
We had coley mccraney's dna on jb.
And not only dna, but it was semen.
And what I believe happened is once the two witnesses,
The mother and daughter, saw tracie and jb that night
And they left, mr. Mccraney got the two girls
Into the vehicle in which they were driving.
- My gut feeling tells me that he might have asked for a ride,
And they tried to help him.
And immediately upon getting the car,
He pulls the gun out, puts it to their head,
And says, drive.
I'll tell you where to go.
- Everything points to the fact of an abduction
At the big little, a rape in a remote location,
And a murder of two girls.
There's obviously missing pieces
That we'll never know the answer to.
But I think the motive was that he engaged in a rape.
And then the violence was as a result of the fact
He didn't want to be caught.
- Lust caused him to rape and murder.
Pure evil.
- To bolster their case, the prosecution calls
An unexpected witness to the stand:
Coley's wife, jeanette mccraney.
- Mr. Mccraney's wife described their relationship
In a positive way.
- But then the attorney general
Asks jeanette if she remembers
Where her husband was on the night
Jb and tracie were murdered.
- She, for the first time, revealed that coley mccraney
Told her he was at the big little convenience store
The last night when the girls were seen.
Placing coley mccraney at the location of the store
Was critically important.
- Under questioning, jeanette also tells the court
Her husband left home around 10:00 pm
On the night of the murder and didn't return
Until about 12:45 am.
- She helped put, kind of, the chain of events together
In a way that nobody else could have.
It was a little bit unusual coming from his wife herself,
But that was powerful evidence for us.
- Then on the fourth day of the trial,
The defense calls a witness
That stuns the courtroom silent.
- Coley mccraney then suddenly gets on a witness stand.
Maybe the most compelling portion of the case
Was really when the defendant decided to testify.
- I couldn't believe it.
Blew me away.
I mean, you could hear a pin drop in there.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[ominous music]
- Four days into his murder trial,
Accused killer coley mccraney takes the stand,
And he makes a stunning confession.
- Mccraney said, yeah, I met jb
A month or so before the night that the girls were last seen.
I had talked to her a couple times on the phone.
- He said that he'd met her at a mall
And thought her name was jennifer.
- The night the murders took place,
He said he agreed to meet at that gas station
That night to hang out with these two girls.
- And then told a story of how he and jb
Had some consensual act of sex.
- It was disgusting.
It was hell to listen to him say these things.
[dramatic music]
- He said, last time I saw them, they were fine.
And that was how he explained that night.
I just sat back and I thought, are you kidding me?
Jb never mentioned him to anyone.
Never.
And nobody ever saw them together.
- He denied in prior statements he ever knew the girls.
But now he wanted the jury to believe
That jb was gonna come out and meet him on her birthday.
It was a story that defied common sense.
- After one day of testimony, the defense rests its case.
And the proceedings are handed over to the jury.
- I thought it was going to be a mistrial,
Because all it took was one to hold out.
- But they ultimately found him guilty
Of the murder and rape of jb and then the murder of tracie.
- Every juror said guilty, guilty, guilty, all 12 of them.
And the place went crazy when that was over with.
And I was crying and screaming.
I said, god, thank you.
God, thank you.
- He was sentenced to life
Without the possibility of parole.
- I said, fine with me.
If we got the death penalty, I would have had
To have been in appeals year after year.
And this way, it's done.
- Mccraney thinks that he is a true man of god.
He's got a lot of people fooled to believe
That he's a true man of god.
But no, he committed this heinous crime.
[somber music]
- Despite the case's verdict, the murders have left a mark
On southeast alabama forever.
- ♪ honey, won't you hold my hand? ♪
- Just watching these people throughout the years,
They're still grieving.
- ♪ feels like the walls ♪
♪ are falling down ♪
- They've never got over it.
I mean, how could you?
♪ ♪
- Friends and family started the monument here,
And you can see jb beasley, tracie hawlett.
This is in remembrance of the two girls
That were found here
And tragically murdered.
- I cemented those steel crosses.
And I would decorate them like a decorator
With gorgeous flowers every year.
Yay!
Jb was wonderful.
That's how I want to remember her,
Because that's exactly who she was.
- Jb and tracie were both smart, attractive.
They could have been anything.
They had their entire lives ahead of them,
And it was snuffed out.
The community didn't deserve that.
And tracie and jb sure didn't deserve it.
♪ ♪