Tag: Howard Sills

Tex McIver has become a symbol. What kind of symbol says more about who we are than who he is. To those close to him, convinced that he loved his wife Diane without question and could no more shoot her intentionally than sprout wings and fly out of his jail cell, Tex is a victim of reverse prejudice, a convenient scapegoat for a society riven by class and racial resentments. Or is he, surrounded by his half-dozen defense attorneys, nothing more than a rich white man who believes the rules do not apply to him, who has spent decades with his thumb on the scales of power, who’s cynically exploiting race-based fears to cover up the opportunistic murder of his wife?

The best Howard Sills could remember, there hadn’t been a double homicide in Putnam County since May 1984, 30 years earlier. In minutes, the mood inside the lake house swung from wild intensity to who the hell did this? This, the sheriff told himself, ain’t local talent.

I first was introduced to Joe Kovac Jr. the way most people run across each other these days: on Twitter. Joe has been a reporter for the Macon Telegraph since 1991. A native Georgian (he grew up in Warner Robins), Joe knows Southern Gothic when he sees it.