Violation: justice, race and serial murder in the Deep South David Rose HarperPress, 350pp, £16.99 ISBN 0007118104
The time lag between event and publication can often give investigative books a sense of distance from their subjects.
David Rose's Violation is not such a work, partly because the story he investigates continues to unfold – tortuously so, two decades on from its beginning. Rose takes up the case of Carlton Gary, a black man prosecuted in Columbus, Georgia for the violent rape and murder of seven middle-aged women: the infamous “Stocking Stranglings”. Typically for Columbus, he has been sentenced to death.
Even as Gary’s appeal case crawls along, Rose uncovers the grievous flaws and omissions of the original trial: evidence that matched Gary’s fingerprints to those of the murderer was later discredited, and key witnesses were not interviewed properly. Only a single pubic hair found at one crime scene gave the police any indication that the suspect was black.
Rose also finds time to research and weave in a good chunk of history, spooling back the story
of American slavery into the 19th century. He doesn’t flinch from the horrific details of the murders, nor from describing, lynching for lynching, the minutiae of racist abuses in the Deep South. It is
a comprehensive and unsettling account of long-miscarried justice idling on the brink of tragedy.
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