Chapter 1

Wednesday evening after prayer meeting, Ruthie Mae Hinds, wearing a summer print dress, stood under the light at the front door of St. Paul’s Church of God in Christ in Lexington, Mississippi, and gave her friend Mildred Monroe a big hug and congratulations on her sixty-sixth birthday. Mildred wore her customary black pants and white blouse. Ruthie Mae’s women’s group at St. Paul’s had given Mildred an affectionate birthday party even though Mildred attended another church just outside of town. Ruthie Mae and Mildred were the last ones to leave. They bid each other a good night and walked to their respective cars in the darkened parking lot beside the church.

It was the last night of October. Halloween. The evening was unusually warm for the time of year, making it comfortable for kids to be outside on an All Hallows Eve. The Halloween celebration this year had aroused a bit of controversy in Lexington. Several clergy members in town had called upon the city leaders to declare the Saturday before Halloween as the official “trick or treat” night, but the issue had been tabled after it was learned several churches were planning to have “fall festivals” on Wednesday evening after prayer meeting. The mayor was pleased with the thought that if this was the biggest issue in the month of October, then things must be all right in the little town of two thousand residents.

Ruthie Mae drove away with a wave as Mildred reached in her purse for the keys to her new Ford Mustang. She was Lexington’s version of the little old lady from Pasadena if there ever was one. Suddenly she heard a swoosh from behind her as a bottle rocket and then a Roman candle erupted from the backyard of a house across the creek behind the church and spewed a trail of sparks skyward, followed by a pop and sparks falling from the blackness above. She looked up and stood watching as another shot from a Roman candle went upward. She heard children laughing. With a pleasant smile she unlocked the driver’s door with the keyless remote device and pulled open the door. All of a sudden, she heard footsteps on the asphalt running toward her from out of the darkness.

Before she could react, he was on her. His body hit her with a force so hard, it knocked the breath out of her and slammed her against the inside of the front door. Her purse and planner/calendar landed on the front floorboard. The keys fell to the ground. She reached down to get the keys hoping she could hit the panic button which would sound the alarm on the car, but as she did so, his knee came up and slammed into her stomach. Shoved violently into the door once again, she had no way of knowing that internal bleeding had already begun. She attempted to scream, but no sound would come from her mouth. She dove into the car, hitting ribs on the steering wheel and landing on the front seat, her body halfway in and out of the vehicle. Her left hand reached feebly for her purse as pain racked her left side from broken ribs. Feeling the purse strap in her hand she clutched it tightly. She felt a hand grab her hair and then she was jerked backward out of the car by the attacker. Now too weak to resist, she slumped onto the asphalt. But he was not finished. Grabbing her by the front of her shirt, he picked her up as if she was a doll, spun around and pushed her up against the side of the car. Her assailant paused for two seconds and turned his head to a black Dodge Magnum sitting in the last parking space in the corner of the lot farthest away from the church building. His partner sat behind the wheel, watching and waiting. He looked back at the limp woman being held erect only by the force of his hand pushing her against the Mustang. His right hand went down into the pocket of his dark, baggy pants. Out came a Glock 17 9mm pistol which had been bought on the streets of Jackson a week before for only fifty dollars. He placed the end of the barrel on the center of her chest and fired one round—the sound lost in the myriad of fireworks. Mildred Monroe’s body went limp and wilted to the asphalt parking lot.

He bent down, grabbed the woman’s ankles and dragged the body twenty feet to a grassy area past the rear of the parking lot. He ran to the Magnum, opened the driver’s door and said, “You drive the Mustang.” The driver paused in confusion, but then exited the Magnum, raced across the parking lot, scooped up the keys and jumped in the Mustang. He cranked it, moved the transmission lever into drive and pushed hard on the gas pedal, making sure not to push hard enough to squeal the tires and draw attention. He did not know his left shoe had just transferred a small amount of the victim’s blood from the paved surface to the carpet of the car. The Mustang lurched forward, traversed the parking lot, turned left on Highway 17 and accelerated away from the scene. The second vehicle waited momentarily and took a similar route, only at a much slower speed. Neither driver glanced back at the body of Mildred Monroe. If either had done so they would have seen a teenage boy and girl running to the victim and then dialing 9-1-1 on a cell phone. The call was answered immediately by the female dispatcher inside the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

The breathless voice of a young man said, “Ms. Monroe has been shot and killed. Please send help!”

“Where are you, son?” said the dispatcher in a calm voice.

“St. Paul’s Church. In the parking lot.”

“Is the shooter still there?”

“No mam, he just drove away in Ms. Monroe’s Mustang.”

In a small town, most people really do know everybody else. And everybody who was anybody—no, even the people who weren’t anybody—knew Mildred Monroe. The dispatcher knew Ms. Monroe and the car she drove.

“Which way is he heading?”

“Toward Interstate Fifty-Five, on Highway Seventeen.”

“Stay right there. Help is on the way,” the dispatcher said. She pulled the microphone to her lips and said, “Attention all units. We have a possible code seven in the parking lot at St. Paul’s Church. Suspect just left the scene in a red Ford Mustang, heading southeast on Seventeen.”

“S.O. three responding from downtown,” she heard in her headset.

“Ten-four, S.O. three.”

“S.O. one also responding,”

“Ten-four, S.O. one.”

She looked across the radio console at the two men in uniform across from her. They were not law enforcement officers; they wore the uniform of an ambulance company.

We’re en route,” one of them said as they both leaped from their seats. Less than one minute had transpired from the time the call had come in.

“S.O. two,” came the crackling transmission in her headset.

“Go ahead, S.O. two.”

“I’m on Seventeen, about five miles out. I’ll wait here to see if he comes by.”

“Ten-four.”

S.O. two, also known as Chief Deputy Roosevelt “Rosey” Adams, turned left off the highway and maneuvered his marked Crown Victoria police car to a narrow side road. He turned around and positioned it so he could quickly get back onto the main highway should the red Mustang come by. He did not have to wait long. The Mustang topped the hill to his left at approximately seventy miles per hour.

As the Mustang passed in front of him, Adams jammed his car’s accelerator to the floor and steered the car onto the highway. Adams did not turn on the blue lights or the headlights, knowing the subject would merely speed-up even faster if he thought he was being pursued. As the Mustang went out of sight over a hill, Adams turned on the headlights. His vehicle’s odometer quickly rose past fifty, then seventy and eighty. He topped the hill at eighty-five and saw red tail lights less than an eighth of a mile in front of him. His right foot began twitching; his breathing increased. These things never got routine. Both vehicles were heading southeast on Highway 17, and were less than two miles from Interstate 55. Adams was rapidly closing in on the Mustang. He deduced it must be slowing down. When he was thirty yards behind his quarry, Adams flipped the switches to turn on the blue lights and siren. As expected, the Mustang accelerated and started pulling away, the red tails lights appearing smaller.

Adams radioed in. “S.O. two in pursuit of suspect vehicle, southeast-bound on Seventeen, approaching Interstate Fifty-Five.”

“Ten-four, S.O. two. Holmes S.O. and MHP being notified.”

The Mustang braked hard as it approached the intersection, and then suddenly turned left into the parking lot of a well-lit convenience store and gas station. Adams slammed on his brakes and slid past the spot where the Mustang turned, but managed to also turn left into the parking lot. The Mustang sped around the back of the station, then the west side of the building and finally back onto Highway 17 and southeast-bound as he had been before. Adams’ full-sized Crown Vic was not able to match the handling capabilities of the Mustang, and he lost ground on the subject. Adams figured the car had made a loop around the service station in order for the driver to throw drugs out the window, not an uncommon occurrence in pursuits nowadays. The Mustang crossed over the interstate and continued southeast. Only a couple of miles ahead lay U.S. Highway 51—and a “T” intersection. Adams radioed in his new position as both vehicles screamed through the rural landscape past farmhouses and gravel side roads. A few of the houses had orange jack-o’-lanterns on their front porches. It took less than two minutes before they were approaching the intersection with U.S. Highway 51. Adams saw the welcome sight of a flickering blue glow in the darkness. Up ahead at the intersection were two sheriff’s cars, blue lights flashing. The brake lights of the Mustang illuminated, its back end rose up and smoke billowed from screeching tires. The Mustang stopped so fast, Adams had to swerve off to the right shoulder of the road and lurch past the red car lest he rear-end it. Once back on pavement, Adams braked his vehicle, glancing in the rear view mirror as he did so to see the Mustang turning around and heading back in the opposite direction on Highway 17. As he made his U-turn, he saw the sheriff’s cars heading his way. They blew past him as Adams completed his turn and rejoined the chase now heading back toward the interstate. Two minutes later, the Mustang crossed back over the interstate with three law enforcement vehicles in pursuit—their blue lights flashing and sirens wailing.

At that moment a traveler from Illinois who was gassing up at the service station looked up at the siren noise to see the Mustang skid past the left turn onto Interstate 55 South, then recover and swerve back toward the service station. The Mustang was coming directly at the gas pumps. At the last second the car slid sideways past the pumps, swerved again and somehow ended up back on the highway headed toward Lexington on the wrong side of the road. At that point, the driver of the Mustang saw the lights of an oncoming vehicle and swerved again, barely avoiding a head-on collision. The right wheels of the Mustang went off the road as the driver turned the steering wheel to the left. This action caused the car to turn sideways and begin a rollover across the highway, into a sign and chain link fence in front of a building known as The Little Red Schoolhouse. The doors flew open and were mangled as the car continued its flipping motion finally resting aside a large oak tree. Fortunately, for the driver, he was wearing his seat belt and shoulder harness and was not ejected from the vehicle. He appeared to have no sign of injury. But not so fortunate for the driver, he was immediately arrested, returned to Lexington, and charged with the murder of Mildred Monroe. His name was Rico Copiah and he was 17 years old.

Order NOW from our secure shopping cart
Limited First Edition Printing Available

Don't like to order online?
Call us toll-free 1.866.625.9241 to order by credit card
or send a check or money order for $14.95 plus $3.00 shipping (first book; $1.00 each additional book) to:

Great American Publishers
P. O. Box 1305
Kosciusko, MS 39090