Bloody Savannah

Savannah is one of America’s most beautiful and historic cities. Yet underneath the mint juleps, oaks bearded with Spanish moss and the splendor of colonial architecture, there lurks a deadly undercurrent. This is a first-person account of an award-winning newspaper crime reporter’s career, covering scores of murders in the Savannah area, including one of the bloodiest eras in the city’s history: in 1985, metro Savannah earned notoriety with the nation’s highest homicide rate. The author describes a wide range of crimes, including murders over a 14-year-old lover, $4 for hamburgers or a baby carriage; the grisly murder of a voodoo priest; bound corpses in the waterways and interstate body dumping grounds; the Scarecrow and “Say Cheese” Killers, serial killer Wade Sheffield; and many more.

Derek Smith was a crime reporter in Savannah, Georgia, for almost ten years and has written extensively on the Civil War. He lives in Bishopville, South Carolina.

Derek Smith

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 249
Bibliographic Info: notes, index
Copyright Date: 2023
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9183-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-4947-4
Imprint: Exposit

Introduction 1
Prelude: Beginnings 5
Chapter 1. Front-Page Murders: Some of the Most Sensational 13
Chapter 2. Other Murders Most Foul 48
Chapter 3. The All but Forgotten: A Few of Savannah’s Cold Cases 63
Chapter 4. The Year of Dying Dangerously 88
Chapter 5. Homicide in the Hinterland 107
Chapter 6. Blood on the Badge 133
Chapter 7. Missing Persons Files 149
Chapter 8. Water, Water Everywhere: Hurricanes, Rescues and Corpses 160
Chapter 9. People Do the Strangest Things: The Sad, Tragic, Vicious and Just Weird 172
Chapter 10. Difference Makers, Heroes and Characters 185
Chapter 11. Savannah Vice and St. Patrick’s Days 206
Epilogue 222
Chapter Notes 225
Index 231

“Informatively enhanced…exceptionally well written, organized and presented…an extraordinary history of an extraordinary American city and highly recommended for personnel, community, and academic library True Crime collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists”—Midwest Book Review