Killer Song

Alfred W. Williams, an eighteen-year-old intellectually disabled black male, is arrested and convicted of rape and attempted murder of Abby, the daughter of a white upper class doctor in a deteriorating city in upstate New York in the summer of 1969. A city in the hold of the long tentacles of a Mafia family from New York City. A city dying a slow death due to a major corporation's abandonment of its founding home. A city caught in the midst of racial tension and moral revolution. Abby was doubled dared to ask Alfred out on a date by her friends, Cece and Dede, members of their self-named click, The EE's. That date led to Alfred's arrest and conviction. Abby's sexual involvement with a married man, Harlan Harrington, county District Attorney, during Alfred's trial forces Abby's father to ask a favor of Legs DiDonna, head of the Mafia in upstate New York. Abby's father, a respected doctor, once saved Legs' brother during World War II. Legs would do the requested favor of getting the doctor's daughter a secret abortion someplace far away. With Dede's help, Abby is brought to a Legs' "connected" doctor in Rhode Island. Unbeknownst to most, she is taken away by someone before the procedure. She is brought to a New York State female doctor who keeps a secret location for unwed mothers, allowing them to bring their babies to term and to arrange legal adoptions with non-disclosure of the mothers. Legs finds out, but is okay with it since Abby would still disappear as agreed and with everyone told she was joining the Peace Corps. Years later, and after serving his time as a model prisoner, Alfred is again convicted. This time for the killing of the elderly O'Bryans, farmers in the rural town of Elmer Hill, ninety miles from his first conviction. Sheriff Daniels of the county for Elmer Hill, and nephew of Corban Gibbs, the nefarious land consolidator, attests to Alfred's killing of the O'Bryans. Gibbs proceeds to buy the O'Bryans' farm from their Estate handled by their distant son. Sarah Parker, a contributing journalist to the local paper servicing the Elmer Hill area, has noticed the unusual number of local accidental deaths over the past years. Researching the victims, she sees deed recordings of the sale of victims' properties to Corban Gibbs. Even though the sales appear to be a fair value, Sarah concludes that "fair value" is effectively controlled by Gibbs, as no one else purchased any of the properties. Sarah, scrutinizing the limited information of the O' Bryans killing and the other "accidental" deaths, decides to also investigate Alfred's life. She believes he did neither crime. She enlists the aid of a past professor of hers, Jack R, Kennedy, former beat reporter on crime for Alfred's hometown, Pulitzer Price winning author, and former State University at Albany professor. Sarah has a gameplan and Jack Kennedy will have to play an important part. Sarah will use all of her best assets, including her analytical mind and her great legs. Did the sixties bring change? Or did injustice simply move into the shadows to grow over the decades that followed. With truth be determined? Is Alfred a Killer? And what price does Sarah have to pay?