Alabama: The Murders of JB Beasley and Tracie Hawlett

On the night of July 31st, 1999, at 10pm, two teenage girls and best friends, JB Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, set out from Dothan, Alabama, to attend a party held in JB's honor for her birthday. By 10:30pm, though, the girls were hopelessly lost. After making two sets of phone calls to Tracie's mother from two separate gas stations, the last one being at 11:30 pm, the girls decided to give up on the party. They asked a woman at the gas station for directions back to route 231 and headed home. But they never made it. JB Beasley and Tracie Hawlett were found dead in the trunk of JB's car on a secluded road less than one mile from the convenience store the next afternoon.

The police had next to nothing to go on. No suspects, no motive. What made it even worse was the fact that a local man, whose story changed 5 times and who claimed to be a witness to the crime, was arrested, but was not the killer. And two local bloggers fingered the Dothan police department, saying they were all involved in criminal activity, and that one of their own had done it, only for it to be covered up. This was also not true.

Until 20 years later, when a palm print from the trunk of the car was put into a public geneology database...and investigators finally had their match...

Show Notes:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4swzDoMy9iWZIjI0fYl2Yb