The first letter arrived three weeks after my return to Atlanta.<\/p>\n
It was addressed to my chambers.<\/p>\n
The envelope was brown, and the handwriting was uneven.<\/p>\n
Inside was a photograph of an old farmhouse.<\/p>\n
A woman stood on the porch.<\/p>\n
She was holding a small dog.<\/p>\n
On the back, someone had written:<\/p>\n
This was my home before Sheriff Voss took it.<\/p>\n
I read the sentence twice.<\/p>\n
Then I turned the photograph over again.<\/p>\n
The woman's name was Margaret Ellis.<\/p>\n
She was seventy-three years old.<\/p>\n
She had lived in Pell County all her life.<\/p>\n
And she had lost her house after a traffic stop.<\/p>\n
I had never met her.<\/p>\n
I had never heard her name during the trial.<\/p>\n
But she had been one of the people who wrote to my aunt.<\/p>\n
The letter explained that Margaret's husband had died six years earlier.<\/p>\n
She had inherited the farmhouse.<\/p>\n
She had paid the property taxes every year.<\/p>\n
She had never been arrested.<\/p>\n
Then, one afternoon, a deputy stopped her on the road.<\/p>\n
He claimed her taillight was broken.<\/p>\n
She argued that it wasn't.<\/p>\n
The deputy searched her car.<\/p>\n
He found an old prescription bottle.<\/p>\n
The prescription was hers.<\/p>\n
But the label had faded.<\/p>\n
The deputy arrested her for possessing medication without a valid prescription.<\/p>\n
The charge was eventually dismissed.<\/p>\n
By then, Margaret had missed three mortgage payments.<\/p>\n
The county had seized her property.<\/p>\n
Pinecrest Holdings had purchased it.<\/p>\n
I sat at my desk.<\/p>\n
The photograph lay beside my coffee.<\/p>\n
I thought about Hattie Greene.<\/p>\n
I thought about the forty-two acres.<\/p>\n
Then I called Chief Judge Brennan.<\/p>\n
"Do you remember the letters from Pell County?"<\/p>\n
"Of course."<\/p>\n
"Another one arrived."<\/p>\n
He was quiet.<\/p>\n
"Is it connected to the investigation?"<\/p>\n
"I don't know yet."<\/p>\n
"Then don't investigate it yourself."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
I looked at the photograph.<\/p>\n
"But somebody needs to help her."<\/p>\n
Brennan sighed.<\/p>\n
"Amara, you know the rules."<\/p>\n
"I do."<\/p>\n
"You're a judge. You cannot become a private investigator."<\/p>\n
"I wasn't planning to."<\/p>\n
"Good."<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
"Send the letter to the appropriate office. Document the referral. Then step away."<\/p>\n
I agreed.<\/p>\n
I scanned the letter.<\/p>\n
I sent it to the United States Attorney's Office.<\/p>\n
I included the photograph.<\/p>\n
I included a note explaining that I had no personal knowledge of the allegations.<\/p>\n
Then I closed the file.<\/p>\n
I thought that would be the end of it.<\/p>\n
It wasn't.<\/p>\n
The next letter arrived two days later.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
Some were written by people who had lost property.<\/p>\n
Others came from relatives of people who had been arrested.<\/p>\n
A few were written by people who had witnessed something and had never reported it.<\/p>\n
I sent every letter to the appropriate authorities.<\/p>\n
I did not investigate.<\/p>\n
I did not contact witnesses.<\/p>\n
I did not make promises.<\/p>\n
But I began to understand how many people had been waiting.<\/p>\n
They had waited because they were afraid.<\/p>\n
They had waited because they believed nobody would listen.<\/p>\n
And they had waited because the sheriff had made them believe that speaking up would only make things worse.<\/p>\n
One letter came from a man named Walter Price.<\/p>\n
He had been arrested outside his own garage.<\/p>\n
The charge was disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n
He had spent four nights in jail.<\/p>\n
When he returned home, his tools were gone.<\/p>\n
His garage had been sold.<\/p>\n
He had lost his business.<\/p>\n
He wrote that he had never told his children what happened.<\/p>\n
He was ashamed.<\/p>\n
I read the letter.<\/p>\n
Then I placed it in the referral folder.<\/p>\n
I did not know what would happen to Walter.<\/p>\n
I only knew that his name had finally been written down.<\/p>\n
And somebody would have to answer for what had happened.<\/p>\n
Source: kaylestore.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The first letter arrived three weeks after my return to Atlanta. It was addressed to my chambers. The envelope was brown, and the handwriting was uneven. Inside was a photograph … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10830,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10817\/revisions\/10830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 10: I Met Margaret Ellis at the Courthouse, and Her Photograph Showed Me What the Sheriff Had Taken From Her<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"