Pretty sure the "parlor game" comment refers to this board and also to some of the Macon.com threads. The limited (known) evidence has added a new element to the whole situation, it is less about guilt or innocence and more about whether the case will be won/lost in court.
This has truly riveted many of the locals, I have never followed a murder investigation this closely before and probably never will again. A murder of this magnitude only happens here once every 50 years, or once every generation so yeah it is a big deal.
I am slowly but surely reading hard copy books on all of the infamous local murders, right now reading "Shadow Chasers" about the Woolfolk murders. Before that the book about Anjette Lyles (Whisper to the Black Candle) and Chester Burge (A Peculiar Tribe of People). All great books with tons of local history, gossip, and eccentric characters. If any here are local and haven't read them you should, they are very interesting and the historical imagery is fantastic. Makes for a great summer reading list and this murder has all of the same elements (including very eccentric characters). That is why many are so drawn to this story. On that note if any middle Georgia posters on here come across copies of "Middle Georgia Magazine" snap them up, the sleuthers here would love those magazines!
While this story will no doubt be put forth in one or two books after the trial I really doubt if the writer/s will do it justice. If Amy/Joe turn out a book on the topic I won't even bother buying a copy, their one-sided "saccharine sweet" style annoys me greatly.
bbm: This is also the first case I have ever "followed" closely as it develops.
I think people "follow" cases that catch the public's especial interest for a number of reasons ... but I do believe that for many of those people, empathy for the victim and their family and friends plays at least some role. I guess that's why "parlor game" kind of rankles. To be fair, though, The Telegraph apparently was quoting some source on that description, not assigning it independently -- and I can understand how LE, prosecution, defense, court officials, or whoever might find the interest of people on the "outside" somehow less noble than their own, and consider it only an annoyance or hindrance when it causes their own interests any problem.
That being said, though, I'm sure that, in some ways, there can be a "game-like" aspect to a case, especially as time winds on, for many of those "official" players as well. Not that they necessarily lose sight of their original purposes and concerns, but that other things enter in. It is just human nature, I believe.
As for newspapers and other media that report on crimes -- especially high-profile ones for which the coverage is continuing and extensive -- obviously that is serving the same "whodunnit" and "what's-gonna-happen-next" interests in their audience that I think are a big part of what keeps people interested in following cases through other avenues, such as crime forums.
JMO, I think for many here at WS, being "hooked" on a case for less than, umm, humanitarian reasons is
part of what keeps us posting. I know it is for me. I am not discounting the empathy and the interest in seeing justice pursued that many reference often -- I just believe that, for most, there are other elements mixed in, to a greater or lesser degree.
I do have to say that I have encountered a
few posters on WS whose interest seems, to me, to be so motivated almost completely by true, continuing empathy for the victim and the pain of their families and friends that it sometimes astounds me -- and, at moments, has made me feel that I might be deficient as a human being -- not everyone who plays "lip service" to that kind of concern, by any means, but a select few who seem to just kind of ...
shine. In those instances, even when I don't agree with their stance on the
case or on a certain point in it, I am still struck by what genuinely seems their nearly-singular motivation. Maybe those few are just a different, rare caliber of person.
OT: Sonya, about the Woolfolk case: I spent a number of years obsessively researching that case, including hours and hours with microfilm readers in the bowels of one of the libraries at a university in Atlanta, where I did major-area independent study on the case in my senior year.
I owed my interest, I guess, mostly to my long-lived grandmother, a spell-binding storyteller who captivated me from childhood with her tales of years gone by -- including ones about the Woolfolk case passed to her by her own older relatives, some of whom had close personal and especially property ties to aspects of the case. Imagine -- as a child, she spent the night in the Woolfolk murder house, not long before it burned! She had stories to tell, she did!
I still have the cassette tape recordings I made of talks with her (and others) about the case and the folklore and legends that passed down through the years about it. On one, my grandmother sings a little snatch of a folksong inspired by the murder. It is wonderful to be able to still hear her voice, colloquially yet masterfully spinning out the stories that kept a child and then a young adult transfixed, patiently considering and then answering my not-always-well-framed questions, and here and there lightening the topic with her understated but sparkling sense of humor.
My grandmother died at just shy of 102 years old. I realize more fully and consciously now how greatly blessed I was to have her in my life, and for so long ... and yet I still miss her so much.
I was working on a book about the murders, but several unexpected life crises intervened ... and before I could take it back up again, Carolyn DeLoach wrote her book (and then released an "enlarged" version, I believe, the one you are reading now). I think I have never really gotten over it.
