Town note
Named after John Ernest 'John E.' Donalson, a prominent businessman who built the town's first lumber mill, the Donalson Lumber Company, and houses for its workers; the lumber company made the town grow.
about 0:06:08The story
In the spring of 1973 four escaped prisoners from Maryland drove into Seminole County in south-west Georgia and killed six members of a farming family. The case became known locally as the Alday murders, and the sheriff called it the biggest deliberately planned homicide in Georgia's history.
Ned Alday, 62, and his wife Ernestine had eloped in 1935 and raised nine children. By 1973 they owned a 525-acre farm on River Road, twelve miles south of Donalsonville, with crops and livestock. Most of the family lived within sight of the farmhouse. Jerry, 35, lived in a trailer on the property with his wife Mary, 26. Jimmy, 25, and the youngest son, Chester, known as Shuggy, who had just turned 30, still lived at home. Ned's younger brother Aubrey, in his late fifties, worked alongside them. The Aldays were churchgoers who did not drink and were described by neighbours as hard-working people who kept to themselves.
He was diagnosed with depression, a poor self-image and hostility towards women. On 27 March 1973 he arrived at the Maryland State Penitentiary. Two days later a riot broke out and he was beaten and raped by other inmates for more than eight hours.
On 5 May 1973 the three men climbed out of a bathroom window at Poplar Hill and hid in the woods. For nearly a week they burgled houses across Maryland and Pennsylvania, stealing cash, clothes and guns, and headed south with Florida or Mexico in mind. On 10 May, near McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania, a 19-year-old named Richard Wayne Miller saw them stealing his neighbour's pickup. He chased them in his 1968 Chevrolet Super Sport and was never seen alive again.
On 14 May the four men crossed into Seminole County in Miller's car, short of petrol. It was Jerry Alday's home. Jerry and Ned arrived in a Jeep and were held at gunpoint. The robbers took a penknife, a cigarette lighter, a wallet and some change, then put the two men in separate bedrooms. Jerry told them his wife would be home soon and had no money, not realising that he had just told them someone else was coming. Wayne shot Ned in the face; Ned got up and came at him, so both men kept firing. Ned was hit six times with .22 and .32 pistols; Jerry was shot four times in the head.
Within minutes Jimmy Alday arrived on a green John Deere tractor. Wayne met him at the door with a pistol, dragged him inside and took his hat, sunglasses and wallet. He put a gun in her face and marched her inside, where she saw the bodies. Then Shuggy and Aubrey arrived in a pickup, laughing at something on the radio.
Wayne took Shuggy to the north bedroom, where his father lay dead, and shot him once through the right ear with a .380 after wrapping a towel around his head.
The gang then blindfolded and gagged her, put her in her own car and drove about seven miles to a wooded area, leaving the Chevrolet behind. They took photographs of her with her own camera while she begged for her life, then made her lie on her stomach. The shots severed her spinal cord. Her body was found in an open field covered with fire ants. Before leaving, some of the men returned to the trailer because Wayne had left his wallet there.
At about 2.30 a.m. on 15 May, Barbara Alday, Shuggy's wife, returned with Bud Alday. They saw legs hanging off the beds and could get no answer at the door. Bud went in through the back door, saw a beer can on the table and women's underwear on the floor, and called Sheriff Dan White, who arrived at 2.45 a.m. with one deputy. The six bodies were found in the trailer; Mary was missing. Her mother, already ill with diabetes and heart trouble, was told only that Mary had been shot and died instantly, but a neighbour told her the full story. She went into a diabetic coma, had a heart attack and died within hours.
On 17 May the town closed for the funeral. Six coffins were taken to Spring Creek Baptist Church, which Ned had helped build, and because the church could not hold the crowd the service was held on the cemetery grounds.
The gang fled to Alabama, stole another car after the Alday vehicle broke down, and drove to West Virginia. There they robbed a country store of $3,000 and several guns. At a roadblock the four men ran.
It found that the community had been saturated with prejudicial publicity, that local passions had been inflamed by the surviving family paying for the prosecution, and that the judge was the prosecutor's uncle.
The farm could not be kept going; neighbours brought in the first year's crops and then the equipment was sold. Because Ned had deeded the land to Jerry, Shuggy and Jimmy, and all three died after him, the property passed through Mary to her family, leaving Ernestine with a small parcel on which she built a tiny house.
He refused his final meal of pork and macaroni, pinto beans, sautéed cabbage, carrot salad, a roll, chocolate cake and fruit punch, declined to make a statement and asked for a prayer.