True Crime Alabama

Alabama's capital was built to project order, authority, and permanence. Its criminal history tells a more complicated story. In The Montgomery Files, J.R. Stranahan examines twelve investigations that shaped Montgomery and the River Region. The cases range from Rhonda Martin's poisonings and the deaths of Hilliard Brooks, Bernard Whitehurst, Willie Edwards Jr., and Viola Liuzzo to the still unresolved disappearances and murders of Kimberly Arrington and Shannon Paulk. The book also follows capital cases involving Michael Sockwell and Christopher Barbour, the Freedom Rider attack, a campaign of bombings aimed at civil rights leaders, and corruption prosecutions that tested the relationship between money and political power.

Each chapter returns to the public record, separates documented fact from allegation, and places the people harmed at the center of the story. Court opinions, agency records, historical archives, and contemporary reporting show how some cases were solved, how others changed over time, and why several still resist a clean ending.

This is not a catalog of spectacle. It is a source-led account of violence, memory, and accountability in Montgomery, Alabama.