ATLANTA — She said we could call her by her middle name, Hope, and most of the recordings she brought us were made old-school, on microcassette tapes.
But they dealt with a modern phenomenon: the use of illegal cellphones by prison inmates.
Last month the Georgia Department of Corrections told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne authorities had confiscated roughly 8,000 cellphones so far this year inside Georgia prison walls, phones that could’ve been used to direct criminal organizations on the outside, harass or threaten victims, witnesses and prison staff, and more.
And the inmates whose voices Hope told us she secretly captured on tape weren’t just any prisoners, but four convicted in some of Georgia’s most notorious killings.
They included: Suspected serial killer Wayne Williams, convicted in two of the cases known as Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered. Williams is reportedly implicated in more than a dozen other killings, though he has denied that.
Eddie Lawrence, described by former Cobb County District Attorney Tom Charron, who prosecuted the case, as middleman for up-and-coming attorney and part-time judge Fred Tokars in the contract murder of Tokars’ wife, Sara.
Curtis Rower, whom Charron said was the triggerman Lawrence hired, who shot Sara Tokars in the head in front of her two young sons.
Phillip Anthony Harwood. Former prosecutor Kellie Hill says Harwood copped a plea to voluntary manslaughter for the contract hit on Buckhead socialite Lita Sullivan and agreed to testify against her millionaire husband, James Sullivan.
The recorded phone calls Hope made before and after she began her work with Channel 2 Action News form the core of our investigation. But, the photos of three of the inmates she told us the prisoners texted to her via illegal cellphone constitute even more graphic evidence of the prison cellphone phenomenon.
GALLERY: Pictures taken of inmates from cellphone inside prison
Hope told us her personal journey into this world began as she worked on what would be her first book, a work about serial killers, and she established contact at first via pay phones and letters with multiple murderers across the country.
Then, she began receiving calls from cellphones, illegal for inmates to possess in prison. She also says she established contact with other killers, thinking of a second book about high-profile Georgia murders, before she had even finished the first.
But then, she said, she became angry, an anger born in part of her own violent victimization.
Hope confided she was shot six times as her best friend was murdered before her eyes by her boyfriend, her baby in her arms. Years later, Hope said, the physical wounds still limit her and remind her every day about what happened, a scar on her soul yet to fully heal.
“Personally, my own victimization is just somehow, just physically, it’s a struggle every day,” she reflected off-camera. “It plays in your mind every day and it somehow cheats you of being the best.”
“It’s a forever burden because it’s entrapped in your mind forever,” she said.
Hope recounted crawling over and holding the baby of her murdered friend, not knowing if her own life was draining away, then, in the emergency room, identifying the murderer to a detective from Atlanta police homicide detective who, along with an assistant Fulton County district attorney, became her heroes.
We researched the case, even talked to the now-retired detective. She got justice. Two people went to prison.
WATCH: Winne's three-part interview with Wayne Williams
“My faith has carried me through,” she said.
Winne brought Hope with him for an interview about the Channel 2 investigation with WSB radio's Scott Slade. It captures the complicated emotions that drove her to undertake this mission for our investigation, a mission involving countless hours of work on the phone and behind the scenes.
She provided numerous recordings to us, the voices of Williams and Harwood particularly recognizable to Winne from previous interviews with them.
Speaking candidly about the complex psychology of a shooting victim interacting on a daily basis with killers, Hope said she believes the inmates meant to manipulate her into companionship and financial assistance, but all the while she worked to outmaneuver them, to gain their trust in search of information.
She said she never forgot what they had done to land themselves in prison, though she acknowledged developing some sympathy for Eddie Lawrence, and one or two other prisoners she’s come to know since she began her research.
“I’m human,” she said, adding about Lawrence, “I do believe he was sorry.”
But she said she was not too sympathetic to remember he was the manipulative middle man who took a mother from two sons, a sister and daughter from her family.
We took our general findings to Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Homer Bryson for reaction, who told us he quickly decided to take action and that he would let us document it.
We later met with his two top Office of Professional Standards agents, Ricky Myrick and Clay Nix, and discussed the results of our investigation in greater detail to see what their response would be.
With unprecedented transparency, the Department of Corrections allowed our camera, and, in effect, Channel 2 viewers, inside cells or dormitories on shakedowns in search of cellphones involved in our stories, after which we confronted each of the inmates involved for their sides.
Three of the four actually denied using cellphones, though at the time we did not inform them of the recordings we have.
Their responses, and the action-packed prison raids form the basis for our next report, Tuesday on Channel 2 Action News.
WJAX
