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DNA Match Reveals Alabama Minister Killed Two 17-Year-Old Girls in 1999
A police chief has never been able to shake the horrible image. “Two young, beautiful girls," he said, "stretched out like cordwood.”
On August 1, 1999, 17-year-old best friends J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett were found fatally shot in the trunk of Beasley’s Mazda.
Six hours earlier, the girls from Dothan, Alabama, were reported missing after getting lost on the way to a party. The car was found along a secluded stretch of road in the town of Ozark.
“They had been both shot in the head and brutally murdered,” Special Agent Barry Tucker, Alabama Bureau of Investigation, told Sins of the South, airing Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen.
John C. White, the now-retired Dothan Police Department chief, still can’t shake the horrible image. “Two young, beautiful girls,” he said, “stretched out like cordwood.”
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Searching for a Motive
With the victims still in the trunk to preserve evidence, the car was transferred to the morgue. Evidence showed that the girls had been shot at close range. A .9mm shell casing was on Beasley’s abdomen. A second shell casing wasn’t found.
Brier scratches and mud on the victims made “it appear that they’d been in the woods,” said Tucker. It appeared that the murder took place somewhere other than where the car was found.
Investigators looked for a motive. “It didn't appear to be a theft of any kind,” said Tucker. “It didn’t appear at first glance to be anything sexual in nature. So what was it?”
The grim mystery had locals scared, according to Leann Capps, news reporter for the Dothan Eagle. Reward money was raised to catch the killer. “People wanted this monster found,” said Capps.
Retracing the Victims’ Final Steps
Before the bodies were found, on July 31 around 11:30 p.m., “Tracie called her mother, Carol Roberts, from a pay phone at a convenience store in Ozark,” said White. "Tracie said, ‘We got lost and never made it to this party. We kind of know where we’re going now. I’ll be home in just a little bit.”
Roberts went to bed and arose the next morning to find her daughter wasn’t home. She then reached out to the Dothan PD.
J.B.’s car was found 23 miles away in Ozark about an hour later. The woods were searched before an officer popped the trunk on the car.
Security camera footage at the gas station with the pay phone showed that the victims had pulled up at 11:20 p.m.
"One of those women, Marilyn Merritt, came to the police the next day after hearing news reports of the murders.
Merritt and her daughter had gone to the store to get a drink when Beasley and Hawlett came up to them.
“They seemed very concerned that they were running late and missed their curfew,” Merritt said. “They were lost , seeking directions to get back to Dothan. I made sure that they understood how to get to Dothan.”
Police combed the area around the convenience store but the search turned up no clues.
Autopsy bombshell revelation
The autopsy revealed that semen was found on Beasley’s shirt and underwear. “I felt pretty confident that whoever did this did not have consent,” said Tucker.
When the evidence was entered into a DNA database, the results didn’t return with a match. As investigators continued to work the case, the grieving victims’ families laid their loved ones to rest.
“I almost fainted at the foot of my daughter’s casket,” said Bealey’s mom, Cheryl Burgoon. “I can't believe I have to plan my baby’s funeral when I should be planning her wedding.'
Investigation Leads to Dead-End
A month after the murders, the case stalled. But then an Ozark resident claimed to police that he was at the scene of the crime when it happened, though he didn’t do it.
“He told us about picking up some guy walking down the road,” said Tucker. “They rode around a little while and met the girls at the gas station and the guy took him out into the woods.”
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Pressed for details, the witness said he didn’t know the man’s name or anything about him. He was arrested and charged with two counts of murder. However, his DNA sample didn’t match the evidence.
It was determined that he’d made a false report and was cleared. “He later said ‘I made it up so I could get the reward money to my family,’” said White.
Another tip leading to a man who lived in Michigan who’d allegedly confessed to the double murder ended up being another dead end. His DNA didn’t match the evidence on Beasley’s clothing.
At this point, the case went cold and stayed that way for two decades.
Familial DNA jump starts the cold case
Then in 2019, investigators turned to familial DNA. The DNA laboratory ran the evidence found on Beasley through public genealogy databases from families whose members had previously submitted their DNA for ancestry research, according to Sins of the South.
The lab then developed a list of Alabama families whose genetic material bears some resemblance to the foreign sample
A name on the list — Coley McCraney, 45, a long haul truck driver and a preacher — rang a bell from high school for Ozark Police Chief Mosley Walker.
Walker asked McCraney to come in to help with the case. “He said, “You’re not a suspect. But I need your DNA. We can branch out from there and get closer and closer to our suspect,” said Tucker.
McCraney, at the urging of his wife, gave a DNA sample. When the results came back, McCraney was a match for the semen on Beasley’s clothes.
Coley McCraney Arrested and Tried
McCraney was arrested for the double murder and for sexual assault. He denied knowing the victims or having sexual contact, according to Tucker.
As the case moved toward trial, the Covid-19 lockdown in early 2020 brought the proceedings to a halt. “Most cases get worse over time,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. “Delay is never a good thing for a prosecutor.”
In April 2023, 24 years after Beasley and Hawlett were killed, the trial began. Prosecutors argued that McCraney got into the victims’ car after they left the gas station, pulled a gun on them, raped Beasley, and then killed both girls.
“There's obviously missing pieces that we'll never know the answer to,” said Marshall.
A key witness for the prosecution ended up being the defendant’s wife. Her testimony helped put McCraney at the crime scene when it occurred.
Four days into the trial, McCraney took the stand and made a shocking statement. He said that he’d met Beasley at a mall a month before the murder.
“He said he agreed to meet at that gas station that night to hang out with these two girls,” said Tucker. He went on to say that he and Beasley had consensual sex.
“It was disgusting. It was hell to listen to him,” said Burgoon.
McCraney was ultimately found guilty of the murder and rape of Beasley and the murder of Hawlett. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, the AP reported.
To learn more about the “Abducted in Alabama” case, watch Sins of the South, airing Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen.
