PROLOGUE
SONG 1: THEME AND MONOLOGUE
PIANIST
You can check the newspaper. In August of 2006, Clayton Hadley of Yatesville, Georgia was executed for the murder of his wife, his daughter, his son, and a New Orleans man going by the name Reverend White, who had moved next door only recently after the carnage of Katrina exiled him from the Louisiana Bayou.
You can check the newspaper. The Thomaston Times. Headline: The Yatesville Tragedy. It was the first and only time Yatesville, Georgia made a headline. The Thomaston Times reports that during his trial Mr. Hadley went on about dolls and hoodoo magic, about rape and the ungodly, and at one particularly cinematic moment stood during the proceedings and shouted, “White killed my family! Damn you, it was his dark magic!” “Well which was it,” said the attorney, “The man, or the magic?”
Sometimes a story is plain too fantastic to hold water in a courtroom. But this is not a courtroom. The story Clayton Hadley told to his peers - who did not believe him - is very fresh to my memory, so I will tell that story again, and leave the believing or the not believing to you fair-minded people. For my part, I do believe it. You can check the newspaper. The Thomaston Times. The bare facts are there. The rest is in the telling.
Music 1a: Watching the News
It started one evening in July of 2006. Mr. Hadley and his wife were doing what they did most every evening: watching the television.
