Thelma Scroggins, seventy-four, was the village’s longtime mail carrier. She was also the Baptist church’s only organist. On the morning of July 14, 1996, Scroggins failed to show up for Sunday service. Her fellow parishioners knew that Thelma never missed a worship engagement. After the service, several of them walked across the street to Scroggins’s farmhouse. There, they found her lying in the front doorway, shot four times in the head. A subsequent autopsy revealed abrasions on her back, shoulders, hands, and feet. She also had contusions on her right shoulder and eyelids. Her purse and
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