I Am Scout Read Online Free PDF

don’t know what he died of.’” Maxwell left the courtroom a free man and settled with Radney from proceeds from his nephew’s insurance policy.
    The fifth death touching the reverend appeared on the front page of the Alexander City Outlook on June 15 , 1977 . Police reported that Shirley Ellington, Maxwell’s teenage niece, had been changing a flat tire when her car fell off the jack and killed her. After reading the news story, Radney decided, “I’ve had enough.” When Maxwell showed up at his offices, his erstwhile attorney turned him down.
    â€œMr. Radney, you’re not being fair to me,” Maxwell protested. “I have done nothing wrong. You’ve got to defend me.”
    Radney later recalled the next few minutes clearly. “I said, ‘Reverend, enough’s enough. Maybe you’re innocent, you never told me anything differently, and I’ll never say a word against you, but I will not defend you anymore.’ In the meantime, the area behind my office building was filled with cameras and reporters from Birmingham, Montgomery, and Columbus, Georgia. A newswoman was standing behind his car, and the last thing I heard the reverend say as he got into his big Chrysler was, ‘Ma’am, if you don’t move, I’m going to run over you.’”
    The police waited to arrest him, hoping Maxwell might do or say something during his niece’s funeral service that would incriminate him. Instead, a scene took place that Nelle decided was the perfect beginning to The Reverend, one that was both awful and comic in one stroke.
    A week after Shirley Ellington’s death from being crushed underneath a car, 300 people gathered for her memorial service in the chapel of the House of Hutcheson funeral home. One of the teenager’s uncles, Robert Burns from Chicago, took a seat in the pew behind Maxwell. As the organist was playing and the choir singing in the loft, Burns took out a . 45 from his suit jacket and shot Maxwell point-blank in the back. For a moment, Maxwell dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief while blood spilled from his mouth. Then he fell to the floor, dead. All the mourners ran for the doors, but finding police blocking the exits, they pushed back inside.
    â€œTwo or three ladies, little heavy ones,” said Radney, “tried to get out the windows and got stuck. The preacher didn’t stop preaching, he just got under the pulpit. The organist got under the organ and kept playing, and the choir in the choir loft kept singing—nothing stopped. The next day, police found more than a dozen guns and twice as many knives scattered under the pews.”
    That’s where Nelle would end her first chapter. 8
    Radney defended Burns, after first checking with the Alabama Bar Association that it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest. But since Maxwell was dead, there was none. The jury was out 20 minutes and came back with a verdict of not guilty. The judge sent Burns on his way. As court adjourned, the district attorney mused aloud that he must be the only prosecutor in the United States to have lost a first-degree murder case when there were 300 witnesses.
    The Maxwell killings were tailor-made for someone with Nelle’s experience. Moreover, Radney said he was “really excited about the possibility of a book or movie” when she contacted him about giving the story an In Cold Blood treatment. He agreed to share all his files going back to the beginning, when he first met the reverend. For the movie version, she said she wanted him to play the defense counsel. Gregory Peck would probably get the lead. (Peck, who had kept up his friendship over the years, was bewildered when she said she had a really good part for him if he could play an old woman! “I’m not sure she was kidding,” he mused.) 9
    For about a year she made her writing headquarters the Horseshoe Bend Motel in Alexander City where she pored over