Unraveling Secrets: Benjamin Hale on the Mysterious Disappearance That Haunts the Ozarks
LL: After all your research, what is the most important thing people still misunderstand about these cases? What might you tell them?
BH: The main thing that I hope that this book will not make people do is further blame or morally admonish or demonize the two people who were convicted of the murder who are still alive, Lucy Clark and Mark Harris.
For one thing, of the five people implicated, the three others — those who are now dead: the one who escaped prosecution, the one who died in prison, and the one who served a long sentence before his release — were far more culpable for the crime. For another, even though Lucy and Mark do share some of the culpability, they deserve redemption and forgiveness. One only served two and a half years in prison, but she has been tortured with guilt ever since, and the other has been tortured with guilt and spent most of his life (forty years) in prison, and was forced to begin his free life (not even quite free — he will probably be on parole for the rest of his life, and can’t leave the state of Georgia) at the age of fifty-seven. Forgive them.
