Murder in Coweta County

The events were the subject of two acclaimed works, both titled Murder in Coweta County: a 1976 book by Margaret Anne Barnes and a 1983 television movie on CBS starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith.

Wilson Turner, a sharecropper tenant, attempted to do extra bootlegging work without Wallace's permission and was fired as a result.

[1] The group then returned to Meriwether County, where Turner's body was first hidden on Wallace's property, then burned in a pit, the ashes and bone fragments scattered in a nearby stream.

Wallace forced two black field workers, Albert Brooks and Robert Lee Gates, to assist him in destroying the victim's body.

Though the book is generally considered accurate, Barnes' website has quoted the El Paso Times as calling it "the new fictionalized style of recording historic events".

[4] Murder in Coweta County is a 1983 television movie produced by Dick Atkins and Michael Lepiner, directed by Gary Nelson, and written by Dennis Nemec based on Barnes' book.