The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders

In 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area’s Black community. For fifteen years, the case remained unsolved. Then authorities zeroed in on Dennis Perry, a carpenter who grew up nearby. Convicted with devastatingly flawed evidence, Perry received a double life sentence. When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of corruption, devastating missteps, and secrets. And he confronts a long-ignored suspect: an alleged white supremacist who had bragged about committing the murders. And even as evidence mounts of Perry’s innocence, local officials work to keep him in prison—until Sharpe’s reporting forces the state to launch a new investigation. The Man No One Believed tells the unbelievable story of one of the most confounding cases in Georgia history, the extraordinary fight to free an innocent man, and how state officials worked against the odds to deliver justice for the Swains after all. Both a riveting true crime story and a searing indictment of American injustice, The Man No One Believed is a gripping work of literary journalism.