The most notorious unsolved murder in our state's fraught history went down in Darlington County in the 4th Judicial District of South Carolina in the dark of April 3, 1952. This book is a protest and an anniversary token, published exactly 63 years after the killing night. The recollections of many who experienced the crime and its investigation close up and variously are woven into UNSOLVED. They are therefore included in this Author Biography of UNSOLVED: A Murder in the Solid South. What difference, at this point, does an political murder from the past make? More than you might think. Old sins cast long shadows; no one can forget what will not be forgotten. M B Spears and her contemporaries had their way of thinking changed by that crime and what followed it. As hope for closure evaporated, their view of "normal" life shifted, showing them once and for all that they couldn't trust the manmade justice system as it existed in the Solid South. Among ordinary thinking people in the victim's church-going, Bible-believing, agricultural community, acceptance of entrenched local leaders crumbled into dust and was replaced by anger against those who would defend the indefensible. Seeing the Pee Dee region from across the sea for each of the past 18 years has clarified for M B Spears how and why crime(s) went unsolved. Some warn it's best to let sleeping ghosts lie. Others feel a compulsion to tear apart the covering of lies. It's their experiences and recollections that built UNSOLVED.