Authors talk about mass murder story at the Acadian Memorial

Jim Bradshaw and Danielle Miller, authors of "Until You Are Dead, Dead, Dead," will talk about how they put together the century-plus old story of Albert Edwin Batson, an itinerant farm worker accused of vicious murders in Acadiana that made headlines across the nation,10 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, upstairs at the Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville.
In 1902, on a prairie in southwest Louisiana, six members of a farming family are found murdered. Batson rapidly descends from likely suspect to likely lynching victim as people in the surrounding countryside lusted for vengeance. In a territory where the locals were coping with the opening of the prairies by the railroad and the disorienting, disruptive advances of the rice and oil industries into what was predominantly cattle country, an outsider made an ideal scapegoat.
"Dead, Dead, Dead" tells the story of the legal trials of Batson for the murder of six members of the Earll family and of the emotional trial of his mother, who believed him innocent and worked tirelessly, but futilely, to save her son's life. More than two dozen photos of Batson, his mother, and the principals involved in his arrest and convictions help bring this struggle to life.
Bradshaw and Miller will explain how they made the crime story, the characters and most of all the culture of the times come alive on the page.