The reckoning

Pete Banning was Clanton's favorite son a returning war hero the patriarch of a prominent family a farmer father neighbor and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning in 1946 he rose early drove into town walked into the church and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell. As if the murder wasn't shocking enough it was even more baffling that Pete's only statement about it - to the sheriff to his defense attorney to the judge to his family and friends and to the people of Clanton - was 'I have nothing to say'. And so the murder of the esteemed Reverend Bell became the most mysterious and unforgettable crime Ford County had ever known.