Walland

I'm Beth Braden, and you're going with me on a real-time investigation into how Gary Wayne Sutton was sentenced to death row for a crime he likely didn't commit.

Last week, I left you all with the Blount County trial testimony from the fisherman who found Tommy Griffin's body on the bank of the Little River in Walland on February 24, 1992.

The fisherman testified that when he looked at Tommy, the blood on the back of his head looked like it was still wet.

After the fisherman, the next witness called was Gary Allen Hamilton, who was a crime scene technician and latent fingerprint examiner for the Blount County Sheriff's Department.

I should have said, that is a shirt like the one I saw them carrying in the courtroom or in the courthouse.

I went back to Gary's statement that he gave to officers on February 25, 1992, the day after Tommy's body was found in Walland, because I remembered him telling the detectives about picking Tommy up from jail.

Here's what I found.

Remember, Gary was giving the statement to Blount County detectives Jim Widener and Dale Gorley, and he walked them through what he, James, and Tommy had done on the evening of Friday, February 21st.

It's on the list of things I'm keeping an eye out for.

In the state's theory of the case, there was no girl.

Instead, they say Gary, James, and Tommy all got into Linda Dellinger's gray Oldsmobile and headed down US-321, back past Howie's Hideaway, past the sit-go on the right, past the left turn that would have taken them back around the mountain to go up to the holler, and instead went all the way to Doc Manning Lane in Walland.

Doc Manning Lane is a left-hand turn off the highway onto a one-lane dead-end road along the Little River.

Gary said he and James gave Tommy some money and that Tommy left with that woman, who was in a, quote, older model Falcon, end quote.

Gary said he and James continued down the road towards Walland until they got to the left turn that would take them back around the mountain.

At the Hunt Road exit, Alcoa Police Officer Stephen Brooks had responded to the fight call, but he initiated a traffic stop after a car turned across the grass median to make a U-turn.

My husband Chad and I are going to read what Brooks told the Blount County jury while he was being cross-examined by Gary's attorney, F.D. Gibson.

This is your hostess and producer Amy Campbell.

And this morning we are setting the table with some good old-fashioned staples: how to cook cornbread over an open fire in cast iron, how to make homemade butter, and how to make peach pies with Iva Spoonwild of Walland, Tennessee.

Also, the happily retired former food editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel, Mary D.D. Constantine shares with us a recipe for Vietnamese beef stew.

And we'll hear Fred Sassaman's potluck radio segment with Pal Kenneth Barger, the man who created an Upper East Tennessee favorite, Pal's Sudden Service.

While he was sobering up, Gary and James burned his trailer to the ground, according to the state's theory.

Then, they drove back down to Maryville to bail Tommy out and then took him to a dead-end road along the river in Walland where they shot him in the back of the head with a shotgun and left him on the riverbank.

For the Blount County trial, the state's witnesses largely remained the same, and they were presented in nearly the same order as the Sevier County trial.

But they didn't all say the same thing in Blount County that they did in Sevier County.