On the evening of September 18, 2017, Edward Earl ’Eddie’ Lanham, 75, was found dead in his Butler Dairy Road home in Summerville, Georgia. A Navy veteran who co-owned the Hair Benders salon in Rome and ran Eddie and Company, Lanham’s death was ruled a homicide from fatal gunshot wounds that were not self-inflicted. Authorities stated he appeared to have been the intended target and that the killing was not random.

Initial reports described the scene as a burglary that had gone wrong, but investigators from the Chattooga County Sheriff’s Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation later concluded the scene had been staged. Inconsistencies in statements by his wife, Susan Renee Lanham, and financial troubles reportedly including about $100,000 in debt drew investigators’ attention to her as a suspect. Her nephew Zachary Hughes told police she had solicited him to kill Eddie; he did not carry out the plot.

Susan Lanham was arrested in February 2018 on charges including murder, aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit murder, and criminal solicitation. Her trial was delayed, and when brought to jury in 2022 the jury deadlocked on the most serious counts, producing a mistrial on those charges. The jury did convict her on two felony counts of making false statements to law enforcement, and a judge sentenced her to ten years in prison for those convictions.

Did anyone in the Summerville or Rome area have contact with Eddie or his business in the weeks before September 18, 2017?