On October 21, 1974, 55-year-old William Culpepper was working as a clerk at a liquor store in Cordele, Georgia, when a man who had escaped from a Florida jail entered the store to rob it and shot Culpepper, killing him. Another clerk, A.V. Norton, was shot and survived. The assailant was identified as Thomas Knight, later known as Askari Abdullah Muhammad, who already had a history of violent crimes including involvement in the kidnapping and murder of his employer and the employer’s wife in Florida.

Knight was eventually apprehended but was not prosecuted in Georgia for Culpepper’s killing because he faced severe charges in Florida, including the murder of a corrections officer while on death row. Those Florida prosecutions proceeded; Knight was sentenced to death in Florida and was executed there on January 7, 2014. The decision not to seek a local trial in Cordele meant the community never saw a Georgia prosecution for Culpepper’s murder.