On May 14, 1973, six members of the Alday family were murdered at a mobile home near Donalsonville, Georgia. Aubrey Alday, 57, arrived at the trailer with his nephew Chester Shuggie Alday, was forced inside at gunpoint and taken to a bedroom where he was killed. The victims were Ned Alday; Ned’s sons Jerry, Jimmy and Chester; Ned’s brother Aubrey; and Jerry’s wife Mary.

Four men — Carl Junior Isaacs, his half-brother Wayne Carl Coleman, George Elder Dungee, and Billy Isaacs — had come upon the trailer intending to burglarize it. As family members returned, they were taken into the home and shot. The suspects fled but were captured in West Virginia four days later.

Billy Isaacs testified for the prosecution in exchange for a plea and served a 20-year sentence. Carl Isaacs, Wayne Coleman and George Dungee were convicted and sentenced to death; those convictions were overturned in 1985 because of prejudicial pretrial publicity. All three were retried and convicted again: Carl Isaacs was resentenced to death, George Dungee received a death sentence later commuted to life, and Wayne Coleman received multiple life sentences after a jury could not agree on death.