ATLANTA — On March 11, 1985, a gunman walked into a historic Black church in South Georgia and gunned down Harold and Thelma Swain. In 2021, spurred on by the Georgia Innocence Project and an award-winning AJC investigation , a judge exonerated Dennis Perry, the suspect originally convicted in the killing. And late Monday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the arrest of Erik Sparre — the man they believe truly responsible for the decades-old crime. He’s in the Camden County jail, officials said, charged with two counts apiece of murder and aggravated assault. In a statement provided to the AJC, Perry said he remains hopeful that the Swains will receive justice. “It’s not about me — it’s about justice for the Swains,” Perry said. “The wheels of justice move real slow.” The Swains’ deaths at Rising Daughter Baptist Church roiled the community near Waverly, about half an hour west of Brunswick. But the case went unresolved for years. While initial investigators believed Perry when he said he was working near Atlanta that day, a cold case investigation landed him in jail in 2000. A jury convicted him in 2003. But as now-former AJC reporter Joshua Sharpe, who’s currently working on a book about the case, reported in his 2020 project “The Imperfect Alibi,” prosecutors withheld key information at trial: namely that the state’s star witness, the mother of Perry’s ex-girlfriend, earned $12,000 for testifying. She told the jury Perry had shared plans to kill Harold Swain. The reporting, which built on findings in the “Undisclosed” podcast , helped free Perry from incarceration in 2020 — and put the focus on Sparre. Suspicions about Sparre, a purported white supremacist, had circulated in the wake of the Swains’ death, but investigators accepted his offered alibi. To support that alibi, Sparre’s supposed manager at Winn-Dixie told police over the phone that Sparre was at work at the grocery store the night of the killings. Sharpe, though, debunked it. He found that the person on the phone had used a fraudulent name, Social Security number and contact information. The original investigator couldn’t recall for sure, but he likely got the manager’s number — which did not correspond to the Winn-Dixie — from Sparre himself. That finding spurred the Georgia Innocence Project and other attorneys representing Perry to conduct a DNA test that the GBI says ties Sparre to the original crime scene. Sparre also told multiple people about the shooting, according to police and court records. In previous interviews with the AJC, Sparre proclaimed his innocence. The GBI declined to provide additional information about their decision to arrest the 61-year-old. It was unclear if he’d hired an attorney. Sharpe, meanwhile, told the AJC he “didn’t have any idea what was going to happen” when he first started looking at the Swain killings. “I just knew that I was terrified that they’d gotten it wrong,” he said. Jennifer Whitfield, an attorney who represented Perry for the Georgia Innocence Project, said nothing can really fix that now — but “watching him build a life is a beautiful thing.” ©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The 26-year-old man charged in last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO appeared in a Pennsylvania courtroom on Tuesday, where he was denied bail and his lawyer said he'd fight extradition to New York City, where the attack happened. Luigi Nicholas Mangione was arrested Monday in last Wednesday's attack on Brian Thompson after they say a worker at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, alerted authorities to a customer who resembled the suspected gunman. When arrested, Mangione had on him a gun that investigators believe was used in the attack and writings expressing anger at corporate America, police said. As Mangione arrived at the courthouse Tuesday, he struggled with officers and shouted something that was partly unintelligible but referred to an “insult to the intelligence of the American people.” Mangione is being held on Pennsylvania charges of possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. Manhattan prosecutors have charged him with five counts, including murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a forged instrument. Here are some of the latest developments: Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Mangione mostly stared straight ahead during the hearing, occasionally consulting papers, rocking in his chair, or looking back at the gallery. At one point, he began to speak to respond to the court discussion but was quieted by his lawyer. Judge David Consiglio denied bail to Mangione, whose attorney, Thomas Dickey, told the court that his client did not agree to extradition and wants a hearing on the matter. Blair County (Pennsylvania) District Attorney Peter Weeks said that although Mangione's fighting extradition will create “extra hoops” for law enforcement to jump through, it won’t be a substantial barrier to sending him to New York. In addition to a three-page, handwritten document that suggests he harbored “ill will toward corporate America,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Monday that Mangione also had a ghost gun, a type of weapon that can be assembled at home and is difficult to trace. Officers questioned Mangione, who was acting suspiciously and carrying multiple fraudulent IDs, as well as a U.S. passport, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Officers also found a sound suppressor, or silencer, “consistent with the weapon used in the murder,” she said. He had clothing and a mask similar to those worn by the shooter and a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, the commissioner said. Kenny said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and that his last known address is in Honolulu. Mangione, who was valedictorian of his Maryland prep school, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a university spokesman told The Associated Press on Monday. Mangione comes from a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather Nick Mangione, who died in 2008, was a successful real estate developer. One of his best-known projects was Turf Valley Resort, a sprawling luxury retreat and conference center outside Baltimore that he purchased in 1978. Mangione likely was motivated by his anger with what he called “parasitic” health insurance companies and a disdain with corporate greed, said a law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press. He wrote that the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and that the profits of major corporations continue to rise while “our life expectancy” does not, according to the bulletin, which was based on a review of the suspect’s hand-written notes and social media postings. The defendant appeared to view the targeted killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO as a symbolic takedown and may have been inspired by “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, whom he called a “political revolutionary,” the document said. Police said the person who killed Thompson left a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side at 5:41 a.m. on Wednesday. Eleven minutes later, he was seen on surveillance video walking back and forth in front of the New York Hilton Midtown, wearing a distinctive backpack. At 6:44 a.m., he shot Thompson at a side entrance to the hotel, fled on foot, then climbed aboard a bicycle and within four minutes had entered Central Park, according to police. Another security camera recorded the gunman leaving the park near the American Museum of Natural History at 6:56 a.m. still on the bicycle but without the backpack, police said. After getting in a taxi, he headed north to a bus terminal near the George Washington Bridge, arriving at around 7:30 a.m. From there, the trail of video evidence runs cold. Police have not located video of the suspect exiting the building, leading them to believe he likely took a bus out of town. Police said they are still investigating the path the suspect took to Pennsylvania. “This just happened this morning," Kenny said. "We’ll be working, backtracking his steps from New York to Altoona, Pennsylvania,” Kenny said. Associated Press reporters Lea Skene, Matt O'Brien, Sean Murphy and Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. 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The holidays means a lot of things, but for me, it's all about HOLIDAY SHOPPING. That includes stocking up on candles, hand soaps, all that jazz. 99% of the time I never actually use them until years after I buy them, but that's a topic for a different day. Soooo, I found some of this year's holiday scents at Bath & Body Works, and also asked AI to make me some FAKE ones. We're gonna see if you can tell me which are which. Here we go! Can you think of a fake holiday scent name? Get creative, and tell us in the comments below! And make sure to follow BuzzFeed Canada on TikTok and Instagram for more! This post was enhanced using AI-powered creativity tools.None