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Inside Dateline: Murder in a small community

The puzzle pieces don't fit in Rome, Georgia

June 30, 2006 |   

Murder in a small community (Jane Stone, Dateline producer)

Rome, Georgia may only be an hour and a half northwest of Atlanta but it seems much, much  further away. It is a tight-knit community with small-town values. Everyone seems to know everyone else and the murder of Thad Reynolds has put the community into almost a collective depression.  It's been two years this July that Thad was killed. His wife Michelle and their friend Richard Scott Harper were charged with his murder.

Yet the friends of Michelle Reynolds and Scotty Harper who I had long conversations with still can't  make the puzzle pieces fit together.  According to them, there were no outward cracks in either marriage, no signs of lives unraveling. No matter how hard I pressed them, they to a person described Michelle as a fun-loving, devoted mother. Scotty, they said, was equally dedicated to his family, the church and to his job at the hospital.   

Some of the answers to the questions of 'could this have happened' may eventually come out in court but we will all  have to wait as the trial is not expected to start until sometime in 2007.