While Octavia Dockery, a 67-year-old woman, and Dick Dana, a 61-year old man, and the squalor at their Glenwood (Goat Castle), were the focus of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, Sister, a key character in this tragic story, was far less well-known. Sister, a 37-year old African American laundress who was sentenced to eight years imprisonment at Parchman Penitentiary in the murder of her husband. Karen L. Cox is a University of North Carolina historian and author of many books on the South. She details the sensation of Goat Castle and its inhabitants and tells the tragic story of Sister, who was convicted for her crime while overwhelming evidence was against Dockery and Dana. Cox thoroughly researches and tells stories about the main characters in the drama. She also tells details of the murder using court documents and newspaper accounts. This crime captured the interest in the pre-Civil War planter classes and the hardships that faced many of them. This crime is also a clear example of the state’s lack of rights for its black population. Merrill, who was the descendant of two prominent planter families in the country, did not marry despite many suitors. She still owned large Louisiana farms and operated them from her Natchez home, Glenburnie, at the time she died. She was involved in numerous legal battles over the years with Dana, Dockery, and their livestock, who routinely strayed onto her property and destroyed it. Dockery was the daughter of a Confederate General/Planter who faced difficult financial times following the war. She relied on her livestock to earn meager earnings to care for Dana and herself. Dana, who sometimes seemed to be in denial of reality, was given Glenwood by her father, an Episcopal priest. Because of the freedom of the goats that roamed the house, including eating wallpaper and walking upstairs to look at visitors. A man of African descent who moved from Chicago to Natchez in order to rob Merrill is suspected to have joined the money-strapped residents at Goat Castle. The man, known as Pink, is believed to have pulled the trigger during the robbery. A law enforcement officer later killed him in Pine Bluff, Ark. The bottom line is that despite the presence of bloody fingerprints at the scene of the murder, the Goat Castle residents were never convicted. White locals still saw them as sympatric characters and wanted to see someone pay for the crime. Burns, who may have been an innocent accompli, was convicted and spent eight years in Parchman. Finally, Gov. Paul B. Johnson was a regular at Parchman’s “mercy courts”, and heard directly from Burns. Dockery and Dana lived in Glenwood for many years, continuing to earn money to see the filth. Officials from Natchez Tourism tried to ignore Goat Castle, the scandalous story, and run a successful pilgrimage to the grand Natchez homes of the pre-Civil War era. Burns, after being pardoned, returned home to marry her second husband (her first husband had died before the Goat castle incident). She was a well-respected member of her church. Her death in 1969, despite the fact that she was a suspect in the Goat Castle murder and the publicity surrounding it, went unreported by the Natchez newspaper. Karen L. Cox will be appearing on the True Crime panel in room 201H of the state Capitol at 4 p.m. Other panel members include Charlie Spillers Radley Balko Miriam Davis, George Malvaney, and Radley Balko.