Life Without Mercy

Download or read book Life Without Mercy written by Ralph Echols and published by . This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were hitchhiking in West Virginia, headed to the Rainbow Family Gathering in the Monongahela National Forest. They accepted a ride from a soft spoken young man driving a Chevy Nova. They never made it to the Rainbow festival.The young women made the mistake of admitting to Joseph Paul Franklin that they did not disapprove of interracial dating. Franklin, a racist serial killer, murdered Nancy and Vicki and left their bodies on a remote mountainside in Pocahontas County. He had committed 18 other murders before that, all of them racially motivated.Twelve years later, despite repeated confessions from Franklin, a local man, Jacob Wilson Beard, was charged with the killings, which had come to be known as "The Rainbow Murders."Beard was convicted of those killings and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. "Life Without Mercy," as they call it in West Virginia.Written with the cooperation of Jake Beard and Joseph Paul Franklin, Life Without Mercy is the story of the Rainbow murders, the perversion of justice and one man's five and a half year struggle to get out of prison and clear his name.If it could happen to Jake Beard, it could happen to anyone.