By Wayne Ford
wford@onlineathens.com

Paige Seagraves, granddaughter of Ned Alday, killed 30 years ago with five members of his family in south Georgia's Seminole County, talks about the effect the slayings have had on her life. Dot Paul/Staff

   Paige Seagraves' office is decorated in a country-western style that hints at her life on a Jackson County cattle farm, but it doesn't give a clue to the darkness that has shadowed her and her family for the past 30 years.
   When Carl Isaacs was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday, it was a finality that Seagraves believes should have happened long ago.
   ''I don't think there will ever be closure on this case. This is something my grandchildren will talk about one day,'' said Seagraves, the granddaughter of Ned Alday, who was killed by Isaacs on May 14, 1973, along with three of his sons, his brother and his daughter-in-law. Isaacs had been the longest-serving death row inmate in the country.
   Seagraves, a senior probation officer working in Athens, believes her decision to major in criminal justice at the University of Georgia was likely influenced by the case.
   ''I don't know if it was a conscious decision, but I've grown up in the courts (due to the case), so I've had an interest in the criminal justice system,'' she said.
   Seagraves was born the year after the Aldays were murdered in a mobile home on the 525-acre farm owned by Ned Alday in south Georgia's Seminole County. Isaacs and two other men, all of whom had escaped a Maryland prison, were convicted in the murders, but their convictions were overturned in 1985. Isaacs was again sentenced to death in a retrial. The others, Wayne Coleman and George Dungee, are serving life sentences.
   The case garnered national attention for its brutality and how the family was killed one after another other as they came in from the fields. The woman, Mary Alday, was raped repeatedly before she was killed.
   ''It's really strange to think that Carl Isaacs is gone because all my life, I've lived in the shadow of this case,'' she said.
   

Law enforcement personnel at the Alday trailer in Donalsonville after the murders on May 14, 1973. Carl Isaacs was put to death Tuesday by lethal injection for his role in the notorious slayings. Two others are serving life sentences. AP

On Tuesday night, she and about 60 members of the Alday family, most from Seminole County, went to the state prison in Jackson for the execution. Seagraves and her first cousin, Susan Chambliss, acted as the family spokeswomen for the waiting throng of reporters.
   Seagraves' mother, Faye Barber, was one of four Alday family members allowed to view the execution, which was a reversal of policy for the prison system. At least since 1973, family members were not allowed to view executions.
   ''I think that after 30 years, that's the least the state could do for us. I think we were owed that,'' Seagraves said.
   ''I was worried my mom was going to break down. She's pretty quiet and never had much to say about it,'' Seagraves said'' Her mother was 18 at the time of the shootings, the youngest of the Alday children.
   Seagraves talked to her mother following the execution.
   ''She said he looked around and then he just went to sleep. She said, 'I don't know what I expected, but it seemed he got off too easy.'ƒ''
   Seagraves said many in the family hoped that Isaacs would have made a final statement.
   ''But we knew he probably wouldn't,'' she said. ''We were hoping for an apology or some form of remorse, but it didn't happen.''
   But Seagraves said she and others had waited a long time for Isaacs' execution. That's why so many family members traveled to Jackson.
   ''It was emotional at times, and people would break down and cry. It was a reunion, and it was kind of our day. It was what we had all been waiting for. But no one said the word justice. No one. No one in the family feels it was justice.''
   ''How can you have justice when the other two are still sitting in prison and it took 30 years to get here?'' she said.
   Seagraves grew up in Warner Robins, but spent many holidays and summers at her grandmother's home in the Seminole County town of Donalsonville. She learned at an early age about the murders of her family.
   ''Everyone in the family was very open to the grandchildren about what happened,'' she said.
   She particularly remembers the influence of her grandmother, who died in 1998.
   ''We were never allowed to say anything bad about Carl Isaacs. My grandmother was a very Christian woman, the matriarch of the family and she believed God would deal with them.''
   ''She was a very dignified person and she wanted a lot of dignity for the family and would not resort to name-calling,'' Seagraves said. ''She would say, 'One day it will happen, and it will happen in the Lord's time.'ƒ''
   Seagraves said the case has affected the way she views politics.
   ''I always look at a candidates' stand on victims' rights and crime control. That's something I always look at when I vote, and I vote in every election.''
   Seagraves said she is upset with comments made by Isaacs' lawyer, Jack Martin, who told reporters afterward that ''we have become one with the killers and we are all the lesser for it.''
   ''I hope Jack Martin never learns the difference between a legal execution and having six members of his family murdered,'' she said.
   Seagraves said the Alday murder case will have lasting effects.
   ''We lost our heritage, and Donalsonville, Georgia, lost its sense of security and the Alday family lost faith in the criminal justice system,'' she said.
   In Seminole County, a cornfield now blankets the murder scene, the mobile home was moved to someplace in Florida and an imposing black-marble monument marks where the Aldays are buried at Spring Creek Baptist Church.
   And the state's most notorious mass murder case has made an indelible mark on its living victims.
   ''It shaped who I am,'' Seagraves said.
   

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Friday, May 9, 2003.