WARNER ROBINS -- For 28 years, survivors of the massacred Alday family have waited to see the culprits in the killings put to death.
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The Case
Faye Alday Barber's father, Ned Alday, was gunned down along with three sons, a brother and a daughter-in-law in a family-owned trailer in Seminole County on May 14, 1973. Prosecutors called the slayings the most gruesome murders in the state's history. In 1974 Carl Isaacs and two co-defendants, George Dungee and Wayne Coleman, received death sentences.
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But overturned verdicts, delays, retrials and other legal entanglements have left Faye Alday Barber wondering if it will ever happen. Timothy McVeigh's execution earlier this week, just six years after the Oklahoma City bombing, has not helped boost their faith.
"We've had trials, retrials and 52 hearings," said Barber's husband, Willie. "They don't even have the courtesy to tell us where the case is and let us know before the news media."
The Barbers said they contacted U. S. Rep. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., earlier this week for help. Chambliss told The Macon Telegraph he had not received the Barbers' request but would meet with the family and help them if he could.
Last month a federal judge gave Carl Isaacs, who masterminded the murders, the right to appeal his death sentence to the 11th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Isaacs claims his rights were violated during a 1988 retrial in Houston County Superior Court.
Isaacs and two co-defendants, George Dungee and Wayne Coleman, received death sentences in 1974. But a federal appeals court overturned their convictions later, saying they couldn't get fair trials in Seminole County because of publicity surrounding the case. All but Isaacs had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment during the retrials.
Isaacs, who is on death row at the state prison in Jackson, claimed in his appeal request that his rights were violated 32 times during the retrial.
Willie Barber said he believes Carl Isaacs is in state prison "with a sly smirk on his face, and he's not been put to death in 28 years."
He said he wants an account of all the money spent on trials and appeals in the Alday case.
"The only thing that surpasses the trail of money in the Alday case is the trail of suffering by the Alday family," Barber said.
