Story of brutal murder of 2 teens that haunted Alabama for 20 years retold on ‘Sins of the South’
The brutal murders of two high school seniors in Alabama’s Wiregrass region will be featured this weekend on Oxygen True Crime.
J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, 17-year-old best friends, headed out together on July 31, 1999, to celebrate J.B.’s birthday. They were going to a field party and then planned to have a sleepover at Tracie’s house.
Their families and friends would never again see the two girls alive.
Their slayings remained unsolved until 2019 when Coley McCraney – then 45 – was arrested after a DNA match was found through a family DNA website in a genealogy search.
The episode is part of Oxygen’s weekly show called “Sins of the South.” It airs at 7 p.m. eastern time and is described by the network as a “true crime series that illuminates the drama, the history and the crime stories found below the Mason-Dixon line.”
The teaser for the Beasley/Hawlett episode reads, “A mother’s worry ignites when two teenage girls never come home after getting lost heading to a party in southeast Alabama,’’ says a teaser of this weekend’s special. “When their car is found abandoned, their small town unites to find them and uncover what happened.”
“And when the truth is revealed,’’ says the shows narrator, “it rattles all of Dixies.”
The show features interviews with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, retired Dothan Police Chief John C. White, and ALEA State Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Barry Tucker.
“There it was,’’ an emotional White said when he discussed finding the girls’ dead. “It’s one of those visions that will occupy your brain and you will never get rid of it.”
J.B.’s mother, Cheryl Burgoon, talks at length about the events of the night the girls’ disappeared, her reaction when they were found dead and what it was like to hear the McCraney when he took the stand in his 2023 trial.
J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, best friends and high school seniors, were found slain in the trunk of a vehicle on Aug. 1, 1999, when they didn’t return home from a party the night before.(OXygen True Crime/Dothan Police)
The murders of the girls’ haunted the Wiregrass region for decades and been given national exposure on television networks throughout the years.
The friends were on their way home from J.B.’s birthday party when they got lost in Ozark on July 31, 1999.
According to Tracie’s mother, Carole Roberts, the girls had been lost and could not understand the directions they were given before stopping at a convenience store in Ozark. They had been on their way home from a party in Headland.
The girls were found the next day inside the trunk of J.B.’s black Mazda 929, on the side of Herring Avenue about one block away from the Dale County hospital.
Both girls had each been shot once to the head, but there were no other signs of foul play. The girls’ jewelry, purses and money were not missing and state forensics experts at the time said neither girl had been raped.
Within a week, police announced a nationwide, 24-hour hotline to received tips and a reward fund quickly grew to $15,000 in donations from area residents. Then-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman announce another $10,000 in state funds.
In the years immediately after the killing, investigators conducted more than 500 interviews, overworked forensics experts and tested the DNA of more than 70 potential suspects.
A 45-year-old Dothan man – Coley McCraney – has been charged with five counts of capital murder and one count of rape int he 1999 murders of 17-year-old friends Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley, whose bodies were found in the trunk of Beasley’s car. Both had been shot in the head. Their deaths have haunted the Wiregrass region for decades.
McCraney has lived his life crime-free and built a family in the 20 years following the murders.
At the time of McCraney’s 2019 arrest, then-Ozark Police Chief Marlos Walker said the 2018 arrest of the alleged Golden State Killer through use of a genealogy and DNA database sparked the chain of events that led to the break in the Alabama cold case.
The department reached out to Parabon NanoLabs in Virginia, which specializes in DNA engineering.
Police said they started the process in August 2018, and it culminated in the arrest of McCraney, a truck driver who spent some time in the military.
McCraney took the stand in his own defense during the week-long trial and testified that he had consensual sex with J.B. He said they had previously met her at the Wiregrass Commons Mall almost two months prior to the murders, and the two planned to meet at the Ozark gas station at 10 p.m. on July 31, 1999.
When Beasley was late, he said he went to his mother’s house to wait on a call from J.B. but never received one.
McCraney, convicted last year, was sentenced to live in prison without parole.