True Crime Georgia: The Atlanta Files

Atlanta sells reinvention. Its case files preserve a more difficult history. In The Atlanta Files, J.R. Stranahan follows nine crimes and investigations that forced the city to confront violence, evidence, race, power, policing, and public memory. The record begins with the unsolved murders of Black women in the early twentieth century and the prosecution that followed thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan's death. It continues through the Atlanta child murders, the long pursuit of the people responsible for Lita McClinton Sullivan's killing, the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, the assassination of Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown, the Fulton County courthouse killings, the fatal police raid at Kathryn Johnston's home, and the trials connected to Rusty Sneiderman's murder. These are not legends retold for shock. The book distinguishes allegation from proof, conviction from suspicion, and an official conclusion from a question the record cannot settle. It explains what juries decided, what appellate courts changed, why some investigations endured for decades, and how public institutions responded when their own failures became part of the case. Built from court opinions, government investigations, official archives, historical records, and documented reporting, The Atlanta Files is victim-centered narrative true crime for readers who want the story and the evidence behind it.