True Crime Georgia: The Augusta Files

Augusta presents itself in finished surfaces: green fairways, riverfront brick, medical towers, and a city built along Georgia's fall line. Its case files preserve a harder history. In The Augusta Files, J.R. Stranahan follows ten investigations across Augusta-Richmond County and the wider Central Savannah River Area. The record begins with the death of sixteen-year-old Charles Oatman in county custody and the six Black men killed by police gunfire during the Augusta Riot of 1970. It continues through the murder of Aleta Bunch, a car recovered from a Lincoln County lake, and the long unresolved disappearances of Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook. The book also examines the disappearance and death of Tiffany Nelson, Barton Corbin's guilty pleas in two killings staged as suicides, the prosecution for Edith Ann Haynes's murder, the survivor who helped expose Reinaldo Rivera, the roadside death of Deputy J.D. Paugh, and the still-unresolved capital prosecution arising from the killing of Investigator Cecil Ridley. These are not legends retold for shock. The book distinguishes accusation from proof, a guilty plea from an uncharged suspicion, direct appeal from later review, a continuing investigation from a solved case, and public theory from an official finding. It explains what juries decided, what appellate courts reviewed, what families kept alive, and what the available record still cannot honestly answer. Built from court opinions, government records, official archives, historical scholarship, and documented reporting, *The Augusta Files* is victim-centered narrative true crime for readers who want the story and the evidence behind it.