Dennis Perry

Camden County, GA | March 11th, 1985

In the spring of 1985, a double murder occurred at the Rising Daughter Baptist Church in the tiny southeast town of Waverly, GA. A white man entered the church and shot the black deacon and his wife. At the crime scene, inches from the deacon’s body and shell casings, lay a pair of glasses that did not belong to anyone in the church that night. Several women were in the adjacent room and all gave wildly different descriptions of the perpetrator, though it seems only one had spoken with him or seen his face clearly. Four different pictures of the shooter were made by four different women. All four were combined into a single composite. Police received hundreds of tips about the case, and in 1988, one anonymous tipster noted Perry's resemblance to the sketch.

Investigators cleared Dennis Perry in 1988 as a possible suspect. They determined that Perry had a solid alibi: he was at work hundreds of miles away the day of the shooting and could not have been in Waverly when the crime was committed. They also showed the woman at the church who spoke with the shooter a photo lineup that included Perry; she did not identify him. Finally, Perry did not wear glasses, like those found at the scene of the crime.

Around 15 years later, after an exhaustive investigation by the GBI and the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff William Smith offered $40,000 of seized drug-related civil forfeiture money to a friend and former sheriff's deputy to solve the murders. Within a week, the deputy had determined that Dennis Perry was the lead suspect, almost entirely due to information generated by a single informant who was seeking a $25,000 reward.

That incentivized witness provided a purported motive for the murders, and she also visited two of the women who had been present in the church and suggested to them that Perry was responsible for the murder. At trial, one of those women testified that Perry looked exactly like the shooter, but when she was shown a photograph of an alternative suspect, she thought he looked exactly like the shooter, too. The other woman, who had previously failed to identify Perry in a photo lineup in 1988, testified that Perry looked like the shooter but she could not be sure. The reward sought by the informant who showed these women Perry’s photograph was never disclosed to Perry’s defense team.

Perry was arrested in 2000. He was interrogated without counsel, and his statements were not recorded. He repeatedly told law enforcement that he did not know anything about the murders. He then made the mistake of engaging in a hypothetical conversation with officers, telling them that he would undo the murders if he could and speculating with them how and why the murders may have occurred. But when officers asked Perry where he stashed the gun, he told them they were putting words in his mouth. At trial, two officers testified about Perry’s hypothetical statements and called them a “confession.” The deputy who was paid to solve the case, however, also testified that Perry had said that he was at the church the night of the murders.

Perry was convicted in 2003. At trial, the jury did not see Perry’s time cards that would have provided an alibi and that cleared him in 1988, because his employer had closed down and the records were gone. After his conviction, the State’s informant was paid $12,000, which was also never disclosed.

After the jury found Perry guilty, the prosecutor agreed not to ask for the death penalty in exchange for Perry giving up his right to appeal. Perry was sentenced to two consecutive sentences.