Introducing Murder, etc.
Rapid Eye Reality’s Brad Willis launches investigative podcast based in Greenville, SC.
Category: Crime
The Grizzly Ate Your Baby
Several years back, my buddy and I made a wrong turn on the way to Virginia. Appalachia is the kind of place with towns called Tightsqueeze, so you’ll understand that any wrong turn is...
Charity Worley: Tragedy compounded
“Nothing was normal that morning.” That’s what Linda told me one spring day around lunch time as she thought back to the little details of the last time she saw her daughter Charity alive....
The last lie you’ll believe
Somebody lied to you. You may not know it yet. You might be seething with hate. You feel it pressing down on your chest. You want to breathe, but you can’t. You see those...
About that story from The Bitter Southerner
Some of you have been reading Rapid Eye Reality since 2001. Other folks have found it in the years since then. Some of you are just arriving after having read “Bust” on The Bitter...
Giggling at hell
There’s a man who makes birdhouses. He’s a jolly guy, the kind you’d think would be good to suit up as Santa come December. He’s a craftsman who hits the southeastern arts festivals, sits...
A letter to an American kid
I will never forget the day you were born. I will never forget the day you turned ten years old. They were both days that scared me until I could feel the fear in...
The F5 Nobody: A terrible idea to stop spree killers
When I was young, I had a recurring dream that the man who lived down the street planned to kill me. In reality, the guy worked for City Utilities and drove a green work...
The monsters are real
I grew up on the west side of Springfield, Missouri. If you look on the left part of Springfield’s gridded streets you will find the map of my childhood. It’s where I rode my...
The kid you’ll never hear about
The gunfire started about the time we reached Field 4. Rat-tat-tats, small arms, over and over again. We were there for baseball practice. A sunny day in September. Mid-70s, blue sky, light breeze, and...
Using John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck died in 1968, four years before the landmark Furman v. Georgia capital punishment decision by the United States Supreme Court. It was the first moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S....
Cracking the comments code
This may surprise you, but I know a little more about crack cocaine than the average 37-year-old guy who grew up in a semi-rural community in southwest Missouri. I know how it’s made, how...
Eric Nicholson, ten years later
Eric Nicholson donated a pint of blood, told his wife Misty he loved her, and went back to work. It was December 6, 2000, a cold, clear day in Greenville, South Carolina. I don’t...