Summary

In 1970, the future of one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, looked bleak until Willie Traynor, a 23-year-old college dropout, assumed ownership. Reporting all the gruesome details of a recent rape and murder of a young mother by a member of the notorious Padgitt family, Willie saved the paper and helped bring the murderer, Danny Padgitt, to justice. Tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi, Padgitt threatened revenge against the jurors.