The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery (Paperback)
It would be accurate to say S. Thorne “Sam” Harper has written a beautiful, well-researched book about Alabama’s first execution in the electric chair known as Yellow Mama. It would also be accurate to say he has, through the little known case of Horace DeVaughn, captured in dramatic detail the state’s century long love affair with death. I am, frankly, jealous.
– John Archibald, author of Shaking the Gates of Hell and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize
The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery revisits a 1927 double killing that shook Birmingham, Alabama, and still raises hard questions today. At the center of the story are Auburn Moore and Ruby Thornton, two people whose secret relationship ended in a brutal crime on a lonely road. What followed was a case shaped by fear, rumor, class power, and the deep racial tension of the Jim Crow South.
S. Thorne Harper looks beyond the first headlines and digs into the people, politics, and institutions around the case. The book follows the shifting crime scene, the uneven police work, the press coverage, and the larger forces that helped shape public memory. It also brings attention to the lives caught inside the story, not just the mystery itself.
This is not a fast, flashy retelling. It is a careful account of how a violent event can be turned into a public narrative that hides as much as it reveals. The result is a true crime history that studies both the murders and the world that made them possible.