Murder in the Garden of Good and Evil: What the Book Didn’t Say

Midnight in Savannah is a bewitching hour. The streets of the historic district fall quiet except for the whisper of a breeze through live oak trees and the soft rustle of Spanish moss. In the moonlight, the grand Mercer-Williams House on Monterey Square looks every bit the Southern mansion of genteel dreams – brick walls bathed in silver light, tall windows reflecting centuries of history. It’s a scene straight from the opening of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt’s famous book that put this very house and its secrets on the world stage. The story Berendt told – of eccentric characters, high society parties, and a shocking shooting – captivated readers and later moviegoers. But as enchanting as Midnight is, it is only a glimpse through a keyhole. Behind that keyhole lies an even more tangled tale of murder, mystery, and the macabre that the book didn’t fully reveal.

For a casual visitor on a ghost tour, or a fan of the Clint Eastwood film adaptation, the story seems straightforward: Jim Williams, the suave antique dealer and preservationist, shot his young lover Danny Hansford in the grand study of Mercer House. Four trials ensued, full of Southern gothic drama, until Williams was finally acquitted. The book presented Savannah as a charming circus of oddballs – from a voodoo priestess performing midnight rituals in a graveyard to a drag queen stealing scenes at cotillions. It was a delicious brew of fact and fable. Yet, ask any Savannah local who remembers those years, or dig into the court records, and you’ll find that the real events were even more dramatic and in some ways far darker than what made it to print or screen.

This article pulls back the curtain on “Murder in the Garden of Good and Evil”, examining what Midnight left in the shadows. We’ll venture beyond the polished anecdotes to explore the deeper history of the key figures – the refined but ruthless Jim Williams and the troubled Danny Hansford – to understand how their lives collided on that fateful night in 1981. We’ll sift through trial transcripts and public records to uncover evidence and testimony that the book glossed over, painting a fuller picture of the decade-long legal saga. We’ll also wander into the realm of Savannah folklore and the paranormal: the whispered ghost stories, the hoodoo rituals at midnight, and the eerie coincidences that have become local legend since the Mercer House murder. And along the way, we’ll note how Hollywood’s film adaptation simplified or omitted some of the strangest, most poignant details of this true crime tale.

Prepare yourself for an immersive journey through Savannah’s most notorious murder case – a story steeped in magnolia-scented glamour by day and haunted by restless spirits by night. In true Savannah fashion, we’ll mix Southern storytelling with hard facts, separating myth from reality while savoring the atmosphere that makes this story so enduring. From the clink of cocktail glasses at Williams’s last Christmas party to the creak of a cemetery gate at midnight, you’ll discover there’s much more to the tale of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil than even John Berendt let on. The truth, as you’ll see, can be more unbelievable than fiction. So step into the garden after midnight – but tread carefully, for here the lines between good and evil blur and the dead just might have their say.

In the Savannah portrayed by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Jim Williams emerges as a sophisticated bon vivant – the ultimate self-made Southern gentleman. We first meet him in the book’s opening pages, holding court in his opulent Mercer House parlor, delighting in living “like an aristocrat without the burden of having to be one.” This witticism sets the tone for Williams’s character as an elegant, witty, and somewhat mysterious host. But who was Jim Williams before the limelight, and what aspects of his life did the book omit? To truly understand what the book didn’t say, one must peel back the layers of Williams’s carefully crafted persona.

James Arthur “Jim” Williams was not born to the manor in Savannah – far from it. He first drew breath in 1930 in the small, unassuming town of Gordon, Georgia. The son of a barber and a homemaker, Williams came from humble roots and developed a keen eye for beauty and history from an early age. He studied piano as a boy, showing a penchant for the finer things, and later dabbled in interior design at college in the 1950s. Restless and ambitious, young Jim dropped out of school and, after a short stint in the Air Force, made his way to Savannah in 1952 with big dreams but little money. Imagine him at 22: a slender fellow with a sly smile, working in a local furniture shop by day, soaking up the faded grandeur of Savannah’s old squares by night. The city’s architecture – elegant but often in disrepair at mid-century – enchanted him. Williams fell in love with Savannah’s 19th-century houses, seeing not old wrecks but potential treasures to save.

By age 24, while most of his contemporaries were still finding their footing, Jim Williams had already bought his first pieces of Savannah real estate. In 1955 he scraped together funds to purchase three dilapidated houses on East Congress Street. He was not wealthy (those crumbling homes were cheap in the ’50s – one could buy a fine historic house for around $5,000 back then), but he was shrewd. He taught himself the art of restoration as he went, getting his hands dirty repairing plaster and polishing floorboards. It’s a vivid image: the impeccably dressed man we know from the book, back in his early days wearing overalls, sweating over lumber and paint, determined to resurrect Savannah’s past glories. Williams quickly proved to have a golden touch. Over the next three decades, he restored over 50 historic homes in Savannah and the surrounding Lowcountry. He almost single-handedly rescued whole swaths of the city’s historic district at a time when old mansions were being razed or left to rot. This side of Jim – the passionate preservationist – is mentioned in Berendt’s book but perhaps underplayed. To locals in the 1960s and ’70s, Williams was more than a party host; he was something of a hero for saving their architectural heritage.

His restoration work also made him a wealthy man. Williams was an antiques dealer by profession and by passion. He scoured estate sales, European auctions, and old-family attics to fill his houses with museum-worthy antiques. By the late ’70s, Jim Williams’s name was synonymous with connoisseurship. The Mercer House, which he purchased in 1969 for a song (after it had stood vacant and neglected for almost ten years), became the crown jewel of his collection and the base of his operations. He famously ran his antique restoration business out of Mercer’s carriage house and even the basement, working late into the night on refinishing priceless pieces. Those who knew him then would often see the lights on at 3 AM as Williams toiled away, cigarillo clenched between his teeth, a Bach concerto playing softly on the radio amid the scent of sawdust and varnish. Berendt’s narrative, focused on the 1980s, introduces us to Williams at the height of his success, but it doesn’t delve deeply into the decades of sweat equity that got him there.

By the time Midnight’s story kicks off, Jim Williams had transformed himself into one of Savannah’s most celebrated socialites. He was the outsider who forced his way into the old guard’s circles with sheer panache (and by hosting the best parties in town). Those legendary Christmas parties he threw each year at Mercer House were the stuff of local lore well before the murder ever happened. Invitations were gold – every Savannah blue-blood hoped to find one in their mailbox come December. Williams would deck the halls with hundreds of orchids, hire live orchestras, and serve champagne under the glow of crystal chandeliers and gaslight wall sconces. If you managed to attend, you might brush shoulders with European nobility, famous politicians, or Hollywood stars on the guest list. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis herself paid a visit to Williams’s antique shop on one trip through town, and rumor has it that members of the Rockefeller family came calling to see his treasures. Jim relished this role of cosmopolitan host – a far cry from the quiet country life he’d been born into.

Yet, beneath the polished image of a Southern gentleman collector, Jim Williams had darker hues to his character that the book only hints at. Berendt portrays him as charming, sharp-witted, perhaps a tad mercenary, but ultimately sympathetic. After all, Williams in the book is a man under great strain, fighting for his freedom, and he mostly keeps his cool. What didn’t come through on those pages was a temper and an ego that people who knew Williams have described in less glowing terms. Behind closed doors, Williams could be arrogant and domineering – a smooth-talking man who expected to control his world. He prided himself on being “kind to the underdog,” as he often said, taking under his wing young men who had talent or potential but needed guidance (or a patron). But if an “underdog” he helped disappointed him, Williams’s kindness could curdle quickly into anger.

Savannahians whisper that Jim Williams had two faces: the gracious host who never let an insult ruffle him publicly, and a much colder figure in private who could flash with rage when things didn’t go his way. Employees at his antique business and some of those young protégés he mentored saw glimpses of that hidden fury. One anecdote passed around by locals involves a dispute over a sale at his shop that ended with Williams reportedly smashing a porcelain piece in anger – an out-of-character outburst for a man who treasured antiques, illustrating just how his temper could slip. If these walls could talk, Mercer House might tell of heated arguments muffled by its elegant plaster walls long before Danny Hansford ever set foot there.

Williams also had secrets that Berendt, writing with Jim’s cooperation at the time, chose not to fully explore. Some were personal – being a semi-closeted gay man or bisexual man in mid-century Savannah meant living a double life to some extent. Williams enjoyed the company of men and women, claiming at one point “I’ve always been AC/DC,” implying he swung both ways. In Savannah society of the 1980s, one did not speak openly of such things, and Williams carefully maintained a respectable front (both he and Danny Hansford had girlfriends at various times to keep up appearances). Other secrets were more insidious, according to later researchers and writers who dug into his past. There are suggestions that Williams’s meteoric rise in the cutthroat world of antiques and real estate wasn’t always by the book. Whispers of underhanded deals, opportunistic swindles of naive sellers, or shady acquisition tactics swirl in retrospect – nothing ever proven, but enough to make some who knew him nod knowingly when one writer described Williams as a “smooth predator” who could have landed in legal trouble even before the Hansford affair. It seems that Jim Williams was very adept at knowing which rules to bend or break in pursuit of what he wanted, whether it was a rare Louis XVI armchair at a bargain price or the loyalty of a beautiful young companion.

Of course, none of these rumored past misdeeds ever caught up to Williams prior to 1981. To Savannah’s elite at that time, Jim Williams was both an inspiration and, perhaps to a few, an object of envy or suspicion. He had money, taste, influence – and he wasn’t born into it, which ruffled the feathers of some old guard families. But he forced them to respect him, in part by cultivating an aura of mystery and power. He could be incredibly generous, donating to historic societies and hosting charity events, then turn around and display a streak of vindictiveness if crossed (there’s a famous story of Jim unfurling a huge Nazi flag from Mercer House’s balcony to annoy a film crew he thought was being rude – a provocative, rather shocking prank that sent the neighbors into an uproar). He definitely had a flair for the dramatic and a desire to remind folks that he wasn’t someone to be trifled with.

By the spring of 1981, Jim Williams was 50 years old and seemingly on top of the world. He had a grand home brimming with priceless antiques (we’ll get to those later – including a few morbid curiosities like a centuries-old human skull or two used as decor, adding to Mercer House’s mystique). He had money in the bank, protégé assistants to help run his business, and Savannah at his feet awaiting his next glittering party. No one, perhaps not even Jim himself, could imagine that the biggest scandal of the century in Savannah was about to explode within his very walls. The genteel antique dealer with impeccable manners was about to become an alleged murderer. And as we shall see, when that facade cracked, all the hidden shadows of Jim Williams’s personality – the pride, the anger, the controlling streak – would come spilling out under the harsh light of a murder investigation.

Danny Hansford was born in 1960 in Savannah, a local son of the working-class South. His mother, Emily Bannister, was just 19 when she had Danny, and she worked hard to raise him and his two brothers. To hear those who knew the family tell it, Emily did the best she could under difficult circumstances. They didn’t have much money; in fact, a poignant bit of her own words came out years later: Emily once confessed that many nights she went to bed hungry, drinking water to fill her stomach so that her children could eat what little food they had. That’s the kind of hardscrabble childhood Danny came from – one of sacrifice and scarcity, the kind that can either forge resilience or leave deep cracks in a young soul (often both).

By his teenage years, it was evident that Danny was a troubled kid. He had a restless, rebellious streak and an ache inside that he probably didn’t know how to soothe. If you picture Danny around age 15, you might see a lanky boy with intense blue eyes and a cocky grin, the type who might steal a cigarette from his mom’s purse and race down River Street on a borrowed motorcycle. He was the kind of teen who’d get into fistfights one week and woo someone’s daughter (or son – Danny’s sexuality, like Jim’s, was fluid) the next with equal fervor. But beneath the bravado lay real mental health struggles. Danny spent time in mental health facilities during adolescence – not once, but multiple times. He battled inner demons of depression and rage, even attempting suicide on at least two occasions. One attempt, chillingly, took place at Mercer House itself in the years before his death, when he and Williams were already entwined in their chaotic relationship. There were signs that Danny had, as Jim later described, “two completely developed personalities. One was calm and charming; the other, violently insane.” In modern terms, we might suspect Danny had a mood disorder or severe trauma manifesting in these swings, but in late-70s Savannah, such a boy would just be labeled as “crazy” or “bad news” by polite society.

Indeed, by the time he was in his late teens, Danny Hansford had a reputation around town. The police knew his name from minor run-ins – petty vandalism, public disturbances, maybe a bar brawl or two. The exact rap sheet is hard to compile now, buried in old records, but those who were young adults in Savannah back then recall that Danny could be both the life of the party and the spark to the powder keg. He had a devil-may-care charisma; some women (and men) found him devastatingly attractive in that doomed James Dean sort of way. But many folks regarded him warily. Savannah is, at heart, a small town disguised as a city – gossip travels fast. And gossip had it that Danny was a “walking powder keg,” a boy with no father figure, too much anger, and a penchant for violence when crossed.

One particularly heartbreaking piece of Danny’s story that the book didn’t explore is his relationship with his family. While Berendt did mention Danny’s mother and even noted her presence quietly in the courtroom during Williams’s trial, he never quoted her or delved into her perspective. In reality, Emily Bannister loved her son fiercely but had become afraid of him by the end. In early 1981, not long before Danny was killed, Emily took out a peace bond against her own son – essentially a court order of protection, similar to a restraining order, that is filed when someone fears another may harm them or cause trouble. This stark action speaks volumes. It suggests that Danny’s volatility had reached a point where even his mother, who had sacrificed so much for him, felt endangered or at least desperate enough to involve the law to keep him in check. The peace bond was still pending at the time of Danny’s death, a haunting footnote that implies if the shooting hadn’t happened, something else ominous might have been around the corner. It’s hard to overstate the sorrow of a mother feeling the need to legally restrain her own child. Emily later said in an interview that went unpublished that she’d seen her sweet boy and his “evil twin,” as it were – she endured his violent outbursts but held onto hope that the sweet Danny would prevail if only he could escape his bad influences and get help.

When Danny met Jim Williams, he was around 20 years old and at a crossroads. He had dropped out of the conventional path (no steady job, no higher education) and drifted through a world of odd jobs and thrill-seeking. By some accounts he worked as a male escort or prostitute, picking up wealthy men or women for companionship – the book famously quips that Danny was “a good time not yet had by all,” indicating his freewheeling sexuality and party lifestyle. He also dabbled in trades; he wasn’t without skills. In fact, one reason Jim Williams took an interest in Danny was that Danny showed some promise in craftsmanship. He had a bit of artistic flair – Williams noted that Danny was talented in art and had come to him wanting to learn a trade, like antique restoration. Perhaps Danny genuinely wanted to straighten out his life by apprenticing with Savannah’s premier antiques dealer. And perhaps Jim saw in Danny not only a potential assistant, but a bit of a reclamation project – an “underdog” he could save, which appealed to Jim’s ego and altruism alike. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Danny was strikingly handsome and 30 years Jim’s junior. What began as a mentorship quickly slid into a sexual relationship, though Jim would later claim it was brief and at Danny’s initiation (“Danny and I had sex a few times at his instigation,” Williams said, downplaying the romance).

Their arrangement was always unconventional. Danny moved into Mercer House with Jim, at least part-time, around 1979. Imagine the culture shock: one day Danny’s loitering around the seedier bars of Savannah, the next he’s sleeping under the same roof as million-dollar antiques and mingling (awkwardly) with high society at Jim’s parties. Some of Jim’s refined friends were undoubtedly scandalized by this rough-edged young man’s presence. Others might have seen it as just another of Jim’s eccentricities – the wealthy bachelor indulging a fling with a “hot-headed hustler.” But to those who really observed, it was clear Danny Hansford was not content simply being a kept man or a passive student. He had a fierce independent streak and little interest in playing the polite protégé. One night he might dress up and behave at a concert Jim took him to; the next, he’d be in jeans, hanging out in Bonaventure Cemetery smoking pot, brooding among the tombstones. (Yes, that’s something Danny actually did for leisure – friends recall he loved going to the cemetery to get high and contemplate the big marble monuments, fantasizing about having a grand tomb of his own one day because “that was what the rich folks had.” It’s a morbid little daydream that in hindsight feels chilling given where he’d end up.)

The Hansford-Williams relationship became a rollercoaster that none of Jim’s refined friends could fully grasp. They saw hints of it: a bruised knuckle on Jim’s hand one week (from punching a wall during a fight with Danny, perhaps), or Danny storming out of a cocktail party in a rage, peeling off in Jim’s car after some spat. Savannah’s rumor mill quietly churned: tongues wagged that Jim’s “house boy” was dangerous, that keeping Danny around was playing with fire. Those closer to Jim urged him to cut Danny loose for his own safety. Danny’s temper was legendary – he was known to smash objects (like that 18th-century grandfather clock in Mercer House’s hall, which he would shove over in dramatic fury during their final argument), and he had allegedly pulled a gun in anger before. In fact, one reason the police initially might have believed Jim’s version of events (that Danny fired first) was because Danny had a history of brandishing weapons and making threats when he lost his cool. This was a young man who at 21 had already lived more violence and chaos than many do in a lifetime.

Yet, it wasn’t all violence and gloom. Those who saw Jim and Danny during their calmer moments said Danny could be surprisingly gentle and endearing at times. He had a sense of humor, a playful side that perhaps only Jim or a close friend might see behind closed doors. One can imagine them in better days: Jim showing Danny how to restore a Louis XIV chair, Danny cracking a joke about how uncomfortable the fancy thing is, both of them laughing as French polish gleams under work lamps. Jim took Danny to antiques auctions and on trips to New York – opening doors of culture and luxury that Danny had never experienced. And Danny, for all his issues, brought a kind of youthful energy into Jim’s staid life, something spontaneous and real that perhaps made Jim feel alive in a way the company of stuffy debutantes did not.

But by the spring of 1981, the honeymoon was definitively over. Jim had grown weary of Danny’s instability – the drugs, the drinking, the no-shows at work. He was in the process of distancing himself, “phasing Danny out” as he told it. Danny, for his part, was feeling cast aside and resentful. He had grown used to the comfort and prestige of being Jim Williams’s companion; the thought of losing that, and of rejection, likely gnawed at him. Their fights escalated in frequency and intensity. According to later trial testimony, Danny even made a half-hearted suicide gesture in front of Jim months before the fatal night (perhaps as manipulation or a cry for help). Emily Bannister, watching from the sidelines, surely feared nothing good could come of her son’s entanglement with this older man’s world. It was like tossing a lit match (Danny) into a room full of antique gunpowder (Jim’s life) – an explosion was almost inevitable.

Thus, as midnight approached on May 2, 1981, we have two combustible characters under one roof: Jim Williams, who always had to be in control, and Danny Hansford, who by then was spiraling out of control. The genteel savior and the troubled soul he couldn’t save. The book gave readers the broad strokes of this dynamic but kept some of the uglier context at arm’s length. Now that we know more about each man – Jim’s pride and hidden anger, Danny’s deep-seated issues and desperate volatility – the tragic showdown that occurred makes a different kind of sense. It was more than a lovers’ quarrel or a spur-of-the-moment passion crime as some thought; it was the culmination of years of buildup, a fatal convergence of two lives that perhaps were doomed to destroy one another from the start.

In the early dark hours of May 2, 1981, the grand halls of Mercer House were silent except for the echo of raised voices. Picture the scene: The sumptuous parlor with its oil paintings and antiques sits empty after a quiet evening. Beyond it, down the hallway, light spills from the door of Jim Williams’s study on the ground floor. It’s well past midnight – the witching hour in local hoodoo lore when good and evil magic vie for dominance. Within that study, good and evil (or at least anger and fear) were certainly wrestling between two human beings. Jim Williams and Danny Hansford were in the midst of yet another argument, but this one was different. This was not a spat that would blow over; this felt like a final reckoning. The book gives a fairly brisk account of the confrontation, mostly from Williams’s perspective. But let’s slow it down and really explore that deadly night in Mercer House, assembling both Williams’s claims and the evidence that investigators later pieced together – including telling details that Berendt’s narrative didn’t emphasize.

Earlier that evening, things had been deceptively calm. Jim and Danny had actually gone out together – they saw a movie (some accounts say they watched The Lady Vanishes on TV, others say they went to a local theatre; either way, it was meant to be a mellow night). They returned home around midnight and decided to play a game of backgammon in the study. It sounds almost civilized, doesn’t it? A gentlemanly board game to diffuse tensions. But as anyone who has fought with a loved one knows, superficial distractions can’t hold back underlying resentment for long. The conversation turned to the sore subjects between them – money, trust, jealousy. Danny, reportedly, was agitated and possibly under the influence (Jim would later imply Danny had been drinking or on drugs that night, though toxicology was never definitively reported). The argument caught fire quickly. Voices rose; vicious words flew. At some point Danny stormed out of the study into the hallway in a rage. In this hall stood a prized possession: an 18th-century grandfather clock imported from England, tall and dignified. Perhaps it was an embodiment of the old-world order Jim loved – and in Danny’s eyes at that moment, it might have symbolized Jim’s precious, stuffy world that he felt rejecting him. With a crash that echoed through the house, Danny shoved the grandfather clock over, sending it slamming to the floor in splintered wood and shattered glass. The violence had begun.

What happened next is a matter of two narratives: Jim Williams’s version and what prosecutors later argued as an alternative. According to Williams (in statements to police that night and later on the stand), after knocking over the clock, Danny was in a full-blown frenzy. The young man burst back into the study, eyes wild, and produced a gun – a WWII-era German Luger pistol that Jim kept in the house. There’s a detail here: Jim had a collection of guns, including that Luger which usually was stored in his desk for protection. How Danny got hold of it is unclear – did he snatch it earlier knowing a fight was brewing, or did Jim hand it to him at some point (a theory some floated absurdly was that Jim might have shown it off earlier in the night)? In any case, Williams said Danny pointed the Luger at him with a murderous look. A split second later, Danny pulled the trigger. Click – misfire. The gun jammed and didn’t discharge a bullet. In that fraction of a second, Williams’s survival instincts kicked in. He lunged to his desk drawer (or perhaps he already was at the desk – accounts differ) and yanked out another gun he owned: a 9mm pistol. Before Danny could clear his jammed weapon or fire again, Jim raised his pistol and shot Danny in self-defense.

Williams claimed it all happened in a blur of fear. He fired once, then twice, then again and again until Danny went down. The gunshots thundered in that enclosed space, flashes lighting up the elegant study with its antique desk and shelves of curios. When the smoke cleared, Danny Hansford lay on the Persian rug, bleeding. He had been hit by multiple bullets: one through the chest, one through the back, and one – the fatal shot – through the head. The positions of those wounds were immediately suspicious. If this was pure self-defense, one might expect shots to the front of the assailant. But one bullet struck Danny in the back. Was he turning to flee, or repositioning? Williams would later suggest perhaps Danny twisted during the shooting. But to investigators, it raised eyebrows.

Now, here is where the timelines and actions become crucial – and where Berendt’s book is somewhat coy. Jim Williams did not call the police immediately. He waited, by his own admission, somewhere around half an hour after the shooting before dialing the authorities. Thirty minutes is a long time in a scenario like this. What was Jim doing? He told police he was in shock, sitting there stunned and smoking a cigarette to calm his nerves before he could even process what to do. Indeed, when he called 911 around 3:00 AM, his voice was noted as unnaturally calm. “There’s been a shooting here,” he told the dispatcher evenly, “Send an ambulance.” That calmness might have simply been Williams’s famously cool demeanor – or, as prosecutors would contend, it was the calm of a man who had just spent the last half-hour staging a crime scene to cover his tracks.

When police and EMTs arrived, they found a chaotic but telling scene. Danny Hansford’s body was lying on the floor of the study near the doorway. A chair had been knocked over. The German Luger pistol was found near Danny’s hand. Jim Williams himself, impeccably dressed as always (perhaps a bit disheveled now), had a bruise or small cut on his face that he explained came from Danny pistol-whipping him (no other witnesses were there to confirm or deny a physical scuffle). At a glance, it roughly fit a self-defense scenario – except for the little things. One detective noticed something odd: one leg of an overturned chair was resting on Danny’s pant leg. A Savannah detective with a sharp eye took in that detail and tucked it away. When the case reached court, a Georgia Supreme Court justice would later famously quip, “Everyone knows a dead man can’t put a chair leg on his trousers.” In other words, for the chair’s leg to be on top of Danny’s pants, Danny likely was already on the floor (dead or incapacitated) when that chair fell or was placed. It hinted that the scene might have been rearranged. Perhaps in a genuine struggle, a chair could tumble and coincidentally land on someone, but investigators were doubtful.

Further evidence gave them pause: the trajectory of one bullet into the floor suggested something didn’t add up about Williams’s story of where people were standing. There was a bullet hole in the parquet floor which Williams said came from Danny firing the Luger at him (the bullet supposedly whizzed past Williams and into the floor). But initial police reports and later testimony about that hole were inconsistent. An officer at the scene seemed to contradict himself about whether the hole came from a bullet that night or was old. If Williams had indeed staged the scene, he might have fired a shot into the floor or wall after the fact to bolster his self-defense claim (e.g., “Look, evidence the kid shot at me too!”). It sounds far-fetched, but the investigators had to consider it. They found no gunpowder burns on Williams – meaning if Danny had shot at him from close range, you’d expect to see some powder stippling on Jim’s clothing or hands, but there was none. Conversely, one would check Danny’s hands for gunshot residue to see if he fired a gun. Unfortunately, a critical misstep occurred: the police failed to bag Danny’s hands at the scene to preserve any gunshot residue. When they belatedly tested, his hands were clean. Was that because he never got a shot off? Or because, in the un-secured half-hour and the subsequent handling of the body, any residue was wiped away? This ambiguity became a major point of contention in trials to come.

The physical evidence was murky, but what about Jim’s behavior? Officers noted that Williams was unnervingly composed amid the blood and carnage. Granted, some people react to trauma by going on emotional lockdown, but it struck a few responders as if Williams was almost in control of the narrative from the get-go. He immediately asserted self-defense and described Hansford as the aggressor without much prompting. He pointed out the flipped clock in the hall (“See, he went crazy and did that”) and explained how Danny had “gone berserk.” One paramedic later let slip that something about the whole scene felt “off,” as if parts of it were too pat. Perhaps it was the faint smell of gun cleaning solvent in the air (one officer thought he smelled it, implying a gun might have been freshly wiped down), or the fact that a prized Persian rug had been rolled back as if to avoid bloodstains – a detail that, if true, would be quite damning (why would someone in the throes of a life-or-death fight pause to roll up a rug?).

There was also blood spatter evidence – often a silent witness to how events transpired. The pattern of Danny’s blood at the scene suggested he may not have been upright facing Williams for all the shots. One wound was in the back of his head, just above the right ear, which could have happened if Danny turned or fell and Williams kept shooting. If Williams fired while Danny was already on the ground (no longer a threat), that undercuts a pure self-defense claim. The book doesn’t dive deeply into these gruesome forensic weeds, likely to maintain its focus on character drama. But these details were debated intensely in court. One forensic expert noted that the absence of significant blood on Williams’s clothes was suspect too. If Danny had been right up close pointing a gun and then got shot through the head, one might expect some blow-back on the shooter’s clothing. Jim’s suit was remarkably clean. It could mean Danny was farther away (contrary to Jim’s “point blank at me” claim) or – a darker thought – that Jim might have changed clothes after the shooting. (There’s no confirmed evidence he did, but the half-hour delay gave him time to, say, remove a bloody dinner jacket and put on a clean robe or shirt. We do know he greeted police in his shirt sleeves, which he attributed to just having sat down and taken off his jacket in shock).

To be fair, some evidence did support Jim’s story. For example, Danny’s fingerprints were indeed found on the Luger – he had clearly handled it. There was also a bullet embedded in a doorway at about shoulder height, which could have been a missed shot from Danny’s gun (or from Jim’s – again, ambiguous). And crucially, Jim Williams had a visible injury: a lump on his head which he said came from Danny striking him with the Luger during the tussle. That isn’t something one usually does to oneself, so it lent credence that a physical fight took place. The room’s disarray – broken glass, overturned furniture – spoke to a struggle of some kind. In short, the immediate aftermath told a story of chaos and violence, but whose violence was the question. Did Jim Williams shoot in desperation as a crazed young man attacked him? Or did Jim Williams, enraged at Danny’s outburst, pick up his pistol and deliberately gun Danny down, then carefully arrange the scene to look like self-defense?

That question would hang like a haze over Mercer House for years. But on that night, in those first hours, Savannah police made their decision: they arrested Jim Williams for murder. A patrol car quietly whisked the city’s most esteemed antique dealer away from his mansion just before dawn, as a few curious neighbors peered from behind lace curtains. One can imagine Jim sitting in the back of the cruiser, impassive, perhaps already plotting his strategy, while in his home the body of Danny Hansford was being taken away to the morgue. Outside Mercer House, Monterey Square remained serene, unaware that it had just become the site of a crime that would soon capture national headlines.

The book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil recounts this basic series of events but in a distilled way, keeping much of the gore and suspicion beneath the surface. Berendt describes a “feel of gunpowder in the air” and hints of voodoo hanging about, giving the scene a poetic spin. Yet he leaves out certain visceral pieces – like that chair leg on the pants, or the odd half-hour gap – perhaps to preserve Williams’s mystique until later in the narrative. For our purposes, understanding those omitted details is key. They set the stage for the drama that followed in court. They show why prosecutors were utterly convinced Jim Williams committed cold-blooded murder and why he in turn was so adamant (and prepared) to defend his innocence by any means necessary.

In a way, the study of Mercer House became a character in this drama – an inscrutable witness. The police snapped photos of the scene: a plush wingback chair toppled, blood spattered on fine wood floors, antique pistols lying in uncanny stillness. These images, seldom seen by the public, tell a truth the book didn’t fully articulate: it was a brutal, bloody killing at odds with the refined setting. Think of it – a young man’s life ended amid gilded mirrors and velvet drapes, his blood pooling near an 18th-century escritoire and a portrait of a Confederate ancestor on the wall. Savannah’s juxtaposition of elegance and violence became starkly real that night.

As dawn broke on May 2, 1981, the city woke to shocking news: one of their most respected citizens was charged with murder, and the victim was that ne’er-do-well kid many had seen at his side. Tongues wagged from City Market to Forsyth Park. The Savannah Morning News headline soon blared about the antiques dealer’s arrest, and folks speculated in hushed tones at Clary’s Café over coffee: Did you hear Jim Williams shot that crazy boy of his? Some immediately assumed Williams must have had no choice – Danny’s temper was infamous after all. Others murmured that there was more to it – maybe a lovers’ quarrel turned lethal, maybe even something premeditated. Unbeknownst to all of them, this was only Act I of a long saga. Jim Williams made bond ($25,000 posted in cash without flinching, testament to his means) and returned to Mercer House, now eerily quiet without Danny’s presence. But if Williams thought his nightmare was over with that one night, he was gravely mistaken – it had only just begun.

What followed the deadly incident at Mercer House was a courtroom odyssey unlike any in Georgia’s history. It’s not every day that a murder case goes to trial four times – in fact, Jim Williams became the only person in the state ever tried four separate times for the same homicide. The book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil condenses this sprawling legal battle into a tense narrative thread but inevitably leaves out many of the intricate twists, strategies, and bombshell moments that occurred across nearly a decade of litigation. The Clint Eastwood film, for its part, simplifies things even further by portraying essentially one amalgamated trial. The reality was far messier and more fascinating. Each trial had its own flavor: a cast of colorful attorneys, shifting evidence, even alleged supernatural interference (if you believe the voodoo angle). Here’s the in-depth look at what really happened in those four trials – what the book didn’t elaborate on – and how justice was pursued, thwarted, and ultimately achieved (depending on whom you ask).

The first trial commenced in early 1982, less than a year after the shooting. Savannah was abuzz; you couldn’t find a seat in the courtroom gallery for the sheer press of locals, reporters, and curious onlookers eager to witness the drama. Presiding was Judge George Oliver, a by-the-book jurist, and leading the prosecution was Spencer Lawton, the Chatham County District Attorney – a sharp, no-nonsense figure determined to show that wealth and status wouldn’t put Williams above the law. Williams, as befitted a man of his means, hired one of the most famed defense attorneys in the South: Bobby Lee Cook. Cook was the epitome of a suave Southern lawyer – silver-tongued, impeccably dressed, with a folksy charisma that could beguile juries. (Legend has it he was an inspiration for the fictional lawyer in the TV series Matlock.) His presence alone signaled that Jim Williams was sparing no expense to fight the charge.

The narrative in Trial #1 was straightforward: the State of Georgia asserted that Williams murdered Danny Hansford in cold blood, possibly in a lover’s quarrel or due to simmering resentment, and then staged the scene to look like self-defense. The defense maintained it was exactly as Williams said: an act of self-preservation against a violent young man who “went berserk.”

What the book skims but was pivotal in this first trial was how public perception of homosexuality hung over the proceedings. Remember, this was the early 1980s in a conservative Southern city. The fact that Jim and Danny’s relationship was sexual was an open secret by then, but it wasn’t something discussed in polite company. The prosecution took a somewhat subtle approach at first – they painted Danny as an “employee and sometime partner” of Williams, hinting at impropriety but focusing on the cold facts of the shooting. Yet under the surface, some jurors likely held biases: Was the older gay man preying on the young wild boy? Or conversely, was the immoral lifestyle evidence of bad character (as shameful as that viewpoint is now, it likely lurked in the minds of some then)? Bobby Lee Cook knew this undertone was dangerous for his client. He tried to keep the focus on hard evidence and Williams’s refined reputation, not the nature of Jim’s and Danny’s personal relationship.

During the trial, prosecutors presented forensic evidence to challenge Williams’s story. They pointed out the suspicious details: the unlikelihood of Danny getting off a shot (none of Jim’s injuries indicated he was grazed or shot at), the angle of the wounds, the delay in calling police, the infamous bullet hole in the floor that one police witness awkwardly addressed. They suggested Williams had motive: he was fed up with Danny and perhaps jealous or fearful of what Danny might do as their relationship soured. There was even a whisper of a theory that Williams might have lured Danny there that night to kill him – though no concrete proof of premeditation was shown, the prosecution leaned on Williams’s composure after the fact as “consciousness of guilt.”

The defense, meanwhile, put Jim Williams himself on the stand. This was a high-risk, high-reward move. Williams was confident in his powers of persuasion – he believed he could convince anyone of anything with his charm (he had, after all, convinced half of Savannah to buy junky old houses and fix them up by his example). On the stand, Williams played the role of the gracious, wrongfully accused gentleman. He recounted the night tearfully, expressing how “I feared for my life” and lamenting “the tragedy of young Danny’s instability.” His attorney guided him through describing Danny’s past violent episodes. Cook brought up specific incidents: Danny’s stint in a mental hospital, a previous suicide attempt, and instances where Danny threatened others. All this was to cement the idea that Danny was effectively a mad dog and Jim had no choice but to put him down or be killed.

One can imagine the jury’s eyes widening at some revelations. For example, it came out that Danny had attempted suicide in Mercer House a few months before – he took an overdose of pills, and Williams had to rush him to the hospital. Such evidence, while sympathetic in a sense, also painted Danny as deeply unstable and capable of extreme acts – thus more likely to have violently attacked Jim.

Despite these efforts, Trial #1 did not go well for Williams. The cross-examination by Lawton and his team poked holes in Williams’s narrative. They pressed him on why he didn’t immediately call for help if he was so distraught – implying that only someone with something to hide would delay. They highlighted how unlikely it was for a gun to misfire and then for a man of Jim’s precision (he was an experienced marksman from target shooting as a hobby) to unload multiple rounds perfectly under duress. Perhaps the most damning witness was a police officer who testified that he found Williams’s Dictaphone recorder in the study that night with an odd recording – apparently Williams had (perhaps absent-mindedly or perhaps deliberately) recorded some moments of that night’s aftermath. On it, according to the officer, Williams can be heard moaning “Oh Danny, oh my God” in a tone the prosecution suggested was theatrical. (This detail later inspired Berendt’s own suspicion that Williams might have been acting more than reacting.)

After days of testimony, the first jury had to decide: Was this an upstanding citizen forced into a terrible situation or a murderer fabricating an elaborate lie? They leaned toward the latter. In 1982, the jury found Jim Williams guilty of murder, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison. It was a shocking outcome to many in Savannah’s high society. Jim Williams – their Jim! – led away in handcuffs to start serving a life sentence at a state prison, a fate usually reserved for street thugs, not antique dealers who dined with senators. The book mentions this conviction but doesn’t delve into the atmosphere: it was one of near hysteria among Jim’s supporters and glee among those who thought he had it coming. Some locals who had quietly resented Williams’s haughtiness felt a grim satisfaction. But others, especially those in preservation circles and his circle of friends, were outraged and convinced a terrible miscarriage of justice had occurred. How could a Savannah jury convict a man so deeply woven into the city’s fabric?

The answer might lie in part with that undercurrent of prejudice. It’s been speculated that homophobia played a role – that some jurors simply couldn’t abide the idea of this relationship and subconsciously cast Williams as the deviant “older predator,” making it easier to believe he’d killed in cold blood. One juror later told a reporter that a few people on the panel were uncomfortable with Williams’s “lifestyle,” though they tried to focus on evidence. We’ll never know exactly, but it’s clear the first trial’s verdict didn’t sit well with everyone, especially not with Williams’s formidable legal team.

No sooner had the gavel come down than the defense filed appeals. And here’s where things start happening that the book glosses over quickly: legal maneuverings and lucky breaks. Sometime after the conviction, Williams’s original attorney Bobby Lee Cook received an anonymous package in the mail. Inside were photocopies of police reports, including one by an officer who had noted a detail about that bullet hole in the floor and later contradicted himself at trial. This mysterious package (who sent it? possibly a conscience-stricken cop or a snitch in the DA’s office) provided fodder for an appeal. In January 1983, the Georgia Supreme Court reviewed Williams’s conviction and found enough procedural or evidentiary issues to overturn it. Chief among them was that the prosecution’s handling of the bullet-hole evidence and some witness statements were deemed problematic. In essence, Williams won a new trial on a technicality, giving him a second chance at freedom.

By late 1983, Jim Williams was out on bond again, prepping for Trial #2. This time, he swapped attorneys – enter Sonny Seiler, a prominent Savannah lawyer (and notable for being the owner of “Uga,” the University of Georgia’s famous bulldog mascot). Seiler was a larger-than-life character, steeped in local connections. If anyone could sway a Savannah jury, it was a hometown boy like him. But here’s where an interesting strategy shift occurred: Williams and Seiler decided to address the elephant in the room head-on – Jim’s sexuality. In the first trial, it was danced around. In the second, they made a calculated decision: be open about it, remove its power as a scandal. During jury selection, they tried to weed out anyone who seemed openly biased. Seiler, with some reluctance, let Williams’s bisexuality be acknowledged so it wouldn’t hang like a dirty secret. Perhaps they hoped Savannah’s climate had mellowed a bit or that transparency would make Jim seem more honest overall.

The second trial in fall 1983 was in many respects a do-over of the first. Much of the same evidence was presented. However, the defense had learned some lessons. They put a bit more emphasis on discrediting the police. The idea was to show that the investigation was sloppy (unbagged hands, contradictory reports, etc.) and that Jim was railroaded due to prejudice. Seiler even hinted that the prosecution was demonizing Jim for being gay, telling the jury not to be distracted by “what a man does in his bedroom” but to focus on the fact that “a good man was attacked in his home.” Prosecutor Spencer Lawton, undeterred, hammered on the forensic inconsistencies just as before. Once again, it was a battle of narratives: chaotic self-defense versus calculated murder.

By this point, the legend of Williams visiting a voodoo practitioner named Minerva had begun to circulate outside of just John Berendt’s knowledge. It’s worth noting that during the trials (especially the later ones), the press had a field day with the voodoo angle. Minerva was the black root-doctor who allegedly conducted midnight rituals in the cemetery on Williams’s behalf, trying to sway the spirit world in Jim’s favor. In between Trials 1 and 2, Williams had indeed been visiting Minerva, making midnight treks to her altar in Bonaventure Cemetery, leaving offerings and seeking supernatural help (Berendt himself tagged along on some of these, which he recounts in the book in vivid detail). While none of that was formally introduced as evidence (imagine the courtroom spectacle if it had been!), the aura of hoodoo weirdness was creeping into the atmosphere. Savannah being Savannah, people half-joked that Jim’s acquittal would depend as much on Minerva’s spells as on his lawyers. True or not, Williams was hedging all bets – he had top-notch attorneys in the courtroom and a voodoo priestess working “the root” outside it.

Despite all adjustments, Trial #2 ended up a near repeat of Trial #1’s outcome: guilty again. In October 1983, the second jury convicted Williams of murder once more, and he was sentenced to life in prison (again). This was a crushing blow for Jim. He reportedly said, with some bitterness, that he was being convicted not for killing Danny but “for being a homosexual,” reflecting his belief that no Savannah jury would clear an openly gay man in a case like this no matter the facts. Whether that was entirely true or an oversimplification, the fact remained – he was two-for-two on convictions.

However, luck (or the law) was still on Williams’s side in the appellate arena. In 1985, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the second conviction as well. This time, the reasons were a bit more clear-cut: the justices ruled that the trial judge should not have allowed certain testimony. Specifically, a sheriff had been allowed to testify as an expert on the scene even though he wasn’t qualified for the forensics he opined on, and the prosecution had pulled a fast one by demonstrating a piece of evidence during closing arguments that hadn’t been shown earlier – a due process no-no because the defense couldn’t rebut it. These technical errors got Williams yet another new trial. Some wags in Savannah quipped, “Maybe the third time’s the charm – or the curse.”

By the time Trial #3 rolled around in 1987, the case had taken on an almost mythic status. Savannah had lived with it for six years. The players were well-known, and many people had taken sides firmly. It was becoming harder to find an impartial jury in Chatham County; everyone had an opinion on Jim Williams’s guilt or innocence by now. Nevertheless, the third trial stayed in Savannah. The prosecution’s case was wearing a bit thin – not in evidence (which remained the same) but in impact. They had to rehash everything again and hope that yet another jury would convict. The defense, now led still by Sonny Seiler, had one big new arrow in its quiver: new evidence about the handling of the crime scene.

Between trial 2 and 3, Seiler’s team had uncovered more information about police errors. Crucially, they brought forward testimony about how Danny Hansford’s hands were not bagged at the scene. This might sound minor, but it was huge: it meant that any gunshot residue on his hands (which would indicate if he fired a gun) could have been lost. The defense argued vigorously that this oversight by police denied Jim crucial proof that Danny had indeed shot at him. Essentially, they turned the tables, putting the Savannah Police Department’s procedure on trial. If they could get one juror to think, “Hmm, maybe the cops did mess up, maybe we can’t be sure what happened,” that would be enough for a hung jury or acquittal.

And that’s exactly what happened. The third trial ended in a hung jury – reportedly with 11 jurors voting guilty and 1 juror holding out for acquittal, despite lengthy deliberations. That lone juror, a woman, supposedly said she “saw reasonable doubt” and would not be swayed. There’s an anecdote that during deliberations, one exasperated juror covertly called a paramedic they knew to ask a question about blood evidence – which is juror misconduct, since they’re only supposed to consider evidence presented in court. This couldn’t be proven after the fact (it came as a rumor to the judge’s ear), but it highlights how desperate they were to resolve the impasse. After two trials ending in conviction, the third was a mistrial in June 1987. This was a tentative victory for Williams – not freedom, but at least not a third conviction.

By now, Williams had spent significant time behind bars between appeals, plus enormous sums on defense costs – estimates put his legal expenses over $1 million (an astronomical amount at the time, indicating just how determined and well-financed his fight was). Chatham County similarly had burned through a small fortune prosecuting him over and over. One might wonder why the state didn’t just cut a deal or drop it at this point. But District Attorney Spencer Lawton was tenacious. He truly believed Williams was guilty as sin and didn’t deserve to get away with it. Lawton was known to say later that as long as he had breath in his body, he’d keep retrying the case until a jury stuck or Williams ran out of appeals. And to be fair, from the prosecution’s standpoint, the evidence was compelling; two juries had agreed. So on to a fourth trial they went.

However, one change was made: recognizing the difficulty of another fair trial in the same city, they moved the venue. Trial #4 would not take place in Savannah. It was transferred to Augusta, Georgia, a city a couple of hours upriver, where the case’s notoriety was a bit dimmer. This was a chance for both sides to get a truly fresh jury that hadn’t been steeping in Savannah gossip for years.

In the spring of 1989, the saga came to its climax in an Augusta courtroom. Trial #4 felt different from the start. Jim Williams and his defense had the advantage of seeing the state’s playbook thrice over. There were no surprises left in evidence, and nearly every witness had testified multiple times, their stories well-rehearsed or worn out. The defense team was finely tuned to dismantle the prosecution’s case now. And perhaps, just perhaps, after eight long years, the emotional weight of the case had shifted. Jim Williams was now pushing 60, visibly tired and having endured heart health issues (he had pneumonia at one point in jail). He may have garnered some sympathy as an aging man persecuted by an unyielding system – a reversal from the original image of the imperious society man who might have abused his power.

The prosecution didn’t do much new in the fourth trial; they largely stuck to their guns (no pun intended) with the same evidence. Spencer Lawton, however, did not personally prosecute this one – an assistant DA handled more of the duties, though Lawton oversaw it. This might have slightly reduced the zeal. Meanwhile, the defense hammered reasonable doubt like a mantra. They emphasized every inconsistency, every police mistake, every unanswered question. Sonny Seiler even took a bold approach of somewhat diminishing Danny’s character – something they’d been careful about before, not to speak ill of the dead too much in front of a jury. But in Augusta, the jurors didn’t have personal ties or local loyalty to the Hansford name, so Seiler felt freer to really draw Danny as a frightening madman. He described Danny as “a man with a death wish” who eventually forced Williams to fulfill it. He reminded the jury that Danny had been in mental institutions, that even his own mother had once sought legal protection from him. This was essentially putting the victim on trial, a strategy that can backfire, but given the protracted nature of the case, maybe the jurors were receptive to hearing why Danny might have been responsible for his own demise.

On the other side, the state reminded jurors that a young man was dead and that the evidence of staging suggested a guilty conscience. They pointed out the multiple shots – one doesn’t usually shoot an assailant in self-defense three or four times including in the back of the head unless one intends to kill decisively. Still, by 1989 forensic science had marginally improved from 1982, and the defense could better articulate alternate explanations for things like bullet trajectories (they even had a paid expert opine that the shots could all occur in quick succession during a struggle).

After eight years and four trials, it took the Augusta jury only about an hour of deliberation to reach a verdict: not guilty. Jim Williams was acquitted on May acquitted of Danny Hansford’s murder. The swiftness stunned many. One juror later said the state just hadn’t proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt – there were too many questions and they didn’t see a clear motive for premeditation. Another juror cryptically mentioned that “we felt like we finally heard the whole truth,” implying that perhaps the cumulative effect of all the trials distilled things enough that they understood the event as an unfortunate fight rather than a planned killing.

Savannah (and now Augusta) media swarmed Williams after the acquittal. In a grand irony, one of Williams’s defense attorneys for the Augusta trial was interviewed and said, “Jim can finally throw his Christmas party again.” That was a quip referencing how the case began right after one of Williams’s famed Christmas galas and had effectively put an end to them. Indeed, Williams expressed a desire to “get back to normal life.”

However, normal life had other plans. Williams’s ordeal left scars: financially, he was lighter by over a million dollars and emotionally drained by nearly a decade of being called a murderer. Savannah society, which had shunned him somewhat during the trials (many of the “grande dames” distanced themselves when he was accused), suddenly welcomed him back now that he was vindicated by a jury. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a piece titled “Jim Williams back amid Savannah elite,” describing how he wasted no time issuing invitations to a new Christmas gala for the winter of 1989 – his triumphant return to the social scene. Jim being Jim, he vowed it would be the biggest, best party yet, thanking all those intimate friends who stood by him.

Not everyone celebrated, of course. For Danny Hansford’s family, the acquittal was a bitter pill. Emily Bannister’s wrongful death civil suit, which had been on hold throughout the criminal trials, was now technically free to proceed. She had filed a $10 million claim against Williams for killing her son. However, with Jim acquitted and now somewhat depleted of cash (if not assets), that civil case never gained traction before events took another turn. Some say a quiet settlement was considered, but before anything could happen, fate intervened once more – in a way that many in Savannah find chilling to this day.

In January 1990, only eight months after he walked free, Jim Williams died inside Mercer House. The timing and circumstances of his death were eerie. He was 59, relatively young, and had not been notably ill (though he was reportedly dealing with a bout of flu or mild pneumonia around then). On the morning of January 14, 1990, just as Savannah prepared for that promised grand Christmas do-over party (planned for late January to coincide with the end of the legal saga), Williams collapsed in the same study where Danny had died. A handyman found him sprawled on the floor in his pajamas, lifeless. The official cause was ruled as pneumonia and heart failure – natural causes. Yet the suddenness raised eyebrows, and inevitably the ghostly whispers began: Did Danny’s vengeful spirit finally get his revenge? Minerva, the voodoo priestess, had warned Jim during one graveyard ritual years prior: “You gotta ask the dead boy for forgiveness.” Jim’s pride wouldn’t let him do that – he snorted at the idea. In local lore, Minerva’s last prophecy rang out true when Jim dropped dead: she had said, “that boy gon’ make sure you join him if you don’t make peace.”

The book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil ends with this poetic justice implication, but let’s be clear on what wasn’t said: The autopsy did not find foul play. No toxins, nothing suspicious – so likely it was indeed a natural, if uncanny, death. But the improbability of it – collapsing in the very spot of the shooting – cemented the case as a permanent ghost story in Savannah’s catalog. Some of Jim’s detractors snarked that “karma finally caught up with him.” Others, more kindly, said his poor heart just gave out after carrying so much stress and bitterness for years. One of Williams’s lawyers mused that Jim had been so driven by the fight to clear his name that once it was over, his body simply let go, having nothing more to sustain it.

Legally, Williams’s death ended the saga. The state couldn’t pursue anything else, and the civil suit by Emily Bannister against his estate quietly faded – one imagines that without Jim alive, going after his remaining assets (which were mostly tied up in Mercer House and antiques, left to his sister) might have been more trouble than it was worth, or maybe they reached a private settlement with a small payout to avoid further circus.

For Savannah, what remained was the legend. The Mercer House stood once more quiet, under ownership of Jim’s sister Dorothy. She eventually opened it as a museum (a contentious move for some who felt she was capitalizing on infamy while simultaneously forbidding any tour guides from discussing the murder inside – Dorothy would snap at visitors who asked, saying she doesn’t talk about that “nonsense”). But the public couldn’t get enough. Then came Berendt’s book in 1994, immortalizing the whole affair with a touch of whimsical narrative gloss, and then the Hollywood movie in 1997.

Each trial had peeled back different layers of the truth, and while Jim Williams was legally absolved, debates still linger: Was he truly innocent or just not proven guilty? Some of the jurors from earlier trials went to their graves convinced he got away with murder. Many of Williams’s friends went to theirs swearing he did what any of them would have done in that situation. The book didn’t explicitly pick a side – Berendt masterfully left Williams’s guilt an open question, though he clearly had affection for Jim. What the book didn’t say outright, but what we can say looking at all this, is that justice is an elusive concept here. Four trials gave four different outcomes (if you count a hung jury as its own outcome). The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in between the extremes. Perhaps Jim did embellish his self-defense claim – maybe he did shoot Danny in self-defense initially but then, in anger, administered a coup de grâce that crossed into murder. Or maybe it happened exactly as he said and the odd details were red herrings of circumstance. We will never know for sure.

One thing is certain: by the end of this legal odyssey, the story had morphed from a simple crime tale into a modern Southern gothic myth – complete with voodoo, ghosts, and a “curse” that seemingly struck down the victor. The trials unveiled facts, but also spawned new legends that live on far beyond the courtroom.

If all Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil offered was a sensational murder and a courtroom drama, it might not have cast such a spell on readers. What truly made the story resonate – and what the book only flirted with but locals know deeply – is the supernatural undercurrent that runs through the whole saga. Savannah is often dubbed “America’s most haunted city.” It’s a place where ghost lore is local lore, and where hoodoo – the traditional black folk magic of the South – quietly thrives in the shadows of church steeples. The Mercer House murder became instantly entangled with these mystical elements. The book hints at them (with the memorable character of Minerva and those midnight graveyard scenes), but let’s dive deeper into the paranormal and folkloric layers that the book and movie didn’t fully explore.

First, there’s Minerva. In the book, she’s introduced as a mysterious root-doctor who helps Jim by communing with the spirit of her late husband, “Dr. Buzzard,” a legendary conjure man, and performing spells in Bonaventure Cemetery. This character was not a literary embellishment; she was based on a real person (her real name was kept private, but locals knew who she was). Minerva lived in a modest home on the edge of town but practiced rituals in the wild, atmospheric Bonaventure Cemetery, especially at night. John Berendt himself accompanied Jim Williams to some of these sessions in the mid-1980s, and his firsthand accounts of them are among the most evocative parts of his book – yet he keeps a kind of journalistic detachment. What he didn’t fully spell out is how seriously Jim Williams took this voodoo business. Some readers might assume Jim did it on a lark, a desperate gimmick. In truth, Williams was a believer, at least enough to repeatedly seek Minerva’s aid. People present at those midnight rites recall Jim actively participating: gathering grave dirt, lighting candles, repeating incantations after Minerva. He was raised Christian, of course, but like many in Savannah, he had a respect for the old Gullah/Geechee hoodoo traditions that permeated the Lowcountry.

Minerva’s rituals for Jim were aimed at two fronts: protecting him in court and placating Danny’s spirit. She would go to Danny Hansford’s grave just across the road from Bonaventure (Danny was buried in a neighboring cemetery called Greenwich) at the stroke of midnight. According to hoodoo, midnight is the dividing line – the last half hour of one day and the first half hour of the next – where magic’s power flips from good to evil. She’d often plan her work around this “dead time,” as she called it, saying the half hour before midnight was for doing good magic, and the half hour after was for hexing or dealing with evil. One of her famous quotes (captured by Berendt) to Jim was: “We need a little of both tonight.” This duality – good and evil swirling together at midnight – is exactly what gave the book its title, but those who have read only casually might not realize that’s rooted in actual hoodoo belief.

During these ceremonies, Minerva would spread open her “conjure book” (a family grimoire of sorts), light candles, and call upon spirits. She’d throw chicken feathers and blood (sometimes literally sacrificing a chicken – something the book alludes to but politely sidesteps in graphic detail) and chant in a blend of Bible verse and Gullah folk speech. She implored Danny’s restless ghost to be at peace, essentially saying: Don’t haunt Mr. Jim, don’t testify against him before God’s throne, let the truth (as Jim tells it) prevail. Other times she took a more combative stance: “Get to the back of Hell, Danny, you heah? You leave that man be!” This was spiritual warfare, Savannah-style.

Jim wasn’t the only one seeking supernatural help. There were rumors (unconfirmed but persistent) that Spencer Lawton’s team consulted a psychic or two, or at least entertained tips from spiritualists who volunteered that “justice will prevail.” It wouldn’t be shocking – Savannah’s law enforcement had quietly used voodoo practitioners in the past for unsolvable cases. The difference here was that everything about the Williams case was already soaked in mystical suggestion, thanks largely to Minerva’s open presence. She even once marched up the courthouse steps in her flowing caftan and head wrap, waving a root bundle, ensuring all who saw her that she was putting the “law stay-away” on the prosecutors. The judge nearly held her in contempt for that stunt.

But perhaps the most eerie folklore sprung up after Jim’s acquittal and death. Locals began whispering that Danny Hansford’s ghost had finally exacted vengeance. The notion that Danny haunted Mercer House took root almost immediately after he died – some of Jim’s house staff and friends claimed they felt a cold presence in the study or heard unexplained noises at night in the weeks following the shooting. Jim himself admitted to Berendt that he occasionally felt Danny’s spirit brooding around. That was a big reason he enlisted Minerva. According to one Savannah ghost tour guide’s account, Jim confided that he would wake up at 3:00 AM (around the time Danny died) and sense someone standing over his bed, or that doors would inexplicably slam. Rationally, it could have been his nerves and guilt manifesting – but in a city like Savannah, the supernatural is a common language for such experiences.

After Jim Williams died in 1990, the ghost stories only magnified. Mercer House sat vacant for a time (until his sister converted it to a museum), and neighbors began reporting strange sights and sounds. People living across Monterey Square swore they heard the strains of a piano and the din of laughter as if a party were in full swing inside the empty mansion. A couple claimed one night near Christmas 1990 they saw lights blazing in Mercer House’s windows and silhouettes of people dancing – but on walking over to peek, the house was dark, locked, and empty. This gave rise to the legend of Jim Williams’s “afterlife party” – that his ghost was throwing the Christmas parties he never got to hold in life after the trials. It’s a chilling yet somehow charming idea: spectral revelers in 1940s evening dress twirling in the ballroom, Jim’s spirit at the organ playing a tune, while outside only crickets chirp. Ghost tour guides to this day embellish that tale for wide-eyed tourists, some of whom then swear they too saw a flicker of chandelier light or heard a phantom clink of glasses when walking by at midnight.

And what of Danny’s ghost? Many say he’s not at rest. Visitors to Mercer House museum (especially those attuned to ghostly vibes) have reported sudden cold spots in the study and an overpowering feeling of anger or sadness there. A few have claimed to see a young man’s apparition fleetingly in a mirror or a window reflection. Could be overactive imaginations – or could be Danny still pacing in frustration. Tour guides sometimes share a creepy tidbit: two of the wrought iron spikes atop the fence outside Mercer House are visibly shorter, repaired. Those are the spikes that an earlier victim, Tommy Downs, landed on when he tragically fell from the roof in 1969 (a 11-year-old boy chasing birds, as recounted earlier). They had to saw off the spikes to get his impaled body off. Some say little Tommy’s ghost also roams the property, a playful presence often overshadowed by the darker ghosts. Neighbors occasionally see a boyish figure up on the roof or hear a child’s laughter in the courtyard – and they attribute it to Tommy’s restless spirit reliving his last moments.

This confluence of tragedies – Tommy’s accidental death, Danny’s violent end, Jim’s collapse – all within one house, practically guarantee Mercer House a prime spot in Savannah’s ghost lore. Some locals also note that the site of Mercer House was built atop what might have been an old burial ground from the 1800s (Savannah has many forgotten graves due to yellow fever epidemics and wars). As such, the entire block might be spiritually charged. The HouseBeautiful article we saw earlier even mentioned the urban legend that Savannah’s sidewalks are uneven because of all the graves underneath – a metaphor for how much the past literally underpins the present here.

The voodoo/hoodoo element persisted beyond Minerva too. After Jim’s death, Minerva was asked by a reporter if she “did the boy’s final bidding” – insinuating did she curse Jim for not heeding her advice to beg forgiveness. She cryptically replied, “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ on that. The spirits know what they know.” She passed away some years later, but the Gullah community still tells of how she put a powerful hex on the Mercer House case, one that perhaps ensured no one truly walked away un-haunted.

Even the characters surrounding the case became part of folklore. The Lady Chablis, for instance, though more comic relief in the narrative, had a kind of magic of her own – the magic of living authentically in a time when that was dangerous for a black trans woman. She always said she could “see through people’s BS” intuitively. Some would say, half-jokingly, Chablis cast a “glamour” on Savannah that helped soften hearts towards the queer community, an outcome that was arguably magical in a social sense.

One cannot ignore how much Savannah itself is a character in this story, with its mood of decadent decay and spectral charm. The book painted the city in lush strokes – gaslight glinting on wet cobblestones, Spanish moss hanging like nature’s tinsel in the moonlight. But living here, one truly does feel a certain presence in the air at midnight. The line from the title about the “garden of good and evil” isn’t just Bonaventure Cemetery. The entire city is a garden where good and evil, life and death, mingle. People here tell ghost stories not just for tourist dollars but because it’s part of their identity. The Mercer House case simply provided a fresh, modern chapter to add to the ghost guide’s repertoire, one with the benefit of being both true crime and supernatural mystery.

The movie adaptation, being a Hollywood drama, trimmed much of this out or treated it lightly. Eastwood included a few scenes of John Cusack’s character visiting Minerva in the cemetery, and one striking shot of her swinging a chicken over her head, but the full texture – the truly earnest belief in these practices – was lost a bit. The film portrayed Minerva almost as a quirky mystic. In reality, she was a pillar of a tradition that many in Savannah’s black community hold dear. There are still rootworkers in Savannah quietly helping folks with curses, love potions, and communing with ancestors. Midnight the book gave a nod to that hidden world, but what it didn’t say outright is how integrated that is in Savannah’s daily life. For every grand church, there’s a root doctor’s home; for every polite society luncheon, there’s someone later burying a mojo bag in a backyard for luck. Jim Williams straddled both these Savannahs – antique auctions in the morning, voodoo at night.

To truly appreciate what the book didn’t say, one must walk Monterey Square on a humid summer evening. Stand at the gate of Mercer House when the tourists have gone. The square is dimly lit by old-fashioned lamps. The statue of General Oglethorpe (Savannah’s founder) stands watch, as if guarding against lingering spirits. The magnolia trees release a lemony fragrance into the heavy air. It’s beautiful, but there’s an uncanny stillness. Locals say sometimes, if you’re quiet, you might hear a faint strain of piano music from the house, or catch a whiff of cigar smoke (Jim’s favorite King Edward cigarillos, perhaps). Others have felt sudden goosebumps for no reason at the edge of the yard where Danny fell.

Whether one believes in ghosts or not, the story of the Mercer House invites belief. It’s just too perfect in its haunting details: the shooter dying in the same spot as the victim, two iron spikes cut from the fence, the midnight rituals in the moss-draped cemetery, even the eerie coincidence that Jim Williams’s last restoration project (a mansion on Gaston Street) was being worked on at the time of his death and happened to be used as a filming location in the movie for a scene of a ladies’ club party – almost like Jim’s spirit snuck into the movie uncredited. Savannah thrives on such coincidences.

In Savannah folklore, people often talk about “the book curse.” Some claim that many who were involved in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil met unfortunate ends. Indeed, several key figures passed relatively young: Lady Chablis died in 2016 (age 59, coincidentally the same age as Jim, though she died of cancer), Emma Kelly (the “Lady of 6,000 Songs”) passed in 2001, Joe Odom died in the early ’90s from AIDS, Minerva died in the ’90s too, and of course Jim and Danny were gone long before the book was even published. It’s likely just the natural course of life, but Savannah being Savannah, some nod knowingly and say the spirits don’t like their secrets being written about, and that Berendt’s bestseller stirred up energies better left undisturbed.

Dorothy Williams Kingery, Jim’s sister, steadfastly denied any hauntings at Mercer House. Until her own death in 2023, she maintained in interviews that she never experienced a single spooky occurrence living there and that all this ghost talk was nonsense. But then, it was well known she also detested how her brother’s memory was sensationalized by the book and film. Dorothy preferred to remember the generous brother who taught her about antiques and financed her education, not the man on trial or the voodoo-tinged caricature. Her stance was likely both genuine and protective – acknowledging a haunting would concede a piece of the narrative she didn’t want to indulge. (Many suspect she did experience odd things but simply ignored them defiantly.)

Despite Dorothy’s wishes, Savannah’s ghost industry has embraced Mercer House wholeheartedly. Haunted house tours include it as a highlight, spinning yarns about how tourists have snapped photos and later found eerie figures in the upstairs windows. (In truth, the museum disallows indoor photography, so most “ghost photos” are of the exterior where reflections can play tricks – but some are indeed spooky!). One guide swears he saw Jim’s silhouette one evening standing at the study window, looking out at Monterey Square as he often did in life, perhaps yearning for one more stroll around the block he owned. Another tells the tale of a visiting psychic who felt a strong presence of a young man near the front door, glowering with unfinished business – presumably Danny.

All this paranormal lore might sound like fanciful embroidery, but it’s integral to the full story. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is subtitled “A Savannah Story,” and you can’t have a Savannah story without a few ghosts. What the book didn’t explicitly say – but its atmosphere conveyed – is that the line between the living and the dead in Savannah is wafer-thin. Berendt’s narrative stayed mostly in the realm of the living, but he knew the dead were characters too, just unseen. The city’s collective imagination filled them in.

So, as much as the Mercer House tale is about a murder and its legal aftermath, it’s equally about folklore and fate. Jim Williams’s fate, Danny Hansford’s fate, even Savannah’s fate (the city’s rebirth as a tourist mecca thanks in part to the book) all interweave like a well-cast spell. The voodoo, the ghosts, the midnight magic – they aren’t just window dressing. They’re the soul of the story, the part that lingers after all the courtroom transcripts have been stored away. The book didn’t need to say outright “Savannah is haunted by what happened,” because by the final page you feel it.

Visit Bonaventure Cemetery today and you’ll find people leaving little trinkets on Danny Hansford’s grave: a cigarette, a half-empty whiskey bottle, perhaps a quarter or a flower. Why? Some do it to appease him (“Here’s a smoke for you, Danny, don’t follow me home!” they joke nervously). Others do it out of sympathy, a recognition that beyond the caricature of “Savannah’s bad boy” was a troubled human who met a violent end. And inevitably, you’ll find fresh offerings on a grave in the adjacent section labeled “Minerva” (not her real name, but she’s buried under her given name, which guides can point out). People leave her chicken bones, candles, and coins, seeking a bit of luck or thanking her posthumously for adding mystique to the city.

Even the famous Bird Girl statue from the book’s cover (which was in Bonaventure) has a ghostly coda: after the book came out, so many tourists swarmed the statue that the family who owned it had it removed for safekeeping. It now resides in a museum – some say the Bird Girl looked lonely there, not at home. There’s whisper that since taking her out of the graveyard, the spirit of the Bird Girl (or what she symbolizes) roams looking for her birds to feed. Pure fancy, but it shows how Savannah can make a ghost story out of anything, once primed by a good yarn.

In a way, the paranormal elements are Savannah’s way of processing the tragedy. When real justice feels ambiguous – was justice done? Who really “won” or “lost”? – the folklore steps in to mete out a kind of poetic justice. Danny’s ghost dragging Jim to the other side, Jim’s ghost partying forever – those are narrative solutions to the emotional loose ends. They satisfy a human need for closure that the courts couldn’t entirely give. The book, being non-fiction, didn’t say that outright, but Savannah’s collective storytelling did.

With all the trials over, ghosts conjured, and movie credits rolled, what remains are the lasting impressions and legacies of this story – things the book didn’t explicitly analyze but that emerge when looking at the full picture with the benefit of time. Now over four decades since the shooting (and three decades since the book’s publication), we can ask: What did it all mean? What has Savannah, or those involved, taken away from the saga that wasn’t said in so many words in the book?

One legacy is certainly Savannah’s transformation. Berendt’s book shone an international spotlight on the city’s peculiar charms and macabre appeal. It triggered a wave of tourism that arguably changed Savannah’s trajectory. Before Midnight, Savannah was popular regionally; after Midnight, it became a global destination. The book didn’t predict this outright, but locals can tell you how by the late ’90s suddenly busloads of visitors were disembarking in Monterey Square daily, cameras at the ready. Bed-and-breakfasts multiplied, ghost tour companies launched, and the city’s economy got a shot in the arm. Yet, the book didn’t mention the double-edged sword: commercialization of local culture. Some Savannahians grumbled that their city turned into “Midnight Disney” for a time – with every shop selling bird girl trinkets and every tour guide in a black cape spooking up the script. Savannah had long been protective of its privacy (a characteristic depicted in the book – remember the old guard’s initial horror that someone was writing about their secrets). After Midnight, the genie was out of the bottle. People now come expecting to find the Savannah from the book, and by and large they do, but it’s a bit curated for show these days. That’s a nuance beyond the book’s scope but certainly a result of it.

For the people involved, many wrote their own codas. Sonny Seiler (Jim’s attorney) enjoyed newfound fame; he even played Judge White in the movie – a fun cameo. He went on to speak about the case frequently and wrote a book of his own (mostly about his life and the Uga bulldogs, but including the Midnight case). Spencer Lawton continued as DA for many years, with a sterling record, but he admitted in one interview that the Williams case was a thorn that stuck with him – it bothered him that ultimately Jim walked free. Dep Kirkland (the assistant DA) clearly was bothered too; hence his detailed book Lawyer Games, which is essentially his argument for why he believes Williams was guilty and manipulated the system. That book and others like Marilyn Bardsley’s are attempts to say “here’s what John Berendt didn’t tell you – the dirt, the dark side, the evidence of other crimes.” They maintain that Berendt’s portrait of Jim was too gentle. Kirkland’s view, for example, is that Williams used his money to distort justice through expensive defense tricks, and that this case exemplified how a clever defense can confuse juries and allow a killer to escape punishment. In essence, Kirkland implies what the book didn’t: that maybe a grave injustice was done in that Williams wasn’t convicted in the end. Readers of Midnight often end feeling Williams was probably innocent or at least that it was murky – partly due to Berendt’s sympathetic framing and the ultimate acquittal. But prosecutors like Kirkland want to set the record straight that in their eyes, Williams was a murderer who beat the rap.

From a historian’s perspective, something the book didn’t say explicitly but is keenly felt: the case, the book, and movie collectively did more for LGBTQ visibility in the South than one might first assume. Without making it an “issue” book, Berendt presented gay and trans individuals (Jim, Danny, Chablis) frankly and without judgment. That was significant in 1994. Locals say that after Midnight, Savannah became a bit more at ease with its queer community. Not overnight, and not solely because of the book, but the conversation opened. The Lady Chablis, in particular, became a beloved figure even among audiences that might have otherwise never gotten to know a trans person. She often sold out her performances post-book; tourists and locals alike came to Club One to see her. Her fearless authenticity did more cultural work than any polemic could. So while the book didn’t trumpet “this is a story about gay life in Savannah,” one of its subtle outcomes was exactly that: showcasing that world and perhaps moving the needle on acceptance just a little.

However, there’s an irony. Berendt slightly downplayed the gay aspect in some ways – for example, he never outright says “Jim and Danny were lovers” in a blunt way; it’s strongly implied, but couched. Possibly, as Morekis’s article speculated, that was a calculated soft-pedal for 1994 mainstream readers. If so, that’s something the book didn’t say plainly but was definitely true. John Berendt himself later said he wondered if his editors urged him not to make every main character gay/bisexual to broaden the appeal. If that’s the case, the book might have understressed just how integrated and vibrant the gay subculture in Savannah was (and is). Reading between lines, though, savvy readers picked it up, and many praised the book for normalizing these characters.

The book also left out some emotional interiority that we can now reflect on. For instance, what was Jim’s mindset in his final months of life, truly? He’d won but at what cost? Some who saw him during that period say he was a changed man – more paranoid, more bitter. The parties he threw after the trial lacked the verve of earlier ones. He was fighting off financial ruin (selling off antiques to pay debts). One could imagine that, in a ghost-story sense, he might have already been half in the spirit world due to exhaustion and disillusionment. Dorothy Kingery suggested in her writings that Jim felt lonely and somewhat ostracized at the end, despite the public support – the eight-year ordeal made him question many friendships. The book didn’t get into that psychological toll deeply; Berendt ended on a lighter note with Chablis and the narrator having one last whimsical moment. But reality wasn’t so tidy. Williams died before Berendt even finished writing, which in a narrative sense gave the book an ending twist, but in life it meant unresolved business. Jim didn’t live to see his name fully rehabilitated in Savannah; some say his heart gave out partly because he knew some folks still whispered behind his back.

And what of Emily Bannister – Danny’s mother – and Danny’s family after all this? The book is nearly silent on them. But their perspective is an untold chapter. After the trials, Emily still had two other sons to care for, and they had to live in a city now famous for her son’s notorious fate. It couldn’t have been easy to constantly see Savannah celebrating a book where her son is depicted largely as a destructive force, without a chance for her to speak of his good qualities (of which, surely, there were some – maybe his love for drawing or how he’d protect his younger brother when they were kids). Locals say Emily bore it with quiet dignity until she passed in 2005. One touching thing: she wrote to John Berendt during his research phase, in hopes he’d give a fair picture of Danny. That letter is in the Georgia Historical Society archives. She wasn’t confrontational; she wrote that she wanted him to know Danny had people who loved him and that he wasn’t just the sum of his troubles. Berendt ultimately chose not to include any quotes from her or much about Danny’s childhood, probably because it didn’t fit the breezy tone or maybe to avoid a tonal shift to tragedy. So the book didn’t say much from the victim’s family view – a point many true crime accounts often miss. In a sense, Danny’s humanity is one thing the book didn’t fully explore. We tried to reconstruct some here, but one can only imagine the pain behind the scenes.

As for Savannah, one could argue the biggest thing the book didn’t say explicitly is that the city itself was the main character all along. Berendt shows it, of course, with loving descriptions, but doesn’t come out and say “Savannah is the reason such a story could happen.” When you examine it, though, this murder case became a sensation largely because of its unique setting. Swap it to any other city and it’s a more standard tale. But Savannah provided that fertile soil of gothic decay, eccentric inhabitants, old money vs. new, race tensions, hidden sexualities – all the good and evil in one garden. The story is ultimately a portrait of a place in a transitional time (1980s into ’90s) as much as of a crime. What Midnight didn’t spell out was that it captured the end of an era in Savannah – the last gasp of the “old Savannah” before it was irrevocably changed by tourism and modernization. Jim Williams’s trials were from 1982 to 1989; interestingly, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 too, marking global change. Savannah in the ’90s opened up (literally to the world’s visitors, and socially somewhat). By the time Berendt’s book turned 30 (in 2024), Savannah had ten times the SCAD student population, trendy boutiques, tech companies moving in, etc. It’s still got its charm, but not the insular, clubby charm it once had. One could say the Midnight story was the swan song of the “Savannah that was,” where an artful dodger like Jim could thrive in semi-secrecy. The new era is more in the open – ironically largely because Midnight itself pulled back the veil.

Finally, a human takeaway: The book didn’t preach lessons, but there are some if we look. One is about the duality in people (reflected even in the title’s good and evil). Jim was a man of art and violent action; Danny was loving son and dangerous hooligan; Savannah is gracious and wicked. The story forces readers to accept complexity – that a person can be victim and culprit at the same time (some say Danny was both the perpetrator of chaos and the victim of a crime). Or that justice can be served in court (Jim freed) yet still feel cosmically unsettled (Jim dies). There’s a moral grayness that Midnight wades into without heavy moralizing, but it’s there. In Savannah’s ghost lore view, ultimately both men are ghosts tied to the house – perhaps implying neither really won. The book ends without judgment on Jim; it doesn’t say “he did it” or “he didn’t.” That neutrality made some in Savannah uncomfortable (they wanted either exoneration or condemnation). But in not saying, it actually said something profound: sometimes we cannot know for certain, and life (and death) goes on with mysteries intact.

It’s fitting then that to this day visitors ask, “So did he do it or not?” and Savannahians just smile and shrug, “That’s for you to decide.” What the book didn’t say outright, the city leaves to endless speculation – and maybe that’s why the story endures. It’s a true whodunit where the verdict didn’t settle the matter in everyone’s mind. And so the legend lives on, enriched by each retelling, each tour, each new piece of info that emerges (like a prosecutor’s memoir or a found letter from Danny’s mom). The Mercer House stands, gorgeous and indifferent, as tourists snap photos and perhaps capture more on film than they bargained for.

In the end, “Murder in the Garden of Good and Evil” is more than one tragedy in one square of one city. It’s a prism reflecting many facets – history, culture, law, folklore, human nature. John Berendt shone a light through that prism; here we’ve tried to turn it a bit to see other colors he left in shadow. None of this is to fault him – his was a masterful curation of reality into art. But reality is always messier, spookier, and more sprawling. As Savannahians might say, “Well now y’all know the rest of the story.” And if you find yourself in Savannah on a sultry night, go ahead and stroll by Mercer House. Peer through the iron gate, down the brick path to the front door. You might feel a chill or see a flicker in an upstairs window. Is it Jim? Is it Danny? Perhaps it’s just the wind playing tricks. But in Savannah, you never can be sure – after all, it’s midnight in the garden of good and evil, and the ghosts have the final say.