Mississippi Goddam Chapter Four: The Investigator
It’s rare to get an official to talk to you for hours about an investigation they did 10 years ago. But that’s what Joel Wallace did with us.
Wallace was a special agent with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and lead investigator in the case of Billey Joe Johnson Jr., a Black high school football star who’d died mysteriously during a traffic stop with a White officer. Johnson’s family and members of the community placed a lot of their hopes in Wallace, who is Black, for a thorough investigation. He’d made a name for himself a couple of years earlier fearlessly bringing down officers inside a rotten and abusive county jail.
But then, based in part on Wallace’s investigation, the grand jury ruled that Johnson’s death was an accident.
When I first met Wallace, he was convinced he had helped the Johnsons get justice. But as we shared more of our investigation with him, his confidence began to crumble.
In this newest episode, we get to sit down with Wallace and ask the hard questions. He’s one of only two officials who had the courage to talk with us. By the end of the interview, he’s left wondering if the case needs to be reopened.
I think it makes for a great hour of radio. I hope you’ll listen.
Light,
Al Letson
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