Author Hutto writes of Macon murder and madness

At the center of the tale is Chester Burge, the illegitimate offspring of landed gentry, who longed to be accepted among Macon’s elite, but remained on the outside looking in.

The more his ambitions grew, the farther outside he seemed to stray. He went from petty loan-sharking as a teenager to buying and renting slum properties and selling illegal alcohol.

Married at 18, he was divorced by his first wife for his excessive demands in the marital chambers, and committed to a mental institution by his mother for reasons that are never clear.

Somehow Burge bounced back, wormed his way into the will of a dying rich relative, pressured his black chauffeur into having sex and was charged with the 1960 strangulation murder of his wife. Though the prosecution's case was weak, Burge seemed unable to catch a break. His defense attorneys deplored his personality defects and even his own mother testified against him.

But wait, there’s more! After being acquitted of murder, but convicted of sodomy and somehow finding another wife (18 years his senior), Burge stumbled into an ending that even Sophocles wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

Suffice it to say, Burge went out with a bang.

Unlike the suave Jim Williams, whose murder trial is the focus of the Savannah tale, Burge is (in this portrait) not only a felon, but also wholly repellent. John Berendt’s Savannah book gave rise to a whole tourist economy in that city, with buses bringing groups of visitors to see Williams’ house and gift shops offering replica “Bird Girl” statues for sale.

Could Chester Burge trigger similar “Midnight” madness?

“I would love to get even a piece of the attention for Macon that ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ has given to Savannah,” said Hutto, a member of the Macon city council and former appointments secretary to the Carter White House. Hutto stresses that the historic value in this Middle Georgia town, along with its rock and roll pedigree, make it a worthy destination.

For that reason he has endeavored to shift attention away from the unattractive Burge. “I tried to make Macon the central figure rather than Chester,” Hutto said.

Yet it’s difficult to look away from the automobile accident that is Chester Burge. Hutto found himself fascinated when he and his wife moved to Macon in 1993, settling in the Shirley Hills neighborhood. Burge's old mansion, casually referred to by neighbors as "the murder house," was around the corner. Hutto couldn't resist asking questions.

“When I first starting looking into this story years ago there were grand dames in Macon society who said ‘please don’t bring this up, we don’t want Macon to be laughed at.’”

The strangulation murder of Mary Burge remains unsolved, and Chester Burge is buried in an unmarked corner of his elegant family's mausoleum. "Even in death," Hutto wrote, "Chester rests only on the periphery of that venerable family he tried so hard to infiltrate."

Book signing

Richard Jay Hutto appears at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse to read from and sign copies of "A Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder and Madness in the Heart of Georgia" on Thursday, 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public; 991 Piedmont Ave., Information: 404-607-0082. www.outwritebooks.com

Hutto also appears 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, at the Georgia Center for the Book, DeKalb County Library, 215 Sycamore Street, Decatur, 404-370-3070; www.dekalblibrary.org; and 7 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 10, at the Barnes & Noble on the Emory University campus. 1390 Oxford Road. 404-727-6222. www.barnesandnoble.com . All events are free.