Explore 50 years of the Presnell death row case

Lori Ann Smith was 8 when she was killed in Cobb County by a man who preyed on little girls. Her friend, age 10, was raped. Five decades after their attacker, Virgil Presnell, was first sentenced to death, he’s still on death row — and the victims’ families are still living with what happened.

Research and reporting: Jennifer Peebles, Thomas Lake.

Photographs: Jason Getz, Hyosub Shin, Ben Gray, Renee’ Hannans Henry, Shaddi Abusaid, Arvin Temkar, all for the AJC; other photographs provided by the Smith family.

Previous reporting in newspaper clippings from The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Constitution and the AJC by Rhonda Cook, Don Hicks, Jim Stewart, Bill Rankin, Henry Farber and the editorial board of The Atlanta Journal.