Tommy Everett found out Thursday, nearly three months after the fact, but it didn't matter.
Alec Evans, the man who'd spent more than half a century in prison for killing Everett's uncle and two other Gwinnett County police officers, was dead.
"It was just a very different kind of closure," Everett said. "I immediately started thinking of all the grandparents, all the siblings. They've all gone knowing that he was still alive. ... They've all gone without that closure. I'm kind of the first generation to have it."
On April 17, 1964, officers Jerry Everett, Marvin Gravitt and Ralph Davis were investigating a "suspicious activity" call near Norcross when they were handcuffed together and shot with their own weapons. After several months, three men — including Evans, a one-time Gwinnett sheriff's deputy — were arrested and charged with their murders.
A Department of Corrections spokeswoman confirmed Friday that Evans died in May but did not release further details. Tommy Everett said he learned of Evans' death this week while speaking with the victims services office at the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Officials didn't specify which Georgia prison Evans died in. He was believed to be one of the longest-tenured inmates in the state.
During Evans' 1965 trial, prosecutors posited that the slain officers had stumbled upon him, Venson Williams and Wade Truett as they engaged in activity related to a stolen car ring. Truett testified against his co-conspirators, who were both convicted and given the death penalty. Those sentences were later commuted to life in prison.
Williams was paroled in 1989 but Evans remained in prison until his death — perhaps because of his continued denial of any involvement in the officers' deaths.
Evans had been in declining health for several years. His nephew, Chuck Harper, could not be reached this week but said late last year that Evans had had a heart attack and likely had cancer as well.
The death of Jerry Everett indirectly led to his family creating Everett's Music Barn, a bastion of bluegrass music that still hosts gatherings every weekend in Suwanee.
Tommy Everett runs the venue alongside other family members.
"I've always wondered, and especially with the music barn, how long can that dark cloud just loom over?" he said Thursday. "... And now that cloud's kind of been lifted."
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