The Alday family murders took place on May 14, 1973, in Donalsonville, Georgia, United States, a small town in Seminole County, Georgia, when six members of the Alday family were murdered by four men who burglarized a family home.
Earlier in May 1973, 19-year-old Carl Isaacs, 26-year-old Wayne Carl Coleman, and 35-year-old George Elder Dungee escaped from a prison in Maryland. They joined with Isaacs' younger brother, 15-year-old William Carroll "Billy" Isaacs, to drive to Florida so the three escapees could avoid recapture. Prior to the drive to Florida, the four kidnapped and murdered 19-year-old Richard Miller in Pennsylvania, presumably so they could steal Miller's car.
The four passed through Georgia on their way to Florida. On May 14, 1973, they stopped at the home of Jerry and Mary Alday to steal gasoline and decided to burglarize the house to search for valuables. As several Alday family members began to return home during the burglary, starting with Jerry and Ned Alday, the four burglars held each Alday family member at gunpoint to force them inside the house, after which they shot each victim to death. In all, six Alday family members – five men (Jerry, Ned, Jimmy, Chester, and Aubrey Alday) and one woman (Mary Alday) – were murdered that day. The family members were also robbed, and Mary Alday was raped.
The Isaacs, Coleman, and Dungee fled to Alabama after the murders but later moved to West Virginia, where police apprehended them. The four faced trial in early 1974, and Billy Isaacs avoided a death sentence by testifying for the state against his associates. Carl Isaacs, George Dungee, and Wayne Coleman were each sentenced to death, although Dungee and Coleman later had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment after retrials in the late 1980s. Carl Isaacs was executed by lethal injection on May 6, 2003, eight days away from the 30th anniversary of the murders. At the time of his execution, Isaacs was the longest serving death row inmate in United States history.
Until Mark Orrin Barton's mass murder of nine people in two Atlanta-based day trading firms in 1999, the Alday family murders were the second deadliest mass murders in Georgia history, only surpassed by the Woolfolk family murders from the 19th century.
Background The Alday family had been established in their Seminole County farming community near the Chattahoochee River for over 100 years prior to the murders. A surviving Alday family member, Bud Alday, who was Ned Alday's brother, the uncle of several of the murder victims, and was largely considered a "spokesperson" for the family in the aftermath of the murders and ensuing trials, stated that the family had a good reputation in the area, were involved in the Baptist Church, and were close-knit, despite rumors of internal strife amongst several Aldays regarding division of the large amount of property they owned. At least two of the younger Alday murder victims were deacons at the Spring Creek Baptist Church, which Ned had helped construct years prior. The Aldays were active in their church, as one was the chairman of the board of deacons, one was the Sunday school superintendent, Chester was the song leader, Jimmy was the training union director, and Jerry was the church clerk and treasurer.
Ned was the father of Jerry Nelson Alday, Jimmy Cecil Alday, and Chester Addis Alday, and the brother of Aubrey Alday. Jerry was married to Mary Alday (née Campbell). The family's traditional routine involved Ernestine, Ned's wife, preparing lunch for the men while they worked on the family farm, while Mary Alday worked at her occupation in Donalsonville. At the time the burglary that preceded the murders initially took place, the Alday men were outdoors working on the farm.
At the time of the murders, Ned Alday was approximately 62 years old; Aubrey was around 57; Jerry was approximately 35 years old; Chester was approximately 32; Jimmy was approximately 25; and Mary Alday was approximately 26.
Perpetrators
Wayne Carl Coleman was born on December 9, 1946, in the township of East Nottingham, Pennsylvania. Coleman was a half-brother of Carl and Billy Isaacs and related to the Isaacs by their mother; Coleman was the last of five children born to Betty Jamison Isaacs and Carson Coleman, the latter of whom abandoned the family shortly after Wayne Coleman's birth. As a young adult, Wayne Coleman worked several low-paying construction jobs. When Coleman was 21 years old, he began accumulating his own criminal record with a burglary conviction. Later, he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for a separate robbery and sent to prison, but after demonstrating good behavior, he was transferred to the Poplar Hill Prison Camp, a minimum-security reentry facility, where he met and befriended George Dungee.
George Elder Dungee was born on March 5, 1938, in Baltimore, Maryland. Dungee had a minor intellectual disability and wore glasses for myopia. His father died when he was six months old, so he was raised largely by a single mother, Fannie Dungee. Fannie Dungee worked 16 hours a day in a vegetable canning plant and often had trouble finding babysitters for her son, who frequently went truant during his schooling years. When Dungee was in his mid-20s, he identified as a gay man, but he had a girlfriend anyway, a waitress who worked at the same restaurant where Dungee was employed as a dishwasher. They had a daughter together and lived as a family unit in Baltimore for a few years while Dungee moved between jobs, since he was fired frequently for slow work performance, until his girlfriend broke up with him and requested child support. Dungee then moved back in with his mother, but eight years later, he was arrested due to owing $1,600 in child support after not having made any of his payments of $5 USD per week, and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was sent to the minimum-security Poplar Hill Prison Camp, where he met Carl Isaacs and Wayne Coleman.
Carl Isaacs was born to Betty Isaacs and her second husband, George Archie Isaacs, on August 9, 1953, in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania; he was the third of seven children born to George Archie Isaacs. His younger brother, William Carroll Isaacs, more often went by the nickname "Billy" and was four years younger than Carl Isaacs. When Carl and Billy Isaacs were young, their father deserted the family, leading the Isaacs children to grow up in a home that Maryland prison officials characterized as "a nightmare of social instability." Growing up, Carl and Billy Isaacs lived in several locations near the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, frequently making extra money in farming and factory jobs and frequently switching schools. At some point, Carl and Billy Isaacs were placed in foster care because their mother was rarely home due to long work hours. Carl and Billy Isaacs developed a juvenile criminal record consisting of convictions for truancy, running away from foster homes, petty crime, and several stints in reform school. Billy Isaacs' first arrest occurred when he was five years old and a police officer caught him shoplifting, after which the police officer spanked him as corporal punishment, although their mother Betty recalled that the boys were "like any other boys" until they hit puberty, at which point they began burglarizing homes.
When Carl Isaacs was fifteen years old, he received his first adult conviction when he was found guilty of car theft and housebreaking. He was arrested several times between the ages of 16 and 19 for burglary. In February 1973, he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for burglary and sent to the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore. On March 29, 1973, Carl was assaulted and gang-raped by older inmates during a prison riot that took over his cell block, leading prison officials to transfer him to the Poplar Hill Prison Camp for his safety. There, he reunited with his half-brother Wayne Coleman, who introduced him to George Dungee. Coleman and Carl Isaacs planned an escape from Poplar Hill after deciding they would likely not be paroled from their sentences early, and Coleman convinced Carl Isaacs to allow Dungee to join them in their escape. Meanwhile, Billy Isaacs had been sent to the Victor Cullen School for Boys, a reform school located in Sabillasville, Maryland, after an arrest and juvenile conviction for burglary. In April 1973, Billy Isaacs escaped from that reform school.
In 1981, a reporter based out of Albany, Georgia, would allege that Carl Isaacs had participated in a total of 13 murders in his life before his imprisonment on death row, including the six Alday murders and the death of Richard Miller.
At the time of the Alday family murders, Carl Isaacs was 19 years old, and his brother Billy was 15 years old. Wayne Coleman was 26, and George Dungee was 35 years old.
Crimes Prison escape and murder of Richard Miller At approximately 3:00 am on May 5, 1973, Carl Isaacs, Coleman, and Dungee escaped the Poplar Hill facility by crawling out of a dormitory bathroom window. Poplar Hill authorities did not alert local police of the jailbreak because the escaped inmates were not adjudged dangerous at the time. Somehow, Wayne Coleman also obtained a .38-caliber pistol. After hiding in the woods for some time, the trio stole a car and drove it to Baltimore, where they picked up Billy Isaacs from his girlfriend's house and decided to head towards Florida because Wayne Coleman wanted to see "the ocean." First, they drove west into Pennsylvania, where, on May 10, they kidnapped 19-year-old Richard Wayne Miller in McConnellsburg so they could steal his Chevrolet Chevelle. They drove into Flintstone, Maryland, where Coleman dragged Miller out of the car and murdered Miller by shooting him in the head. Miller's body was discovered on June 3, 1973, almost one month later.
Alday family murders While the Isaacs brothers, Coleman, and Dungee drove through south Georgia in Miller's stolen vehicle, the four saw what looked like a gas pump on Ned Alday's property at approximately 4:00 pm on May 14, 1973. The pump was actually an irrigation pump and could not be utilized to refill their vehicle's gas, but upon discovering Jerry Alday's mobile home on the property was unoccupied, Coleman and Carl Isaacs burglarized the mobile home to steal valuables; Dungee and Billy Isaacs eventually joined them. The first members of the Alday family to arrive at the property were Ned and Jerry, both of whom were unaware of the ongoing burglary. Their arrival startled the four burglars, who then held Ned and Jerry at gunpoint and robbed them before shooting both "execution style" in separate bedrooms; Coleman shot Ned Alday, while Carl Isaacs shot Jerry Alday. Ned survived Coleman's initial gunshot wound to the head and attempted to fight Coleman before Carl Isaacs fatally shot him at least five more times.
Jimmy Alday arrived shortly thereafter on a tractor and entered the home, at which point Carl Isaacs murdered him by shooting him in the head in the living room. Mary Alday drove up to the mobile home in a separate vehicle, and Carl Isaacs forced her inside as well while Aubrey and Chester Alday drove up in a pickup truck. Carl Isaacs murdered Aubrey in the same bedroom as Jerry Alday, while Coleman murdered Chester in the bathroom. After Chester's murder, Carl Isaacs raped Mary Alday on the kitchen floor. The group moved Mary Alday to a wooded area, where Dungee raped her and then murdered her by shooting her as well. During his testimony at trial, Billy Isaacs would later testify that his brother and Dungee tortured Mary Alday as well.