In small towns, a church often serves as more than a place of worship. It is also a meeting hall, a program venue, and a social center. The Rising Daughter Church in Waverly, Georgia, is such a facility, serving as the hub of the tiny, unincorporated community of eight-hundred people.

On the evening of March 11, 1985, the Baptist church also became a crime scene, as sixty-six-year-old Deacon Harold Swain and his sixty-three-year-old wife Thelma were shot to death in what they considered their second home. Eighteen years later, a man was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison, but many, including some detectives involved in the original investigation, believe he was not the killer. In July 2020, a judge agreed.

Harold And Thelma Swain

Rising Daughter Church is located on Highway 17 just outside of Waverly, a predominately black community in Camden County in rural southeast Georgia, approximately sixty miles north of Jacksonville, Florida.

Rising Daughter Baptist Church

Waverly, Georgia

On the evening of March 11, 1985, Thelma Swain and eight other women attended the church’s weekly Bible class led by Harold. One of the women, Vanzola Williams, excused herself at approximately 8:50 p.m. to pick up her daughter from work.

Vanzola Williams

As she was leaving, Vanzola was surprised to see a white man she did not recognize standing in the church vestibule. The man told her he wanted to speak with the deacon.

Vanzola summoned Harold and heard the two men speaking as she left. Several of the other women caught glimpses of the man.

The Church Vestibule

After a couple of minutes, the women in the Bible group were startled by the sound of scuffling followed by gunshots. Thelma ran to her husband’s aid while the other women fled to the kitchen and pastor’s office to call for help, only to find the phone line dead. Vanzola Williams had also heard the gunshots and had run around the church, entered through the back door, and taken cover with the other women.

Afraid the gunman might still be in the church, the women locked themselves in the rooms and waited approximately twenty minutes before one of them, Marjorie Moore, ran to a nearby convenience store and called the police. As she did so, she noticed a car in the parking lot that she did not recognize. She thought it was a medium brown 1965-70 Plymouth Duster or Dodge Dart. By the time the police arrived, the car was gone.

Paramedics pronounced Harold and Thelma Swain dead at the scene. Harold had been shot four times– three times in the chest and once in the back of the head. Thelma had been shot once, in her upper chest. The bullet casings found on the floor showed the murder weapon was a small caliber gun.

A robbery gone wrong was ruled out as over $300 was found in Harold’s pocket.

The Swains Are Murdered

The church’s phone line had been intentionally cut.

Two pairs of eyeglasses were found at the crime scene, one of which was the deacon’s. The other is believed to have belonged to the killer. The crudely created makeshift pair of metal glasses appeared to have been assembled from parts of two or three separate pairs. Its lenses were thick, the mismatched earpieces were wrapped in tape, and transmission fluid residue was found on them.

Rising Daughter Church was often frequented by transients seeking a handout or free meal. Police believed the killer was such a person who had modified the cheap glasses because he could not afford to purchase new ones. Because the surface had been pocked by a welding torch, he may have had experience as a machinist or welder.

The glasses would have been worn by someone exceptionally far-sighted with astigmatism in the right eye.

The Killer’s Glasses

Police used an Identikit to create a composite of Harold and Thelma Swain’s killer. The four photos one the left were created based on four different women’s descriptions. Elements of each image were later combined into the sketch on the right created by another artist.

The women generally agreed the man had a small build, was between five-feet-six to five-feet-eight inches tall, and weighed one-hundred-thirty to one-hundred-forty pounds. They thought he wore dark clothing; five plastic shirt buttons found at the scene contained dark blue shirt threads.

On other details, however, the women did not agree. Some remembered the man as having blond shoulder-length light-colored hair, but others thought it was darker. Some said he was wearing the glasses, others thought not.

Approximately an hour-and-a-half before the murders, a man matching the general description of the killer was seen at Reed’s Store, a few miles north of the church. He had blond hair and was wearing glasses, a jean jacket, dark jeans, and a dark shirt. This man stood out to the store owner because he was acting nervously and barely had enough money to pay for a bottle of Pepsi.

After exiting the store, the man was seen driving what appeared to be an orange or burnt orange Plymouth-type vehicle in the direction of the church.

A Pepsi bottle was found at the crime scene. I could not find anything saying whether it was confirmed to have been purchased at Reed’s Store or if DNA was extracted from it.

Composites Of The Killer

On July 5, four months after the murders of Harold and Thelma Swain, police in Telfair County, Georgia, one-hundred-thirty-five miles northwest of Waverly, stopped a car for a minor traffic violation. An illegal automatic weapon and submachine gun were seen inside the vehicle and several other such weapons were found in the trunk. The three occupants were arrested, one of whom was Donnie Barrentine.

An acquaintance said Barrentine was en route to murder a man on the orders of his cousin, a known drug dealer who instructed him to cut the telephone lines before going into the targeted man’s home, just as the church’s telephone lines were cut before the Swains were murdered.

The same associate said Barrentine’s cousin had also ordered him to kill the Swains because of a drug debt owed to him by the couple’s son-in-law. The contention was sketchy as Harold and Thelma had no such relative. Their adopted daughter’s stepfather, however, was involved in drugs and in hiding at the time.

Three people said Barrentine had bragged at a party about killing a black preacher and his wife in a southern Georgia church and had shown them the gun he used. When interviewed by police, Barrentine admitted making those statements, but claimed he was lying to elicit a reaction. He, however, failed a polygraph examination when responding that he had not murdered the Swains.

After viewing a police lineup, Vanzola Williams, the woman who had left the church group early on the evening of the murders and who had spoken to the killer, was not certain the man was Barrentine, saying she believed he had longer hair and a darker complexion. She was, positive, however, the scuffed boots he was wearing were the same boots worn by the killer.

The Camden County District Attorney declined to prosecute Barrentine for the murders, saying the witnesses, both the women who had briefly seen the killer and those who said Barrentine had bragged about the killings, were unreliable.

Barrentine served five years in prison on weapons violations.

                                    Composite                Donnie Barrentine

churches across Kansas in October and November 1981, three-and-a-half years before the Swains’ murders. After one robbery, he fled in an older car with a Florida license plate.

In one instance, the Kansas suspect had asked a priest for gas money; the Georgia killer may have asked Harold, a deacon, for money.

The drawing of the Kansas robber bore a resemblance to one of the composites of Harold and Thelma’s killer. He has never been identified.

                                The Kansas Robber The Swains’ Killer

Dennis Perry was a carpenter and laborer who had lived in the Waverly area until 1984, the year before the murders, when he moved in with his mother in Jonesboro, fifteen miles south of Atlanta, after taking a job with a concrete company. He was a suspect in the murders of the Swains because he had little money and frequently returned to Waverly to visit his grandparents who lived near the Rising Daughter Church.

Perry was cleared of involvement by the original investigators after his boss told them he was working in Jonesboro until 5:00 p.m. on March 12, 1985. The murders occurred less than four hours later. Perry did not have a car, but even if he did, the authorities did not believe he would have had time to drive the over two-hundred-fifty miles to Waverly.

In addition, Vanzola Williams did not pick Perry out of a photo lineup . . . at the time.

Dennis Perry

Circa 1985

In 1998, a new special investigator was assigned to the case. When he re-interviewed Carol Ann Beaver, Perry’s girlfriend at the time of the murders, she told him Perry was not at work in Jonesboro that day, saying he was in fact in Camden County visiting his grandparents. She said Perry had called her the day before, telling her he had hitched a ride from Jonesboro on the back of a motorcycle, broken into his grandparents’ house, and was riding back that evening.

Carol Ann’s mother Jane told the new investigator that Perry had threatened to kill Harold Swain because he had laughed at him when he had asked for food from him three weeks before the murders.

Perry Is Suspected

The below photo of Dennis Perry was taken sometime in the 1980s. When shown this picture, Cora Fisher, one of the women in the Bible study group on the evening of the murders, believed it was he who was in the church that evening. Vanzola Williams, who had not picked Perry out of a photo lineup when shown a different photo of him, also believed he was the killer after viewing this image.

Dennis Perry,

1980s Photo

On January 13, 2000, the thirty-eight-year-old Dennis Perry was arrested at his Jacksonville, Florida, home and charged with the nearly fifteen-year-old murders of Harold and Thelma Swain.

Perry maintained that he was in Jonesboro on the night of the murders, having attended a party after getting off work. His boss at the time confirmed he was working that afternoon, but the company was defunct by the time of his arrest and Perry’s employment records with them could not be located. Investigators, however, were able to confirm the party Perry claimed he attended that evening in Jonesboro had not occurred.

Under interrogation, police say Perry confessed to killing the Swains, saying he was drunk and high on drugs and that the deaths were accidental. Perry denies doing so, saying he ended the interview after authorities were “trying to put words in my mouth.” For reasons the police have never explained, there is no record or tape of Perry making the alleged confession, nor are there tapes of witness interviews.

Perry later refused to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for a twelve-year sentence.

Perry Is Charged . . .

At Perry’s trial, many believed enough reasonable doubt to his guilt was raised after a coworker testified they had both worked in Jonesboro until approximately 5:00 p.m. on the day of the murder. In addition, Carol Ann Beaver admitted she was not certain of the date her former boyfriend had made the phone call to her about going to Camden County.

Nonetheless, Dennis Perry was convicted of the murders of Harold and Thelma Swain in February 2003. He waived his right to appeal to avoid the death penalty and was instead given two consecutive life sentences.

. . . And Convicted 

Many, however, do not believe Dennis Perry murdered Harold and Thelma Swain and fear the real killer may never be learned because much of the physical evidence recovered from the crime scene has inexplicably gone missing, again with no explanation from authorities.

Crime scene and police line-up photos have disappeared, as has the church vestibule mirror and the metal phone box marked with fingerprints believed left by the killer when he cut the phone lines outside the church.

Doubts Over Perry’s Guilt

The most significant piece of evidence found at the crime scene was the pair of glasses believed to have belonged to the killer. They, too, are nowhere in sight.

The glasses were shown in an Unsolved Mysteries segment on the murders. Georgia investigators say the show’s producers never returned the glasses to them. I could not find any sources stating if Unsolved Mysteries ever responded to the claim or offered an explanation.

The glasses were for someone who was near-sighted. Some sources state Perry wore glasses only for reading because he was far-sighted, while other sources state he had perfect 20-20 vision and had no need for glasses.

DNA of hair fibers had been extracted from the glasses. They did not match Perry’s. Although Donnie Barrentine was known to have worn thick glasses resembling the ones found at the crime scene, the DNA did not match his hair either.

Glasses Gone

Another suspect in the murders of Harold and Thelma Swain was Erik Sparre. Multiple acquaintances said he was racist, and he allegedly told two people he had killed a black preacher and his wife in Camden County. A search warrant was granted to search his home, but no physical evidence was found linking him to the crime.

When questioned in 1986, Sparre told police he was working at a Winn-Dixie in Brunswick, twenty miles northeast of Waverly, on the night of the Swains’ murders. Authorities spoke to a man identifying himself as Donald A. Mobley. Claiming to be Sparre’s boss, he confirmed Sparre was working as an overnight stocker from the afternoon before the murders to the morning after the slayings. As a result, Sparre was cleared as a suspect.

That alibi, however, is now called into question after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently determined no one named Donald A. Mobley had ever worked at the Brunswick Winn-Dixie. The man who managed the store at the time was named “David Mobley” and he told the paper he had no memory of ever speaking with police about Erik Sparre or providing an alibi, and had no relative named Donald A. Mobley.

Some current investigators believe Sparre gave their predecessors a fake name and number for his manager to establish an alibi for the time of the murders.

Erik Sparre, 1986 Photo

Emily Head, Sparre’s wife at the time of the Swains’ murders, and Rhonda Tyson, Sparre’s second former wife, both say he used drugs, owned several guns, beat them on several occasions, and had threatened to kill them. Emily also says the glasses found at the crime scene looked like a pair he had welded using three pairs of his father’s glasses. She said he told her he had lost them sometime before the murders.

When Sparre left their house on the morning of the Swains’ murders, Emily told investigators he was wearing dark clothing and a pair of lizard-skinned boots, consistent with what the Swains’ killer is believed to have worn. When he came home the following morning, he was wearing a white t-shirt.

Emily Head

Sparre’s Former Wife

In 2015, testing was done on items that were found at the crime scene and has been safely preserved: the shirt buttons, the telephone wires, and the shell casings. No usable DNA was found on the items.

In March 2020, DNA provided from Erik Sparre’s mother, Gladys, determined the hairs found on the glasses at the crime scene showed they most likely belonged to someone from his maternal line. The tests excluded them from coming from over 99% of the world’s population, including Dennis Perry. Erik Sparre, however, was among the 1% who could not be eliminated.Based on these findings, Perry’s lawyers filed a motion for a new trial, which was granted in July 2020. His conviction was overturned and he was released from prison. One year later, he was formally exonerated.

In April 2022, Dennis Perry was awarded $1.2 million by the state of Georgia for his nearly two decades of wrongful imprisonment.

Perry’s Conviction Is Overturned

A couple of hours after Dennis Perry was freed from prison, seventy-nine-year-old Gladys Sparre she was found dead in her Waynesville, Georgia, home, where Erik also lived. Her death was ruled accidental, caused by “cardiovascular disease and asphyxia.”

Many find the ruling suspicious as she was found with a plastic bag over her head.

Gladys Sparre

Following Gladys’s death, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) searched the home for evidence linking Erik Sparre to the murders of Harold and Thelma Swain. The findings have not yet been announced.

As of this writing, Erik Sparre, now fifty-nine-years-old, has not been charged with the murders of Harold and Thelma Swain. He denies any involvement in the crime and says he never told anyone he had killed them. He also denies claims that he murdered his mother.

 

Sparre Is Not Yet Charged

Harold and Thelma Swain are buried in the Rising Daughte’ Cemetery, only a few hundred yards from the church where they were murdered.

In November 2020, their bodies were exhumed for new testing. No results of the tests have yet been released.

Bodies Exhumed

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14200881/harold-swain#

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14200435/thelma_swain#

SOURCES:

• ABC News
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Denver Post
• The Florida Times-Union
• Georgia Innocence Project
• News4 Jacksonville
• WDUN Radio North Georgia
• Questia Online Research
• Unsolved Mysteries