Uga and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Now that I’ve sucked you in by seeming to promise a story about your favorite mascot…Uga’s connection to the story you are about to read is flimsy because it’s made through the late Frank W. "Sonny" Seiler, breeder of the long line of Uga mascot bulldogs for the University of Georgia's football team.

Seiler also was was a prominent attorney who represented the killer in the infamous Savannah murder case that spawned a bestselling novel and motion picture.

I wrote the following article for the Athens Banner-Herald a decade ago:

By Joe Johnson

Published 8:53 p.m. ET Oct. 30, 2013

After three decades, the ghost of Danny Hansford still haunts the Mercer House in Savannah.

Two juries concluded that he was murdered by antiques dealer and preservationist Jim Williams in what some called a lover's quarrel. A third trial ended with a hung jury and a fourth acquitted Williams, who claimed that in 1981 he shot and killed Hansford in self-defense.

Though long removed in time, the sensational murder case that spawned the best-selling book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and a hit movie by the same name has a couple of ties to Athens.

Frank W. "Sonny" Seiler, breeder of the long line of Uga mascot bulldogs for the University of Georgia's football team, represented Williams in three of the trials.

Then-chief assistant district attorney for Chatham County, David Lock helped to prosecute Williams, and he is now an assistant district attorney in the Western Judicial Circuit, which includes Clarke and Oconee counties.

Though both attorneys graduated from UGA's School of Law and were involved in the "Good and Evil" murder case, they don't know each other socially.

"Like other lawyers, I saw David Lock all the time, and if we spoke on the street I guarantee it would be about the Bulldogs and not Jim Williams or the book," Seiler said.

Lock, who began prosecuting in the Athens area after losing an election to become Chatham County's district attorney, was reluctant to discuss his role in the trial.

"In regard to the Williams case, I handled most of the appellate matters through the four trials," Lock said in an email. "I assisted (District Attorney Spencer) Lawton in the third and fourth trials of the case.

"I cannot be of assistance in answering your questions in regard to the book and the movie, which were released several years after the trials," Lock said. "As reports concerning the book belied its status as nonfiction, I never read the book, nor viewed the movie."

The book that was authored by John Berendt set a record for remaining on The New York Times best-seller list for 216 week after its 1994 debut. It portrayed Savannah in Southern Gothic tones with a range of eccentric personalities serving as backdrop to the highly publicized murder case.

Unlike Lock, Seiler was more than happy to recollect the case that put his hometown on the map as a tourist destination.

The killing took place in Williams' home, the Mercer House. The mansion was one of more than 50 homes that Williams restored in Savannah's historic district and the lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina. The house is named after General Hugh Mercer, its original owner and grandfather of composer Johnny Mercer. Many of the movie's scenes were shot there.

Williams, a semi-closeted homosexual, each year threw extravagant Christmas parties at the Mercer House, an event that many in Savannah's high society hoped to be invited to.

"You had a prominent businessman who was responsible for renovating many of Savannah's historic houses, and to have a shooting like that take place in the mansion that was owned by Johnny Mercer's grandparents, all the elements to sensationalize it were there," Seiler said. "The news media really built it up."

After Williams was convicted in the first trial in 1982, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the verdict on appeal and a new trial was ordered.

Seiler, a skilled civil litigator, said he became Williams' new defense attorney by default.

The lead defense attorney at the time was Bobby Lee Cook - thought to be the inspiration for Matlock, the television lawyer who never lost a case. Seiler was familiar with many facts of the case because he already was representing Williams in a lawsuit filed by Hansford's mother that sought millions of dollars.

"Jim had used a local lawyer to assist Bobby Lee Cook in the initial trial, and I don't know why, but Jim didn't think he did a good job," Seiler said. "So Jim asked Bobby, 'How about Sonny, because he knows this case?'"

After Seiler joined the defense team, and soon before the second trial was to begin, Cook had a conflict from which he could not excuse himself. A federal judge in Florida would not grant him leave from a major drug case so that he could represent Williams in the second trial.

"That left me in the No. 1 chair, and with the beginning of the trial just a month away I had a hell of a time getting the judge to give me extra time to prepare," Seiler said

Seiler on the set during filming of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Seiler never doubted Williams' innocence and said that his client was convicted by a local jury that was drawn from a community that didn't like gays.

"They were trying him for being homosexual, and the local press did a terrible hatchet job, characterizing Hansford's killing as a lover's quarrel between a smart, affluent guy taking advantage of a nobody," the attorney said.

At 21, Hansford was less than half the age of 50-year-old Williams.

"Jim and Danny did have a relationship, and it came out in trial evidence that he hired Hansford off (the) street and was teaching him a trade where he did restoration of antiques," Seiler said. "Hansford was learning an honorable craft and he was proving to be a very diligent worker, but he just wouldn't leave the drugs and liquor alone."

Prosecutors argued that after Williams shot and killed Hansford, he staged the crime scene to make it appear he returned fire in self-defense, placing a gun he had fired under Hansford's hand as he lay dead on the floor.

Seiler maintained that Hansford was a heavy-drinking hot-head who stormed into Williams' study in a rage and shot at him, missing three times, and that Williams pulled a gun from his desk draw and returned fire, killing Hansford.

Like Cook before him, Seiler lost the second trial, but successfully appealed to the state Supreme Court. The conviction was overturned on grounds a detective should not have been allowed to testify as an expert witness that the crime scene had been staged, and the prosecutor waited until his closing argument to introduce evidence.

Prior to the third trial, Seiler subpoenaed records from the hospital where Hansford was taken to from the crime scene. The hospital disclosed an admitting record that suggested that Hansford's hands were not bagged when he was brought to the hospital.

Taping paper bags over the hands of shooting victims is standard procedure for preserving possible gunshot residue, or evidence that they fired a weapon.

Seiler located the nurse who had signed the document and she said that while the body was still at the hospital, she received a telephone call from the medical examiner instructing her to bag Hansford's hands. At the third trial, the nurse testified that she had put plastic garbage can liners around Hansford's hands before the body was removed for the autopsy. An expert testified for the defense that plastic bags create moisture, which could have washed away any residue.

That trial ended in a mistrial, with a lone hold-out juror adamantly insisting she saw reasonable doubt that Williams had murdered Hansford and would not be dissuaded.

Seiler was then able to convince the judge that a change of venue was needed, and the fourth trial was held in Augusta in 1989.

"When picking the jury, we'd strike people who were prejudiced against gays and we got a the jury seated in one day with people who said they didn't know a damn thing about Jim Williams or anything else," Seiler said.

Seiler presented another hospital employee who corroborated the nurse's testimony that Hansford's hands were not bagged until after he arrived at the hospital.

"If they could prove that Hansford never fired a weapon, we couldn't prove it was self-defense," the attorney said. "Our evidence that showed that his hands were not properly bagged sealed the deal for an acquittal."

Williams didn't get to enjoy his freedom for very long. In January 1990, six months after the trial, he died from pneumonia and heart failure at home, in the foyer outside of the office where Danny Hansford was shot.

As the infamous case and Williams' life came to an end, so did a chapter of the Georgia port city's history.

"Jim Williams had a lifestyle people didn't cotton to in those days, but the social attitude of Savannah certainly has changed since we first tried the case," Seiler said. "It would be fair to say that Savannah has a class of people who cling to historical places and issues and protect it jealously, and I'm glad they do. Unlike other sleepy Southern cities that grew up fast, we've grown slowly since 1733."