Crime

1960 Macon murder trial subject of new cable TV show

By AMY LEIGH WOMACK awomack@macon.com
Suzanne Doonan scans the walls of the Hart Mouseleum searching for the burial crypt of Chester Burge who was charged with his wife's murder in 1960 and dead himself less than three years later. His remains were brought to the building for interment under the cover of night, unceremoniously, and have never been marked.
Suzanne Doonan scans the walls of the Hart Mouseleum searching for the burial crypt of Chester Burge who was charged with his wife's murder in 1960 and dead himself less than three years later. His remains were brought to the building for interment under the cover of night, unceremoniously, and have never been marked. BEAU CABELL THE TELEGRAPH

Fifty-five years after Chester Burge was charged with killing his wife and sodomizing his chauffeur, his murder trial is the subject of a TV show set to air on cable next month.

Interviews with Bibb County State Court Judge Bill Adams, Macon historian Phil Comer and former Macon city councilman and author Rick Hutto will be featured in an episode of the series "A Crime to Remember," which will air on the Investigation Discovery network at 10 p.m. Dec. 8.

Adams' father, Charles Adams, represented Burge in the November 1960 trial that resulted in his acquittal.

"It was quite a story" when it happened, the younger Adams said. "It was a high-profile case. People still talk about it."

Hutto penned a book about the Burge case in 2010, "Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder And Madness In The Heart Of Georgia."

The show also will include a re-creation of the murder, Hutto said.

Mary Burge was found strangled in her bed May 11, 1960, at the Shirley Hills neighborhood home she shared with her husband, a then-56-year-old Prohibition-era whiskey runner who later worked in real estate.

Police ruled out robbery as a motive.

The Ku Klux Klan was suspected for a time, since the group had protested the Burges' renting homes in white neighborhoods to blacks.

Burge, who was hospitalized for a hernia operation at the time of his wife's death, was linked to the killing through a fingerprint on a closet door.

Although Burge lived in the house, a handyman claimed to have cleaned the door while Burge was in the hospital.

After being found not guilty in the murder case, Burge was convicted of sodomy that December. The conviction was overturned the next year, though.

He died days after being burned in an explosion and fire at his Palm Beach, Florida, home in 1963.

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398 or find her on Twitter@awomackmacon.

This story was originally published November 27, 2015 at 9:52 PM with the headline "1960 Macon murder trial subject of new cable TV show ."

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