At the age of 40 Susan Galbreath’s life had spiralled into a dull purposelessness, with no fixed ambitions, targets or goals. By the year 2000, she had two failed marriages behind her, one son, and had moved south from Chicago to Mayfield, Kentucky. Her third husband was an alcoholic and the marriage was in atrophy. She had not worked since an illness in 1998 and anyway had a background without any fixed skills or training. It was a dead end-life in a near dead-end town.

On the morning of August 1 she was having coffee in the local café and the waitress mentioned that a body had been found in the school playing fields nearby. It was a discovery that would change her life irrevocably.

“I believe nothing happens by chance. I’ve often ignored instinct and regretted it,” she says. “This time I let instinct lead me.” Her instinct – “I can’t tell you why” – was to go to see the body for herself.

What she saw defied reasonable description. A female black corpse, naked, horribly burnt and bloated, the face unrecognisable.

Susan Galbreath still does not comprehend what happened to her at that moment, but she experienced an epiphany. “Nothing prepares you for a sight like that. I started to cry. I should have been repelled and walked away but something led me there. It wasn’t all over when I saw the body. It was just beginning.”

She didn’t know who the dead girl was, she had never shown an interest in crime, but it was as if the spirit of the victim somehow entered her, eventually transforming her into an Erin Brockovich figure, quietly determined to expose something bad when all around her was incompetence and indifference.

Two days earlier, 18-year-old Jessica Currin had been walking home after a dullish Saturday evening at her friend’s house when she was stopped and given a lift in a car driven by Quincy Omar Cross, a 31-year-old layabout, serial hard-drug user and sexual offender. Also in the car, in a heavily drug-induced party mood, were four others – one man and three girls in their late teens.

Once she was inside the large, white, old Cadillac, Cross immediately began to sexually assault Jessica, aided by one of the girls. All four had been using cocaine, Ecstasy and alcohol. When Jessica resisted, Cross smashed a small baseball bat into the back of her head.

They went to one of the gang member’s homes in Mayfield and a furious sexual assault on Jessica followed. As he raped the young girl, Cross took his black braided belt off and held it around her neck. Jessica was mercifully unconscious for much of the attack, but for a moment she regained consciousness: “Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “I’ve got a little boy, Zion. Don’t do this to me. I want to go home.” Cross ignored her. After she died, several acts of necrophilia were performed on her by all four. When it was over, they took her body to the garage, dumped it, covered it in trash and continued partying.

The following evening, Jessica’s body was taken in the boot of the car and dumped on the playing fields of Mayfield Middle School. Petrol was poured over the corpse and it was burnt. The body was found on August 1.

Death in a small town

Mayfield. Population 10,000, one church for every 243 residents; General Tire, once the biggest employer, has long since left town; a huge Walmart has all but killed the few local stores; a handful of public canteens selling all-you-can-eat catfish and chicken and fries for a few bucks. A town without locus supporting a decent, God-fearing community on the Kentucky/Tennessee border, a town that gave more than most of its sons to the Iraq war, racially mixed but without racial tension.

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