Beth Henley's mother killed; suspected arrested (Mississippi playwright's mom)

Clarion Ledger (Liar) ^ | 10-24-02 | Kiely

[wardaddy]

Longtime Mississippi stage actress Lydy Caldwell, mother of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley, died today after being assaulted during a break-in at her northeast Jackson home.

Police arrested a suspect in her death shortly after 8 a.m. and charged him with capital murder.

[wardaddy]

I just browsed the LIAR to see how they would "whitewash" the sniper news and came across this senseless tragedy. My old hometown has sunk to a level of depravity that no one could have imagined 20-30 years ago. Avondale was and still is basically a very nice street in a nice part of town but the "hood" has been encroaching steadily.

Guess Willy never knew some of the Henley's family were prominant civil rights workers in the 50s and 60s. Wonder how Jackson will classify this murder to skew their stats?....armed trespassing resulting in accidental death at hands of oppressed perp.....

Hellbound train stops for nothing...gotta love the "New South"

[Thebaddog]

I'm loving your eclectic style, but this one is getting away from my Midwest Fighting Whitey peabrain. But I also gotta tellya, yer wife is a babe in your bio.

[solo gringo]

Jackson was my home long time ago.Worked for ritter grocery co and yager food stores also jitney jungle food stores. went to milsaps for a short while.Jackson was a neat city and enjoyed by everyone.Very few problems then ,but now it is a tough town to bad.

[wardaddy]

Yes it's gone to hell in a bucket much like Memphis, Little Rock etc.

Shame...anyone with any money leaves to get out of town....except the naive, idealistic or those who can't afford otherwise.

The McCartys and Holmans of Jitney Jungle fame live in the neighborhood where this occured btw....some of them anyhow.

[sweet virginia]

Why!!!.....thank you very much Dog!....btw, my husband is eccentric not eclectic...lol

[solo gringo]

I Opened a store for jitney jungle in corpus christi,texas.Strange enough mr.ritter i worked for 10 years before was working for jitney as the franchise ad man. the store belong to the crites family of corpus christi.

[Hildy]

How awful. About Ms. Henley:

Elizabeth Becker Henley was born on May 8, 1952, in Jackson, Mississippi. Growing up, Henley always dreamed of becoming an actress. After graduating from highschool, she attended Southern Methodist University where she wrote her first play, a one-act entitled Am I Blue which was produced at SMU's Margo Jones Theatre in 1973.

Henley's first professionally produced play, Crimes of the Heart, was the co-winner of the 1979 Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. A black comedy about three sisters, one of whom has just shot her husband, Crimes of the Heart then moved to New York where it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of 1981.

Henley's other plays include The Wake of Jamey Foster (1982), Am I Blue (1982), The Miss Firecracker Contest (1984), The Debutante Ball (1985), The Lucky Spot (1986), Abundance (1990), Control Freaks (1992), Signature (1995), L-Play (1996), and Impossible Marriage (1998).

In addition to her stage plays, Ms. Henley has written a number of screenplays including the acclaimed film version of Crimes of the Heart which was nominated for an Academy Award and featured Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, and Sam Shepard. Other screenplays by Henley include Miss Firecracker starring Holly Hunter, Mary Steenburgen, and Tim Robbins, and Nobody's Fool starring Rosanna Arquette and Eric Roberts. She also collaborated on True Stories (1986) with Steven Trobolowsky and David Byrne, the lead singer of the Talking Heads who directed and starred in the film.

[wardaddy]

Unfortunately this type of barbarity is more and more common in Jackson these days. A few years back, a "raiding party" of gangstas invaded a home in NE Jackson (the nicer part of town) while a wedding party was underway and robbed everyone and raped several of the girls and shot several of the men.

My aunt lived two doors down from Mrs. Caldwell on Avondale until her own death from natural causes several years back. Everyone I know in the Jackson Metro area now carries a pistol...all the time. My grandmother shot at a black man on her door stoop around 10 years ago. She had a house in the hood...she had refused to move. A black policeman who lived next door heard the shots and ran over to help her drag the man inside the doorway just in case. The perp survived. He was drunk and banging on the wrong door..lol. When my then 83 year old granny fired her 1911 over his head he had fainted from fright.

Now, that part of town is very very bad. The black cop got out and my grandma's passed on. The cop made detective later I heard...a good man. Unfortunately not enough like him to stem the tide.

[cricket]

Very sad story. . .

. . .time for these cities to think of 'Guilanni' style governance and clean-up. . .and see Liberalism as a 'death wish'. . .

[oyez]

I used to hang out in Jackson when I could. The people used to be so doggone nice. Nobody worried about locking their doors. I lot of tragedy has passed down the Pearl since those days.

FWIW, I hope the perp gets the gas chamber.

[cricket]

[Henley's first professionally produced play, Crimes of the Heart, was the co-winner of the 1979 Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. A black comedy about three sisters, one of whom has just shot her husband, Crimes of the Heart then moved to New York where it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of 1981. ]

Police arrested a suspect in her death shortly after 8 a.m. and charged him with capital murder.

Crimes of the Heart; . . .a 'black comedy about three sisters, one of who has just shot her husband'

"C.C. Henley's son, Craig Geno, 17, was shot execution-style in 1996 at a home in northeast Jackson.

Difficult sometimes, to separate fiction from one's reality. . .

[wardaddy]

Everywhere I 've been in the world with similar demographics and social ills (I know I know I sound like a liberal) has basically the same problems with rampant crime and decaying neighborhoods and infrastructure.

I've seen approximately 100 sq miles of greater Jackson go from working class white and black and even professional class white and black to "Cabrini Green" style desolation and ravage. It's incredible. The NE sector has held to a degree but they do so at peril.

I lived in Manhattan in the 80s. Guiliani would be a good start but Jackson is now 75% South Bronx style decay. I don't think Guiliani could have fixed NYC were it 75% South Bronx or Bed Sty.....nice thought though....

Some cities decline to East St Louis levels and simply reach bottom and stay there. A large swath of Mississippi's capital has already done that....I don't see a comeback anytime soon....especially when the city is now run by folks not much better than the thugs who commit the crimes.

It is truly 3rd world. It would be Kingston were it on the water.

[wardaddy]

It is very very bad these days oyez. Aside from my aunt who had lived on Mrs. Caldwell's street, I also have a first cousin who lives on an intersecting street.

Several years ago, I was there for a funeral. I have 100s of kin in the Jackson area and The Delta and the Meridian area. Anyhow after a family gathering on the city's western border in Clinton (which is fairly safe) myself and my brother and 2 of my male cousins decided to drive thru town on Clinton Blvd. and Capital St to our hotel (The Residence Inn near the Coliseum downtown). We knew we were going straight thru what was by then gangstaland at midnight but said what the hell...it's our hometown, we aren't gonna just roll over. We were not armed. When we passed in front of the zoo on Capital, we were suddenly surrounded by Jackson Police and Hinds County tactical cops all dressed in black with some very nice black guns...Car-15s and whatnot. There was also the ubiquitous helicopter overhead with it's lights all over us. All the cops were black of course and when they saw us they all started laughing and were amazed. There had been a multiple homicide drive-by nearby and the cops were stopping all Jeeps (like we were in) looking for the perps. They had a gunpowder sniffer they waved in the window all the time bearating us for being the dumbest assed white boys they had seen in awhile. They warned us that for us to drive thru that part of town at night was absolute lunacy given our race. They were quite frank and pointed out to us that our hometown was not the same place we had grown up in.

When I was a boy in the 60s and 70s, I could and did go anywhere in town anytime with no fear of safety from black juke joints on Farrish street to after hours liquor booths off Lynch.....with impunity/

That's all gone now. Jackson now has the peculiar habit of labeling armed home invasions as "armed trespassing" to skew their crime stats...lol

Pearl is still fairly safe and you know why. Armed redneck central except nearer Brandon or the Resevoir where it gets a bit more posh.

[cricket]

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. . .

["I don't see a comeback anytime soon....especially when the city is now run by folks not much better than the thugs who commit the crimes."]

. . .well, of course, there has 'always been crimes committed by those in power' - a little 'liberal smoothee' here as well :^)

. . .and you are right about the thugs today; en masse and et al for that matter. . .

Of course, see Liberalsim as the root of all the problems and as the carrier of the malignant social ills that we now face .

Trying times. . .incredible challenges. . .

[wardaddy]

No doubt.....liberalism is a ruination and fraught with uintended consequences.....particularly for those it purports to help.

[cricket]

"No doubt.....liberalism is a ruination and fraught with uintended consequences.....particularly for those it purports to help."

". . .liberalism is a ruination and fraught with uintended consequences.....particularly for those it purports to help."

Really, this would make a great 'trailer' running under every Repub campaign ad'/TV spot. . .

and bumper sticker. . .and. . .well, it just cannot be said often enough. . .

. . ..liberalism is a ruination and fraught with uintended consequences.....particularly for those it purports to help."

. . .

[wardaddy]

Thanks.....you've made my night.


Maybe one day John Huang2 will recognize my genius..lol

One can hope right?

[cricket]

[Thanks.....you've made my night. . .Maybe one day John Huang2 will recognize my genius..lol. . .One can hope right?]

. . .gotta have hope, always !(lol). . .and a gentle reminder from 'wardaddy'". . .liberalism is a ruination and fraught with uintended consequences.....particularly for those it purports to help."

[prplhze2000]

If I remember right, the Geno case involved drugs. It wasn’t random.