The wife of a murderous preacher has described how she went from “living the American dream” with her family to her husband being convicted of the murders of two teenagers in 1999.
Twenty-five years after the killings, Jeanette McCraney spoke about the moment she learned the father of her two children was the prime suspect.
“I start calling him, there’s no answer, a couple of hours go by and my phone rings, and he (the police officer) says: Is this Mr. McCraney’s wife?” jeanette counts ABC 20/20 in a preview obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com ahead of Friday’s episode.
‘I said, “Has Colin been in an accident?” He said no. “I was like, ‘Okay, is he in trouble or something?’ I’m confused.” They said, “Yeah, he’s in big trouble.”
In March 2019, modern DNA evidence linked Alabama preacher Coley McCraney, now 49, to 1999 Tracie Hawlett and 17-year-old JB. Beasley.
The wife of a murderous preacher has described how she went from “living the American dream” with her family to her husband being convicted of the murders of two teenagers in 1999.
Twenty-five years after the homicides, Jeanette McCraney (pictured right) spoke about the moment she learned the father of her two children was the prime suspect.
In March 2019, modern DNA evidence linked Alabama preacher Coley McCraney, now 49, to 1999 Tracie Hawlett and 17-year-old JB. Beasley (pictured)
Jeanette’s life would never be the same. “I feel like we had it all together,” she adds in the clip.
The mother of two, who maintains Coley’s innocence and is by his side, said she was “living an American dream” in Dothan, Alabama, with her idyllic family life in 2019.
They appeared to be the model Christian family, with Coley working as a minister and truck driver at the time of his arrest.
“My kids are growing up in church,” Jeanette tells ABC News. “They’re watching their mom and her dad do the right thing.”
But not everything was as it seemed. Coley McCraney’s DNA matched samples found in Beasley in March 2019, and she would later stand trial for capital murder and rape.
The case dates back to July 31, 1999, when Beasley and Hawlett met to celebrate Beasley’s 17th birthday at a party in Headlands, Alabama.
But they never reached their destination. 20/20 also hears from the victims’ parents, who describe their last interactions and the nightmarish years since.
Hawlett’s mother, Carol Roberts, remembers how her daughter called her from a gas station in rural Ozark, Alabama, where the girls had stopped on their way to the party.
They had gotten lost and were wondering how to get to Hawlett’s house. But they never succeeded.
“We have addresses,” Roberts remembers her daughter telling her over the phone. ‘She didn’t speak as if something was wrong. There was no fear or anything in her voice. We said “we love you” and I went to bed.
The next morning, Roberts realized that her daughter had not returned home.
Coley McCraney’s DNA matched samples found in Beasley in March 2019, and he would later stand trial for capital murder and rape. (Pictured: McCraney arrest)
JB Beasley (pictured) was on her way to celebrate her 17th birthday when she was murdered.
Hawlett last spoke to her mother from the gas station hours before she was killed.
She called 911, and within hours, police discovered Beasley’s black Mazda sedan on the side of the road, less than a mile from the gas station.
Their bodies were found with gunshot wounds to the head inside the trunk, while their belongings, including bags, money and Tracie’s keys, were still inside the car.
“That crime scene, that trunk, those two girls is the only homicide where I turned around and had to walk away,” Barry Tucker, former police captain with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, tells ABC News.
“When you see innocence and a life that has just been taken, it’s hard to accept.”
For the next 25 years, detectives combed the southern state for clues about who killed the teenage girls, but to no avail.
In 2018, Ozark Police Chief Marlos Walker learned that new forensic genetic genealogy was being used to catch the Golden State Killer in California.
Walker sent DNA samples from the 1999 file to a lab in Virginia and five months later received results that matched a familiar name.
“I was looking at the list again, and when I saw the name McCraney, it caught my attention because I knew a McCraney in high school,” he reveals to ABC News.
When approached, McCraney voluntarily gave a DNA sample, and Walker was “blown away” when it matched the samples found on Beasley. He had never been a suspect.
On March 15, 2019, police arrested Coley McCraney and charged him with four counts of capital murder and first-degree rape. He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
“I was shocked,” Roberts says. “We’ve waited 24 years for this and finally someone is going to be held accountable.”
Coley McCraney’s DNA matched samples found in Beasley in March 2019, and he would later stand trial for capital murder and rape.
Pictured: The scene of McCraney’s arrest decades after the Alabama murders.
“When they read ‘Guilty,’ I fell forward and tears ran down my face,” Beasley’s mother, Cheryl Burgoon, tells 20/20. She described her daughter as a “beautiful gift.”
McCraney maintains that he had sexual relations with Beasley but did not kill the teens.
‘They can call me a cheater, they can call me a dog. You can call me a lot of things at that point, but you can’t call me a murderer,’ McCraney says in the phone interview with ABC News from his prison cell.
He has appealed the verdict and hopes to get a new trial. A ruling on this appeal is expected sometime this year.
ABC’s 20/20 airs Friday at 9 pm ET and will be available to stream the next day on Hulu.
