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On the morning of 16 July 1996, someone walked into a furniture store in downtown Winona, Mississippi, and murdered four employees. Each was shot in the head. It was perhaps the most shocking crime the small town had ever seen.

The killings rattled residents, and the pressure on investigators to solve the crime was intense. But initially they had little to go on. No one witnessed the murders, and the crime scene offered only a few clues. After a few months, investigators charged a man named Curtis Flowers with the murders. At the time, he had no criminal record, and his only connection to the murders was that he’d worked at the furniture store for a few days that summer.

What followed was a two-decade legal odyssey in which Flowers, who is black, was tried six times for the same crime – by the same prosecutor, a white man named Doug Evans. Flowers remains behind bars, though he’s maintained his innocence.

Reporters from American Public Media spent two years digging into the Flowers case. They found a town divided by race, and a murder conviction supported by questionable evidence.

Hosted and narrated by Madeleine Baran.