The Sun Does Shine

On February 23, 1985, John Davidson, the assistant manager of Mrs. Winner’s Chicken and Biscuits restaurant, is shot and killed in a robbery. The Birmingham Post Herald reports the story a few days later. Ray writes that he doesn’t know where he was that night because he doesn’t spend his days creating alibis for himself, but he has never eaten at that restaurant in Birmingham. There are no fingerprints or eyewitnesses at the scene—anyone could have done it. That person left with $2,200 and got away with murder.

In June, Ray turns 29 and he quits his job at the furniture store because he doesn’t want to work Saturdays. He wants to be able to take the day to help out his church and spend time with his mom, so he gets a job with a company called Manpower, which provides temporary labor to businesses around Birmingham. All he wants is to make a living, buy a car, and find a nice woman to fall in love with and marry. He thinks that the job at Manpower will allow him to figure out something else he might want to do—he even considers opening a restaurant.

On July 2, a gunman shoots and kills Thomas Wayne Vason in a robbery of a Captain D’s restaurant in Woodlawn. The homicide investigator notes similarities between this case and Davidson’s murder in February. Two days later, Ray celebrates the Fourth of July with his mom and Lester. He notes that the holiday is the biggest in Alabama, with parade floats, games, races, and strangers inviting each other in for food. Ray is happy—he has just started seeing a new girl named Sylvia—and he remarks to Lester that he feels like “anything is possible.”

On the night of July 25, Ray clocks into Bruno’s warehouse at 11:57 p.m. Like all the temporary workers, Ray checks in through a guard shack outside. Ray drives the forklift for about 10 minutes, and then he cleans the bathroom. He finishes this task around 2:00 a.m. and then takes a break for 15 minutes. After that, he works outside separating broken pallets from good ones, has his lunch at 4:00 a.m., cleans under a dumpster, and clocks out around 6:00 a.m.

That same evening, at a Quincy’s Family Steak House in Bessemer, a gunman shoots the assistant manager Sidney Smotherman in the head. However, Smotherman survives his wounds and reports what happened to the police. He describes his assailant as Black, 5-foot-11, 190 pounds with a mustache. The homicide detective in the Captain D’s case is working with the detective from Bessemer.

On July 31, 1985, Ray is mowing the lawn in his front yard before church when two white policemen arrive on his back porch. Ray doesn’t run or resist them as they pat him down and cuff him—he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong. He quickly tells his mom that he’s going to jail, but he assures her that he didn’t do anything. The police then search his car and bedroom while Ray’s mother starts crying. He assures her that everything is going to be okay.

On August 2nd, an article appears in the Birmingham Post Herald describing how Ray has been charged in the Bessemer robbery and shooting. Smotherman identified Ray as the man who shot him, and police recovered a .38-caliber pistol from Ray’s home that matched the bullets. The article reports that Ray has also been connected to the other two robbery-murders and that Ray has been transferred from the Bessemer City Jail to the Jefferson County Jail.