Friday, Nov. 28, 2008

Yes, we get sports and murder cases

A friend recently asked me, seriously, if I got football in McClellanville.

That's the way he put it: Do you get football in McClellanville?

Yes, I assured him, we get football. We get it on the, whatchacallit, the television. Heck fire, some of us even have indoor plumbing.

As of last Tuesday, I could add one more thing: A prominent spot on the police blotter.

On that day, at about the time I was teeing off with the Grand Strand Swingers at Farmstead Golf Club in Calabash, about eight police cars were pulling up in front of my home in McClellanville.

No, I had not taken a chainsaw to one of the village's sacred live oak trees or started shooting mosquitoes with a 12-gauge. Fact is, they weren't looking for me.

They were there to arrest my next-door neighbor, Keri Pope, and charge her in the 2003 slaying of her husband in Georgetown.

I heard about the incident later in the day from other neighbors - as in "Do we have a news story for you!" and "You can put this one in big headlines!" - then confirmed it in The Sun News.

Here I thought I was living the quiet life in McClellanville when actually I was living next to a woman who police say killed her husband.

Apparently, she was believed to be so dangerous it took about a dozen officers from Georgetown and Charleston County, every one of them brandishing a weapon, to place her in handcuffs.

Sheez.

Pope had only lived there for about a month. I had never met her, but we waved at each other once as she passed in her black station wagon. No big deal. Everyone in McClellanville waves.

The place she was living in was a small, one-story rental property that had been vacant most of the summer.

Actually, we had more trouble with the last tenant. She had a dog named Georgia that proved something of a nuisance. It barked, usually aggressively, when anyone passed the home. Once, when my wife lost a shoe, she found it in the tenant's backyard.

According to the manager of the property, Keri Pope had a tanning salon in Mount Pleasant. Her child often stayed with grandparents in Georgetown, and she thought McClellanville was a good midway point to live.

That sounds good, but now I'm wondering if she thought McClellanville was an even better place to hide out, a place where no could ever find you.

I could understand that. Not many people have found me since I moved to McClellanville last year.

Then again, they may not realize I get football down here.