Because of the Hate

The Murder of Jerry Bailey

By: Kirk McCracken

Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies

Because of the Hate is the true story about the murder of Jerry Bailey, a beloved high school football coach in Oklahoma. In 1976, Jerry Bailey had resigned as the Sapulpa High School head football coach but was murdered by his assistant Paul Reagor, Jr. The audiobook goes into detail about the day the coaches went missing, the murder, the trial, and the fall out from it.

Five years removed from winning a state championship in Nowata, Jerry Bailey had ended his run as the head coach at Sapulpa and was ready to move on to another high school and another football team. However, Bailey and his assistant Reagor left school on a January morning and never returned. An exhaustive search eventually found both coaches the next day, but only one was still alive. Reagor was found inside of an abandoned farmhouse several towns away from Sapulpa, and Bailey was dead inside of the truck of Reagor's car. Why did Reagor kill Bailey? Why did they leave the school that day? The town of Sapulpa has never really discussed the murder out of respect for Bailey's wife and children. It left nothing but rumor, speculation, and questions, but now, over 40 years later, every question can be answered.

©2018 Kirk McCracken (P)2018 Tantor

Lost in the history

The author should have stayed with the actual story of the murder & less with statistics that had nothing to do with the story or murder & less history of townships, mascots, & less biography of all characters. Author gave far too many stats & too much history from the 1945's to fill pages, he should have stuck to the facts of the case & story.

Intriguing High School Coach Killing Another

Unfortunately there’s nothing intriguing or unusual in the story. I kept waiting for something unusual about for example the claim of insanity. Coach claimed insanity. Experts testified to different conclusions just as one would expect. Jury found coach guilty. Much trial transcript reading but entirely as one would expect. Nothing interesting there. An endless, pointless chapter about what happened later to people mentioned of no particular interest. Fortunately it was a short book. It was among my. free books. A good book to read to fall asleep with since the story line won’t keep you awake.

boring

this was like reading a high schoolers paper that they forgot to work on until the last night so they just throw in as much random barely related stuff to make it the required length.

included in this book:
-extensive high school sports stats
extensive history/background of at least three small towns, not just the town the murder happened in or the victim &perp lived/worked in
-many different court transcripts read verbatim, at length
-SEVERAL obituaries of random people read IN FULL at the end....

I'm sure there's more but I've lost interest and can't wait to click "remove from library."