If you go to Screven, Ga. between Waycross and Jesup, turn left and continue on about nine miles you will come to the Reedy Creek Restaurant. I have not been there since the ’90s, but the dining then was like so many other hideaway type restaurants – excellent.

I am not much into chain restaurants so Reedy, like so many others I have found in South Georgia, are like finding little treasures tucked away in the woods. Other restaurants I include on this list are Ray’s Millpond Catfish House (Ray City), Jernigan’s (west of Lenox in Colquitt County), Speed’s (Shellman Bluff on the coast), Buccaneer (near Darien) and there was a restaurant called Blueberry Hill between Waycross and Hoboken but I am not sure if it is still there. In north Georgia near Clayton, there is a restaurant that only opens when the man who owns it goes in to cook. He calls a few people to let them know it is open and what’s on the menu. By night fall there is not an empty space in the parking lot.

Reedy Creek sits on a green pasture inside a fence built for cows. The building is built of original barn wood … no paint on any outside board. When I was there you parked on the grass … no paved parking lot at this restaurant. This is pretty standard for my favorite places. Ray’s has a paved parking lot and Speed’s is a double-wide trailer but past that, they all give to their visitors a unique and memorable experience.

There is one major difference between Reedy Creek and all the others – its owners were brutally murdered in 1986 in their home across from the restaurant. Reedy is located on Clifford Jones Road. Mr. Jones, 48, his wife, Nina, 47, and their son, Gerald, 14, were killed during an early morning break-in. Their only other child, a daughter, was not at home when her family was slaughtered. Her father was stabbed, beaten and shot six times. Her mother, while sleeping, was shot three times and her brother, who woke up when the father was being confronted, was beat with a pistol, stabbed in the back and shot.

Two brothers, Larry and Bruce Lee, along with Bruce Lee’s wife, Sherry, came to the Jones home in search of money from the restaurant. They got only $1,500. Two months later, a Glynn County man was killed in a home invasion by the same trio. Bruce Lee was also killed. Sherry Lee has since died.

Larry Lee, who was not the shooter in the Glynn death, was given life and upon conviction for the Jones murders was given the death sentence. Twenty-years later a Tift County Judge has ordered a new trial for Lee through a standard death sentence appeal. He was assigned the case in 1998.

Lindsay Thomas, who served as congressman for the first district from 1983 to 1993 and who now lives in Atlanta but who still owns a home and farm in Screven, took up the fight against the judge and efforts for a new trial. In a letter to The Tifton Gazette this week, Thomas wrote: “He (the judge) has never looked in the face of Christi Jones (the Jones daughter) … he has never talked with Clifford’s brother, Gene, and seen the anguish on this good man’s face rekindled now by this recent ruling. No (this judge) has sat behind a desk and decided that he knows better than those who sat in the courtroom and listened to the evidence while they looked into the eyes of the accused.”

The Tift judge announced recently he is not seeking reelection and Thomas wishes the democratic process could have worked against him. Of the family, Thomas writes, “Most likely they will be compelled to, once again, look into the face of a man … still alive after his victims have been in their graves for 22 long years.”

The good memories Clifford Jones and his family wanted so much for Reedy Creek Restaurant continue to be haunted by a past that our legal system will not let die. The Jones family deserves better than this.