FORSYTH, Ga. — A courthouse is a staple in the community. It's where some of us get married and births and deaths are recorded. Justice is served and taxes are paid. They are buildings, but they house the histories of our community's most intense dramas.
Every Friday this month, Suzanne Lawler takes you into the hallowed halls of four Central Georgia courthouses. This week -- we're headed to Monroe County.
The Monroe County Courthouse, in its high Victorian eclectic style, landed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1980. It was built in 1896 and rests on the highest piece of land in the county.
"As soon as they tore the old courthouse down, it took only about 10 and a half months to completely build this courthouse," Commissioner Larry Evans said. "If you notice the clock tower, how high it is, I cannot figure out how they did it. I just think it was an incredible accomplishment."
Evans says he's roamed the courthouse halls since he was a kid.
"When you walk in here, you're walking back in time," he said.
Speaking of back in time, Evans says in the 1920s, people would come to the basement. It's a law library now. A well supplied everyone with fresh water that they would pump and carry home.
"We cannot locate that well," he said. "It's as if a ghost came down here and stole the well."
You can't prosecute a ghost, but there are many trials of note that happened in this city center. One stands out.
"The most-famous trial was the Mercer students that were killed down in Juliette," Evans said.
That was in 1995. After two years, police cracked the case, when FBI Agent John Cook testified against his own son, Andy Cook. The younger Cook confessed the murder to his dad.
"I took what he trusted to me, and I went and told someone, and I knew that I was probably casting his fate, that it would be my words that would send him to the electric chair," said John Cook on the witness stand.
Andy Cook died by lethal injection in 2013.
"The square was filled every day during the trial," Evans said.
Those were dark days, but the courthouse saw better ones. It played a main role when Hollywood came calling for four films. The most recent debuted on Netflix, called 'Amazing Stories.'
What you see today is very reminiscent of what it looked like a hundred years ago. It's iconic to those who live here and a city center people in Monroe County feel proud to call their own.
PHOTOS | Monroe County Courthouse
Join us next week, Friday, November 8, to find out which Central Georgia courthouse we feature next.
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