TIFTON — The author of “Burned: The True Story of the Sheila Bryan Murder Case” said the case that split Omega seven years ago seemed the natural place to begin her true-crime writing career.

“I wanted to know what happened. There were two totally opposite verdicts,” Jana Cone said. “How can that happen? How did it happen? It intrigued me and I think it did a lot of people.

“I think I got the answer and it’s not an answer that is going to make a lot of people happy.”

Sheila Bryan was indicted Dec. 18, 1997 on charges of arson and murder for the Aug. 18, 1996, death of Freda Weeks, her 82-year-old mother.

With Weeks as a passenger, the vehicle Bryan was driving that Sunday morning left Livingston Bridge Road in Colquitt County, traveled down an embankment and burned.

After a week-long trial in August 1998, the jury found Bryan guilty of murder and arson. She was sentenced to serve a life sentence plus 20 years, but the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the conviction. Bryan’s second trial began on Jan. 24, 2000.

Cone, a journalist with a criminal justice education degree, contracted with Thomson South Georgia to chronicle the second trial, held in Thomasville. Her feature stories appeared in several area newspapers, including The Tifton Gazette, The Moultrie Observer and The Thomasville Times-Enterprise. Without a laptop computer, Cone said she would take her trial notes and rush back to The Gazette to write the articles that would appear in the next day’s editions.

“The deadlines were very intense,” Cone said. “It’s not only the deadlines, but you certainly have more liberty to go into things in much more depth in a book.”

Bryan’s second trial lasted four days and on Jan. 28, 2000, after three hours of deliberating, the jury acquitted her on both counts. During the trial, Cone said the investigators, attorneys and others involved with

the case were not very forthcoming with information.

“Most everybody except Sheila ran as soon as I said hello,” Cone said.

“After the trial, most people are (more free) to speak their minds, but

they have to trust you. Building relationships doesn’t happen overnight.”

Cultivating trust meant hours spent in homes and offices visiting and

interviewing people, Cone said. Much of that trust, she said, was broken

with the airing of a story about the case on CBS’s 48 Hours.

“The show made a lot of people involved angry and distrustful,” Cone

said. “I’ve had the phone slammed in my face. The 48 Hours show was a

big obstacle for me.”

Cone believes the title of the book is appropriate because the story is

about an arson case and “a lot of people felt they got ‘burned’ during

the case.”

Cone said she went to great lengths to “get the book right” and used the

same unbiased perspective she used when writing the newspaper articles.

She allowed people mentioned in the book to assist in checking for

accuracy.

“After I got all those pages done, I either sat and read it to them or I

sent them the pages to read. I would ask them if it was accurate and

tell them to point out any mistakes,” Cone said. “I know in my heart of

hearts that when I say someone did something that the facts are as

accurate as we can get them.”

It took Cone two years to finish the book and another to find a

publisher. She doesn’t recommend new authors attempt the process without

an agent.

After negotiations between one publishing company and her agent fell

through, Cone said the Publish America group accepted the book for

publication.

“Publish America rejects 80 percent of the material sent to them,” Cone

said. “Those are the very best odds that a new author will get with the

company.”

“Burned” is available in bookstores in Tifton, Moultrie and Thomasville

and can also be found online. Now that Cone is an established author,

the publication of her second book might prove less difficult. Cone said

she is currently writing about the brutal 1984 molestation and murder of

a young Tifton girl.