Not long before before Paul died, he complained over his regular spaghetti and meatballs at Annie Moffitt’s restaurant that an intruder had been trying to break into his house for several weeks. The next week, Paul, eating at Annie’s, again complained to the sheriff about the intruder.

David was also voicing complaints about Paul around town, claiming Paul owed him money and had ripped him off after a job. “Paul didn’t pay them worth a damn,” remembered Mrs. Underwood. She recalled David complaining that after a day of hard work in the summer heat, Paul would give them $5 and a beer.

The latter was particularly unappreciated: According to Mrs. Underwood, David had quit drinking and didn’t want to encourage Cindy's drinking either. That, Mrs. Underwood contends, was the cause of Cindy and David's last fight: David smelled alcohol on her and “[s]he hit him first and he popped her on the mouth.” David was at a particularly low point last summer. Estranged from Cindy after she reported the assault to the police, he was terrified of returning to jail. Wallace Lester, who also tried to help David and Cindy, said one of the last times he saw him, David said he was losing his mind and was going to do something crazy. “He would come by and he would just be weeping,” Wallace said. "Some days I could help him out, and other days I couldn’t."

The last night of David’s life, July 15, he stopped by blues musicians Shannon McNally and Wallace Lester’s home. He was clearly agitated, and Shannon did some breathing exercises on the porch to try to calm him. Shannon watched him walk away down the road.

He went by Mrs. Underwood’s house. She was on the phone with Medicaid — “you don’t hang up on them” — and yelled for him to wait, but the call took over an hour. “When he couldn’t get me, he went to Paul.”

Around 10:40 p.m., David sat down on Paul’s porch. Clifford Yon, a neighbor, saw him sitting in the white rocking chair smoking a cigarette. Paul got up from watching television and came to the door.

In Paul’s version to the police and his lawyer, he heard a loud knock, followed by another, each knock increasingly louder. Then David kicked in the glass door. When Paul opened the door, David put his leg in the doorway and wouldn’t move. Paul asked David to leave, and he refused. He told him to leave again. David wanted $10, and Paul told him he didn’t have it. Paul said at this point David forced his way inside, and Paul went into the other room for his .45 Colt. He shot David once, close range and right in the heart. He took two photos of the blood stains on his floor, and went outside, knocking on a few neighbors' doors. When no one answered, he flagged down a man in a white Chevy pickup truck with tinted windows and told him to call the police. When the first police officer arrived, Paul was still on the street corner talking to the man.

Paul turned over his weapon — "don’t drop it,” he told the officer — and directed the officer to David’s body in the doorway of the house. The officer took David’s pulse; he was dead.

Tim Liddy, a local pharmacist and alderman, got a phone call at 1 a.m. to come pick up Paul at the police station. When Tim arrived, he asked Paul if he wanted to call a friend. “I already called a friend,” Tim recalled Paul saying. “I called you.” Tim drove him home and told him he needed an attorney. “You are a celebrity, and once this hits the media...” But Paul was more concerned with getting the glass on the front door replaced.

The next morning, Tim couldn’t get Paul to answer the door. Annie joined Tim, and Paul finally answered. “He was shaky,” Annie said. “He was all bent out of shape.” Tim offered him a room at his bed-and-breakfast on the square, but Paul refused. “I had to come back,” Paul told Annie. “I was afraid if I didn’t come back that I would never come back again.” Annie pressured Paul to go to the hospital, but Paul refused. Tim called local lawyer Phil Knecht, and Bruce McMillan also came over to check on Paul. “He was talking out of his head,” Bruce remembers. "He wasn’t even talking about the shooting. He was talking about how you can’t get in touch with him because he didn’t have a phone." Cindy also came to Graceland Too at around 1 p.m., crying and wanting to see Paul. Annie and her sister disapproved of her being there and let her know it; Cindy quickly left.

As Phil questioned Paul on the porch, hecklers would shout at Paul from their car windows, “You’re going to prison!” Mississippi has a castle doctrine, a version of "stand your ground," meaning that a homeowner — the king — can use deadly force if threatened in his castle. Midway through his questioning, Paul told Phil they had to stop the meeting. “We can’t do this anymore,” Paul said. “We’ve got to give you a tour, you’ve never been here before.” Phil laughs remembering his response: “Paul, I’d love to, but right now you could be facing a murder charge.”

Paul insisted, and gave Phil a tour, his last one. They spoke for an hour longer, and Phil left and prepared a press release. That night, he told reporters that Paul was “too shook up” over the shooting to give comment.

Annie went back to check on Paul at around 4:30 p.m. with her sister. They pressured him to go to the hospital, but he resisted. “I just need a little bit of rest,” Paul said. “I haven’t been to sleep.” That night he walked onto his porch, locking the door behind him. “I think he was going to get help," Annie said. "And he sat there in that rocking chair and died."

The coroner confirmed to me that they ran a full toxicology report — though failed to provide it — and held that Paul died of natural causes. After a grand jury hearing this fall, prosecutors decided to not pursue the case, clearing Paul legally. Phil told me it's "very rare" that a dead person is tried.