It was midnight when the bells of St. Michael's Church began peeling long and loud, ringing

in 2014. And all across the city of Charleston, glasses clinked and revelers smooched. Everybody

wishing one another a grand and glorious new year, full of hope and promise. Of course,

seasonal cheer was in short supply over at the Elcannon Detention Center. It was lights

out at the county jail, where Aaron Wilkinson stared into the darkness above him and listened

to the guttural sounds of the sweeping men around him and thought about the trial to come

that might keep him behind bars for a long, long time.

I guess I was kind of angry at God for just feeling sorry for myself.

In the weeks after his arrest, Aaron had clamped up. Instead of being rewarded for exposing

a murder plot, federal prosecutors made it clear they wanted Aaron to get serious prison

time for his role in the plot.

He was going to go to trial with everybody else. If he wasn't looking at a gun found in

his car, he wouldn't have said anything.

Just like that, upset Aaron no end. So now the way Aaron saw it, no immunity, no testimony.

He'd recant, he told them. He'd say his earlier statements to detectives had been made

while he was under the influence of heroin. If he revealed everything and still got a

long sentence on the gun charge, just no thought, Aaron. He'd take his chances in front

of a jury, thank you very much.

What must Chris Latham and Wendy Moore have been thinking, lying in their separate wings

of the big cowty jail, sloughing around on thin strips of foam over cold concrete benches?

If not for Aaron Wilkinson, they'd be snug in their big beach halves. Come fee on a fine,

thick mattress beneath 500 count linen sheets, drifting off to the rhythmic pounding of

...