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 El Cannon 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

sleeping 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, I mean, just feeling sorry for myself.

In the weeks after his arrest, Aaron had clammed 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.

Comments 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 Karam. 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

...