May 22nd, 1964, at 2 a.m. at the state line between McNary, Tennessee and Alcorn, Mississippi.

Two of the poorest, most rural counties you can find in America.

And yet, for almost two solid decades, this stretch of Highway 45 has been controlled

by one of the most brutal criminal organizations in the American South.

Dotting it are all manners of bars, jukebox joints, dance halls, and motels,

where one can find any manner of vice. Booze, even though the region is dry,

working women, gambling, drugs, whatever you want, it's for sale. And that includes local law enforcement.

Running these rackets, the king and queen of the area, are a couple named Jack and Louise

Hathcock. They open up their first restaurant together in 1950 and advertise it as a place

to get good southern home cooking. But that's just to lure unsuspecting travelers in,

because the thing is, running the racket straight up, it's just not enough for them.

They are greedy, and they need to fleece and hustle every farmer and truck driver coming through.

Whether it's on rigged card games, fix dice, or just having one of their

working girls pickpocket, a drunken tourist in over his head. And anyone who wises up to the

hustle maybe starts complaining about getting ripped off, they get dealt with. Usually it's a beating,

but sometimes it's a bullet to the back of the head and a body dumped into the river.

The two of them have a whole army of goons to do their bidding if need be, and the cops in the

area, either scared or on the take, and the few that aren't. Don't expect to get anything

through the courts when witnesses have a bad habit of contracting sudden amnesia. In nearly two decades, they've run every degenerate scam and scheme you can think of

with their minions. But the thing about scumbags is, eventually, they always turn on each other.

Louise, she's been stepping out on Jack with a young, slick-talking, sociopathic outlaw

named Carl Toad White.

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