More than four years have passed since that night when life as Kevin Graham Jr. knew it changed irreversibly. The Ladonia, Ala., boy lost his older sister to a gruesome shooting, and just days later his mother was jailed on capital charges she enlisted a hit man to execute her own daughter.

“My first thoughts were, ‘This can’t really be happening,’” Graham, now 13, recalled recently. “When my mom went to jail, I did not see that one coming.”

Graham and other family members return regularly to a white cross that marks the site of the slaughter. A serene Russell County countryside offers a degree of solace, and at times an eerie quiet interrupted only by a rustling in the trees. It’s here along bumpy Bowden Road that law officials in July 2007 recovered the bullet-riddled body of 20-year-old Shea Graham in the southernmost reaches of their jurisdiction.

The gunshots that rang out that night are still reverberating in the scarred lives of a family that has sought closure and says it has received little help from the courts. The victim’s mother, Lisa Graham, and the alleged gunman, Kenneth R. Walton, have been awaiting trial for more than four years on capital murder charges.

Both have pleaded not guilty and face a possible death penalty if convicted, prosecutors said.

A number of factors, including the renovation of the historic Russell County courthouse, have repeatedly delayed the case. Local judges have ruled that the county’s makeshift court facility -- a former library -- is unfit to accommodate capital cases.

But the wait has been excruciating for members of the Graham family on both sides of the iron bars.

“She’s in jail but this family’s in prison,” said Cherie Crabb, who straddles the unusual position of being the grandmother of the victim and mother of the accused. “We can’t move forward because we don’t know what to expect. I can’t take another year of not knowing.”

The charges against Lisa Graham are of the most serious in nature. Though they insist she is innocent, family members recognize the possibility the jury may not send her home.

Court documents show Walton has confessed to the shooting and also implicated Lisa Graham, though defense attorneys say his story changed considerably over the course of a few hours. It’s unclear whether Walton will testify against Lisa Graham, who will be tried first, but court documents show his attorneys discussed a plea offer with him as recently as April.

Prosecutors have said they plan to use incriminating statements Lisa Graham allegedly made during an interview with investigators, and when she was speaking privately to her husband at the Sheriff’s Office but being recorded. Defense attorneys have sought to exclude those statements, claiming Lisa Graham was not fully advised of her rights.

Investigators said they have evidence the two conspired in the days before the shooting. In pre-trial hearings, they’ve testified about a possible motive, too, saying Lisa Graham had grown tired of her daughter’s drug use and feared she was going to jump bail on charges she faced in a drive-by shooting in Columbus.

“Lisa Graham is one of the hardest persons I have ever talked to in my life,” Russell County Sheriff’s Office investigator Grover Goodrich said during a preliminary hearing in 2007, according to a transcript. “She was very difficult in getting a straight answer to anything because I think she was trying so hard to cover up everything.”

Friends and family members interviewed this month said Lisa Graham had a “love-hate” relationship with her daughter that had its ups and downs. But many people close to her say they cannot believe she would have gone as far as the authorities say she did.

“I really honestly don’t think Lisa was capable of anything to that extent,” said David Harvey, 16, a family friend. “You hear about things like this on TV but you never think that this can strike so close to home. I feel like it has really affected the neighborhood.”

Added Crabb: “Lisa and Shea, they fussed and they fought like mother and daughter do. But Lisa would have never hurt her. She’s never hit Shea in her life.”

But investigators have interviewed several people who said Lisa Graham frequently complained about her daughter’s lifestyle and spoke of wanting to kill her if she could get away with it, according to court documents. Goodrich traveled to Arkansas to interview one such family friend.

After four years of waiting, Lisa Graham may finally be within months of going to trial. District Attorney Ken Davis said last week her case will be the first capital murder trial to be held in the newly renovated courthouse, which still is expected to open this winter.

“The court has ruled that the our present facilities are not adequate for the trial from a security standpoint,” he said.

The shooting

At the preliminary hearing, Davis referred to Shea Graham’s shooting as perhaps the most heinous act he’d seen in more than three decades of prosecuting.

The shooting is believed to have happened before midnight on July 5, 2007. Court documents show Shea Graham was shot at least five times -- twice in the head and three times in the torso, according to the autopsy report -- and left bleeding on the side of Bowden Road.

A former Eufaula, Ala., police officer on his regular truck driving route told investigators he mistook the corpse for a deer carcass the first time he passed it. As he made his way back down Bowden Road, he got a clearer look at the body and called 911.

Shea Graham had no identification on her. Her family had reported her missing, however, and fingerprint analysis quickly identified the body.

Walton, who worked for Shea Graham’s father, quickly became a person of interest. Friends told investigators they had last seen Shea Graham getting into Walton’s truck at a gas station on Victory Drive in Columbus.

Walton initially denied leaving the gas station with Graham, court documents show, but he later acknowledged it after investigators told him they had triangulated his cell phone to the Bowden Road area around the time of the shooting.

Goodrich testified that Walton ultimately confessed to the shooting and even acted it out for Heath Taylor, the Russell County sheriff who was a lieutenant at the time. According to Goodrich, Walton said Lisa Graham had long asked him to “do something about Shea.”

“He said there was no specific amount of money,” Goodrich said at a 2008 hearing. “She said that she was going to take care of him. There were things that were going to be done.”

Investigators claim that Walton and Lisa Graham met at the Columbus Public Library on Macon Road shortly before the shooting, allegedly to discuss their arrangement. Though the defense has challenged whether this meeting in fact took place, authorities believe this also is when Walton retrieved Lisa Graham’s handgun, which he allegedly used in the shooting.

In the months before her death, Shea Graham had herself run afoul of the law. Family members said she had been hanging with the wrong crowd and using drugs.

Shortly before the shooting, Shea Graham was indicted in Muscogee County on four counts of aggravated assault in connection with a 2006 drive-by shooting in south Columbus. Prosecutors in Columbus alleged she drove past a crowd of people on Ginny Avenue. Stanley R. Heath, the passenger, has since pleaded guilty to firing into the crowd and striking one man in the shoulder. He’s serving a seven-year prison sentence.

Russell County investigators said Shea Graham had been expected to appear in court the morning after she was shot.

Bond dispute

At the time of Shea Graham’s death, then-Sheriff Tommy Boswell told the Ledger-Enquirer this case was unique among the murder-for-hires he’d worked in his many years behind the badge. “I’ve never seen one quite like this,” he said.

Another unusual development in the case happened last September. Many suspects charged with capital murder are denied bond because they are considered flight risks. Lisa Graham initially had been denied bond as well, but she was granted a $2 million bond after a hearing last September.

She had been poised to post the bond and be released pending trial. Taylor, however, declined to accept bonds written for Lisa Graham by AAAa Bonding Co. of Opelika, Ala. The sheriff, who didn’t return a call seeking comment last week, said in court documents that the company does not have the assets to cover the bond.

The owner of the company represented he had more than $5 million in assets, Taylor said in court documents. But he said those are personal assets not subject to forfeiture, and that the company’s qualifying power of attorney specifically limits its bonds to $150,000.

The bondsman who wrote Lisa Graham’s bonds has disputed that but asked not to be quoted. Lisa Graham, meanwhile, has filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus seeking relief from the court.

Learning to cope

At 9 years old, Kevin Graham Jr., or “Boo” as he is called, may have been too young to grasp the depth of the tragedy when his sister was shot and his mother went to jail. Unfamiliar with the criminal justice system, he recalled thinking the ordeal would take six months at the longest.

After the September bond hearing, he began to get his hopes up that his mother could be coming home. But he’s learned to temper his expectations.

“It be extremely nice” if she were released, he said.

Family members say Kevin Graham has become withdrawn since the shooting. He’s often teased at school about his mother’s incarceration, and he failed the seventh grade this year.

He said he hit a boy in the jaw one day who was “talking about my momma.”

“He’s just not a normal little boy any more,” Crabb said through tears. “You never see him smile or laugh any more. He’s in his own little world.”

Eric Harvey, 15, a friend who says he’s more like a brother, said he’s tried to distract Kevin Graham at times by playing video games with him and working on projects. They also stop by the white cross some days on the way to and from their summer jobs.

“Every now and then, he’ll look up at the rebel flag that used to be his sister’s that’s hanging on the window and say, ‘You know, I miss Shea a lot,’” he said. “And he’ll start tearing up a little bit.”

Visits to the jail have become overbearing for Kevin Graham, so he rarely goes any more. Lisa Graham still receives regular visits, however, from Warren H. Thompson, a Ladonia octogenarian who helped raise her.

“It’s hard for me to fathom what has gone on,” Thompson said in an interview in his living room. “It has had an awful impact on our family.”

Thompson also spoke of the financial strain. He lives off Social Security checks and increasingly struggles to afford the cost of receiving Lisa Graham’s calls from jail.

Thompson, a devout Christian, finds strength to move forward in his faith. Though his memory is fading, one thing he says he won’t forget is that Shea Graham appeared to be trying to turn her life around right before she died.

He said she was baptized about two weeks before the shooting.