Jake’s Mountain Road

In the interest of keeping the followers of this blog informed, I want to announce that there is another book out now about Leigh.  A friend from Boone, Wayne Clawson, has written and published a book entitled “Jake’s Mountain Road: The Murder of Jeni Gray, the Kidnapping of Leigh Cooper and the Trial of Daniel Brian Lee.”  Wayne worked in the Development Office at Appalachian State University for many years and still lives in the Boone area.  He actually drafted a book several years ago, but dropped the project for awhile.  He recently picked it up again and published about a month ago.

As you might guess from the extended title, this book concentrates on the period of 1989-90, from the kidnapping and murder of Jeni Gray through the trial.  It focuses more on the trial and the arguments over whether Daniel Brian Lee should have received the death penalty (which he did) or life imprisonment.  Wayne doesn’t say this, but I suspect he is not an advocate for the death penalty.  A strong case was made by the defense team at trial that a brain aneurysm affected Daniel Lee’s personality and should have mitigated against the death penalty.  The prosecution argued that this crime was so heinous that the death penalty existed for just such crimes as this.  That was never a strong issue with Leigh or anyone else in our family, as we knew Daniel Lee would never get out of prison based on the minimum sentences he would have received for all the charges against him.

As most authors would do, Wayne took some “literary license” liberties with some of the  dialogue in his book, particularly the dialogue between Leigh and Daniel Lee, but nothing I can’t live with.  I’m not endorsing his book, but neither am I panning it.  I hope he does well with it.  I do want to make special note and express my appreciation that he indicated that the proceeds of the book will go to the Jeni Gray Scholarship Fund at ASU and the Leigh Cooper Wallace Scholarship Fund at Watauga High School.  “Jake’s Mountain Road” is available on Amazon in print and Kindle versions.