Monday Mystery: Sometimes danger followed romance on Lovers Lane

It was about 2 a.m. on a clear, cold morning in January 1971 when Deputy Eugene Seigler Jr. spotted the Ford. Its windows had been shot out. The Richmond County sheriff's deputy patrolling a road called Lovers Lane east of downtown Augusta said the vehicle was parked beside the railroad track embankment.

Sitting on the ground with her back against the car was a woman later identified as Mary Paine, 27, of Beech Island. She'd been shot in the back, but was still alive.

She told Seigler she'd been sitting this way for hours, unable to move. The deputy radioed for an ambulance.

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Paine said she and a man she identified as her husband, Joseph Grant, 22, of North Augusta, had been in the car about five hours earlier when another vehicle drove up. Four men got out, wrenched open the Ford's door and began shooting. Paine said Grant pleaded with them to stop, but one said, "Kill them," and more gunfire followed.

Paine, who said she was in the rear seat, tried to get into the front, but was shot, wounded near her spine.

Grant bolted from the Ford and fled, but bullets followed into the dark and at least one found him. So did Seigler's spotlight several hours later. It showed the young man stretched unmoving across the railroad tracks. The deputy radioed for another ambulance.

Grant would be pronounced dead on arrival at University Hospital. Paine was listed in critical condition.

'Lovers Lane' assaults

In the weeks that followed no updates on the attack appear in the digital archives of the Augusta newspapers.

"Lovers Lane" assaults, however, would highlight regional and national crime news during much of the decade that followed. The most notorious was probably David Berkowitz, the admitted "Son of Sam" killer who stalked lovers lanes around New York City.

The search and eventual capture would be featured in newspapers across the nation, including the front pages of The Augusta Chronicle.

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In Atlanta, police would accuse the local newspaper of creating "widespread panic" with its 1977 accounts of a "lover's lane killer" in that city's southwest neighborhoods and public parks. Three people would be killed, others attacked and suspects arrested, then freed when evidence fell short.

One veteran detective called it "the biggest murder case in Atlanta in 25 years," and the city's public safety commissioner called catching the killer the "absolute, No. 1 priority."

It would be, too, until the "Missing and Murdered Children" case and its subsequent arrest and conviction of Wayne Williams in the early 1980s.

'Death Road'

Closer to Augusta, Aiken County would report a "lovers lane" shooting on Banks Mill Road in 1975 when a 23-year-old Aiken man was shot several times in the head while parked off the country road on a Friday night with his fiancée.

Back in Augusta it's still surprising that the shooting of Paine and Grant did not seem to attract interest.

Only 10 months before, a teenage girl and her boyfriend, had also parked on Lovers Lane and been surprised by four young men, who forced the boy into the trunk, then raped the girl, later letting her go.

There were other such incidents on Lovers Lane, whose isolated and romantic attraction dated back to the 1800s.

It was often the scene of not only assaults and robberies but such misfortunes as the unclothed couple overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning when they decided to keep the car motor running during a cold night's tryst.

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The latter probably inspired a Chronicle-published letter to the editor suggesting the name Lovers Lane be changed to "Death Road."

"Too many things have happened in this area," its author wrote. "People have been taken there to be robbed, beaten, raped and killed. Cars are found with dead people or persons half dead."

The letter's author suggested a name change would make the isolated location less enticing. Barring that, she called for more police patrols.

Both suggestions were too late for Joseph Grant and Mary Paine.

Bill Kirby has reported, photographed and commented on life in Augusta and Georgia for 45 years.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Monday Mystery: Lovers often sought dark, privacy, but so did criminals