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Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption
The haunting true story of a triple murder in the Ozarks, two lovers on the lam, and a death-row inmate saved by the pope.
On a spring day more than ten years ago, sixty-nine-year-old Lloyd Lawrence was gunned down in rural Missouri. The shooter also turned his twelve-gauge shotgun on Lawrence’s wife and their paraplegic grandson. The crime took place in a region known mostly for Pentecostal fervor, country music, and family-friendly tourism. But soon the murders would expose a dark underbelly in the Lloyd Lawrence was a notoriously violent crystal-meth kingpin, killed by an aspiring drug dealer named Darrell Mease.Capturing the raw circumstances that took Mease from his clean-cut youth to the front lines of Vietnam and an aftermath of drug use, Almost Midnight unites an unforgettable range of characters in some of America’s most peculiar locales. When Mease and his girlfriend fled to the Southwest on a hair-raising road trip, this only brought Mease closer to death row. After his conviction, he claimed to receive a religious revelation guaranteeing that his life would be saved by miraculous intervention, a long-shot prediction that came true. A bizarre twist of fate brought Pope John Paul II to Saint Louis, where he pleaded with Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan to commute the sentence just months before Carnahan’s fatal plane crash. In a triumph of investigative journalism, Michael Cuneo gained unprecedented access to Mease and immersed himself in the culture of the Ozarks, exploring its bucolic farms and seedy strip joints, and the lives of its preachers, cockfighters, and outlaws. By turns chilling and riveting, Almost Midnight brilliantly evokes the life of controversial renegade Mease, and the stranger-than-fiction world he still inhabits.
On a spring day more than ten years ago, sixty-nine-year-old Lloyd Lawrence was gunned down in rural Missouri. The shooter also turned his twelve-gauge shotgun on Lawrence’s wife and their paraplegic grandson. The crime took place in a region known mostly for Pentecostal fervor, country music, and family-friendly tourism. But soon the murders would expose a dark underbelly in the Lloyd Lawrence was a notoriously violent crystal-meth kingpin, killed by an aspiring drug dealer named Darrell Mease.Capturing the raw circumstances that took Mease from his clean-cut youth to the front lines of Vietnam and an aftermath of drug use, Almost Midnight unites an unforgettable range of characters in some of America’s most peculiar locales. When Mease and his girlfriend fled to the Southwest on a hair-raising road trip, this only brought Mease closer to death row. After his conviction, he claimed to receive a religious revelation guaranteeing that his life would be saved by miraculous intervention, a long-shot prediction that came true. A bizarre twist of fate brought Pope John Paul II to Saint Louis, where he pleaded with Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan to commute the sentence just months before Carnahan’s fatal plane crash. In a triumph of investigative journalism, Michael Cuneo gained unprecedented access to Mease and immersed himself in the culture of the Ozarks, exploring its bucolic farms and seedy strip joints, and the lives of its preachers, cockfighters, and outlaws. By turns chilling and riveting, Almost Midnight brilliantly evokes the life of controversial renegade Mease, and the stranger-than-fiction world he still inhabits.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 9, 2016
I know that if you haven't read this book yet then I would like to say run and get your book now for it is that good. I actually found this book on my overdrive app from the library while searching for another book and I'm glad I did read it...
This is based on true events that happened in and around the Ozarks of Missouri and not to far from where we live as a matter of fact. I have always enjoyed reading books that take place in or around our area and with this one it sure hit the spot.
This is based on true events that happened in and around the Ozarks of Missouri and not to far from where we live as a matter of fact. I have always enjoyed reading books that take place in or around our area and with this one it sure hit the spot.
February 25, 2015
Almost Midnight, by Michael W. Cuneo, is a well researched investigative documentary centering on a little known local boy turned outlaw whose execution is miraculous commuted by intervention from Pope John Paul II and Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan.
For anyone outside the southwest Missouri Ozarks, or not an advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, this journalistic gem might go unnoticed. Having lived in Greene, Taney and Stone Counties, where much of the saga unfolds, I found it intriguing.
Pentecostal reared, backwoods country boy, Darrell Mease, returns from Viet Nam addled by paranoia, alcohol and drugs, then by default or choice ends up working for local methamphetamine drug lord Lloyd Lawrence. Feeling betrayed and used by Lawrence, and with a $10,000 bounty on him imposed by Lawrence, Mease plots and carries out the cold blooded execution of Lawrence, Lawrence's wife and disabled grandson.
On the lam with his accomplice girlfriend Mary, they roadtrip through the southwest United States eventually being caught and returned to southwest Missouri to stand trial. Mease is convicted of first degree murder, placed on death row and issued an execution date of January 27, 1999, coincidently the date Pope John Paul II, famously opposed to the death penalty, is to make an unprecedented visit to St. Louis. Had the State of Missouri deliberately tried to insult the Pope, they could not have done a better job. Then, feeling the need to reset Mease's lethal injection date, the Pope's attention was drawn to Darrell Mease. Mease who had early on had a jailhouse, born-again, religious experience and maintained God as his lawyer and that God would literally set him free!
So, prophet; divine intervention; conspiracy of circumstance? We are left to decide, while Darrell Mease remains incarcerated for life still waiting God to set him free.
For anyone outside the southwest Missouri Ozarks, or not an advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, this journalistic gem might go unnoticed. Having lived in Greene, Taney and Stone Counties, where much of the saga unfolds, I found it intriguing.
Pentecostal reared, backwoods country boy, Darrell Mease, returns from Viet Nam addled by paranoia, alcohol and drugs, then by default or choice ends up working for local methamphetamine drug lord Lloyd Lawrence. Feeling betrayed and used by Lawrence, and with a $10,000 bounty on him imposed by Lawrence, Mease plots and carries out the cold blooded execution of Lawrence, Lawrence's wife and disabled grandson.
On the lam with his accomplice girlfriend Mary, they roadtrip through the southwest United States eventually being caught and returned to southwest Missouri to stand trial. Mease is convicted of first degree murder, placed on death row and issued an execution date of January 27, 1999, coincidently the date Pope John Paul II, famously opposed to the death penalty, is to make an unprecedented visit to St. Louis. Had the State of Missouri deliberately tried to insult the Pope, they could not have done a better job. Then, feeling the need to reset Mease's lethal injection date, the Pope's attention was drawn to Darrell Mease. Mease who had early on had a jailhouse, born-again, religious experience and maintained God as his lawyer and that God would literally set him free!
So, prophet; divine intervention; conspiracy of circumstance? We are left to decide, while Darrell Mease remains incarcerated for life still waiting God to set him free.
July 13, 2021
This is a tough one as I couldn't decide between 3 and 4 stars. It's not really that long of a book, but something made it feel like I was reading it forever. There was a little too much detail into Darrell Mease's early life before the murder. There was so much that I never really got a good feeling what defined this guy; after all of it he remained a bit of an enigma. And something stated much later in the book made me wonder if any of the account was really true (can't really get into specifics).
I really thought going in that Pope John Paul took an interest in the case and there was a specific reason he wanted Darrell's life spared. Nope. Or if there was, it was never stated. It's a decent true crime book, and I give a mild recommendation.
I really thought going in that Pope John Paul took an interest in the case and there was a specific reason he wanted Darrell's life spared. Nope. Or if there was, it was never stated. It's a decent true crime book, and I give a mild recommendation.
May 16, 2014
Michael Cuneo masterfully takes this worldwide news story and humanizes it with indepth profiles of the principle characters. Beyond the "just the facts" stories in the media, Cuneo lays out the twists and turns of Mease's struggle with his own demons that seemed destine to seal his fate. The story is told against the backdrop of the isolated and sometimes dangerous Ozarks and its hardscrabble culture of poverty, crime and straight-laced take no prisoners Pentecostal religion. An amazing story.
August 9, 2012
Extremely well written, a hard-to-put-down kind of book. You feel like you are getting to know each character very very well.... made me want to meet Darrell and Mary.......
October 26, 2019
#59
Borrowed from library.
FS: "Deputy Jerry Doff of the Stone County Sheriff's Department was headed up Route 13 on a slow Sunday when the call crackled over the two-way."
LS: N/A
Borrowed from library.
FS: "Deputy Jerry Doff of the Stone County Sheriff's Department was headed up Route 13 on a slow Sunday when the call crackled over the two-way."
LS: N/A
May 8, 2018
Almost Midnight is a very readable true crime account and much more. In some ways, this tragedy could have been a Shakespearean play. In another way, it is a puzzle in which Cuneo prompts the reader to ponder the impact of war, the power of prayer, the politics behind the death penalty, the consequences of underemployment/poverty, the influence of environment, the separation of church and state, and so on. However all such issues are raised in a manner that does not turn the readers’ attention away from the drama unfolding in “the story” of Darrell, Mary, and Lloyd. Moreover, Cuneo raises the issues without insisting the readers all come up with the same answers or for that matter, tackle the issues at all. I am surprised (and relieved) that someone hasn’t turned this “story” into a movie. The book will stick with me.
February 24, 2020
Interesting read. All this happened before I moved to the Ozarks, although, I do remember his life being saved by the Pope. It has been and still is a tough area in parts of the Ozarks. We have come along ways but there is a long way still to go. One thing that I never quite understood is why Darrell's defense didn't focus more on his military service. He was definitely dealing with PTSD which led to his difficulty once he returned from his year in Vietnam. He was not a drug user or drinker until he was there. He came home and never left the life style that was adopted while he was there.
January 21, 2020
I was not sure what to make of this book. The title that said three brutal murders put him on death row... the pope's plea for mercy saved his life. Im still not sure the whole story. The murders were really gruesome. Why the pop stepped in and asked for him alone to be saved is hard to believe. The story ran on alot and seemed to just end abruptly.
January 22, 2020
I couldn't put this book down. I worked in the courthouse where the trial was held during those times, so I might be a little biased. There were very few auxiliary people I was not familiar with and, of course, the crime itself was big news. Having said this, I think the story would be of interest to anyone who is a fan of true crime as there were a lot of strange, extremely ironic twists.
May 2, 2018
True Crime
A good book, this one is well written and tells an interesting story. The book here is completely unexpected and surprising. I would think that any true crime fan will find it a good book to read.
A good book, this one is well written and tells an interesting story. The book here is completely unexpected and surprising. I would think that any true crime fan will find it a good book to read.
May 11, 2018
Enthralling
Very in-depth, easy reading. Detailed but easy to follow. You walk away with the feeling of having lived this as a witness to the story, whether as family, friend or relative.
Very in-depth, easy reading. Detailed but easy to follow. You walk away with the feeling of having lived this as a witness to the story, whether as family, friend or relative.
August 16, 2019
I don't know how I missed Darrell Mease's story when it happened. I guess I don't read the newspaper like I read books, but this book was fascinating. What a great cast of unusual people. The outcome demands some thinking about.
December 20, 2019
What a great book
This book really illustrates the damage a war does to the minds of young people and adding drugs into the mix really complicates things. Nothing good ever comes from illegal drugs.
This book really illustrates the damage a war does to the minds of young people and adding drugs into the mix really complicates things. Nothing good ever comes from illegal drugs.
August 4, 2019
The book was good but It didn’t talk much about the Murder or the crimes. But it was still interesting. It wasn’t my favorite book though.
March 22, 2017
Had paused this for awhile and finally finished it.
It was interesting to me as I lived in this area for awhile and knew some of the characters.
It was interesting to me as I lived in this area for awhile and knew some of the characters.
January 10, 2016
This author is great! The book is so well presented. There's no author ego. There is obviously a lot of research of not only the crime but also the local, the culture, the politics, the religiousness, etc. It is framed out so the reader feels the moment, the heat, the paranoia etc. It has to be one of the best true crime books I have read. I would live to have the author rewrite some of the crap written about some really great cases!
April 9, 2009
I read this because a friend I usually trust raved about it. It was the dullest book I've encountered in a long time--the true crime story about a murdered in Arkansas whose death sentence is commutued by the Gov at the request of Pope John Paul II. It reads like a journalist wrote it and my final thoughts were "who cares?"
May 26, 2012
This book is about murder but it reads like a fiction book not like other true crime books. I found myself wanting to get to the end to see if everything happened the way I wanted it to,
February 7, 2016
I read this book because it happened in the area around where I grew up. My friends knew Darrell's sons. I found the book interesting.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews