Hearing date set for McGee

Edward McGee made his first Bedford County court appearance in 41 years Tuesday, as a preliminary hearing was set for the man accused of killing 9-year-old Deborah Ray in 1966.

McGee's next appearance will be on Thursday, Oct. 2 at 1 p.m. He is accused of murdering Ray on Dec. 18, 1966, and has already served more than 40 years in the murder that same day of 8-year-old Phyllis Seibers. The girls' bodies were found in a drainage ditch.

The two cousins had gone to the old city dump off Sims Road to look for discarded dolls, but never returned home. Autopsies performed at the time showed that both had died of blunt trauma to the head.

But while McGee was found guilty of the Seibers slaying in 1967, he never stood trial for Ray's death.

As members of the Ray and Seibers families tearfully looked on, McGee was escorted into the first floor courtroom to appear before Judge Charles Rich.

Since McGee has been behind bars for the past 41 years serving a 99-year sentence for the murder of Seibers, Rich said he assumed that McGee did not have an attorney, nor could he afford one.

---

---

McGee said that he couldn't, whereupon Rich said he would appoint counsel from the public defender's office.

Following that, McGee was escorted from the courtroom to a holding area upstairs, and then back to the Bedford County Jail a few moments later.

McGee was in court for a little over a minute. Members of the Ray and Seibers families had no comment for the media.

Due to a civil jury trial taking place in the large second floor courtroom, proceedings took place in the small first floor chambers. Rich called the General Sessions Criminal Court docket first, then the courtroom was cleared and family members of both victims filled the benches.

Det. Lt. Pat Mathis of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Shelbyville Police Department said McGee was granted a mandatory parole on Tuesday, Aug. 12. McGee's sentence ends on Feb. 12, 2009, according to the Tennessee Felony Offender Information Lookup website.

However, Det. Sgt. Jason Williams filed a first degree murder warrant against McGee for the Ray slaying on Aug. 11. Williams and officer James Wilkerson have also been working on the McGee case, Mathis said.

"We did that (filed the detainer warrant) in order to hold him so he wouldn't get back in with the public," Mathis said two weeks ago.

"There was pretty much an outcry from a lot of people that justice needed to be done in the case as far as the other little girl," Williams said.

At the time, prosecutors did not want to try the original cases together. According to T-G reports from 1967, Attorney General Jim Kidd said that the charges for the Ray murder would be presented after the Seibers case was concluded "if necessary."