Tourists, traders, and bargain hunters congregating in the town square for Scottsboro's traditional First Monday Trade Day initially thought the explosion they heard was a sonic boom. On that morning of December 4, 1972, people in the small north Alabama town were shocked when they learned that a bomb consisting of five sticks of dynamite had ripped through the car of a prominent attorney, Loy Campbell, blowing off both his legs and nearly taking his life.

Investigators found Campbell barely alive and his disintegrated car in his driveway just across the street from the school attended by his six-year-old daughter.

What followed this horror were two years of unyielding investigation resulting in the arrest of the town's wealthiest landowner, Hugh Otis Bynum, great-grandson of the founder of the town. Bynum was charged with masterminding and funding the attempt on Campbell's life. His arrest and the trial that followed pitted Bill Baxley, a young, ambitious Alabama attorney general, against the state's most prominent defense lawyers.