Terrance Strong, a 42-year-old Black man, was killed on September 8, 2015, in the small Coosa County community near Goodwater, Alabama, a place where the roads run quiet and most people know one another’s names. That Tuesday, law enforcement was called to a residence off Old Dam Road, and inside the home investigators found Strong dead alongside another Goodwater resident, Dantigo Kelley.
What should have been an ordinary late-summer day ended with a crime scene that left a town shaken and families facing the kind of silence that doesn’t lift when the lights go out.
Authorities said the two men were found bound and shot to death, a detail that suggested to investigators that whoever did this had time, control, and a plan. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency was brought in to assist as the case moved from a local response into a deeper investigation, and autopsies were performed as officers tried to piece together what happened in that house and why the men were targeted. In the first public updates, officials emphasized that the investigation was active—but also that there were no arrests at that time, leaving the community with questions and no public sense of who might be responsible.
In the days that followed, Goodwater had to do what small towns often do in the wake of violence: mourn publicly while grieving privately. Funeral arrangements for Strong were announced soon after, with services held in Goodwater and burial to follow locally, the kind of homegoing that draws together relatives, neighbors, and friends who are still trying to make sense of what can’t be undone. While loved ones gathered to remember him, investigators were left with the harder task—finding a path from the scene on Old Dam Road to the person or people who had left two men dead inside it.
Years passed, and the absence of answers hardened into something the community could feel. By February 27, 2023, the case was being pushed to the public again through Central Alabama CrimeStoppers as a double-homicide cold case, with Goodwater’s police chief acknowledging that information was limited but that the search for answers continued. CrimeStoppers announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest or arrests of whoever was involved, urging anyone who knew something—no matter how small it seemed—to come forward, share a tip, and help move the case from memory into accountability.
From what has been publicly released in those official updates, no suspect has been named, and no arrests, charges, trials, or convictions have been publicly tied to Strong’s killing. What remains is the stark outline of the crime—two men, bound and shot to death in a residence off Old Dam Road—and the long stretch of time afterward, where the hope for justice depends on new information, a witness deciding to speak, or someone finally revealing what they know about who walked away from that home.
