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 Edward Lamar Dooley was born on December 12, 1966 in Ashburn, Georgia. His father, William, was a part-time farmer, part-time odd job schemer and his mother, Edith, was a homemaker and was also jokingly referred to as a government red tape facilitator.
The Dooley family never had much money or ambition. William scraped by growing a few crops and raising a handful of scraggly pecan trees. He tended to spend more time playing poker and drinking with the boys than actually working, so money was always a scarcity in the Dooley home. Inevitably, the family would get into some money bind and then William would turn to odd jobs as a way of trying to bail out of the trouble. He often took jobs as a handyman working on private residences. The people of Ashburn could never understand why he would drive for an hour or two to get to these jobs. Didn't Ashburn houses need painting? Didn't Ashburn houses need a new porch? What they didn't always realize was that William was also stealing items from the houses he worked on, so he didn't want to do that in his hometown. Or sometimes he would get a homeowner to buy additional supplies and then William would sell them to other construction crews.
Edith stayed at home and raised the young boy, Eddie, and his two older brothers, Jack and Terrance. When money became tight around the house, she also knew how to turn a quick scam. She was known far and wide throughout the county as the person who would help you fill out the government forms to get extra assistance. She knew how to create an extra dependent or to claim higher medical bills. She knew which agencies talked to each other and which didn't. So Edith could help you bilk money out of the city, county, state, and federal governments all in the same day. Sometimes when the Dooleys needed money, Edith would pull off some scam herself, but usually she just guided other people through the labyrinth of paperwork for a healthy percentage of their take.
The Dooley boys all grew up in this environment of shadiness and deceit. The older boys, Jack and Terrance, grew tired of their father's lack of ambition. They felt that if he was going to be a farmer, then he should be a farmer. If he was going to be a bag man, then he should be a proper one. As they grew older, they went in different directions, Jack to the pecan tree business and Terrance to the burglar business. But both distinguished themselves in their intelligence, ability, and ambition. Neither wanted to continue William's hard scrabble life.
Eddie, however, did inherit his father's laziness and slow mind. He dropped out of high school and made his way on construction jobs, stealing supplies and tools. He floated over to the nearby town of Fitzgerald and worked at the AC Delco plant. He thought that a bogus worker's compensation claim would set him up for a while, but of course the money immediately disappeared and Eddie was back to work soon enough. Over the years, he drifted west, through Georgia, Alabama, and into Mississippi. He managed to avoid any serious jail time, just a weekend here and there in county lockup. He would always leave a small town in the middle of the night, eviction notices and rent due bills still tacked to the door and signs posted throughout the town to not accept checks from Edward Dooley.
Eventually, Eddie landed in Oxford. The small town suited him and the college allowed plenty of opportunity for his lazy method of crime. Fraternity houses and convertible BMWs were always easy to reach into. Eddie was arrested for petty theft a handful of times, but recently had been able to stay under the police force's radar. At the time of Andy Fine's death, Eddie was working part-time for the University of Mississippi Physical Plant.
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