Name: Ira Gene Slayton
Age: 56
Appearance: Ira is an elegant woman, preferring to adorn herself in silk gowns that grace the floor and gently caress her lithe form. Dark purples, greens, and blues compliment her appearance and draws attention to the opal jewelry that decorates her slender fingers. Her gray hair is natural and unlike most women her age, she refuses to dye it. She believes that it suits her and if asked, she will tell you that it is her favorite feature, her hands being close behind.
Personality: Ira is a woman who takes control. Throughout her life, she was seen as a leader because she could think things through and seemed to know what was needed and when. She isn't afraid to go to go to great lengths to accomplish something. She built her life on bettering herself and not allowing people to get into her way. Ira operates on a higher level of justice and morality, preferring to take matters into her own hands. If Ira's sense of control is stripped from her, she becomes irrational and distraught. She will do whatever it takes to regain that stability.
Lost History: Ira was born to Calvin and Geraldine Slayton in the Winter of 1958. They lived in the small farming community of Coldwater, a thirty minute drive from the town of Fayetteville, Tennessee. They owned the largest home in the community and the most acres of land, but felt competition from the Carter family for the majority of their working lives. After the Carter's lost their land due to poor financial management, Calvin Slayton bought it and continued to profit from his business choices.
Thanks to her family's well-known reputation, the Slayton's were treated as celebrities and were regarding as the family everyone should strive to be. Unfortunately, this treatment was only seen in the public view. Once families were in the privacy of their own homes, rumors would begin to spread around Coldwater about Calvin Slayton's connections to the mafia, or his less-than-honorable agreements within Fayetteville's political world. Whether these rumors were fact or fiction, no one but Calvin would know and he took that knowledge to the grave with him in 1978. After his death, it became apparent that Calvin had left nothing of value to his wife or daughter except for the farmhouse and two acres of land. The rest had been willed to Horace Locker for unknown reasons.
Even after the patriarch of the Slayton family had died, rumors continued to spread throughout Coldwater of why the farm was given to a family friend rather than family. Peggy Rutledge had heard that it was because Geraldine had cheated on Calvin twenty years earlier and Ira was not his real daughter. Joyce Greene said that she had heard from Calvin himself that Geraldine had been trying to kill him by putting arsenic into his food. Sue Cowan, however, swore that it was because Ira and the young Carter boy, Jim, were planning on getting hitched and Calvin would "be damned to let his land fall into the hands of those jackasses."
In the Spring of 1978, just two months after Calvin's passing, Ira and Jim Carter confirmed one of the rumors by getting hitched at Fayetteville's Courthouse. Ira left her home in Coldwater and moved forty-five minutes away to New Market, Alabama where she discovered that the Carter family had been able to rebuild their fortune and, in a way, became richer than the Slayton's had ever been.
The married life treated Ira well and had blessed her and Jim with three children. James was born in 1979. Elizabeth followed in 1981, and Sarah surprised them in 1989. Tragedy unfortunately struck the family in 1995 when their son, James, was killed in an automobile accident. After his death, the marriage between Ira and Jim was strained. They fought constantly and over time the deep love that was held for one another turned into hatred. Divorce for the Christian family was not an option, so they stuck together and despised every second of it. In 2008 when their youngest daughter moved out on her own, Ira and Jim were free to treat each other however they pleased. It was during this time that Ira decided that she was going to put an end to her suffering and the life insurance policy that Jim had on himself was more than enough incentive.
Regrets: Ira regrets buying her son's first car, the new 1995 Porsche that would eventually take his life. It had been a birthday gift and Jame's couldn't wait to take it out for a spin. She also wishes she could take back the fights that had happened in the home before Sarah and Elizabeth had moved out. After they were both married and had families of their own, Ira only heard from them through infrequent phone calls. She would say that she regrets marrying Jim, but that would be a lie.
Visions: Ira often sees flashes of a red car wrapped around a tree. She can hear screams of terror and feels sick to her stomach when the vision comes, but she doesn't know why. She will also see a man screaming at her, but she can not hear him. When she turns to look away, she sees the fleeting image of a young girl in the doorway.
Death: After years of research, Ira finally felt brave enough to carry through with her intentions of murdering Jim. She had found a plant called Aconitum and cooked it into supper one evening in the summer of 2014. The plan was to serve it to Jim once he came in from work. She had read in her research that it was not immediately poisonous and Ira was prepared to eat a small amount of the meal before leaving the table, to keep Jim from not being suspicious. This happened as planned, but once Ira retired to her room she realized that she had ingested too much of the poison. She attempted to leave the home and take herself to the hospital under the pretense that she was going to the store, but she died in the garage.
