TAYLORSVILLE, Miss – J.C. Haynes heard about it in the drug store. Mary Clark was just driving by when she saw the crowds. Betty Jones knew something was going on when two helicopters landed in the field next to her home.
As the search for the missing Hargon family moved to a patch of wooded land south of Taylorsville (search), friends and curious residents turned out to see what all the ruckus was about.
"We don't have nothing much going on around here," Jones said. "When something happens, it stirs everybody up."
The town of about 1,700 is 60 miles southeast of Jackson and about 100 miles from the Hargons' home in the rural Yazoo County (search) community of Vaughan.
The bodies of Michael, Rebecca and 4-year-old James Patrick Hargon were found just outside Taylorsville in Covington County (search).
Dozens of onlookers wedged themselves along the narrow road across from the police barricade marking the entrance leading to the land being searched.
The land is owned by Taylorsville resident Tony Moran, whose family lives about a mile from the property.
Officials said Moran is an acquaintance of Earnest Lee Hargon (search), but they did not say what exactly led them to search several acres of Moran's land, starting Monday morning.
Several of those gathered were simply curious, but others said they were close friends with veterinarian Lisa Ainsworth, the wife of truck driver Earnest Lee Hargon, who was charged Monday in Yazoo County with kidnapping and murdering the Hargons.
The family of three went missing on Valentine's Day.
Taylorsville residents said Ainsworth is well-liked in the community, but her husband of about seven years is a mystery.
"I've never even seen him," said Blake Blakeney, a high school friend of Ainsworth.
Some of the locals greeted the crush of news media with hospitality. A table of fried chicken and sandwiches was laid out for the working visitors.
Other residents, though, weren't thrilled with all the attention and declined requests to be interviewed by television reporters.
"You never hear about a town like Taylorsville until something like this happens," said Alex Boykin, 26.
Still others were inconvenienced.
Barbara Aiesworth's house is one of four on the road beyond the barricade to where the search was taking place. She said she had been waiting for three hours with her 7- and 11-year-old children to get back into her home.
"I left to get some gas and I couldn't get back in," she said.
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