70 years later, the steny family asked a south carolina court to throw out george s conviction. all of the authorities from that era are gone. along with most of the court records. surviving relatives of the murdered girls continue to believe in steny s guilt and question his family s timing. i have sympathy for the parents and the sisters and the brother. i feel like they know that he did it and that s why they never have revisited the grave. they never have put a headstone or footstone. they never talked about it. if we had allowed a stone to be there and someone found out where my brother was, they probably would have dug his grave up and throw him to the wolves. even if you think i m wrong, my brother did not do it. and i hate no man. reporter: in the end, the steny family got what they were looking for, the judge agreed, young george s rights had been violated and threw out his conviction.
and the 7-year-old were beaten to death, multiple severe head injuries suggested the killer used a hammer. the steny family fled in fear after police came looking for george. they were looking for somebody to blame it on. so they used my brother as a scapegoat. reporter: the motive was attempted rape. and in a dizzying rush to judgment, george steny s trial reportedly took just three hours. the all-white jury deliberated just ten minutes before the judge sent him to the electric chair. his defense attorney called no witnesses and filed no appeal. with attorneys representing the steny family today, i went back to where that tragic encounter happened, to find the railroad tracks rusted, covered and the field littered with painful memories. a rush to judgment i could almost understand. but why was there no appeal?
george steny needed to be dead soon. george steny sitting in jail for a year would have been an incredible difference in the facts and circumstances of this case. and i think in that way, they swept it completely under the rug. reporter: in spite of a confession police say they got from steny, family attorneys say a new examination of the few records that still exist shows a botched investigation. steny s alibi, his little sister was never questioned. there was no evidence of attempted rape, no evidence of blood on steny s clothing and no murder weapon consistent with the wounds found on the girls. what is left seems like an almost impossible story, that little george steny was somehow able to murder both of these little girls, beat them to death without a struggle, then carry both of their bodies and their bicycle about 300 yards that way to hide them in a ditch.