Republican presidential candidates will gather in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday, at a moment when the state’s politics have new resonance on the national stage.
Mr. Goodson, who had been featured in the investigative podcast set in the town of Woodstock, Ala., “brandished a gun at officers” before he was fatally shot, the authorities said.
The mayor fatally shot himself after a news site published a photo of him in makeup and said he had written erotic fiction and posts using names and photos of local residents, including a minor.
“His hold over me is gone,” Beth Holloway said of Joran van der Sloot, the longtime suspect, who confessed to killing her daughter after she resisted his advances on a beach in Aruba in 2005.
The new voting map, chosen by a court after it ruled that Alabama illegally diluted Black voting power, could lead the state to elect two Black representatives for the first time in its history.