Hoodoo-practicing Beaufort Sheriff to be subject of show ‘Coffin Point’

J.E. McTeer, the late Beaufort County sheriff known for his practice of hoodoo, will be the subject of a new TV series, according to entertainment news site Deadline.com.

Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment has agreed to co-produce "Coffin Point" with Alpine Labs. The TV show will be based on the true crime book "Coffin Point: The Strange Cases of Ed McTeer, Witch Doctor Sheriff," by Baynard Woods, Deadline reports.

"I think viewers will be rewarded with a glimpse into a little known, and incredibly rich culture that's truly at the root of so many modern day traditions," Overbrook executive producer James Lassiter told Deadline.

McTeer, known as "Boy Sheriff," served in the role for 37 years, from 1925 to 1963.

In 2009, his son told The Island Packet that McTeer’s practice of “white magic” not only helped him gain the trust of the county's Sea Island communities, but spread knowledge of hoodoo to the surrounding region.

"The (practice) was a very private thing," son Ed McTeer, then 70, said. "He thought of himself more as a poor man's psychiatrist. People would come to our house from four states over to talk to him. You looked at the faith that some of the people around there had, and still have, in that stuff and he knew it wasn't something you (could) blow off."

The series will explore McTeer's beliefs as well as the racial tensions of the era between the Gullah and white communities, Deadline reports.

"For us, it's going to be a really great honor to explore this culture and showing it as being a real thing," Alpine Labs producer Kevin Abrams, who is writing the pilot script, told Deadline.

It was not clear Friday which network or online service will claim the show.

This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 10:40 AM with the headline "Hoodoo-practicing Beaufort Sheriff to be subject of show ‘Coffin Point’."