Wife of killer preacher Coley McCraney breaks her silence about chilling moment she learned her husband had been arrested for murder of two teen girls 20 YEARS after their deaths

The wife of a murderous preacher has described how she went from “living the American dream” with her family to her husband’s conviction for the 1999 murders of two teenagers.

Twenty-five years after the murders, Jeanette McCraney has spoken about the moment she learned the father of her two children was the prime suspect.

“I start calling him, no answer, a few hours go by and my phone rings, and he (the officer) says, is this Mr. McCraney’s wife?” says Jeanette ABC’s 20/20 in a preview exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com ahead of Friday’s episode.

“I said, ‘Did Colin have an accident?’ He says, “No.” I was like, “Okay, is he in trouble or something? I’m confused.” They said, ‘Yes, he’s in big trouble.'”

In March 2019, modern DNA evidence linked Alabama preacher Coley McCraney, now 49, to the 1999 year of 17-year-olds Tracie Hawlett and JB. Beasley.

Jeanette’s life would never be the same again. “I feel like we had everything together,” she adds in the clip.

The mother of two said she was “living an American dream” in Dothan, Alabama, with their idyllic family life in 2019.

They appeared to be the model Christian family, with Coley working as both a pastor and a truck driver at the time of his arrest.

“My children are growing up in church,” Jeanette told ABC News. “They see their mom and dad doing the right thing.”

But all was not as it seemed. Coley McCraney’s DNA was compared to samples found on Beasley in March 2019, and he would later stand trial for murder and rape.

The case dates back to July 31, 1999, when Beasley and Hawlett met to celebrate Beasley’s 17th birthday at a field party in Headlands, Alabama.

But they never reached their destination. 20/20 also hears from the victims’ parents, who describe their final interactions and the nightmare years since.

Hawlett’s mother, Carol Roberts, remembers her daughter calling her from a gas station in rural Ozark, Alabama, where the girls had stopped on their way to the party.

They got lost and asked for directions back to Hawlett’s house. But they never made it.

“We have directions,” Roberts remembers her daughter saying on the phone. ‘She didn’t talk like anything was wrong. There was no fear or anything like that in her voice. We said to each other, ‘We love you,’ and I went to bed.”

The next morning, Roberts realized her daughter had not returned home.

She called 911 and within hours, police discovered Beasley’s black Mazda sedan on the side of the road, less than a mile from the gas station.

Their bodies were found with gunshot wounds to the head in the trunk, while their belongings, including wallets, money and Tracie’s keys, were still in the car.

“That crime scene, that trunk, those two girls is the only murder I’ve ever turned around and had to walk away,” Barry Tucker, a former Trooper Captain with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, told ABC News.

“When you see the innocence and a life that has just been ripped away, it’s hard to swallow.”

For the next 25 years, detectives combed the southern state for clues about who killed the teenage girls, but to no avail.

In 2018, Ozark Police Chief Marlos Walker caught wind of new forensic genetic genealogy used to catch the Golden State Killer in California.

Walker sent DNA samples from the 1999 file to a lab in Virginia and five months later received results that matched a known name.

“I was looking at the list again and when I saw the name McCraney, it stood out because I knew a McCraney in high school,” he revealed to ABC News.

When contacted, McCraney willingly provided a DNA sample, and Walker was “blown away” when it came back as a match to samples found on Beasley. He had never been a suspect.

On March 15, 2019, police arrested Coley McCraney and charged him with four counts of capital murder and first-degree rape. He was later sentenced to life in prison.

“I was in shock,” Roberts says. “We’ve been waiting 24 years for this, and finally someone is being held accountable.”

“When they read ‘Guilty,’ I fell over and had tears streaming down my face,” Beasley’s mother, Cheryl Burgoon, told 20/20. She described her daughter as a “beautiful gift.”

McCraney claims he had sex with Beasley but did not kill the teens.

“They can call me a cheater, they can call me a dog. They can call me a lot of things at that time, but they can’t call me a murderer,” McCraney said in the telephone interview with ABC News from his jail cell.

He has appealed the verdict and hopes for a new trial. The ruling on this appeal is expected sometime this year.

ABC’s 20/20 airs Friday at 9 PM ET and will be available to stream on Hulu the following day.