Murder From The Shadows - Stab, Kentucky

This week, in Stab, Kentucky, when a shot rings out from a grassy knoll, killing a beloved local figure, a mob of residents chase the killer down, which leads to a twisted and strange story of wild motivations, and an odd conspiracy that no one can even believe is real, welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Yeah, indeed, Jimmy. Yeah, indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wismann. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today, and another absolutely crazy twisted, just mess of a murder again. That's standard. With Small Town Murder, we have a crazy story for you today. Before we get to that, though, get your tickets right now. Shut up and give me murder.com is the place to be for those. Get your tickets for Dallas coming up. Dallas, let's fuck it up. Let's do it. It's the only show of the weekend. We're going to fly all the way to Texas, make it worth the while here. Dallas, October 3rd, can't wait. It's a nice theater, too, can't wait for that one. Then October 16th and 17th, we're going to be in San Jose and Sacramento, and those are going to be different stories, by the way. If you want to come to both, you'll see different shows. Dallas, by the way, that's going to be a local murder. It's going to be a Dallas suburb murder, so that'll be fun. Then also November 13th and Terry Town, those are just about sold out. I don't know how many more of those are left. Then Boston are actually met for right outside of Boston on November 14th. Get your tickets right now. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you do all of that, as well as listen to our other two shows, crime in sports. Don't have to care about sports, but you have to care about idiots doing dumb things and us making fun of them, which I think you're up for if you're listening to this show and your stupid opinions is, again, us making fun of people for doing and saying dumb things. 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Then for small town murder, we are going to talk about this trick or treat murder that happened back in the 50s where someone tried to use Halloween as a cover for some murder that was very personal and had nothing to do with ghosts or ghouls or anything else. It's a lot of fun, though. Can't wait to do that. Patreon.com/CrimeInSports is where you get all that. That's not it. That's not all. Oh, what else you got? We have more. Oh, absolutely. All three shows plus express everything. All ad free with your Patreon. No ads. You're going to get a shout out at the end of the show, too. Jimmy will try his best, but more than likely less than name up, but that's okay because he's trying. That's a disclaimer time. Here we go. This is a comedy show. Everybody, that is without a doubt undisputed. We are comedians and we're going to make jokes and people are going to die because the show's a small town murder. You wonder, how did that happen? How does that go together? Very easily. There's lots of ways to make this funny. First of all, maybe we'll make fun of a town because who doesn't make fun of where they're from? First of all, we all make fun of the town we're from, so it's a good time. We're just having a little roast of a town and then maybe we'll make fun of a bumbling police force. It doesn't. To the right thing and let a murderer go free and kill more people will make fun of murderers because. Oh, yeah. What else do we have to do? Well, we're going to go down and yeah, go down and take their honey buns away. We can't do that. So we make fun of them. That's all we got here, but what we never do, we go out of our way not to do is we never make fun of the victim or the victim's family. Why James? Because we're assholes, but we're not scumbags. That's how it works. Do you think that sounds good to you? You want to hear a crazy, crazy story? Well, you're in the right place for that. I think it's time. Everybody. What do you say to sit back here? Clear the lungs, which I have to do extra because I'm still sick. Paul, jeez, for that. I'm all soon to fed it up and ready to go though. So that's all right. Right. Clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky. And let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah. All right. We're going down to Kentucky. You know, in a Kentucky, we're going to stab Kentucky. Nice place. Now, the towns are real. We're going to explain this whole thing. Stab, by the way, is STAB stab. Right. Right in the gut. So, yeah. Now, stab is right next door to a tiny, they're both tiny little places, a place called shopville. You know, stab and shop villa are essentially the same town, but have two different names for some reason. They share the same fire. It's the, the shopville stab fire department. It's everything they share is together because they're like a half mile away from each other. And there's really no reason why they should have different names. So there's shopville. The murder actually happened technically. And I think it was in shopville, technically, but stabs a much cooler name. So we're going with that. And most of the stats here, though, are going to be from a bigger town right next door called Somerset because the other two towns don't have stats really because they're that right in the middle of nowhere. They don't, there's no census for them. There's no anything. So we're going to use Somerset stuff, basically a zip code 42501, which encompasses those towns and Somerset and all that kind of thing. All right. Either way, everything's in southeastern Kentucky. So we know that about two hours and 20 minutes to Louisville, about two hours and 50 minutes to Nashville, and about three hours to DePau, Kentucky, our last Kentucky episode, episode 698, crazy cousin carnage, which is exactly what you expect from Kentucky. That's good. That's a, that's delivering what's expected when you, when you give it an episode like that. This is in Polaski County. Sure. Area code 606. The motto here for Somerset is they have a nickname, the car cruise capital of Kentucky. Oh, is this where they're cruising? Go cruising, baby. Yeah, car cruise. And then also the motto here is the spirit of Southern Kentucky, which is the spirit. You'd hear the spirit coming because he would be rattling with all the pill bottles in his pockets at this point. If you, and when you listen to our story, too, it's exactly what's going on here. Oh, you're in a Hillvilly area. Oh, do you have anything? Are you holding? That's the ghost. Say it now. They come in. You think they're coming for you and then you hear like shit rattling around. You go in. They're just, just rifling a medicine cabinet. That's all they're doing. Yeah. In the movie, it's played by Leo from basketball. Yeah. He's just, he's just itchy. Him and him and the kid who played fucking Leo Fitzpatrick, too, the other Leo, the one from the wire, who's a bubble. Oh, yeah. And from kids also where he's also. It's great. He's good. And that's it. Anyway, history here, the, the stab post office was established in 1922. The stab is so small. The post office was discontinued in 1994. They were just like, you don't need a post office. Go to the other town and get your mail discontinued. Like a shirt. Yeah. Like it's not selling. It's the post office. Now the name stab. You go, where the fuck did they get that from? Must be some name. They literally just picked it because it was short. It was a stab in the dark. No, it was short. They were looking for a short name, just four letter. Four letter name. And somebody was like, you know, they were suggesting things. And one guy was like, just because you call your wife that we ain't calling the town that. No, that's bullshit. You know it. Billy, you know, we ain't calling the town to see where God damn it. Jesus Christ. So I got one. Stop it. Nope. No, don't you dare. It's enough of the path. We can't do that. No, I told you. I told you. I done told you. Twatch ain't going to work. The C word, none of them words are going to work. What about stab? All right. Close enough. It's the first one that ain't a curse word to where we get it. So I guess the first choice had been rejected. I don't know what the first choice was, but it was rejected as too long by the postal authorities. That's too long of a name. So they go, fine, stab then. How's that short enough for you? Plural stab. No, no, no, no, no. All right. Take the S off. Yeah. That's fun. That's just like good enough. Okay. Good. So it's shorter. It's terrible, but it's short. You guys are fine with that. I like that. Stab is a location of a cast window formation called short Creek. Okay. A cast window, also known as a cast Fenster. This is, I'm just reading a definition. I don't know any of this shit. It's a geomorphic figure. Our feature found in cast landscapes where an underground river is visible from the surface within a sinkhole, which is I had, I had a little spring like this in a yard I had it for a house we needed for like three months before we didn't pay the rent we had to leave it to in the morning. But yeah, in the backyard, there was this thing and I found the water and asked the landlord and he said that's incredibly pure ice cold spring water and he reached your hand in. It was just in a little hole and it was ice fucking cold and like it's sweet. What? Sweet. Reached her hand. No, I reached her hand in. You could see it. It's a hole in water flowing. You just reach your hand and get the water up. Why wouldn't you do that? Water is a life force. I'm not reaching in. You know, everything needs water. What the fuck is living in there? It's a, it's a spring underground. It's not. There's gotta be things in there, right? It's moving like you see it's like flowing fast under there. So it's full enough that there's no like quote unquote riverbank in there that something could live on. It's just a, no, no, no, it's only the water goes through the little thing and it's moving so fast and it's so cold. I don't think anything's living there and the hole's only like this deep to the water. Oh, okay. I'm not like reaching my whole arm in there. I'm not mutaling the fucking spring water out. It's not. You're gonna come up with a creature James. You can you see me sticking my arm into the shoulder just into the ground? Is that something that you would imagine I would be doing at any point in the life of a child? If an adult told me to do that, I'd probably would do that. I'd be like, you're out of your fucking mind. I'm not doing that. So anyway, yeah, that's, that's a problem. So this, in this feature, a spring emerges, then the discharge abruptly disappears into a sinkhole. So the word Fenster is German for window as these features are windows into the karst landscape. So that's how it, how it works there. It's a, just the short river. It's like a weird, like a length of a football field river. I could talk about this all day. It's fucking interesting. Oh, I, I keep reading, reading about it. I wasted so much time. Somerset was first settled in 1798. It received its name from Somerset County, New Jersey, where a bunch of the settlers had come from. So I wonder if everyone's still rude here. We'll find out. Rude but great sandwiches. So you know what? It's fucking whatever. Also, this is fun for summer nights, summer, like Somerset summer nights, cruises 25th anniversary on June 28th, 2025, a north east Ohio, Jesus Christ. People, they jumped a replica of the dukes of hazard car. So they took an old charger and a very cool car that's rare. But, and, and, and, and, and, and they dicks they fucking did that over summer sets fountains square. They jumped it like the Duke boys attracting 30. Oh, my God. I saw this. I did too. I remember seeing. I saw that. Yeah. It was just last year. 35,000 people came to see that, which is, didn't it fuck up the front end of that car too? Like it landed. No, I mean, the front ends very heavy. I don't know how it wouldn't. That's for the engine. In the show, every time it landed, you just saw the entire front end crumble. I mean, the suspension fall fell upon everything was a mess. I think it made it. And I think it fucked up the car a little bit. But I definitely made it and everybody inside was okay. My father used to go just destroying the suspension on this car. Look at it. He'd be telling me the realism of it while I'm four. And I don't care. It's just cool that they jumped to just explode in those Monroe. They just jumped to chasm while fucking while their horn played a song. That's awesome when you're four. That's cool. That's cool. I love summer set because it truly feels like home. The friendly community in small town atmosphere make it a great place to live. And I'd love to see even more activities in places for teens to enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. Right now it's just the pills that keep them occupied. All right. It's just old socks are going their their childhood and watching the Duke's vassal jump. That's fun. Teenagers. What the fuck is with this car? Why are we doing this? Did that? Why's there a racist flag on it? Is that Dixie that just flew over? I don't think they'd say that in Southern Kentucky. Maybe not. I don't think so. We'd be like, Hey, why they got the flag we got in the front yard in there. Same flag. Three stars. I was bored and raised here. It's an all right size town that has everything you need. People are fairly friendly wherever you go. Lake Cumberland. This is a big attraction here by the way, a lot of tourists is great for days swimming and fishing. It's seen significant growth in the past years, but nothing that the residents would like to see the city bring. Nothing that the residents would like to see the city bring like new shopping centers or renovating and reviving our mall. It's mainly just an affordable place for older folks to retire or for families trying to live cheap. Not many opportunities for single, young people. One star. I moved away and came back and it was the biggest mistake of my life. I like when the reviews aren't so much about the town, but they're like a therapy session about your bad decisions that you don't. I made a mistake. I made a mistake. It made a huge mistake. I left and then failed and then had to come back. Yeah, those are two different bad mistakes. Once, yeah, once you're here, it's hard to get back out. Lifepoint owns almost all medical offices and even run school nursing. No culture here. However, if you like chicken and dollar general, it's the place for you. I don't know. Finally, this one's a little bit longer. I'll buzz through it here. One star been here for 1.5 years and it's the worst place that I've ever lived and I've lived all over the USA. Strange people walk around outside and will randomly come to your door in nice areas. And from Phantasm, right? Yeah, it's just a hot. It's a poltergeist, right? It's a man, was that what it is? Exactly what you're talking about somehow. I think it's the same guy. It might be creepy, weird looking tall. Phantasm is pinhead guy, but I think the guy from poltergeist is also. Oh, you mean the actor, not the character. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, All right. We're very confused and way off. Oh, Phantasm is, it is him. Same guy. I'm mixing up Phantasm and Hellraiser too. Look at me knowing very little about horror. Well, it's the last time you watch those movies. We all watched them. We rented them in your 30 fuck. Exactly. Yeah, totally. And people look to be heavily on drugs. Okay. Most people are extremely overweight and people dress like slabs in public. Yeah, it's everywhere. I don't think guys I can do it. Yeah, that's just that's here. The contrast to this is the elderly community here drives very dangerously and will pull out in front of oncoming traffic frequently forcing you to put breaks to the metal and people drive so slow like they're on their way to their funeral causing delays. They're funeral, not a funeral, by the way, their own funeral. There are a few wonderful all caps people mixed in this city, but they are hard to find. When dealing with everyday customer service phone reps or customer service desks, you will be met with attitudes and rudeness 90% of the time. I've had the worst experiences here. It is truly a town of fake and miserable people. I do not recommend this place whatsoever. If you're used to southern hospitality and kind and genuine people, wow, roasted. That's just trying to keep people away because they love it there. Maybe. I don't think so. Doesn't sound like it from everywhere. No, it feels like they mean it. Yeah. People in this town, this is for the whole zip code, by the way, 18,062. But in these tiny towns, way less people, more women than men by far, 52.6 percent women. So that's way above for town that size above the average median age. Here's about 40, 40.5 and it's average with married people and things like that. A lot more people are single with children here, almost 30 percent. Race in this town, 92.9 percent white, 1.9 percent black, 0.0 percent Asian. None of them. They're like, we ran the lease out this town five years ago and they come back and that's that. We have 2.3 percent Hispanic. Religion here, 50, 50 is normal the rest of the country average. Here it's 59.6 percent religious and not a shock here. The number one religion with a bullet all the way to the top 43.9 percent of the people here are Baptist. That's what it's all about. Nothing else, nothing else cracks 4 percent. It's just Baptist Baptist and more. That's it. As we know, Baptist are the Catholics of the South everywhere. Unemployment here is about average. median household income here, not average at all. It's about 30,000 below the average. 39,923 dollars a year. That is rough. Now cost of living though, also pretty low. 100 is average regular. Here it's 78 and median home cost here is 153,100 dollars, which is obviously less than half the rest of the country. That doesn't matter when you have nothing. Yeah, but I mean, I guess if you make 40 grand a year, maybe you can get $150,000 house. I mean, it's cutting it close, but I mean, it's sort of, you know, if it was 60 and 210, we'd go whatever. So if we've convinced you, this is the only place to be, obviously, you want to have strange people knocking on your doors randomly. We have for you the stab Kentucky real estate report. Average two bedroom rental here goes for $750, which is very low. Very affordable. It's incredibly low. That's about half a little more than half the national average. Here's the first house two bedroom two bath. Technically, a tea bowl for each and every beehull. It is not great looking. I got to be honest with you. It looks a little broken down. I mean, the The livable it's fine, 1,050 square feet, so pretty small on an acre of land. Not the worst thing in the world. - That is a trailer though, isn't it? - It's not a trailer, it does have a metal roof here. Everything seems to have metal roofs here, but it's not a trailer, it's an actual structure, single family residence, $177,500, which seems high. Seems a bit high for that. Then that one is in Somerset actually. Here's one in Shopville, or Shopville Road in Somerset. This is four-bedroom, two-bath, 2856 square feet. This is a cool looking house, it's a stone house. It's built in '85, but it looks like it was built in 1885, so it's got a bunch of irregular stones, you know, built like that. - Yeah, river rock. - Yeah, like that, that's pretty cool. It looks like it's like half underground though, which is strange in the back. It's like on a hill, and the porch looks like it comes off the second floor, which is now a ground level. It's very strange. One point. - That's very common in hill places. - Yeah. - Yeah, where do you get, like, it looks like it's one floor, but when you get to the back, then you've got to walk out basement, that's really cool. - That's interesting. - This is the opposite of that. - Yeah, yeah, this is 2856 square feet, so big place, 1.77 acres, $299,000 for that. And then finally, six-bedroom, six-bath, T-Ball for each and every B-Hull, 5,592 square feet. - My God. - That's a big house. 1.57 acres, and it's like a big modern looking house, track housing with the no trees around it, 'cause it's all been knocked down, built in 2012. $1,250,000 for that, you're out of your mind. - Yeah, 40 grand a year. Come on through and take a tour. - Good luck. - Yeah, strange people knocking on your door, 'cause you're an idiot for buying that house. Things to do, go to Lake Cumberland as one, and then there's the Moonlight Festival here. This is in downtown Summerset, Food Vendors, Spirits, I guess that's booze, I would hope, live art creation from local and regional artists. I don't know if it was just real superstitious people going, they're going, "We spirits there." - Have no idea. - They're coming from the hills. - Yeah, they're coming from the hills. Regional artist and eclectic mix of performances here, music lineup, Sammy Kershaw. - Hell yeah. Clayton's brother, I don't know who that is. Is that a famous person? - Sammy Kershaw. - He's terrific. - Well, there you go. The big Lula, L-O-U-L-A, Summerset Big Band with special guests, Spooky Fox and Brando Van Shyok. - Okay. - Okay. - Sammy's the headliner. That's a big deal. - It sounds like a very big deal for them. - Lauren Michael Sellers, I don't know if that's Lauren and Michael or Lauren Michael, I'm not sure. - It's one person. - One person, weird. T.A. Clayton and the Soul Miners. - Okay. - And then the Owen Wright Band with special guest, Becca DeBoard. - Good for you Becca. You got on there with Mr. Kershaw. - Bad. There's a review of this festival, by the way. Two stars, nothing special this year. This is from three years ago. A terrible teenage main band. The singer was advertised as teen friendly, but had awful lyrics and not a message. I want my kids to follow. - Oh, I got to know who it was. - Then they go on to complain. There's not enough bourbon there for the rest of it. - I don't want my teenage music singing about teenage love. - But unless I'm fucked in the hammer. Had to pay $5 for a drinking wrist band, but there was hardly any alcohol to buy. I wanted to be drunk in front of my kids. That's what I wanted. Okay. - Hardly any. - There should just be any. - Wow, crime rate in this town. Property crime, almost double. The national, it's pills, dude. This place is overwhelmed with drugs. It is. - What is going on? - You ever seen the wild, wonderful whites, everybody? That's what's going on. It's the same thing in all these Kentucky or American hollow or any of these. It is all pills all the time. All drugs. - I think that is. I can't imagine. - That's crazy. That's hopelessness is what that is. - When the whole region's involved in it here. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault, the Mount Rushmore of Crime, two and a half times the national average. It is so dangerous. - This place is like Rikers for Christ's sake. Okay. (laughing) Wow. That said, let's talk about some murder. - Let's do it. - Sorry, we went a little long on the town, but damn it, it was funny, so we had to. - It's terrific. - Let's see. Let's talk about a guy first here. Okay, let's talk about Sheriff Samuel Wilson Katron. Okay, Katron, C-A-T-R-O-N. I've heard it pronounced different ways for some reason here. Sam, Sheriff Sam, everybody calls him. Sheriff Sam. Now, Sheriff Sam is the Sheriff of Pulaski County, which is not a lot of people in Pulaski County, so everybody knows Sheriff Sam. That's one of those things. He's about 48 years old in 2002 there, so you can do the math on that one. He was born about 54 there. His parents, this is the interesting story. His parents here, his dad was a police chief as well. Chief Harris, everybody call him. Harold Lewis Katron Senior. He was born June 4th, 1909 in Pulaski County, so these people are generations back in Pulaski County. - Generations of lawmen. - Of lawmen in this county. He was a summer set patrolman in the 1930s and then served as a sergeant in the Army Air Forces during World War II, came home, and then spent a few years as the fire chief, which we'll talk about here. In 1941, before the war, he got married to Jenny Rachel Morrow, who was a local lawyer's daughter. So hooked up there, now Jenny, who will be Sheriff Sam's mom, obviously. She was born in summer set in 1916, and she's her only child of a lawyer and his wife, Wilson and Florence. She graduated summer set high school in 1934, went to Bowling Green Business University in 1937, and was working in her father's law office when she met Harold and married Harold. She turns, she's one of these women, women in the 40s had a lot of energy. Well, people do, but women were always doing a million things. They were in like 18 organizations and federations and riveting, and they were really busy people in the 40s. I mean, guys were at war, so I mean, they had to do something, but you know-- - They gotta do everything. - They gotta do everything. That's what I mean, they had to do everything at home. So she was born to all the organizations, the local home makers, the Republican women's club, the rescue squad, the PTA, all this stuff. Everything you could imagine here. Now Harold, by the time 1950 comes around, he is the chief of the Somerset Police Department. - This man has so many pensions. - He's got all sorts. He's got army pensions, fire pensions. - Yeah. - This guy dies in action. They're gonna be set. He's got it all lined up. - And if he lives through all of it, then he's gonna inherit his wife's dad's lawyer fortune. - They're gonna be fine. - They're gonna be doing well. Now the kids that they have, they have four children, the Catrons. They have a Mellie Rachel girl, 1942. They have Harold Lewis Jr. who will go by Lewis always. And we'll talk about him throughout the story. He's born in '46. And then Sam, Sheriff Sam was born in May of '53. May 11th, 1953 is Sheriff Sam. And then his sister Nancy in 1954. That's the family. - Two boys, two girls. - Two boys, Billy's a boy. - I know she's a girl. She's a girl. So his girl boy, girl boy boy girl, is how they got him there. - Now in the '50s, there's a big bootleger problem here, which by the way still exists in this area. And now. - They're still, they're still dry counties. - Oh yeah, I guess that's true. - Until you grow the fuck up. - Yeah. - And stop talking about fucking, I won't free them and I want this shit when you don't allow adults to buy alcohol. - Sell a beer and then we'll talk. - Shut the fuck up. I don't wanna hear about it. Yeah, you keep your guns and I get a fucking beer I can buy over the counter. I don't care. - That's just a bizarre thing. - It's so bizarre. - You know what it is now, but it used to be. - Yeah, right, right. It used to be 'cause women were tired to get punched in the fucking mouth. - And all these people drink. - Yeah. - Right, that's the other point. - That's what the fuck is your problem? - It's so hypocritical. They all fucking drink. They all drink, they all go to the next county or they do, they have the private clubs where you're like. - At church. - Yeah, the private clubs where you're allowed to drink and shit like that too, 'cause that's not selling it. That's, you sell it in membership in clubs. - Yeah, it's a way around the laws. We found out from people that have told us here. So if you have to do that, just make it fucking normal so you can buy a goddamn beer. - Have a drink. - So fucking stupid. So anyway, that's what's going on here. Get off our fucking soap boxes here. Step down off our soap box. Careful, we've been drinking. So calm down. We gotta step down real carefully. - Everybody stay clear while I stuff to happen. I am hammered. 'Cause I fucked up. So yeah, bootleggers ran liquor through the dry territory and the chief, he enforces the law. So he makes enemies and on April 10th, 1957, Harold, chief Harold, the dad, he's sitting on the front porch of the family home on Jasper Street. He's got 11 year old Lewis next to him, the boy. A sedan slowed in front of the house. I think it was like a 40. 48 or 49 Buick, they said, and someone fired a shotgun through the window and the car sped off. Now, it hit Harold in the back. Oh, shit. He got hit. Louis, the 11-year-old at the time that's got spray in the arm by pellets, too, because it's a shotgun. It's fucked up. Both survived, but Harold's lung collapsed. And the doctors counted between 86 and 88 shotgun pellets in his body, but they picked out. One of them was so close to the heart that they couldn't take it out. They had to leave it there. They had to leave it, yeah. Nowadays, they'd be able to go get it. But back then, they'd have to fucking leave it there. With a scope, they wouldn't even have to do it. They just press a button and a remote, and the scope's block it out. Yeah. Just get a fucking, get it, get a magnet. What are we doing here? Just get a big magnet. Hold it up. Yank that fucker out. Why are we, why are we doing this? It's really small when it's just, it'll come right out. I just solved everything there. Magnets. It's done. No, I can't work. So three men were arrested, according to the accounts of the case here. Now, one of them killed himself before trial. Oh, later, the whole thing is very, very weird here. People say it was bootleggers settling a score, and that's what the, that's what the family says. It was bootleggers going after him here. Now Sam was only, Sheriff Sam was only four years old or three years old, and it happened. And he was inside the house. So he just heard this boom and everybody freaked out. They arrest a 20 year old named Robert Stevens. And he's the guy who's going to, going to go to trial for this, saying it was him. Now, Robert Stevens, though, the, the car that did it is registered, it's his car. So they're saying, well, he must have been him, but there are no people that can put him in the car. There's no eyewitnesses. Nobody on the porch was able to identify him in the car. No, but it's his car. So they put him on trial for murder. And the problem is they're unable to reach a unanimous decision. It's a mistrile. There's a hung jury because there's no eyewitnesses. It's just his car. So they're like, it's plausible deniability that no one saw him in the car around that time either. It's not like someone saw him leave the dairy queen. And then five minutes later, he was there. No one saw him in this car. So it's pretty interesting here. A judge here sums up the whole deal. He reviewed the evidence given that the auto belong to Stevens by recalling the testimony of, um, Catron, his son and neighbor. He added that all three said the shot came from a 38 to 40 model Buick. I'm sorry, I said 48 38. The judge said the Catron and his son had testified they both saw the car after the shot was taken. And there were two street lights and a porch light to give a clear view. Um, but they're not of the couldn't get a good enough look at him. That's amazing. They can be certain that it was a Buick when every car of that year looks the same. Every car looks exactly the same. Exactly the same. But it might be like, you know how you can tell if you're looking, you can go, that's actually a 68 command on a 69 head lights. This one around the dollar, like it might be little details like that, because there wasn't a ton of cars back then too. It wasn't like, is that a Kia or a fucking or a Hyundai? It was either a Buick, a Chevy or that tail lights give away so much. Absolutely. Um, the judge said there is a, there is a terrifying example in this city of organized lawlessness. Um, he told the jury. Um, he said, I have evidence to know that organized crime exists here. Men have banded together with no regard for law or life. They've not organized for entertainment or pleasure. Their motive is gained. Their motive is money. He blamed the illegal liquor in narcotics traffic in the county in 1950. So I'm just trying to show you how things don't change because this is not the murder that we're going to talk about here. Um, the judge said, I've never seen any good results come from probation. He starts talking about how you got to really give it to people. Um, just kill them on the first events. It's almost what he says. He said the only way to deter criminals is to jolt them with a prison sentence. The only way is to send them where they'll learn crime better with people who are more experienced at it. They can do criminal college. That's thinking real nice there. Um, so that's what he says. You've got to put them in. You got to put them out of his circulation with a jail sentence when they are given a fine, they consider that nothing more than a license to do business. And I have heard them say that they can clear enough profit in one night to cover the fine, talking about bootleggers. Um, now a friend put it this way about the whole shooting. Uh, he busted someone for running moonshine and he got mad and came back. Harold was sitting on the front porch and got shot. Okay. That's what this guy says. So Harold Preston, he went back to work, um, led fucking, you know, bullet by his heart. Yeah. Pellet by his heart. Reinflated lung. Yeah. On September 16th, 1964, the pellet shifted and caused a heart attack. Oh, no. And he died at 55. Oh, fuck. Yeah. So dead, dead, dead, dead. Um, my question is, can you bring that guy back and now try and for murder as opposed to attempted murder? I mean, that's the, that's not double jeopardy. I don't know. It's attempted and then murder, right? Yeah. But if you, I guess logically, if you can't find him, he wasn't found not guilty. So yeah, he was a hung jury. So you can bring back charges anytime you want. It ups the charge rather than, yeah, he's not going in for attempted anymore. No, no, that's definitely murder, though, if somebody dies, oh, yeah, you're on of the wound. Oh, fuck, yeah. Absolutely. They charge people like that all the time. Now Harold was 55. Young Sam was 11 at this time. And young Sam worshipped his father and said, right, then I'm going to be like my dad. I'm just a police officer. Yeah. So that's how he does it. Now Sheriff Sam, in addition to that, he's an eagle scout. Yeah. He'd become Sheriff later on. One thing that's a little bit odd here about Sheriff Sam, there's a couple things that are strange. One is he's in his late 40s. He's a quote lifelong bachelor who lives with his mother the whole time. Yeah. He's like Buster Bluth. But yeah, I mean, I guess if it's just I know the dad died. So you want to take care of your mother. I get that. There's that. But there's also the trauma of dad dying the way he died. Perhaps it just makes him that makes you not like the genus. I don't know what I want to be with any I don't understand. Those are separate issues. I can see how traumatic was that for him. I could see getting a wife and saying, look, we have to live with my mother because she's getting older and I take care of her. That would be fine or getting a girlfriend. But like he's never there's never any talk about in that James. He might just be like, I'm never going to get married because if I die, it might destroy a woman. I'm just going to fuck everybody. That's not how biology works. Or you see going to police work because he just loves the handcuffs. I mean, I don't know what it is. But any time I hear lifelong bachelor never moved out of his mother's house, he gets a little edgainy and you get a little like that's very. Yeah. You can't say it's creepy when it's edgain, but it's fine when it's him. You know what I mean? Just because he's a police or anybody else because you know the results of that gain. So that's creepy. But if it's creepy, it's creepy always. Sorry. It might be creepier as a cop because you can get away with sawing a woman in a half and a fucking barn. Yeah. Well, mom's sleeping. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, that's not a bad thing either way. Whether he's asexual gay or fucking whatever it is. I'm not saying he is any of these things. I'm just saying whatever he is, it doesn't really fucking matter. And it's irrelevant here. So he never moved out. He lived with his mother. He seemed perfectly happy with that. No kids, no wife, no nothing. Um, that's his casserole. I believe it's top tier, top tier green chili chicken enchiladas is what he makes. It's excellent. As a nice. You got to get the recipe from Laurie Vallo. And he's very happy. Um, he sounds like it sounds like he's like see more skinner is what he sounds like actually from the Simpsons, the principal because he's like a very respectable man who does respectable things and looks normal and looks great. And then he's like, but mother, you know what I mean? And I'm not making fun of him. Just saying like, yeah, it's it's giving me a see more skin or vibe. I've never met anybody that just lived with their with with their mom forever that didn't have some it. They weren't just an incredibly fascinating character one way or another. That's it. There you go. That's exactly right. Very interesting person. And I want to talk to them and ask them everything and they have to be truth. I want it all. Give me it all. Um, so he graduated from Somerset High School 1971. He earned his Eagle Scout certificate in 67 at 14. So he's all into that. That's fucking impressive to do. Oh, it is. No, that's hard. That's hard. That's still a lot to do there. Um, he always was an Eagle Scout too. He stayed up with all that kind of stuff. Those guys who do the Eagle Scout shit. They do that forever. Like that's usually jammed. Don't make it till you're 18, 19 somewhere in there. Yeah. And then I mean, part of it is that you're you're right. The idea is to pass that on to the to the wee below. Exactly. Cup scouts and everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, yeah, just to keep everybody growing to be a man, not blowing them in the woods. It's just going to say keep your fingers out of each other's but holes would be my first fucking. Yeah. First lesson here, forcible butthole fingering will not be allowed in the troop other than that. I don't know. That might be my the most upsetting thing that's ever happened in, in, uh, is shaping youth in this country, is that that basically was a fucking farm system to fuck boys constantly. It's so fucked up. Yeah, I mean, well, it went bankrupt and rebranded. I don't even know what it is now. Who now the Mormons are in charge of this? No, they're the ones controlling it. Yeah, which I don't even know. I don't even know, they'd never fucking get it. I don't want anybody in the exact way to know. Any adults who want to spend, and I'm not talking, there could be one, but any group of adults that want to spend time with children who aren't theirs, there's a bunch of pedophiles in that group. Sorry, there just is. Yeah, there's a few real nice people who want to do the right thing, and they have kids, and they want to raise them right, and then there's a few people who act like that, and they want to fuck your kid. That's what goes on. There's no other, I don't want to spend time with anybody's kids. Yep, there are some that are men that failed as parents, that just want to, if they help these kids be successful, it replaces, or how they feel about their own kids. They had a shitty childhood, or this was very good for them in their childhood, and they want to give that experience to somebody else, or they're just pedophiles, and this is a way to get access to children. Unfettered. Unfettered. Unsupervised, it's crazy. I say that all the time, too, 'cause it's really hard, because the people who aren't kid fuckers, who want to actually help kids and spend time with them, are the most amazing people in the world. They're incredible. They're incredible, they're selfless, and I don't want to look at your fucking kid. Any of you, anybody out there, I don't care about your kid, I care about my kids. I care about Jimmy's kids, I care about my kids and my family, everybody else, I don't give a fuck about your kids. 'Cause nobody does, I mean, I want your kids to be successful and all that, I'm not gonna fucking do it personally. I'm not gonna personally guide them is what I'm getting at. I don't care about that, to that way. So, I admire people that do that and don't do anything. But the problem is, the mix is-- Huge problem. You cannot keep that away. If that's the honey pot to them is a bunch of children, they're gonna swarm to it, it's just the way it is. And evidently nobody thinks this would happen to my kid, and everybody thinks this will never happen to my kid out there in the woods. Absolutely, I met Scott Masterbot. He's a real, he's a sweetheart. Yeah. He had a tray of orange slices, which we know the best. It just makes all the sense in the world that a man volunteering to take children into the woods, he's doing that for a reason. Either the greatest guy in the world or the worst guy in the world. There's no in between. It's literally what it is. So you have a bunch of the greatest and worst people ever in one group. Flip a fucking coin, 'cause that right there's 50/50, babe. That's right. So he started at the Sheriff's Department for Pulaski County Sheriff's Sam in the mid-1970s, a deputy state fire marshal who worked with him for years and all this type of thing said that there was definitely something in his father being killed that made him do all this. He said it wasn't revenge. I just think he felt like he needed to pick up where his father left off and kind of build his shoes, which makes sense. In 1981, he quits the force. Don. A guy named Johnny Adams was elected Pulaski County Sheriff and Sam quit. Nobody said that he hated Johnny Adams or there was any bad blood but he just quit after the election and instead became chief of police in the town of Ferguson, Kentucky, in 1982, small town. He held that job till 1985 and then he runs against Johnny Adams for Pulaski County Sheriff and he wins. I got a feeling he doesn't like Johnny Adams, James. He doesn't like the way he does things but everybody from back there said they got along and all of his friends said he wasn't like fuck Johnny Adams. He just wanted to be sheriff. I think he was building this resume. He went to be chief of a town so he could then be the sheriff. Just being in a deputy, I think that's what they were saying. His friends, it was more like to quit when he gets in charge. Go away and then come back and oppose him. That sure sounds like fuck Johnny Adams. It does but it could have been Johnny Adams or Jimmy Westman. It wouldn't have mattered. He just wanted to, that's what he wanted to do. Yeah, but it sounds like he's not inviting him to the barbecue. And anyways, you didn't get to taste the moths off. No, so in his time in County Sheriff, he takes office in January 86 and he's the sheriff from then on. He is Mr. Sheriff, man. He wins an election again in '89. Sheriff again. He was named Kentucky Sheriff of the year in 1989, by the way. Wow, of all the counties. So they got a shitload of those, they got a ton of counties. Luckily, most of the sheriff's are probably corrupt. So that's excellent. You guys, it's a smaller fool. Yeah. I'm taking a little bankroll. Yes, too many boss hogs out there and Enes and Frosco P Coltrane's, and that's what happens. Now, more election wins. He wins in '93. Then there's the '98 election. This is very interesting. This is rural Kentucky. So one of the big things about this is the sheriff's department is a steady paycheck. Yeah. No mine can close, no factory can close, no, you know, as long as the town don't close, we're all right. Well, it's the county. So as long as the county and the county can't close, that's great. County and close. Gotta have county facilities. The state will pay for it if they have to, you know, you're always going to get paid. And the other thing if you're sheriff, that is a powerful position because you are now in a position to dull out steady, well-paying jobs to people you know, so that and your family, your friends and people that are whatever. So it's a lot of, you know, patronage back and forth there, power. And this is, these are counties where this was coal and tobacco all this area and all kinds of shit like that. None of this shit is around anymore, really. So this is a big deal if you can get into this. So in 2002 here, or I'm sorry, the 1998 election we're talking about here, they said that decades of persistent poverty had warped local elections into raw grabs for power and patronage. That's the associated press. We're not loyal to anybody anymore. No, they're just, it's just to get yours and get your family in there and help them out. And that's, that's what it is. Now, Polaski County basically, whoever wins, not even basically a thousand percent, whoever wins the Republican primary wins the election. You don't even need to have an election. It's going to be 85 percent to 15 percent every time in these areas. So this area, the, the may primary is the big deal. And then the November election is, they don't even care. That's just the, that's just the celebration. It's, it's like the election on the wire. The primary was the election and, you know, he said, if I can't get 85 against the Republican and Baltimore, I should fucking pack my bags. That's the same thing here. If you can't get 85 percent against a Democrat in Polaski County, we'll fucking you doing. Yeah. So he, uh, they, he had an opponent named Kay Stringer in this primary. And, um, on election night, this is crazy. Sam was told he lost by 99 votes. The primary. He's like, shit, then they found there was a mistake. Who knows? We found 99 votes. Well, no, we found 100 votes. Looks like you won by one. Stop it. A block of 100. Okay. Then, okay. They came, they did an official recount because they were like, obviously one vote. We have to recount this shit. Yeah. According to the accounts of the race, both people finished with exactly. Now it's a tie, five thousand five hundred or five thousand nine hundred fifty three votes a piece. Perfect tie is what they found in the recount. What? Okay. So Kentucky's law for how to remedy this isn't to another recount. Make sure we didn't fix it. Their law is we flip a coin literally, literally flip a fucking coin. That's how we're going to decide this thing. That's the law. A coin flip. Not, I'd rather have an essay contest from the two of these people or some shit, a coin flip. I mean, they should have right into their, they should be tie goes to the challenger because if you can challenge the incumbent and get as many votes as him, it should be like boxing though. If it's a draw, the champ keeps his belt. That's it. You didn't beat the champ. Yeah. And in, in the NFL, tie goes to the receiver. I guess the runner in baseball, maybe that's, maybe that's it if you can't, if you can't challenge hard enough to win, then fuck you. And that's it. Yeah. I think that's how it works. But uh, you didn't flip the coin. Flip a coin. Flip a coin. So the county officials flip a coin and Sam wins the coin toss. So he's the sharp still case stringer went to court about this to go and isn't this, this is ridiculous. This is a, a provision from the 1800s to just flip a fucking coin. Can we do something more modern? And they said, no, it's fine coins flip hundreds of thousands of dollars to win. A, a nickel decides this. Sorry. It's Tails, motherfucker. Keep going. Back off. Pack your bag. Pack your bag. So that was also strange. Then, uh, the Associated Press said that the county's chief prosecutor before the, after the election, but before the coin flip was indicted on federal extortion charges for shaking down a local pawn broker for a hundred thousand dollars. It's so corrupt around here, dude. It's insane. It's insane. Um, the money was used to as a political, as political contributions, chiefly to Sam's closest competitor who was the prosecutor's cousin. So the person who tied with him, that is his cousin, uh-huh. trouble on federal extortion charges for shaken down pawn brokers for political contributions. Okay. Allowing them to sell stolen guns for if you chip me off a piece, I'm not sure exactly what it was allegedly. The prosecutor was convicted and sent a federal prison, by the way. Oh. Okay. So this is the town. I think we've set up the how things work here. It's real fly by the CD or ask real. Real dukes of hazard shit. That's what it is. This is the kind of behavior that garners double the violence rate. Yes. Because you're allowing shit. And the thing about it is Sam is considered a very upstanding man. He does not know nobody says he's corrupt at all. He is like the last honest man in this fucking corrupt ass county. That's how this is. That's how this is working. He's he's Joe Don Baker in that fucking movie from back then. He's the last fucking bad. So he's doing what he expected his dad would do. Yeah. He's I think anything he figures it seems like if he was like that, it would disgrace his father and obviously can't have that because his mother's right there to hit him. She's in the next one. Right. She doesn't even have his own place. So his radio call signal was unit 111, which was his batch number was 111. The associated press later on described him as having an unimposing as a quote unimposing law man with a shy demeanor and an awkward overbite, which does not sound that's a sheriff. It's not the most shining complimentary. It's weird. It's a skinny Homer Simpson that they just described. Yeah, but they described him, I guess because he's not like Mr. On the sheriff. I guess is kind of what they're trying to say. That's supposed to be sort of a compliment is the thing. Okay, a meek man that's friendly with an overbite. Yeah, but also a big guy and all that kind of thing. But everybody said he's a very dependable, hardworking, honest man. They said that it was just anything happened. You call Sam. He'll take care of it. He'll take care of everything. A United States Congressperson from this area said being sheriff, as we all know, was Sam he's all it's his love, it's his job. It was his joy. Yeah, he doesn't even have his own house. So it's got to be his job, you know, a former director of the sheriff's Kentucky Sheriff's Association later said that Sam was perhaps the best Kentucky sheriff of the last hundred or the last 30 years. So that's an hundred. I miss broke myself. So his brother, Lewis, the one who got sprayed with shotgun pellets on the porch said that he, quote, he did a lot for a lot of people. Some of the older people said that when the snows hit, he'd come by, might be midnight to check if we had our medicine, food, and if we still had heat and everything like that. Make sure we weren't going to die in this shit. He literally just go out to the rural areas to check on the old people of the area that he knew and just make sure everything was fine. Which is. We're going up to the pharmacy if he knew me, too. That's insane. Wow. Incredibly caring. Exactly what these people need from their sheriff in this area. So a friend of his later said that in 20 years, she had seen him, knew him for 20 years. Well, only seen him out of uniform one time. The land wears the uniform every day. All day, every day. He's always working. Work seven days a week. They said the only time she saw him out of uniform was in a photograph because he was a groom'sman in somebody's wedding so he was wearing a tuxedo. She didn't even see him. It was in a photograph. Which is funny because I picture him wearing his entire uniform and a bow tie. That's a very big. Comber butt. You got a comber butt over there. So he drove an unmarked brown Ford Crown Vic, a brown and yellow with the department's colors. Lovely choice, guys. He wore a bulletproof vest every day, no matter what, no matter what he was doing or where he was going because of his father. He didn't eat that tuxedo was a bulletproof vest. Always. Well, yeah. Under his uniform. I'm sure he wore it there too, though. Probably. He's just used to it. He's like junior from Reno 9-1-1. He's like, "I'm just used to having it on." He's still the sheriff. You got to be. Yeah. Where's the last place somebody's going to shoot you at a wedding? That's right. Well, you're picking at the crab legs at the wedding, that's right. So he wore it every day because it would happen to his father. He was very aware of that and it was a symbolic thing for him. He would patrol back roads till two in the morning, sometimes all night. He just worked all the time. That's all he ever did. Hate's weed. This guy is a fucking hate's weed, which is marijuana or like. Marijuana. Hates it. Just despises it, which is, I mean, come on, it's already a dry county. Let these people have something for fuck's sake. Other than. Here is this. 2000-ish. They're doing all this. It's like, come on. I'm not saying it. Like, wonder why everyone's on pills. They're poor, broke, miserable, no jobs, booze is illegal and you can't get weed. So what the fuck else are you going to do? And the sheriff's war hunt. Marijuana. He got his fucking helicopter pilot's license so he could fly over to try to spot weed in the cornfields during the summer. Take it back. What? Okay. Where are you about the crackheads running around on the ground? Don't worry about some farmer who lets somebody grow a patch of weed in this cornfield. That's crazy. A pilot's license to find rogue, holler, holler plants. Yep. Because that's farmers and cornfields would do that a lot for years to make extra, especially in this area where there's a fucking money. They do it to make a few extra bucks. And a lot of farmers in the 80s, their farm survived from doing that. That's how they survived when all the farms were being foreclosed down in the 80s. That's how they survived. So it's. There's movies about that from the 80s. He had. he sat on the governor's task force for marijuana eradication, which sounds like the worst fucking thing I've ever heard of. That's terrible. Stupid. And on Appalachian highs, intensity, Appalachian high-intensity drug trafficking area board. So he's all about stopping drugs. He makes a lot of arrests, a lot of them, especially for drugs. One sweep here in the 2001, brought more than 70 arrests on 129 indictments in one sweep. One of the biggest drug stings of the county's history. They did. Is it all weed? And that's all metham pills and shit, too. Because by 2001, 2002, he's also. And I think you should spend all your time on this and forget weed growing in cornfields, working on the outbreak of meth labs in the area. Let's welcome those. Yeah. There are a thousand times more dangerous and awful. So. Right. The danger alone in the manufacturing of it. Just looking at that. That's bad enough. And then doing it. Yeah. But the doing it could work. Also, there's that. But then when you're not doing it and you need it, the things that you do to get it, that's. Horrible. Horrible. It's horrible. I can't believe there's a new meth user ever again. Thank fuck, though. You cannot go into a store and buy a beer. Thank God. No Budweiser round here. Thank fuck for that. So yeah, he is. Baylook at Sam as he is like the. He's a demon these meth users because he's up their asses. So. Good. They don't like him at all. He's always coming. Always working on something. Always trying to come at you. So there's no relaxing for these meth people. And by 2002, 2003, this region is a fucking awash in drugs. I mean, it's even worse now. But back then, it was terrible. So that same congressman, Hal Rogers, said that the district that he represents that includes Polesky County has been dubbed the nation's painkiller capital. Wow. You know, overtaking West Virginia and Florida. Florida other parts. That's saying something. So. Wow. Now, Sam's other activities here. He's a member like we said of the local scout troop. He's an Eagle Scout. He's a past chief of the Kawita Lodge and the order of the arrow, what these are. A member of the Somerset Polesky County rescue squad and a Kentucky colonel. You bet. He's also a Kentucky colonel. He also fries the hell of a chicken. That's right. And shoots a three pointer like nobody's business. They were a basketball team. Now, 2002 election here. He's going again. There was fifth term now, dying in 2002. The sheriff's race heats up. Here we go. It's. And he almost lost a minute ago. He almost lost. I mean, it was a fucking tie. He's only for the grace of tales did he win like. Well, for the grace of somebody's thumb flipping a little harder than. They're not. Yeah. And catching it right the right time. So there's five candidates total in the primary. There's Sam, there's Sam's very close loser last time, Kay Stringer, back for a rematch. There is a Somerset police officer named Todd Woods or Todd Wood. I'm sorry. So that's three. There's a fourth one that doesn't really matter. And then there's another guy named Jeff Morris and Dark Horse just drag and votes away. He's at last place by a long shot. And everybody hates him because you have no chance. No. No, no votes. You're dick. He barely gets any coverage. Yeah. He doesn't get anything. He's a former deputy that quit after a couple years under a cloud of scandals. So it's not like. Well, that's. He's not a guy. He doesn't even work as a cop anymore. Yeah. it's a little strange here. Um, now April 13th, 2002, about 6 p.m. The elections heating up, uh, this is the annual fish fry is underway. This is to raise money and all that. It's at the shopville stab volunteer shy fire department. That's where it takes place. Big thing, annual spring fish fry. It's one of two fun razors. The department holds each year a fish fry in the spring and a chilly supper in the fall. Oh, it makes sense. Yeah. There's about 350 people there. Yeah. They're frying up catfish. It's selling well. They're raising money. Um, each candidate for office for every county office has been invited to speak at this event too. So while you're eating fish, you're listening to whoever's running for control or things. No, no, not a debate at all. Everybody gets five minutes and you just make your speech and you move on. That's awesome. Five minutes a piece. Yeah, no debate. And just this is what's good about it. It's like how they do elections in deadwood. They just, yeah, they just brought them up there. And I think I'd be a good sheriff because, I like this town. It's a good town. I don't even, uh, set up shop and, uh, be here in the future. So that's what's going on here. Everyone's buying fish. They're doing everything like that. Sam's mother is brother Lewis is there. Yeah. Todd Woods there. K stringers there. Jeff Morris is there. All the candidates are there. Sam has five minutes for his speech and he uses about 10 seconds of it. And that's all he needs. He says, my name is Sam Catron. I'm running for sheriff. I appreciate your vote. And he leaves. He assumes everyone knows who he is. You know who I am. I'm not going to waste your time acting like you don't know me. That's stupid. I'm sure I'm saying I'm sticking around if you'll have me. If you like what I do vote for me. Basically, that's it. So I'm going to get back to it. Yep. April 13th, 2002, same night, about an hour later, after all the speeches, about seven p.m. It's time for the old cake auction, which is a nice thing. Um, firefighters invite Sam onto the stage to help sell the desserts. Sheriff Sam, he knows everybody. So you, hey, look, he's this cake or whatever. So he buys to himself. He buys a chocolate bun cake, which is sounds amazing. I love a chocolate bun cake. That's fun. I just love a bun. Oh, it's all ready. It doesn't need anything on it. And then they put shit on it. Get that shit off of there. I don't even want it. I just want that cake part. No, it's so good. And Amish chess cake, which I think it makes it looks like a board like it's checker's checker style. Um, he pays with a hundred dollar bill. So he buys two cakes for a hundred bucks, show and he's a magnanimous fuck over here. Um, April 13th, same night, seven, 15. He's got his cakes and he's walking to put his cakes in the car. Okay. Now his car is parked across the road because he wanted to leave parking for the other people. That's a nice guy. That's how considerate he is. I don't want to take up the good parking spaces. He's fine to walk. So it's across the road a little bit, not far, but right there takes his cars out the cakes out there. It's the unmarked Crown Vic. That's what he drives. He sets one cake on the trunk. Yep. So he can unlock the door. He unlocks the door to put the other cake on the back seat, which is going to be precarious on the way home. I don't think it's going to be a big real slow no bumps. As he's doing that, a single rifle shot is cracked from the woods up on a hill in the woods. You hear a single rifle shot. Sam drops. No. Sheriff, Sheriff Sam, the bullet strikes him on the left side of his head toward his face in the head right in the head. Boom. Drops like a fucking deer lights out. He falls onto the road with a cake still in one hand. He fell like just straight down. Key's still in the other hand. He's also wearing his vest, but that doesn't protect your head unfortunately. So yeah, one of those people said the cake was still sitting on the car on the trunk lid. That's a a judge that was nearby who saw everything witnesses said they heard a single loud crack. One eyewitness and there's a lot of quotes we're going to give from a discovery series called sins and secrets like 15 years ago that's a bunch of quotes. They're good at collecting quotes for that. One witness said, as soon as I heard the shot ring, I knew it was a shot. Yeah, it's rural Kentucky. These people know a rifle shot when they hear one. Seems I heard a gunshot. I said, that's a gunshot. I mean, if you don't hear a lot of gunshots, I think it's a car back firing. I suppose. Yeah, this area, they're like, what's that about a 30-out six right there? I think you hear that? Yeah, yeah. They know gunshots. Again, this is like on the wire when they hear something and go, that's a nine. No, that's a 40, man. You know what the fuck you're talking about? You're around gunshots. This person said, I turned immediately and just didn't a split and just didn't split a second. Sheriff was on his back straight beside his car. There was actually blood spray in front of him. So it happened. Oh, wow. It's a good shot. They said the bullet struck him in the face or the head from a considerable distance. We're talking 80 to 100 yards. This isn't an impeccable rifle, man. No, this is a good hunter. He's pretty good, but this is scary. It's a high-powered, they find. It's a 25-ought six-round is what hit him. Pretty high-powered, just above, obviously, it has had above the vast here. But people didn't get right away unless the people were around Sam to see him drop. They just heard a rifle shot in the distance, which in rural Kentucky is not a, not a thing. There's plenty of rifle fire in the woods all the time. Like you don't even think twice about gunfire. So then someone saw the sheriff on the ground and then everybody was like, oh my god, and ran over there. His elderly mother is there. She runs over. His brother's there. One witness said it was total chaos. Everyone was screaming and crying, as you can imagine for Christ's sake. And now this is her second law man relative, immediate family, who's been gunned down. Gunned down. And this one is, I mean, he's fucking dead. I mean, he's got the floor. There's no full and dislodging and taking him later. This is the end of it. This is it. So now what a witness sees up on the hill while this is happening is they see a man in camouflage. Yep. Up on a grassy knoll, as they called it in the woods, with a rifle slung on his shoulder, climbing onto a motorcycle on the hill and riding off. That's what they say. No one can identify. They just see a man, Camo rifle, like man takes off. Yeah. A terrible camouflage of everybody sees you, by the way. Right. That working well. Why are you wearing snow, snow camo out here? He's got that desert storm shit going on. That brown stuff. They're like, that digital shit. Yeah, digital brown. So he does that. Witnesses said they just paused for a few minutes or they just paused for a few minutes about the killer and then walked up on the hill, got on a motorcycle and rode off. So like the shot rang out and the guy didn't get on the motorcycle right away and drive off. That's the thing. He waited, watched everybody doing shit and then they watched him get on the motorcycle and drive off. I guess that's smart. If you want to make sure he's dead. Well, you make sure he's dead and be. Make sure that everybody sees that he's dead and causes a stern commotion because then nobody's looking around for who did it. They're looking at, oh my god, is he okay. Problem is if he were to take it off right when he'd the shot rang out, he would have had a pretty good head start and gotten away. But instead, he takes off. Everybody watches him take off and the county clerk, quote, he, this is a quote from somebody else. He hollered out. Go get him, boys. And then all the guys jumped, jumped in their trucks and went after him, unquote. Oh boy. Now he's in deep trouble. He's got every fucking buddy at the fish fry. Pist off hillbillies, all armed to the teeth chasing him through the fucking rural roads. In their likely jacked up for the whole truck. They're coming. And these guys are pissed, too. This is a, I mean, they were just to go get him, boys. I mean, they're, they're on one. That's a horrible war cry. Yeah, it's fucking crazy. You're in trouble. The news, by the way, later called the hillside the grassy knoll and called the shooter summer sets version of Lee Harvey Oswald. Okay. Because it's such a hard shot and such a long shot. And Sam was standing and moving. It's all he was sitting in chair somewhere, stationary. He was moving around. So somebody in this area doesn't speak Latin. They just got a shoot and then go Latin. Exactly. Yeah. I think that's John Wilkes Booth who screamed shit in Latin after he killed Lincoln. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's the other one. Yeah. That's a death to tyrants. Yeah. We always do that. We do their whole name, the whole middle and everything. Yeah, let's see, you know, who that's why some other poor bastard just named John Booth doesn't get fucking. I think it's specific for that reason, I would think. Yeah. So anyway, it's in front of a crowd. It's a wild deal. Now, interesting here, remember Kay Stringer, the 1998 coin toss loser. That's poor guy here. I guess the deputy coroner who reached Sam first, his name was Larry Stringer. That's Kay's brother. Oh boy. And the county coroner was Alan Stringer, another brother. Oh boy. See, that's what I'm saying. It's all too much there. They He covered up the body, one first responder said, still lying there where he was getting shot, still lying where he was getting shot, where he got shot, I think is what you're going for. Still lying there where he got shot. I was going to use what they said, still lie in where he was getting where he was getting shot. I had him covered up. You can still see the blood run on down the concrete. Yeah. Yeah, it's a blanket over him is going to stop the blood from coming from his bullet wound in his fucking head. So yeah, and then the other guy, you know, K stringers checking his pulse and, you know, all this type of shit here. So the, it's obviously a huge fucking deal. Everybody's here. There's tons of sheriff deputies here. There's all sorts of everybody from the county. It's a lot. It really is. And even like the veteran officers were like, what the fuck just happened? Like everybody was kind of, you know, he's stupid for a minute here. They couldn't. They're like, it's shocking. It's crazy. We're at a fish fry for Christ. Right. This isn't like a, the man's holding a bun cake in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. He's got an Amish chest, chest cake in his hand while there's blood. It's crazy. He's got a bunch on the trunk. Should soul nuts. So he got a bunch of trunk, baby. That's right. So one person, a cop said it was beyond the scope of what I could realize a person would have done. And then said, I just froze. I didn't know whether to scream at the top of my lungs or what. So everyone was just like, what do we do? The first thing they do is everybody who hasn't run after the killer in their pickup trucks is immediately, completely locked down in the fish fry in the fire department. You're not allowed to leave witnesses. Yeah. Now you can't leave. It's one of those. Yeah. They were keeping you because they didn't know because they didn't know whether the shooter have an inside person was there somebody there signaling the shooter. They don't know if there's a, you know, if this is a conspiracy from both sides or they had no idea. So nobody went home. They said, quote, everyone at that fish fry was put inside the bay doors and was kept there. They would not let anybody leave. And they set up laptop computers and question everybody. That's it. So hundreds of people there. They interviewed also the other sheriff candidates. They interviewed Kay Stringer. They interviewed Todd Wood. They interviewed Jeff Morris. They interview all these people. So everybody gets interviewed. They immediately have to swear in the deputy chief. Yeah. Because he's now the boss. He's now the boss. So he's our chief deputy, not deputy chief. He's his close friend Jim McWarter, who's a former Kentucky state police officer who'd come back to local law enforcement to help Sam because they were friends. That. So he was sworn in, you know, within an hour to be acting sheriff because they need somebody to direct this investigation on the ground here. The state police are going to really take that over though after a while, obviously, because it's a county official being killed. So it's a big deal. Minutes later now. Okay. They're locking this down, telling everybody to stop. People are crying. They don't know what to do. There's a guy riding the way in camouflage with a rifle and a motorcycle. Right. Luke Boyz are in pot pursuit. Everybody's fucking chasing him. I assume firing guns out the window up in the air as they do it. Probably. Just an assumption. Just to let the guy know exactly where they are. They can store at work still, you know, just having shots since yesterday. I'm fired. This in a minute. Yeah. So about five miles from the fire station. The motorcycle rider tries to take a curve in the road that's a little bit wet, a little bit too fast and lays the bike down. Uh-oh. Not good. He's trying to get right and get it up when a guy named David Brian Hoffs arrives in his pickup truck and just drives it right into the motorcycle in the back. Fucking hell. Fucking plow. There you go. There you go. You're not getting up anymore. And David Hoffs said the only thing I know to do to keep him from getting any further was to hit him with my truck. I run about 50, 55 mile an hour and this is I'm reading an exact quote. I run about 50, 55 mile an hour and I hit him pretty well head on. I knocked him about 25 feet backwards off of it. Mind you. I don't even know if this guy shot the sheriff. No idea. They just said go get him boys. So I hit a man with my truck at 50 miles an hour. I attempted murder. I tried to kill him. Yeah. Then David Hoff, as the guy flies back and lands, David Hoff runs over to him and says you better not pick that rifle back up or I'm going to beat you to death. Okay. So he says he, he believed him. The guy on the ground. I think he just hit me with the 77. Yeah. I think I'm gonna stop. I don't know if he, if he's, if he could do it, but he's willing to anyway, he's willing to beat me to death. He has shown. Yeah. So, um, and then Hoff tells the people bystanders to call the police. He says, call the cops. This is the man who killed the sheriff. So the guy on the ground in camouflage takes his helmet off and just says I did, oh, what? That's what he says. I did. He gives up. He got hit by a trucky. It's all over. He gives up. Well, shit. Yep. Hoff was right. Well, he was the guy, only guy in camouflage on a motorcycle, the rifle over a shoulder running down the road. But there's probably a lot of guys in these woods. Oh, yeah. So we don't know. Just for sure until he says it. Yeah. Just not that guy running that direction. Yeah. You know, that'd be terrible luck. If you were just some guy who happened to be going out hunting bird hunting that night. Yeah. Fucking dress like this. So much use to share it from my general direction. Shit. Yeah. I had a nice, ah, man. A tree stand right on up there. It was real nice, too. Rune the whole thing. So the later on, they said, yeah, you hit him with the motorcycle, knocking the rider off. This is from the report and sending the rifle flying. Hoff got out of his truck and approached the rider while brandishing a tire tool. He came over with a fucking, with a tire iron. So I'm going to beat you to death if you grab that fucking thing. And he believed it. Wow. The rider, Danny Shelley, that's his name, took off his helmet as Hoff approached, Hoff told by standards to call the police as he killed the sheriff and Shelley responded. I did. Um, David Hoff said about this, that this is like a decade later, too. He says this. He's still pissed off. He said, quote, I was highly pissed, which is, I could see that. I just like, I was highly pissed. I was highly 50, 55 mile an hour. I was highly pissed because he took a good man from the community all because he was just stupid and wanted to kill somebody. Yeah. There. And I'll blame you. Well, I'm going to hit you on my truck. I don't blame you. That's balls to he's a man just killed, not just a cop, the top cop and, and you're going to just chase him down with a tire iron and you pick up truck, you hit him with the, the rifle went flying when you hit him with the pick up. Yeah. Yeah. Not worried. This guy's in a shoot on him or something. Right. That's my point. Once the rifle went flying, he said, you're in trouble now. I got a tire iron. So, yeah, they're, you know, this is, this is a mess here. Yeah. And this wasn't cops chasing him. This was a posse of rest off red necks with belly full of fried catfish. Yeah. It's a lot. So they're doing that. One veteran officer later described the anger and said, the man who pulled the trigger quote will hurt you quicker because he thought about you the police officer. Okay. That's that was this quote. I don't know exactly what that means, but. Well, please are right. Go pure. Okay. Yeah. Did you get hit by a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, p, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a Did you get hit by a trap or a piece of it? Well, did you hop on you off the road in his 77? Yeah. She also drove your truck all you went over there. But so by the time of sheriff's deputy finally arrived, the suspects are ready on the ground next to his wrecked boner cycle, rifle lying off in the distance and a guy standing over him with a fucking tire iron ready to hit him with it. That's what the sheriff pulls up to where the deputy here. He takes the man into custody at 741 PM. All right. So that 26 minutes, I think they said after the shot rang out very fast. They got him in custody. Yeah. Now their first theory because they're like, they don't know this fucking guy from Adam. He's not like a guy that, you know, Sam knows real well. Sam wasn't banging his wife for something. It's like, who is this fucking idiot? So their first instinct is that this is some sort of revenge grudge thing here that Sam arrested the wrong people and they're pissed off at him. And you got to assume that it's the sheriff. Yeah. That's that's it. One of the investigators said, the first thing you think about is that it's somebody he's arrested. Somebody he's made mad. Obviously, those kind of people can have a vendetta or a grudge. Sure. Yeah. Another investigator said there was a lot of people who might have had some reason to be mad at him over an arrest. There were so many people that were potential suspects. Yeah. How many people have you arrested? Well, we just did a roundup where I arrested 79 drug dealers. What do you think? None of them are pissed off. You know, right. So how old is this kid? That's under a little bit of contention. I believe he is 31, but then paper another paper said he was 24. So it's hard to tell and then it's a long story. Kentucky doesn't keep days. It's didn't keep track of he's born sometime in the in the oughts is what they say and I'm sure if they write all that shit down That night, okay, they take that guy away that night pretty much as this is all happening America's most wanted is on Featured on America's most one it is Sheriff Sam not his murder him a segment he had taped already Looking for somebody looking for somebody which is the first person. They're gonna think is behind all this by the way because that's airing So they feature a segment on him about a subject named Steve Anderson who is a Somerset area Militia guy and pirate radio host He's a white supremacist lunatic is what he is who does crazy shit on the internet put up a ham radio to get his message out Yeah, let's talk about him. He broadcast a shortwave radio program called the militia hour. Oh God from his home Under the name Kentucky State militia radio. Oh my god 2000's podcasting. That's it. It happened. There was people doing it back then The actual Kentucky State militia eventually disowned him He's too much for the Kentucky State militia. They literally said he was too much of an he had too much Anti-Semitic content. Oh My god the Kentucky militia. Do you know how much anti-Semitic content you have to have They're like to be saying some slurs. They're like talk about black smore What you doing just talk about them Jews with a plenty of other people of mad at Jesus Christ He got Mexicans and what you what you mean and not what the Mots of all talk about some house for Christ sake All right, even a Jew in Kentucky. What the hell you care? 0.0% 0.0% at least in this area So he was kicked out for being too racist out of the Kentucky State militia Good Lord So he rebranded his shit because you know, he can't use their banner anymore as united patriot radio Which is what they're all about. It was a patriot or shit early adopter of early adopter Yep in the fall of 2001 by the way during a traffic stop this Steve Anderson Open fire on a Kentucky sheriff's deputy and escaped into the hills He got pulled over open fire and just took off running into the hills and was missing for months. Did he hit him? Yeah, he shot a guy. Oh god. He opened fire at a guy He was and he would make open threats against people from Kept from being in the woods. He'd send out threats. He threatened a local reporter for covering his shit and So Sam takes this guy seriously. Yeah, well, yeah, the night he's killed Investigators had to seriously think about You know, this guy's a we have a fugitive malicious sniper in the woods right now Wow, enforcement and and his profile was gonna be on tonight So maybe this guy had something to do with it Maybe he came back for revenge. He saw the guy on camera or heard about it in an air whatever it is The problem is with minimal investigation. They said they have no reason to believe that these two guys are connected the shooter and Steve Anderson, but it was an interesting theory at first here That's so that's the most plausible conspiracy. I've ever heard it's and they said it to their like he's missing in the woods He's a sniper. This is all they sense But then they have this other guy this Danny Shelley guy sitting here. Yeah, he's 31 Danny Shelley at this point That's right. I ended up finding the exact date of birth. So 1971. So Danny Shelley is his name Danny S Shelley S It's shell EY at the end. Yeah, so his nickname though. What everybody calls him is pup Everyone calls him pup like a baby dog. Yeah, or puppy on a love after lockup. Yeah Who's now dead who knew that she was gonna be the one that survived. That's crazy. She's she's oh, that's right The other one. I thought puppy died puppy's the friends alive the other one died. You're right. Yeah, her friend is alive God damn it doesn't I can see her face. Yeah, the way she talks right now. I know her always so mad I could pick her out of a line up here So Danny bold pup here a little bit about him born in 71 grew up in the UBank area a small community That's like Pulaski and Lincoln County in that area there Um, everybody said real nice kid He's a big fuck too. He's like six four two hundred fifty pounds of big fucking guy. Huge pup Yeah, we'll pup big old boys, so He is not from this very Small area, which means he's always been a bit of an outsider is how it works everybody says that about yeah from around this area He's everybody said he was a nice kid um his family not a shit family decent family respectable family um He was prom king. Oh Now in an area this small obviously that's a as much of an accomplishment if if your school has you know five thousand kids and it's different But still he's prom king. He's king of these people anyway. Um, he's also a very good athlete in his high school yearbook Uh, they describe him as quote one of the sweetest guys in Pulaski County now he's from the county He's not from another area. That's another guy. Sorry. So One of the sweetest guys in Pulaski County is how he's described by the yearbook editors under his picture Okay, they like him and um yeah, but the neighbors in UBank said they didn't really know shelly or his family very well One said quote they're just not mixers. They don't associate much with anyone All right, but not mixers. Okay, keep to themselves. Uh, he played he played in county softball leagues for years One person said he got along with everyone daddy. It's a nice nice kid everybody said just a real nice kid here um Biggest that big guy he hunted he knows how to shoot real well because he's been hunting since he's a kid After high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and made himself a better shooter I went in not really because it didn't last very long. No, I guess his knee. He always had a fucked up knee from sports Yeah, and he's also heavy and a big guy and uh his knee got his knee got fucked up in boot camp And uh, he was discharged before he ever finished training. He might not have shot around in the Marines He might have still been possible. Yeah, you know, so can't get past run down the hill. It's over. It's not gonna work Yeah, to get to the point to shoot things, so yeah Um, so he washed that up boot camp with a bad knee and came home to you bank and um He wasn't really in didn't go to the summer set area quite yet Uh, one of the kids who went to school with him said he was a jolly kid who went to work in Georgetown after he graduated from high school He had gotten injured and came back to Polesky County um Now when he came back he's injured. He's got no education except for high school. He's got no There's no jobs around here really so he's got a series of odd shit jobs here and there Unemployment Just but he's got VA benefits and shit like that because that's crazy. He doesn't have VA benefits. He doesn't get him He was in boot camp like three weeks. Right, but I thought you still get everything for that No, I don't think you get hurt in boot camp. I don't know enough, but I fucking hope not Jesus Christ No, that was where I was going. It's a fucking way don't get that you don't get to just sign up Go there, dick around and play fucking games and do some push-ups for three weeks And then get I have to pay for your health care for the rest of your fucking Meniscus and how you're on my dime Don't think so. I don't think so. Um, so that's that would be ridiculous. Um, I hope not I mean, I hope they would pay for it like a to help them get healthy That would be one thing if they needed a surgery or something. I think it's lifelong That would be insane. We can't have a rule where just if you sign up you get everything free forever That's insane. I think it is for what he didn't do anything I don't believe me. I'm not you did not serve this country. I'm sorry He did that wanted to so bad to well, so what Yeah, you know, I'm not paying for this shit. So he comes home, um, and it's a mess He's about 20,000 dollars in credit card debt 2000 two thousand dish dollars. That's he has five or two thousand dollars. That's just living He had no job and no money. Oh, yeah, so that's just living um He had a criminal record also nothing big though public drunkenness and assault You know, just shit dumb shit His knee kept hurting though and he kept getting prescribed painkillers by the doctors. Oh, no, I see it Oh, yeah, so he became very dependent on a knee and very dependent on these pain pills and Ended up selling some drugs too to be able to pay for his own drugs. He figured out hey um he Would do ever he would roll up money and snort crush Xanix He said he even said that he rolled up a hundred dollar bill to snort crushed Xanix off the gas tank of the motorcycle He fled on after he shot the cop so when there was that pause that was the pause So he could do a line of fucking Xanix get on his motorcycle and drive away Which might be why you wiped out by the way I mean that shit will make you fucking really relax. It doesn't that's not a painkiller either. Why is he doing that? No, no, this is he's beyond painkiller. Yeah, now he's just those pills doing everything now. He just does pills. Yeah I've never heard of that before imagine Imagine Lee Harvey just starts selling. I'm stuck in on a glass dick before he gets out of that. Come to me. Come to me, president. Yeah. He blows that out of the window. I see exits. They find a broken crack pipe by the door. So the, this is very interesting though. That's what he's doing and he's a mess now. He had an accident at work also and got more into pain pills. Pain pills. He started selling them. He said, quote, you can forget everything. He said the least little thing bothers you. You run to them. He goes, once you get into him, you're looking for reasons to take it. And the weird part is I've read that this is fucking crazy that your body, when you're addicted to this shit, will make pain that doesn't exist. So you'll get it. Your body is fruity. That's right. Yes, your body will trick you into doing it. Whereas they say like a lot of this pain that you think you have. I'm not saying some people don't have horrible injuries, but some people that have these phantom pain things, once they're like, they go through a bunch of rehab and they're clean for six months. They don't have any pain anymore because the body knows it's not going to get the opiate that it wants. But for a long time, it knows that I, I make this hurt. Ow. You're going to get the thing I want. Yeah. Yeah. Your brain like, like tricks you like for a dog and treats. Yeah. Yeah. Like the Metroid brain, like pulsating in your fucking head. That's terrible. It's fucking crazy. So they interrogate him, Danny, and sit him down. What the fuck, dude? Why'd you do that? And one investigator said, Danny was just a local kid. He'd been sort of a minor sports hero in high school, like people knew him. One investigator said that he seemed like a nice enough kid. The question would be, how did he get in this position? What the hell happened? You have no beef with the sheriff? The fuck's the problem. The sheriff never arrested him personally or any of that shit. So according to investigators, his first explanation when they sat him down was literally the sheriff is the devil. Okay. Sheriff's the devil and I was ridding the world of evil. Well, that's what I'm doing. Evil. We don't like this. This is. So they said, what does that mean exactly? Why is the sheriff evil? Why are you ridding the world of evil? Why are you making it like this? Um, so to give us something. So he does not give a reason when asked, what do you mean by that? He just says Ken White, when they go, huh, Ken White, that's, that's my answer. Ken White. Who is Ken White? Well, we'll find that. One of the investigators said the relationship was very symbiotic. Ken White gave drugs to Mr. Shelley and Mr. Shelley did his bidding. We'll talk about Ken White in a minute. They said Mr. White was only too willing to supply any of the drugs and all of the drugs that Shelley needed to boost his ego enough to give him courage to do crimes. Okay. Now, like we said, Shelley is super hooked on oxy-contin by this time. That's what he's, that's his main thing. Xanix is just, he does that for fun in between, but oxy's are his, are his thing. When people stop giving him prescriptions, he needed a supplier, obviously. Yeah. So, and he finds Kenneth White. Now, Kenneth, again, we got PUP and now we got this guy with maybe the best nickname of anybody we've ever had. Kenny's got a nickname. Kenny Fingers White. Oh. It's Christ. Fingers. Oh. Ah. That's not good. Yeah. They call them fingers over here. Kenny Fingers White, who is 54 years old at this point, born in 47. I mean, that's a, a very, it seems like a nickname that could be a gangster's nickname, but even Dick Tracy left that one out. Everybody had crazy nicknames. Nobody was, nobody was fingers. You can't be Dick Fingers either. No. That's not going to work. That's probably a nickname. The gangsters. Yeah. So, fingers over here. Yeah. Danny Shelley met fingers at the summer set mall. Obviously. Um, according to Danny Shelley, fingers had pills for sale. Shelley had Coke on him and they began doing some business together. We're pals now. We're pals. Um, now a little bit about all fingers white here. He was a bootleger. Yeah. Who realized that it's a lot easier and more lucrative to sell drugs. Much easier. Much easier. And it's just a thing of pills that's this big is worth more money than a shitload of moonshine. You have to carry your truck or whatever the fuck so he is the opposite of Danny. He's five foot four. He's a little guy is the size of a finger, five foot four, about 200 pounds, though. Oh, he's a little fat from the hit with your hammer, maybe he looks like he swelled up on you swollen. And also he's a sometime police informant. All the cops know him because basically you can't be a bootleger and a drug dealer in a town like this for a long time without getting busted. And when he gets busted, he just tells on people for a while to get himself out. So he also sold shit at flea markets sometime, not drugs actual flea market shit. Yeah. He's a mess. A witness later on said that talked about whites what he called career arc from small time bootleger who would sell liquor in the dry territories and pills like volume to people just here and there that bought booze and shit to what he called a veritable drug kingpin selling oxy cotton cocaine, meth, Xanx, codine, unit, whatever you wanted he got. And he had always a special agent with the DEA testified that white was a major participant in the local drug trade. And he later on though, all his attorneys always say that he's not a drug dealer. He makes his money selling items at the summer set flea market. That's how he makes a living. He makes a little bracelets. They're adorable. And now another investigator said, quote, Mr. White was probably the most influential drug dealer in the county at the time. Wow. He's the guy. And oxys at this point, by the way, are really starting to take off as a recreational drug. Oxys weren't around till the mid 90s. That's when they came out. And the fucked up part is they came out. The drug company that introduced them introduced them as this amazing pain killer that is not addictive at all. Right. All the videos for the doctors had the pitch to everybody was, it's not even addictive. It's amazing, which that's what they told people about coke in the 70s. It's not even addictive. If something feels that good, it's fucking addictive. Well, if it if it nods, your body is going to crave that and it just makes all the sense that it would be like is a fucking ice cream is addictive. If you get into it enough, you know what I'm saying? Ice cream can do it without all that. Imagine what this should do to you. Yeah. Fuck. It's just your body. Your body doesn't, I mean, you don't want, you don't want to feel pain, but your body needs the pain to to warn you when something's unsafe or listen to your fucking body is the point. But those drugs numbing that and killing that it's something that's a brain receptor that your body craves that because then you don't have to, then you don't have to, it doesn't have to do things. Absolutely. Yeah. Your body wants to feel better. Doesn't have to report. It feels better. So, and if you've seen, you know, like I said, wonderful lights. It's, you know, boom, county, mate and call shaking pills and they're crushing them up and snorting them. No one's taking pills. That's not what we do. No. It takes too long. So they dissolve the powder. A lot of times they would inject it too. They'd make a fucking, you know, injection out of it. So a tons of this shit here and it became Hillbilly, heroin, like you mentioned before. So this is what Kenneth White is doing. He's a bootleger, spent his early life running liquor and now he's doing this here. And his washed up high school athlete, buddy, who's huge, popping fingers. So now, really, he's got no competition. He's the big guy, old fingers white. But the main problem is this goddamn sheriff flies fucking helicopters around and won't leave everybody alone about fucking drugs and makes huge busts and all that kind of shit. That's a pain in the ass. White was arrested in 2001 on a cocaine possession charge as well. Court papers showed an informant told police that white had sold him an oxy cotton as well. Charges were later dropped against him as they are in tons of drug cases because they arrest people before they have actual evidence of conviction. They just arrest people all the time. So according to investigators here, he was also, he's like the biggest drug dealer and the biggest informant in the county, both. So the cops kind of let him operate a certain amount because they need the information. They get help. Okay. So they like having no one on his bitch. Oh, he's a total asshole. He's a piece of shit this guy. They said that whenever white found himself in trouble, he'd give up a rival. One time they said his information led to arresting two men who were carrying about 100,000 pills on them when arrested. Wow. So he's giving up big people, too. He knows what he knows what everybody's doing, too. Fuck yeah. Later, by the way, an investigator said he worked as a DEA informant as well and said that was his MO. That's what he did. So he kept a get out of jail free card. Then he continued to play it over and over and over again when we would, when he would getting really hot water. So that's all he does, man, scumbag. Now by early 2002, Sam had told him, you're not going to be a fucking informant for us anymore. You're not doing any of that and told him the arrangements over and I'm taking everybody down. So either stop stop selling drugs or you're in a lot of fucking trouble eventually, but we're not. You're not going to get out of it by telling on somebody else next time. Now, that's interesting. The sheriff, by the way, little few months earlier, had raided White's house and confiscated a four wheeler. Okay. Yeah. For some, whatever it was, Stolen, he didn't have papers for it. He confiscated a four wheeler. This pissed off. All fingers real bad. Kenneth White was upset. That was my Rincon. I needed that. And he said to his friend, quote, he'll pay for that. Is that right? Taken my four wheeler. How dare you? That's my only means of transportation. Yeah. Got a fee. How dare he? So White would brag about also to other people, and we don't know if this is just to try to keep people in line and keep people scared of them, but he would brag about committing to murders in another county, which sounds like a 15-year-old saying, I totally fuck this girl in Canada one time. It's one of those. It's a drug dealer version of that. My girlfriend goes to that other school. You know, she goes there. I had a friend do that once. He pulled one of those shit. There's good no girls. You never talked to them. It was super. He just wouldn't talk to girls. No girls fucking this guy. I knew the guy. He wasn't getting laid for a while, but it that way. And he said one time they went to South Carolina on vacation, and he fucked some girl down there. I'm like, no, you didn't. When he was like 14. And I'm like, give me a fucking break. And then he said, what's her name, dude? What was her name? And he sits and he there was like a three-second pause. And he said, chastity. And we were like, you fucking liar. Why would he do that? He picked that name. We're like, that's a lie. It's too connected to sex. It's a lie. You don't understand man. The beach in North Carolina. It's like South. It's an aptitude. Yeah. Oh, man. He could just throw and poo. That's it. He could have just said Laura. And we would have went. We think you're lying. But we said chastity. So then for the rest of high school, we would make fun of him about chastity. Where's chastity tonight? You fucking loser. We'd pick out him for that. That's amazing. I don't think women, I don't think girls, teenage girls, pick on other girls for not being able to get guys. They do. Do they? That guy would never stick his dick in you. You fucking loser. Do they do that to each other? Are they that mean? Like we are, they go both ways where you either fuck too much or not enough, but not their friends. That's their enemies that do that. This is your best friend making fun of you for chat. We were all hanging out every weekend making fun of him constantly at his house while we hung out. We like it. I mean, they're certainly playful enough around each other to make fun of each other for fucking too much. They do that. That's good. Yeah. That's good probably. But it's never not enough. Yeah. We've never made fun of a dude that fuck too much. Never. Once and they've never made fun of a girl who fucks too little. It's interesting. Different values for different genders is about that works. So one night white here told somebody we know and we'll talk about it in a minute who it was to watch the evening news on a night when the story of two teenagers murdered in Lincoln County was on and he implied to this person that if you cross me, same thing will happen to you. Like I did it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very interesting, but there's never any evidence that he had anything to do with those deaths as a matter of fact here. Now shelly tells them I'm afraid of fingers white. Yeah. Freight of him here. I see bragged about killing people. He always carries a gun. I saw him one time point of pistol in someone's face during a deal in front of me and he also warned me never to cross him or my family would get hurt. Right. So it's bad. Now white here, by the way, is kind of a sharp guy as we'll talk about. No, he's got to be semi intelligent to run a fucking drug empire and be one of the most powerful drug dealers in Southern Kentucky. But at the same time, he pretends to be a moron whenever he gets arrested. He fucking, he tanks IQ tests like crazy. In 92, he scored a 78 on an IQ test and he realized that wasn't low enough. So then later on, he scored a 68 during a state-given test that had to do with crime. Then the psychologist said he was malingering, acting stupider than he was. And so they've said that his IQ is over 70. He's good enough to fucking put on trial basically for something here. So they said that, you know, his intelligent, his intelligence is at most a minor issue. They said it's not anything that you could not be in trouble for. Now the motorcycle that Danny Shelley was riding is a Yamaha. Yeah. And it's registered not to Danny Shelley, but to somebody else, someone who has not reported it stolen either. Okay. So this is not a loaned out or got it out of somebody's shed and they didn't notice more on the Yamaha and the owner of the Yamaha in one second. All right. They talked to Danny some more here. And the first thing they told them, there's a problem. He said it was just me and me and Ken, me and fingers. Okay. He admits Ken White made me do it and I'm all in this with Ken White with fingers. That's what Danny Shelley says. Fingers about to be real pissed off at you. I would say, but they said that he kept using the wrong pronoun at one point, the wrong plural, they said and an investigator said every now and then he would slip up. You keep saying they when you're talking about just you and Ken, that's that's we, not they. Right. Why do you do that? Doing that? That's, no, that's what Danny saying. Yeah, but I'm saying is Ken, is Ken they? No, no, no, no. It's he's not. Yeah, Ken. He's a five foot four fat drug dealer from Southern Kentucky. It's like, worry, I'm, listen, fella. I'm concerned about my pronouns. All right. All right. So he kept saying they, and they were like, why are you saying they over and over when you mean we? Yeah. What's up with that? So then later that night, this is fucking amazing. Ken, by the way, is doing some dumb shit. He's recording his own phone calls on a microcosm, one of those, like answering machine deals. So the next morning, the police go over to search his house and we'll talk more in detail about that. He, there's this tape there. And he's, he's got this tape. And the tape was later, it's called a ham-handed attempt to create an alibi. He taped all this stuff like, oh, well, yeah, I was over three counties over tonight. And I, you know, I'm sure sad about just shit that's trying to use misdirection. And then he's the one who was like, you probably want this tape amount from my phone calls because I've been taping the phone calls. And they were like, oh, yeah, so set up his own thing. It's interesting here. Then they find out some other shit here, the innocent sounding recording and all of that shit. Then they, they find out also is we'll find out there's a battery that was purchased for a motorcycle a little bit earlier, where Danny and, and fingers there, puppet fingers are on camera at Walmart buying a battery for the motor, for the motorcycle that Danny crashed on. Oh, okay. So the immediately the county prosecutor said they are looking to seek the death penalty against Danny Shelley. They said the state law allows for the death penalty when a law enforcement officer was killed while performing his official duties. He was wearing his uniform and attending the fish fry as the county sheriff. Therefore, he's at work and you killed him. Now you're shit out of luck. So anyway, Kenneth White's arrested. Okay. At his house. And let's find out how any of these people are connected and how this goes to the sheriff. Yeah. So they arrest him at his home in Somerset minutes before police arrived. White was sitting in front of his house in a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which had a large Jeff Morris for sheriff sticker on the back window. Nice. Fifth place guy. Yeah. Now this is the, this is the press pulled up to talk to him because it's all, there's tons of leaks. I mean, they know exactly where to go. They beat the cops there. The press to talk to this guy. So they said, have you been interviewed in this case? And he said, quote, I ain't got nothing to say to you about that. Oh, well, exact words. He then drove up the road to the Dixie Mart and bought a small pizza. He returned home to eat the pizza and the cops arrested him when he came home with the pizza. Okay. Never got to eat a slice. Never got to eat it. Damn it. Damn. Wind Dixie pizza. Yeah. Oh, a Dixie Mart pizza. Got me a Dixie Mart pizza, which I'm sure is amazing. Real good. Nice char on that Dixie Mart. I'm sure. Yeah. Oh, high quality pepperoni. The cheese too. Very high quality. So his call that sausage. Oh, god damn it. So the first interview, he denies a lot. Old white here. Um, he denies it and then, uh, all sorts of shit had nothing to do with the shootings now. Yeah. He said, they said, well, where were you? He said, well, I was with Danny Shelley and Jeff Morris earlier in the day working on the campaign. Um, Jeff Morris is campaign manager. That's what I want my campaign manager to be a tiny fat drug dealer. Perfect. No. Excellent. Is the campaign manager manager? He's run a lot of successful campaigns. Okay. Um, so they said, well, where were you with 715 PM, mister, when all this is going down and he said, I'll shop him with my wife. Oh, he's got a wife. I don't know. Nothing. Yeah. We think he lives with his mother. Right. Yeah. No, he's, he's out with his wife is what he said. Um, so when they search his house, the funny thing is after that, um, they get, take him down the station and then they go back to search his house, they get warrant and all that shit. And guess who's there? Oh, there I've the candidate. Yeah. I'm like, that's interesting. Um, so they take him down for a second interview now to the Commonwealth attorney's office, white. Um, it's very interesting. They talk to Morris a little bit here and we'll figure that out. Um, now white, basically, Morris and his family are now placed in protective custody, by the way, the candidate and his family are placed in protective custody. Um, on the ride back, white talks about Danny Shelley talking about blowing, blowing his head off, meaning the sheriff. He said, Danny Shelley said, I'm blowing his head off. So I mean, that's, that's what I heard. So he's throwing white throwing Danny Shelley right under the bus. Now, the motorcycle, the Yamaha, who's it registered to? Who's is that? Jeff Morris is motorcycle. Okay. Little about Jeff Morris, Jeffrey Allen Morris, 34 years old, the number five candidate down at the bottom of the polls here, the poll scraper. Uh, dragon votes, pieces shit. Yep. Just annoying everybody's 34 years old. Um, apparently, by the way, when Shelley was arrested, he had a camouflage suit, a rifle with a scope on it. That's how he would have used for the shooting, a cell phone whose last dial number was Kenneth White and a Walmart receipt for a motorcycle battery. Uh huh. Okay. Now the battery was paid for by Jeff Morris. The, uh, cell phone belongs to who? Jeff Morris. Yes. Not good. All right. So it's bad. Obviously. Um, it looks bad, but they don't know if these guys are taking advantage of Jeff Morris, if they said, you know, they don't know because Jeff Morris doesn't even benefit from this. That's the point. That's what they said. They said that the motorcycle was, uh, that's when it came back. The motorcycle registered to him. They're like the candidate for the fifth place sheriff guy. What are they talking about? Uh, he was a sheriff's deputy to last July for Christ's sake. Oh my god. So they all know. They're like, that doesn't, uh, I wasn't even supposed to be here today. So they're investigating all of this and they don't understand it. Um, and Mick Worder, the new sheriff who's just sworn in, uh, said that he knew of no ill will between sheriff Sam and Jeff Morris. There's like, no, no, will there. This makes no fucking sense. And he, they also say, uh, both the police and the congressman is there, but I'll say that Morris is not a suspect. That's not what we're saying. We're just, we put his family in protective custody and all that kind of thing. Um, they did find out Shelley and, and also white have been involved in Morris's campaign. Shelley's brother Wayne said that Danny is a close friend of Jeff Morris and said that, you know, his family is shocked by this. They don't understand why he would, you know, shoot the other guy. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah. Also, why are you? All right. What are you so close with people that are that have fucking ham radio setups? Yeah. Right? That's fucking. No, that's Steve Anderson. Oh, well, that was the other guy. That's the other guy. Yeah, he's, he's gone. So he hasn't been caught yet. We'll, we'll finish up his story. Don't worry. We won't leave that ball hanging. Good. That's driving me crazy. I want to know everything about it. It's fucking funny. So they talked to Jeff Morris and Jeff said he's shocked that the sheriff was shot at the fish price. And I was there for Christ sake. Um, he said, honestly, that gave me second thoughts about even continuing my campaign. He's like, what do I want to win and have somebody shoot me? That sounds like shit. That's your dirt bikes in the woods, man. Yeah. They're like, I don't know. So he said that he loaned Shelley, who's a campaign supporter, the motorcycle because Shelley had told him that he was interested in buying it. And Jeff Morris was going to sell it. So he goes, I told him to take it for the day as a test drive to see if he liked it. That was, we was going to buy it from me. So I just lent it to him. Um, he said, I had to buy a new battery for for it at Walmart in order for him to take the test drive. He's not going to pay for a battery. Yeah. He's not going to pay for a battery for truck for a bike. He doesn't even know if he's going to buy. So he said, he and Shelley, I gave him the motorcycle. We parted ways for the day. I went to do campaign shit, went to the fish fry. And then this is what happened two hours later. He's dead. What the fuck is that all about? Um, but the footage shows Morris and Shelley and fingers white all at Walmart together. Um, now they said they, he said, yeah, well, we spent the whole day, uh, having campaign signs, hanging them up, putting them up and talking to voters. That's what we were doing all day. He said, quote, daddy went his way and Ken took me home so I could go to the rally. Normally, they went to functions with me, but Danny wanted to ride the motorcycle and Ken said his wife wanted him to take her shopping. This looks real bad though. It does. Um, yeah. And an investigator said, we don't suspect Morris is anything they said. He had loaned the bike to Mr. Shelley. That was it. That he's just a useful idiot. The useful idiot. Exactly. So did the cops actually think he's involved? They're like, he's a, doesn't make sense. It's anything. But then Danny Shelley says Morris was involved. Really? He was involved in this. And they're like, I don't know if we believe you. It makes your story more, you know, fantastic. Yeah. And fantastical and make it sound like it's some big thing rather than just some idiot shooting the sheriff like you are. Um, but they were like, I don't think so. I know that they were like, we know the guy is a former deputy. He had no beef with Sam. I don't get why he would do that. Um, and he was standing in the parking lot being helpful. Helping everybody after the murder was questioned and didn't, you know, didn't sweat it at all. Doesn't make any sense. Why would he be hanging out with the big drug dealer and all that kind of thing? Anyway, one investigator said it all seems so far fetched. You never really expect something like this to actually happen. Something like that. Like, you know, crazy. So then they get kind of white for the second interview. Okay. Like we were talking about white at this point says, you know, it's all Jeff Morris. It's all his fault. It's the sheriff. He wanted him dead. And if you want, I'll help you gather evidence against him. Of course, you will fingers pieces. Is that why they call him fingers? Cause he fingers, everybody. I think so. Maybe that area is like long fingers for a tiny guy. I'm not sure. It could be anything. But maybe fingers for that. I don't think the size of a thumb and yeah, they call them, they call them swole thumb. That's what they call him. So they said, we think you're more in on it than him. So we're going to place his family in protective custody. And we think you're trying to set another guy up and you probably would kill him to keep him from coming forward and saying he didn't do it. So now they know that Shelley's involved. They know that white's involved because he's all but admitted his involvement as well. He said, I'll help you. By the way, who more on Jeff Morris? And so we don't really know much about him other than he's running for sheriff. He's the guy. He's not from Pulaski County originally. All right. He's another big guy. Six five. This guy is. Wow. Some big fellas here walking around. People describe the funny thing is he's lived here for years. He moved to the area in 87. He's lived here for 15 fucking years. Yeah. And people say that he's quote, not from around these parts. Not from around here. God damn. Oh, better part of two decades. Not from round these parts. That's how it is in these places. That's. Wow. I found that out fast in North Carolina. That's really. I will not accept you. No. Yeah. From around that. Yeah. From around here. Are you? I, you know, many times people actually said those words to me so many times. My cousins experiencing that right now in Nashville, one of the bigger Southern cities. They just fucking a people from anywhere else. That's all that's there as people from everywhere. Everywhere else. Yeah. Everybody's a god damn tourist. That's not I've been a tourist. People move there. They're not. That's what I mean. But that's what's considered that's on pedal fucking bikes. Are you kidding me? Be here 10 15 years in your tourist. Fuck off. That's fucking wild. That's funny. Yeah. They say that an awful lot. So he moved there in 87. He he was a high school basketball really good player growing up high school basketball player. He was married. Jeff Morris. We as two young children. Sure. His neighbor said, you know, he plays with the kids in the front yard. He's a good neighbor and a nice guy. In 96, he went to work as a deputy for Sheriff Sam. And he worked there for about five years. Then in July 2001 is when he left the department over what they called unauthorized days off and other things as we'll talk about. And other things. The official thing was an internal disciplinary problem. But the chief deputy Jim McWarter later said it involved unauthorized time off. Now Jeff Morris said, But as he resigned because of a dispute with the sheriff over vacation time and allegations that he had stolen a wallet from the evidence room. Oh. So he said, I'd just quit. So he left the department, went to work in a family plumbing business, which is belongs to I believe his father-in-law, and that's what he's doing, working for his father-in-law doing plumbing. So he decided to run against Sheriff Sam there for the 2002 Republican primary. He's five years as a deputy, so that's his main qualification. He also has no money to run, has nobody backing him. He's running against a four time incumbent, but also the second place person got just as many votes as the year before or the election before. He left under like a cloud of weird shit of unauthorized days off and stolen wallets and all that bullshit. So it's not looking good. Facts for a good run. That's why he's dead last in a field of five by a long shot here, and he has no goddamn money. That was the problem he had. No, for campaigns need just huge infusions of money constantly a campaign is like a restaurant that just opened here. Just just get a fire going and shovel money into it. And it's fucking for no reward until the very end at the end. If you don't win, it's just wasted money. Yeah. Again, you get a job that pays 60 grand a year that you just spent hundreds of thousands a dollar trying to get of other people's money, but fall of 2001 is the sheriff race. And that's when Kenneth White approached Jeff Morris to help. He said, Hey, I think I heard you running for going to run for sheriff. I can help you out with the money part of that. No, you need money, right? Guess what I have? I got money. Lots of it. And Morris apparently said that White first said he wanted to help. First White came up and said, Listen, you saved my brother's life one time. So I want to help you with your campaign made a real altruistic thing, real, you were good to me. I'm going to be good to you, but that's not what he wanted after a minute at the lake. White spent between 25 and $30,000 on this campaign again, 2002 money. Just put it in about $5,000 that he browned it up on his own. And by the way, for a county sheriff race in rural Kentucky, that's a shitload of money going into the race. It's not normal. That's a lot. That's who came in fifth. Imagine what first, second, third, fourth, they're not, they're not spending much. That's the point. They're not spending very much. That's a ton of money for a campaign in this area. That's more than you need. Got it. But people still have to know who the fuck you are. The problem is you got the fucking incumbent four time sheriff and the other person who they clearly like because they almost unseated him. So who are you? And no one even knows you or likes you. And white didn't just write checks. He put up signs. He knocked on doors. He campaigned. I mean, he was like a real campaign manager. He signed Morris's candidate nomination papers, which you need to, it needs a couple of registered voters to endorse a paper to show that you're a real person that people know. Doing this for real. Yeah. Yeah. And detectives pull those papers. They go, "Mother fucker, if Kenneth's white fingers is on the, he's still on." He's still on. Guess who the other signature was. One of the other. No. Danny fucking Shelley. Yep. So that's interesting. Shelley is the guy apparently who hooked them up because Shelley was friends with Morris. He needed money. Shelley knows a guy with money. It's white. That's how they ended up together. Shelley had told white this guy needs money. And his wheels started spinning and saying, "If I could get a sheriff elected, I'd own that sheriff." Yeah. I didn't do what I wanted. I want. And punity, basically. That's how it was here. And Shelley works as a volunteer on the campaign and white gives him pills while this is going on. This is the arrangement. So they spent a good deal of the winner of 2001 and spring of 2002 riding around Polaski County, putting up yard signs. I assume snorting Xanix off the fucking dashboard and off the back of the signs. So the detectives go through Morris's campaign paperwork to make sure this is true. And they found a lot. They found that like I said, white had signed the nomination papers. White had been a major financial backer, tens of thousands of dollars. And they said turned out to be his major financial backer from anywhere from 10 to $30,000, which is a lot of money in this area. So the investigators at this point said, all right, we're pretty sure Shelley's telling the truth. Yeah. But we need these two idiots to tell the truth. So they get Morris and Kenneth White to take polygraphs. Okay. Now Morris goes first and this is important. They're not in the same building like waiting. He's going to take his and they're going to bring White in to take his from another place. The question he fails on is, where are you involved in the plot to kill Sam Catron? That's the one that he fails on. Okay. The detectives said, we found you lying about whether you know about the murder of Sam Catron. And he broke. He completely snapped. You're right. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but I started doing fucking chunk from, from goonies. He just started going off. I, but then this happened, I've been waiting to tell you. Yeah. And one investigator said, the emotion started pouring out of him and he said, well, I'll tell you what you need to know. Wow. Correct him. He's not a criminal. That's the problem. He's not a, doesn't, hasn't been sat down with drug charges over his head before. He passed everything except for this one very important question. You're right. Except for the only question that mattered. Yeah. So, the only question that we wanted to ask you matter fact. That's it. So he admitted, yes, I gave him the motorcycle and I knew what Shelley was going to use it for. Now, he admits it. He said, I was afraid white threaten me and my family and my children. That's what he said. Oh, I was scared. He said he would keep repeating that forever. Um, a detective who was driving Morris to jail, then radioed the officers who were transporting white for the polygraph and told them Morris confessed and he implicated white. So we don't need his polygraph. Turn his ass back around, take him to jail. Yeah. Matter of fact, if you give him polygraph, it could fuck everything up. Get him back to jail. Well, yeah. Exactly. Get him back to jail and, you know, we'd rather we believe him white more than we believe or I'm so we believe Morris more than we believe white anyway. So white hears this over the radio and says, well, I want a lawyer. Give me a lawyer then. Car turns around back to jail. He wants a lawyer. So that's that. He said, I told him, Jeff had confessed to the crime and he'd also implicated Ken White. Ken White said, I want a lawyer. So I told him, just turn around, we'll go ahead and put him in jail to fuck them all. So that's fucking funny. And they said after all that, the campaign tied the three men together. Wow. Now so the main thing they want to know about Morris here is what did you know about white things? When did you know this? How involved in this were you? So Morris said, okay, fine. During the relationship, I that's when I learned that Kenneth White was a drug dealer. Like, he didn't know that ahead of time. He was a cop in here for five fucking years. He doesn't know Kenneth White is the biggest drug dealer in town. Come on. That's a terrible detective or deputy. So he claimed that the financial arrangement for the campaign, he said, I tried to back out of it because white, when I tried to back out of the whole thing, saying I was uncomfortable with it, that's when white threatened my family. Oh. So I'll kill your kids. I mean, how does Morris, then at that point, not put a gun and fucking white smile and go, are you really? What are you gonna do? I will spray your brains all over the wall right here. You're a cop for Christ's sake. Don't you have any? This guy's a five foot four turd, little turd guy who sells drugs, not the five foot four makes him a turd, but he's a turd anyway, I need to five foot four. So anyway, that's how it goes here. He said, I tried to back out, he threatened to kill me. And he said, white wanted me to win the sheriff's office. That's what he wanted. He had this vision in his head of controlling the sheriff's office. So here's a question and answer. They said, he said, I don't know if I've asked you, but after the election was over, you was going to be sheriff. What was Ken going to do? Fingers. Was he going to, what was he going to get out of it? And Morris said, me as sheriff would have power and he wanted to run drugs and alcohol. And he said, from Polasky County, or they said, yeah, and they said, that was what he was going to get. And Jeff said, yes, that was his big investment in this as he wanted to, which is huge. If you can deal drugs with impunity and sick, already knew that. Yeah. And sick. The sheriff on your opponents. Yeah. You are going to be the kingpin here, around here. What a scumbag all of them are. All of them. Danny too. Danny had been promised a job in the sheriff's department of Jeff one. That's what he was doing for a steady job. So some accounts, by the way, say that he was promised a post in the evidence room as a matter of fact, where the, where the drugs are, where the drugs are. So that's fucking funny here. Now the day after the murder here, yeah, they have a lot going on. They've talked all these people here. And Shelley says that the three men talk several times about killing the sheriff. This wasn't a, in on a whim here. They said that Shelley said that that they talk several times and white said it was Shelley's idea. Shelley said it was white's idea. Sure. To quote, "Shelly said the only way to beat Sheriff Cantron" in the lecture, Katron in the election was to blow his head off and then he bragged about his marksmanship. Like I could do it from a long distance. I could do it. This is white saying this, trying to push a lot of the blame there. So here's the thing. Do they believe him or do they believe anybody and how the fuck would this help Morris win as the question? Because five people running for sheriff, the incumbent is up there. The other, the second place person is obviously going to be a major contender. Todd Wood, by the way, the third guy was working a working summer set police officer with no scandals or anything like that. He's going to get a decent amount of attention. Jeff Morris has got, you know, resigned under a cloud of shit and is in last place. So what the fuck basically? Basically, you kill Sam. That doesn't mean everyone's going to vote for Jeff. So what sense does this fit place trying to, trying to scam or weasel to get any spot jockey higher? You're not in the second place. You're in fifth place. You're still lost horribly. Now you're in fourth place. Congratulations. You feel better about yourself with the same amount of votes is the problem. So that's, that's what's very wild about this whole thing is it doesn't make a lot of sense from that point of view. But I guess they thought maybe it would unfold differently here. But all the threads lead back to Jeff and Jeff Morris being involved in this and everything like that, especially, you know, the phone call connecting Shelley to white and then all that it's all connected. So Shelley says that several days before the fish fry, I guess that that he Morris and Kenneth White had told him that the sheriff needed our intended to arrest and possibly kill the three of them for election. They said that's what they told him. They said, listen, Danny, we got to kill this guy because the sheriff says he might kill us all. He's already told about the plot. So we got to get him or else he's going to get us. He's going to get us. So Shelley's explanation to the police was like we said, the that the sheriff was the devil incarnate and then he was reading the reading the world of evil, which is a funny thing that he said there. But anyway, he said that, you know, they told me killer be killed, man. So what was I supposed to do to kill this world, babe? The plan was the day before April 12, 2002, day before the murder. The actual plan came together that day, the day before this wasn't a long thought out thing. The day before they were like, we should kill him tomorrow. Yep. And then they decided to do it. That's never worked, right? Not really. No. So they rode around the county in white's Jeep Cherokee putting up yard signs. So they're, you know, doing all that and nobody, they're just riding around in the Jeep. They're talking about the five candidates. They're talking about how they need to fucking get this guy out of the way. Nobody talks about how you're going to get the other three people out of the way. But that's fine. Shelley and Morris also said that white picked the shooting position and the escape route because that's where you shoot him from. That's spot right there. Then you take off this way and you'll be able to get away. Then Morris and white bought the bullets. Also, that's the other thing. The bullets were paid for by Jeff Morris. So that ties you right to it, man. That'll tie you right to it. Now April 13, 2002, the midday, the problem was the motorcycle had a dead battery. So they went to Walmart, store surveillance cameras show all three of them in the automotive department buying a battery for the bike. They said, well, there you go. That's something. Why would you go to a place with fucking light security cameras together? Why not give him 50 bucks and say, go buy the goddamn battery that goes on the bike? I guess that's showing that you didn't know, right? Supposedly, or it shows you're a complete idiot and you don't mind being seen with people you're going to murder with here. And he still had the receipt for the battery on him when he was arrested. So April 13, 2002, Danny Shelley tells the police that white pumped him full of Xanax, quote unquote, that afternoon handed him a rifle and sent him to the fire department. Remember he had a bunch of Xanax where he was doing lines off the motorcycle gas tank. Santa white denies all of that there. So Shelley took his camouflage suit, his scoped hunting rifle, the motorcycle sets up in a wooded rise across from the shop. They'll stab volunteer fire department, waits for shit to happen. White was supposed to go to to watch, but he didn't. He went home to take his wife's shopping quote unquote. So the plan called for Shelley to meet the others afterwards. The other part is apparently this is according to white, I believe if I'm not mistaken, that Morris intended to kill Shelley and then claim self-defense so they could blame it all on him and not have anybody else connected to it. I killed the crazy bastard. He tried to kill me too. He's trying to kill all the sheriff candidates. Real dark night situation. He came after me. I killed him. So there's your, there's your perpetrator. Go and get him out the way and then we'll yeah, that's how it goes. So then the fish fry was underway. He made a speech. The cake auction happens. That's that. Now somewhere in the hills across the road, Danny called Kenneth White from the hill while waiting. And apparently he said that Kenneth White told him, don't let me down. Don't let me down. All right. You can do this. You can do this here. So April 13th, 2002, that's or I'm sorry, 2002 at 715 p.m. That's the shot. Then they said, go get him boys. They chase him into the goddamn woods. You better not pick that rifle up. I'm a beach at a death of this goddamn tire iron. Then they have the Walmart tape. They have the exact battery that the making model, the powers, the motorcycle. It's not good. So the charges come in and they charge Jeff Morris and Kenneth White fingers with complicity to commit murder. Basically, yeah, exactly. Danny was already charged with capital murder at that point. So they said complicity to murder carries the same penalty as the murder itself. Yep. That's the problem. So complicity, by the way, in Kentucky is the exact same thing as murder. It's not a lesser crime. Right. It's just another way to be charged with murder. Um, Kentucky Recos. It would make sense. Kentucky's complicity statutes as a person's guilty of an offense committed by someone else when the intention of the promoting of promoting or facilitating the commission of the offense, he solicits commands or engages in a conspiracy with that person or AIDS councils or attempts to aid such person in planning or committing the offense. Those are awfully big words for Kentucky. Who wrote that? Yeah, that's somebody definitely needs a lawyer to explain that bit to him there. Um, for this area, that's a little much. Yeah. So here's some town reactions because the town, think about if you're a town's person, just in this area. The sheriff is like the sunrise and you can count on him. Somebody shoots him dead. Well, he's holding a butt cake for Christ's sake, which doesn't seem like something that happens every day. That's a crazy sentence. Then in the next three days, all of this comes on that not only was the sheriff killed, but it was a giant conspiracy involving the fifth place candidate, the biggest drug dealer in town, and some dipshit on a motorcycle. And you're like, what's going on to a murder by a guy that had no chance? This is fucking wild. Yeah. Wow. This is a wild scene. Um, the shopville fire chief said the murder has traumatized many residents in the area. Yeah. It's a big deal. Uh, another lawyer in Somerset who said he represented many of the people who Sam has arrested over the years said Sam was liked by almost everyone. Even the people who arrest he arrested liked him. Sure. There's a decent guy treated him decently and was just a stand up guy. He wasn't a piece of shit. Um, it's the thing. If you're very, very honest, after a long time, people will grudgingly like you, but God damn it. Yes, he's arrested me. Yes, word, whatever, but fuck if he's honest, and if I don't respect that a little bit, God damn it. So he said, I'd have clients come in and tell me how the sheriff talked to them before he arrested them and told them he would do all he could to help them. Well, do my best, but you got to help you too. He said, I'd chuckle. He'd do anything to help them get 50 years in prison, but he'd make the arrest and come away with a political ally. Oh, shit. He was that good at talking to people where yeah, that's, you see it in interrogations all the time, but we're trying to help you. We just want to help you. We want to help you be convicted of murder. Yeah, I want to help you go throw your whole life away forever. But he's so damn personable. Yeah. That you kind of get come away like in the guy, even though he coaxed a confession out of you. It's getting you put away forever. So like that police chief that likes us. I God, damn it. I love that guy. Guy love that guy. Yeah, he's awesome. Indie Atlantic. Absolutely. He's a keynote speaker the other day. He was holding his dick, taking a piss and another cop walked in and goes, yeah, I heard your name on a podcast. And he's like, two cops holding their dicks in full uniform talking about me and you. That's hilarious. Yeah, they see Send us a bunch of swag and shit, it's funny. - Yeah, some of the nicest stuff, anyway. - Real nice. So they said that they make an announcement, by the way, this is the congressman for this area who somehow becomes the spokesman, even though he's nothing to do with law enforcement. Talk about politics. No, no, I got this, everybody. I'll represent the area. He said that the sheriff died at the hands of a cowardly assassin who hid in camouflage to brutally take the life of this great public servant. - Yeah. - That's some politician shit right there that he just said. Oh man, so that's what he said. Now the mayor, Somerset Mayor JP Wiles, who's known Sam forever, said that everyone shocked locally. He said people were just sick, it was devastating. We've got a quiet little community here, then something like this happens, turns everything upside down. - Fuckin' hey, does it? - That's right. April 18th, 2012, is the funeral for Sheriff Sam. And they, it's a really well-attended thing. Hundreds and hundreds of people, their cops come from everywhere. - Yeah, it's so sad. - More than 2,000 mourners. They said the auditorium was packed. Dozens of people listened outside to loud speakers. It was one of those, it was like Babe Roots funeral. I guess tons of, they said hundreds of cruisers from across the state nation were part of the processional to the cemetery. So people drove their cars in from everywhere for Sam. Sam really had a lot going. They did a final radio call for him. - I guess that's shit. - Yeah, that's on a documentary that they ended up doing there. It's a sad one, yeah. Real sad, they said, we, we, oh Sam, could throw in this, that he did not die in vain. We must follow and pass on his example. Guess who this is? - Who's that? - The congressman again, who's gonna talk for everyone at the funeral. - Funny as shit. So the auditorium was packed, standing room only. This Rogers, the politician said, I've never witnessed such widespread and universal grief. Everyone feels as if they've lost not just a family member, but a close family member. Not just a family member. The Pikesville Police Chief James Justice. - Fuck, is that right? - The police chief's name is James Justice. - Get outta here. - Jimmy Justice. - Jimmy Justice, police chief. - Oh, Jim Justice. - That's a Pikesville Police James Justice. All alliteration, too. P.P.J.J. - Goddamn. - He said that he had known Sam's reputation across the state as a known nonsense sheriff. He said, thugs and drug dealers are not mourning too much right now. - Okay. - Thugs and drug dealers and people who dare to grow weed in their own property, you know, 'cause freedom. Guys, you can't, don't have any fucking money. - Exactly. - Or opportunity to make any. - Oh shit. Sheriff Harold Don Gabbard of Butler County said that Sam worked tirelessly. He said it made no difference how many hours a day he had to work or how many days a week. The crooks would move back and forth between Ohio and Kentucky to hide. They couldn't hide with Sam on the job. The crooks, another lieutenant of the Florida highway patrol said that his reputation in law enforcement circles was nationwide. He said, I knew about Sam in Florida as an online patrol. Yeah, he said he was well respected as superb law enforcement officer. That's why he said he wanted to go to the funeral 'cause he heard what a good guy was. He said, this is basically equal to losing a brother. That come down. You don't know the guy. - There's thousands of sheriffs around this country. - Yeah. That I get the ear in the same business, but when another comedian croaks in a fucking hotel room, I don't say it's like losing a brother. So if I knew the guy, I say I knew the guy. If I didn't, I didn't, that's it. (laughing) - We all did the same thing. - My brother Jerald. - Yeah. My brother Norm there who died. - Yeah, over pals. - We're big pals obviously. - Yeah, if I died, I'm sure he'd save the same. (laughing) That's fucking great. Another cop said he was the truest and most dedicated public servant I've ever known. We will never replace Sam Catrone. Nor should we try. We shouldn't even give it an effort. - It's don't even try, forget it. - Now during the election now, is obviously that this has blown the election apart, and I assume everybody's also curious how the election turned out. - Sounds as though everybody moved up one slot. (laughing) - Not how it worked though. It turned out not to be like that. - What happened? - That's the thing. Well, they were worried that they thought about what if everybody writes in Sam? - Yeah. - Which he'll still be on the ballot. What if they all just vote for him? Then what the fuck do we do? - Oh God. - So then they have to assign the next person to go to whatever. So they said that's a distinct possibility of the county clerk said. He said there's gonna be a lot of people who still wanna vote for Sam. So he said, I don't know. They said his name will appear on the ballot along with those of Kenneth K. Stringer, who he barely defeated, Todd Wood, Martin Calhoun, who has no police experience, that's why we didn't even mention him. But he's still beating Jeff Morris, by the way. (laughing) That's what's going on. - Such a big question. - Yeah. So he predicted there will be a large tribute vote for Ketron. He said that half he wins the primary. It's likely the county Republican committee would choose an opponent to face the opponent on Norris Whitaker in the fall. Now Stringer, Wood and Calhoun all said they would temporarily suspend their campaign. You know, we're not gonna campaign actively during the funeral, basically. They said Morris, the other candidate, could not be reached for comment. That's 'cause he's in jail, 'cause he's been arrested. - 'Cause he's used his phone call for his lawyer. - Yeah, not for the press. So the family, Sam's family backs a candidate, actually. They back Todd Wood. - Really? - He's a police officer. - Yeah. - They said that we feel he's the most qualified person not only to maintain, but to continue what Sam has literally given his life for. - Fuck Stringer. - Yeah, fuck K Stringer. That, by the way, is Lewis Ketron. Standing next to his 86 year old mother, saying this. - Oh, yay. - She outlived her son and that's sad. So the election goes on six weeks after this is when they go to the polls. So Jeff Morris' name is still on the ballot. - Wow. - 'Cause he's on there while he sits in jail, Todd Wood wins the primary, the one the family backs. - Stringer has got to be so pissed. - So pissed. - Yeah, here's the craziest thing. Jeff Morris received 123 votes. - What asshole would do that? - 123 people voted for a washed up deputy who got basically booted for being a fucking dirt bag and then shot the sheriff. - They voted for it. - Had the sheriff murdered. - I bet a, that's like 123 people who've been arrested by sheriff Sam. - Feel it. - I like that guy, fuck him. - Yep. - Super hate cops. - Yeah. Now the death penalty is on the table and they say they're gonna seek the death penalty against all three men. Fuck them all. They said the victim was the sheriff, killed in uniform beside his cruiser at a public event. That fits the circumstances done and done. - Yeah. - They said we needed it to be done right. We needed to set an example and show what we're gonna do if that takes place in this community. - Uh-huh. - Okay. September 2002 looks like there's gonna be a plea deal for Jeff Morris. - Oh, he's not gonna take it laying down. - Yeah, he's not the drug guy here. So, but it all goes forward. But then Jeff Morris says, oh no, no, no, I never agreed to plead guilty. - Oh. - Bullshit. Apparently the deal was a plea agreement where he gets 20 years before the possibility of parole. So 20 years and he's up for parole. It's not bad for murder, I would say. But he said, I never agreed to that. His lawyer, Robert Alexander, said that Morris changed his mind in the last minute about accepting a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. And he didn't wanna do it. Morris said that his lawyer, Alexander and co-counsel, Bobby Richardson said that he said they did not have consent to make the plea. I didn't tell him to make that fucking plea. - Well, no, they didn't make the plea. They went to the DA with a deal to be made. And they came back to you. - Well, he's saying they were filing the deal. And his lawyer says it was a done deal. And then Jeff pulled it at the last minute and Jeff said, I never agreed to it in the fucking first place. He said, my lawyers just did that without me agreeing. He said the attorneys approached him once about the possibility of a deal, but he said he refused. He said, I told him no, fuck no, and fuck no. And then they went and said that I'm making a deal. - You're gonna die, man. - Morris said they went ahead and did it anyway. I never actually agreed to anything. A plea bargain is admitting my guilt. And I'm not guilty of this heinous crime. - Wow. - So in response, his lawyer said, I've never made a plea arrangement that wasn't authorized. Like that's disbarment. - He said if you do that. Like getting trouble a lot. So what do I get out of that? He said that Alexander and Richardson had indicated during plea negotiations that they had talked to Morris several times about the agreement. That's what the prosecutor said. Asked about Morris's innocence claim, Montgomery, who's the prosecutor said, I think that's something in jury's gonna have to sort out. That Morris had only met with his attorneys briefly three times in five months. So that's it, that's it. not a lot of lengthy discussions about a plea deal there. September 2002, right after this, Morris is so mad he does an interview from jail with the newspaper, with the career journal there. Louisville is first interview here. He proclaims his innocence and says he fired his attorneys for setting up a plea deal, deal behind his back. And he said, I'm innocent. I didn't do this. By the way, they describe, I'm innocent. I didn't do this. Said Morris, his blue eyes, sunken, and frame hunched over as he talked in a small room with only a table and two benches about 20 feet from his cell. The weight of this is killing, killing, hunching. He then says, I know how it looks, but looks are on everything. They just describe. Yeah. He said, well, how do you keep yourself occupied? And he said, I watch TV and sleep. I think about things. I write poetry and letters. I do the best I can do. And he goes on saying that he resigned over disputed vacation days. He said he returned from a trip with his family. They went to Myrtle Beach and Sheriff Sam said, I never gave you permission to have the days off. And Morris said, I loved him to death at the time, but he said I was insubordinate. Morris said it was Shelley and White who encouraged him to run for Sheriff to begin with. He goes, I wasn't even going to run for Sheriff. They told me I should run. He said, I was too trustworthy, but nobody ever said, let's sit down and plan this out. I might have been gullible and they might have taken advantage of me, but we didn't sit down and go, how are we going to kill Sam, basically? I'm dumb as shit. I'm just a moron. Thank you for not voting for me for Sheriff. I would have been a disaster. 123 people have dumbered me in this. He said he, this is an understatement of the year. He should have been more selective in choosing his political allies. Is that right? Think about that one. Not people hanging out with murder. I should didn't do well with my murder allies. So my political allies either. So Morris said Shelley had inquired about a deputy's job if he was elected Sheriff and it's wild. Okay. His new lawyer, Jane Butcher, what a lawyer named Butcher. She's going to butcher this one. She said she was surprised Morris granted this jail interview. She said, and this is the line, it's everything. I don't approve of him making a statement, but I understand why he would. He's always maintained his innocence. He said, but I don't understand this shit. So November 2002, Steve Anderson's captured. Remember Steve Anderson, the United Patriot front militia idiot. What did he do? Where was he? He was a tip from an America's most wanted viewer captured him. He was later sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for taking a shot at somebody. January 2003, Danny Shelley takes a plea deal. He takes a place. Well, he's, it's life from from murder. Well, it says this particular deal is to testify against Kenneth White. They're gonna. They're gonna. The murderer's gonna take the deal. They say he's a moron and a drug dealer and a drug addict and the other guy is a manipulative fucking psycho who's been a problem in this county for 20. They believe this guy didn't come up with this. Kenneth White put him up to this as they they all believe that 100% manipulated a drug addict to do his bidding for. Yeah, it's a little more dangerous. If you give a drug addict enough drugs, they'll do what you want them to do, especially for more, even more drugs. Then we're going to kill him and let this guy out one day and he's going to go do it again. Yep. So his lawyer said about the guilty plea. It gives him a shot at redemption is what it says. Now during story. Yeah. During sentencing, Danny said, I'm very I'm terribly sorry for what has happened and for what I've done. Judge Sam Sister said it's nice to know there's some admittance of guilt, some sorrow, but I would still rather have my brother back. Obviously, but still this family is very classy. By the way, the controlling family extremely classy. Liz, what they say later, they're they're decent people as who they are decent people. So the judge says to Danny, you say they fuck off 25 life in prison. No parole for 25 years. It's pretty good. Not bad for shooting the sheriff with a fucking sniper rifle right from a fish fry. That's pretty good. In a place where they don't take kindly to no shooting at the blue. Fuck no. Yeah. So and also the the the sister Sam Sister said that his apology does seem sincere. Okay. And he they believed him that he is sad and sorry. They said that they really felt he meant it and they all accounts of the case. People they knew and stuff all said that once the drugs were out of his system, he was completely devastated by what he did and had no I basically just he woke up in a different life. So eventually it was like holy I fucked my life up bad cannot believe what he's done. Yeah. And the patrons eventually accepted his apology as genuine and then they're they're good with them. They said they forget wonderful, nice people. April 2003, by the way, a year after the murder, the new sheriff launched Operation Unite, a regional anti drug initiative that still exists. And they said that a quote. This is again, the goddamn set the congressman in my over 30 years of public service. I've never seen anything as devastating as the present scourge of drugs illegally used in my area. Right. It's overwhelming. Such a scourge. Now Morris says he's willing to play. Oh, they said, listen, you plea you to we want white. Whites the guy. He's the mastermind. You plea testify against white. He wants to plea, but he says that he also wants to insist he's a victim at the same time. Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. And they make this deal. The prosecutor said I sat down with the family, the Catron family, and the family is satisfied with the outcome. I'm happy with the outcome. Ultimately, they're the ones who suffer the most. Right. Now at some point, according to Morris, he tried to get out of the arrangement. That's what he said in court. White didn't take it well, threatened him and his family. He said, I thought he already committed murders in the county. So what the fuck? Yeah. He said that Morris said after taking a campaign contribution from Kenneth White, he came up with the plan to kill the sheriff. He said, I only participated because I didn't want to get killed and all that kind of shit. Now he also says that Morris stated that white implied the same could happen to him if you crossed white. The trial judge told the jury on record, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the statement that two teenagers turned up dead. The court has admitted that for the sole purpose of letting this witness testify that the defendant made a statement. I'm going to further inform you that I've been informed. There's no evidence at this time that Mr. White had anything to do with that matter. But just to let you know, and Jeff said, I was in fear of my family's life. So I went along with it. So I plead guilty. After he pleads guilty, Sam's brother Lewis said, I feel it felt like a ton came off my shoulders, but nothing will ever bring my brother back. They say, you may fuck off. Life in prison, not eligible, eligible for parole for 25 years. Same exact agreement that that Danny Shelley got. Now the original agreement was 20. So he cost himself an extra five by fucking off here. Then October 2003, Kenneth White's going to go to trial. He's not pleading. Fingers is going to run it. Fingers is going to trial. What is he out of his mind? They won't give him a deal. They have the other two testifying against him. They want the death penalty on him, period. That's it. They want to fry him. So anyway, they said that the defense served notice that they intend to introduce evidence of mental illness or insanity here. They sent white to the Kentucky psychiatric or correctional psychiatric center for evaluation. This is when he starts doing the IQ shit, saying he's got 68 IQ. And they're saying he's malingering. He's faking. The trial court found him competent. Found his IQ was at least over 70, which we've done a case later, or that's not the factor anymore, but that's a whole separate issue. And denied request for more time to arrange another test. The judge said, quote, the indications are that Mr. White did not cooperate sufficiently with the IQ tests to have a valid reading. The court is of the opinion that in part, the reason was the reason it was not accommodated was that the report that you have shows he was not giving his best effort to cooperate with counsel for that reason. The court finds his IQ over 70 and then just fucking, I find you not as dumb as you are. There you go. I find you a little bit smarter than that. I adjudicate you slightly higher than a moron and perceived. That's amazing. That's amazing. So a few days before trial, White's adult daughter died suddenly. Oh, no. That's pretty horrible. And whatever that does, doesn't want this poor woman to die. Natural causes are some shit. We don't know. I don't know, but I'm going to make an assumption. Perhaps maybe a small overdose or something. I don't know, allegedly, no way of knowing it could have been a she could her ovary could have exploded. I have no idea. Perhaps she uses the same things for dad cells. You never know. It's Kentucky. I just assume everybody's on something in this area at this point. So on the second day of jury selection, his attorney moved for a continuance citing both his debt daughter and his debt, his debt IQ as well. He's got a debt brain and a debt daughter help this guy. The judge gave white half of the third day of jury selection to be with his family. Half a day for your daughter dying. Other than that, moving on, they said, Mr. White will be able to assist in his defense. The court had an opportunity to observe him. And I understand the circumstances. I have sympathy for him. However, my feeling is, let's go forward. So we're going forward. November 2003, Kenneth White trial, the lead detective said, we've got a strong case. We're just waiting on the trial. Here it is. The prosecutors cast him as the devil of Southern Kentucky. Right. He everything that you look out the window and see and think is wrong. That's the guy that causes it. You know how the devil went down to Georgia. He had to get through Kentucky. He then came right back home. He went, he went home through Kentucky on the way. He spent a good deal of time there. That's a whole other album. So yeah, he said that that's what happened here. He's a drug lord. Now he's a drug lord who corrupted a former deputy manipulated an addict and turned them both against the county sheriff so he can run his horrible death dealing business unobstructed. And then they brought this fat weeble in and showed the court who he is. And the defense said, they're, they're making him out like he's, you know, Loeska Bar. He's a flea market vendor who's being fucking framed by two admitted idiots to save their own next. He's just a poor flea market vendor. He runs a, he runs a, a pawn shop at the flea market at the flea market. I mean, he sells a lot of drugs there, but still it's just a flea market. So the Commonwealth calls 22 witnesses. At least nine of them are there in one way or another to show that Kenneth White's a drug dealer. Yeah. Because that's a big part of this here. Um, they said, uh, uh, Danny testifies and Danny says there's not a day that don't, there's not a day that don't, well, sorry. There's not a day don't go by. That's a hard one to gather. I don't think about it. I feel like I was tricked and lied to. That's right. He said, who wouldn't feel bad about killing someone, but at the time I thought it was either me or Katrone. That's what he said. Um, he said, I was scared of him, meaning white. He said white ones told me don't go against me because you know what I'll do to you and your family. Oh, he said he went against the plan not only because he was scared because drugs impaired his judgment. He said he was under stress because he had no job was worried about federal drug investigators was fear, fearful that if he broke away, he family would be harmed. And he was convinced that Sam was a threat because Kenneth white told himself, right? He said, quote, I was tricked and lied to. They knew I wasn't right. And they, uh, and they used me. I had no control over my thoughts and my actions. They knew I was. They knew I wasn't right in the head. Um, and then he said he called from the woods and that white told him don't let me down. Don't let me down when he was in the woods. So he had to do it. Now Jeff Morris testifies same shit that we heard before, uh, he testified. He tried to back out and he was told, watch the news. I'm going to kill your whole family. Um, we want to run drugs and alcohol. Um, the defense asked if you were so terrified, you stood next to Stan at the fish fry and said nothing while Shelley waited in the woods with a rifle. Why didn't you tell him? Get the fuck out of here. Go out. So deal. He said because you were talking to Sheriff Catron, you could have said one word to him about Danny Shelley. Somebody had could have been up there and caught Danny Shelley waiting up there with the gun. And that was a good cross examination. And, uh, he said, Mr. Morris wanted to be the sheriff. And this was his way of getting elected, even if he had to be involved in the murder of his opponent. The defense basically had to try to make the dad to have Shelley and Morris have no credibility. That's their only, yeah, that they don't believe them. They're admitted killers. They pleaded guilty to escape execution. You know, the air incentive was, you know, to hand the jury a bigger villain is all bullshit and all that kind of thing. Um, they said he didn't need help or any instigation for anybody else to be involved in the act. He was the one who had the nerve to really do something in this case. That's what they're saying about Shelley. Um, they said, you know, you can't believe those guys essentially. Right. And the prosecutes to want to talk about somebody else. Yeah. And it's a weak case on both sides too. It has weak case for one side for the defense obviously, but the prosecution doesn't have a recording, a note, a text, nothing in white zone words where he plots the murder. All he has is, is Shelley and white. And the fact that everyone said would have scumbag drug dealer is sure, which I mean, he's being convicted just as much for being a drug dealer is for murder. Absolutely. I think they're going to go, well, whether he's a murder or not, he's still a drug dealer. So fuck him. I think that's what they're going to say. That's how they're way. I mean, what, what goes with drug deal and, uh, but for not murder James? Yeah. That's what it is. They said the Walmart video doesn't show intent. There's no intent in that video. Three guys buying a battery. And it shows, it shows a share of candidate buying a battery for a motorcycle for another guy, not for him. Say a nice guy. Yeah. So the jury, eight women and four men deliberates less than an hour. Well, it's not very long for this whole, for all of this conspiracy, all this shit. They just wanted to fill the paperwork out. Uh, he has found guilty of complicity to commit murder, uh, vermice complicity to murder, uh, his immediately, his, his lawyer says he plans to appeal his conviction, blah, blah, blah. Sentencing prosecution wants the death penalty. Yeah. Killed to sheriff and performance of his lawful duties. What do you want? In cruiser, in the, you know, next to his cruiser, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pain in to do it again. Exactly. The prosecution here, uh, said Sam Catron was a local official. He was the sheriff. He was a local public official. You have to go out to there, out there to fish fries. You have to go get out and public. You have to meet these people. He's out there as a local public official. He's also out there as sheriff. He's in uniform. He's got his car, got his radio on. He's already, he's ready to go 10, 8 at any time. He was in the lawful performance of his duties. He was out there campaigning, trying to keep his job as sheriff or to keep his job as a local public official. And he was gunned down for that simple reason. I think there's actually three aggravators that we've proven to you beyond a reasonable doubt. Kenneth White speaks, all shackled up and everything. And, uh, he said, I just want you to know I had nothing to do with your brother's death. He looked at Lewis and told Lewis that. Wow. Yeah. He said, whether you believe it or not, I didn't. So Kenneth speech before sentencing his quote, not, I'm sorry. Yeah. Not, you know, what I did was terrible. And I hope everyone can forget me. He said, quote, I'm not worried. I'm innocent. I have done nothing wrong. The good Lord is going to take care of me. I know that he will. Why do so many think that that's a good chance, stands to take? It's fine to not admit anything if you're going to appeal. And if your stance is I am not, if I am innocent. And I've got confidence that I can beat this on, on. Yeah. But this seems like you're, you're fucked. They've shattered for an hour. Yeah. They're, they, you're done. Um, anyway, they told him you, sir, they fuck off life without parole. Okay. With that because it's hard to give the death penalty as someone who didn't pull the trigger. That's hard for a lot of people to do. They just go, I just can't, he didn't actually kill a man. I can't give him the death penalty, but possibility of parole. Never. Fuck him. Put him away. Um, and the Lewis, the brother, said, I fully believe that this, that he is guilty and he's getting his due. He was given life without the possibility of parole. And that's, um, he said that as far as I'm concerned, he got exactly what he deserved done. Um, they also said, anytime, oh, this is the prosecutor anytime you make a deal with the shooter, it's a hard decision, a decision to make, but I'm glad to see this is all over and all three are convicted. Right. Now Sam's family, Lewis said that his mother, who's in her late 80s at this point, Jenny is holding up well. Um, he said he worked part time as a deputy for his brother, but after he was killed, he decided that losing two members to law enforcement was enough. And I got out. It's nobody wanted me there anymore. His mother said she was satisfied with the plea agreement. She said, um, she said quote, we think it's in the best interest of all the families. Then the mother, uh, the brother and mother here, they were talking about, uh, the brother said the murders affected everyone, including Morris's mother, Louise Hester of Glasgow, who attended all the hearings and said it hurt all the families. We've suffered a loss of family member and they've suffered in a way from the same thing. It's people are so nice. Um, now that mother, uh, the Hester woman described the case as heart wrenching and said she still still can't comprehend how her son got involved in the plot to murder the sheriff. He said Jeff worked for Mr. Catron for five years and had a lot of respect and admiration for him. She said she can't understand how any of this started. Yeah. She said, I've heard him say so many times. This is so unreal. I can't believe it's happening. She doesn't know exactly how the plot unfolds And she said I think a lot of the stuff hasn't come out. Maybe it will She also had gone over to approach Sam's mom before the hearing and she said I told her how sorry I was I have felt and prayed for the Catron family every single day since this has happened and they were more than happy to accept her As well as her nice people. Some of the people in the in town wanted the death penalty and they're pissed off One person said I think it's a waste of taxpayers money. I think we ought to hang them up on the gallows torture them and burn them Well, I'm glad you're not a governor. Good Christ Then another one said I think we ought to have the gallows built on the town square and hang them Nobody realized this shit. We've already tried and got rid of four reasons. That's what I don't understand about this shit Also, you don't know we try to bring back stuff. It's like we did that. Yeah. Stopped it for a reason Also public hangings and public execution is so bad for children. You don't need this is gonna say The people bring their families to that shit Then you know what we concurse as much as we want on broadcast television then you tell me to put my cigarette out in this Opening of an airport and I'll kick you square in the fucking dick. Yeah, that's right. I will smoke in my Anywhere I won't play on the fucking light attendance right in their face and go doesn't matter It's not bad for kids because they can see a guy's head pop off and that's fine. So shut the fuck up Public hang fuck you you sick bastard Um, someone also said some people have said being in prison for the rest of your life is probably a worst punishment Then you know capital murder. So um, I'm at peace with it. Yeah, it's shitty It's gotta be torture 2005 he appeals white does he argued that um The witnesses were all character assassination uh, he leaned on Morris's testimony that said he ran drugs in alcohol and all that kind of thing and said that Morris had a reason to lie So you shouldn't believe him. He argued that a sheriff carrying cakes to his car at a political first fish fry Was not engaged in the lawful performance of his duties He's saying he wasn't on duty. So it should have been different if he's bad stuff and ready to go 10-8 James dude He's ready to 10-8 it yeah Well, this is like last week somebody saying well, you can't rape a corpse. So it ain't right That's the same thing that you're getting. It's a when you're making that argument. You've lost the fucking argument long ago. That's terrible um So he said yeah His his presence served a dual a dual purpose that he was engaged in a monetary deviation from his official duties in taking care Cake to his car does not disturb the conclusion Just because he wasn't yeah, he was what so if you're on duty in the sheriff's office and you go to take a piss now You're not on duty and someone can kill you now. Well, you're vulnerable now if you're vulnerable. You're not on duty Yeah So also the court talked about he complained about the IQ test thing saying he wasn't malingering whatever 2007 Mom sam's mom finally dies at 91 which is sad Jesus Yeah 2010 Jeff Morris wants to vacate his conviction really yeah He filed his own motion arguing that he had acted under extreme emotional distress and that his guilty plea was involuntary and that his lawyer was in effect They said get the fuck out of here you idiot. No 2011 white appeals again saying there's new witnesses and they said given the credibility of the witnesses And the fact that neither Morris nor Shelley would testify that white was not involved We find no basis for relief in this case keep on keeping on 2014 daddy Shelley's lawyer The ones that said it's a shot at redemption was shot to death outside his law office in Somerset at 8 a.m On June 27 2014 as he walked to work. What did he fuck up? Well, no the man in charge Clinton in an abnet was a neighbor who approached this guy seeking help with his problems and decided to shoot him He pleaded guilty but mentally ill and received 25 years Satin's he's all fucked up in the head Prosecutors described him as schizophrenic and delusional as well. I didn't know what the fuck he was doing Whatever's problem was he asked him for help and he's like I can't help with that though Too much um November 23rd 2018 Kenneth white at 71 years old dead in prison dang Dead as shit. Yeah fingers is gone Fingers is gonna finger on down the way up to wherever the fuck so He said that they said um. I'm sure it brings relief to the family that he's finally passed meaning the victim family here June 2020 Morris tries to use COVID to get out of prison. Ah He filed here. No, he filed citing overcrowding double-bunking and bad ventilation The appeals court turned him down and said the COVID-19 pandemic and event that just began shy of two decades after he was Already in here is not extraordinary circumstance that entitles him to relief Um 2023 this is sad. Yeah, Lewis brother Lewis and his wife Carol are killed in their homes From carbon monoxide poisoning in their homes uh home in their home. Okay. I'm sorry that's fucked up together Part yet they said a family went to check on them and found them unresponsive in their home Um apparently somebody left a car running in the garage. No Silent cars man Happens all the fucking time so loud exhaust saves lives save well. I My 71 car vet. I have never thought it was fucking off when it was on not once. I've got shaking and rumbling What it's on? I've got a metal sign above my door in my mudroom wanderer and it When that car is on you know it Bang in on the I mean the house is shaking but still That's fucking hilarious so um Um the congressman remember that ham congressman there He said that um He said the young man that actually did the shooting an oxy-contin addict at the time who later Said in essence the drug had taken him over and he didn't realize what he was doing Um, and he called it's the drug trade. That's the scourge here Danny Shelley in prison He appeared in a Documentary for Kentucky educational television about the It's called choices. It's about the green river correctional complex and people in there And he's test says to the kids in the that he's trying to talk to through the camera more temptations now than what they used to be And um his mother also described Polaski County as a quiet country place with church and friends Where everybody's neighborly and it's a nice place to raise your children up But then she added and said that but you know things have changed Um, so there you go Oh, by the way, there's a um 2022 a resolution uh was filed by the Kentucky general assembly um to Make Hal Rogers Parkway bridge over the Buck Creek in Polaski the sheriff Sam Catron memorial bridge Rename it Rename and Kentucky educational television produced the sheriff Sam Catron story a 26-minute documentary Also, it was on A&E's city confidential and investigation discovery sins and secrets Both Danny and Jeff are eligible for parole next year No, yeah right now um one is in Danny's and southeast state correctional complex Jeff is in uh eastern Kentucky correctional And they're not getting out They might not Danny's got a good shot at it. You think so? Absolutely Even the family forgives him even the congressman said i think that boy was under a lot Of bread that ain't his fault like everybody in the whole thing thinks of Danny as like the second victim It's I'm scared of him because that that young man is a great shot I agree I agree totally, but they're they think of him as the least responsible of wow He had the least to gain from it and he's just a dumb guy. They stuffed you know loaded up with drugs and pushed out there essentially is how they put it So anyway, that is Stab slash shop bill slash summer set Kentucky and a fucking crazy store well done James great. Oh, Jesus Christ There you there. There's a wild fucking story. 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And we'll talk about that. And you get everything we put out, all of our shows. Crime and sports, your stupid opinions, and small town murder. We all add free with your Patreon as well, which is incredible, so you get all of that. And then you also get a shout out at the end of the show, which is right goddamn now. Jimmy, do me a big favor here. Hit me with the names of the people who we could not live without doing this show. Hit me with them. Right goddamn now. This week's executive producer Gary Howard, checking Gary Livingston, Texas. Gary. I think he's been there a lot. I think he might live there. I don't know, maybe. He moves a lot, Gary, he moves around. Can't pin him down. No, it's, yeah, that's what they do. It's Alan Albrecht, Alison Heimer, Courtney Ducker. Happy hour is in Hall or Jal, New Mexico. Oh boy. All like Appenio, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's in Hall, Appenio, Mexican, New Mexico. In Hall, New Mexico. And Atlanta, Zamol. Thank you so much. Allaney, you're the best. Thank you. Other producers this week, Jeffrey Adamansky. Happy birthday. Jeffrey Adamansky. Adamansky. I think that's right. I think I did that right. Good for you. Good for you. Something Polish. Oh, for birthdays. Amazing, Jeff. Oh, happy birthday, fucker. Also, Peyton Meadows, Kylie Martinez, Andrew Morgan, Janice Hill, Nathan Rose, Liz Vazquez, Peyton Meadows, Amanda Jenkins, Sarah Kelly, Joe King, Karen, with no last name, Sla Holstra Hyman. I don't know if they're trying to get me to say something gross or if that's a real name. There are people named Hyman, we found. Oh, that's a last name. Yeah. We found a bunch of those. Yeah. Oh, to high school with a couple. Safron. That's a real name too. Orondorf is. Wow. It's. Wow. This is. Safron Orondorf. Orondorf. Yeah. Pile driving people left and right. Mr. Wonderful himself. Is that Mr. Wonderful's first name? No, it's Paul. Paul. It's true. Yeah, Paul. Does he have a kid name? He might. You never know. Mr. Paul Orondorf naming his kid Safron. He's like a red necked. Right. Not Safron. Perhaps. Maybe. I could see like, you know what I'm saying. Maybe more horror. Occasion spice mix of some kind, you can name him, but not that. Not Safron. That's the truth. Michael Torkelson, Noah Schrader, Terry Concade Battles Insights, G, with no last name. Teresa Carruthers, Charmaine, Passmore, Kathy Lyons, Julia Bass, or perhaps Bates. Lisa Cotheren, Mallory Christensen, Tyrese with no last name. Probably not that one, right? Probably. I assume. T.M. Ragecovitch, Michelle Woodward, Jonathan Cooper, probably not the one, the past rusher from Broncos. Michael Rogan, Allison Graves, Cliff Springer, Joy Gray, Jennifer Gersellick, Gersalac. Gersalac. That's what. That's what my name is. Tessa with no last name, Aaron Everett, Jen Demire, Demiree, Matthew Blitz, Melissa Mike, Carrie Pasaretta, you Takakawa, Takagawa, Melissa with no last name, Carrie Kay, Stephanie Howell, Liz with no last name, Chaz Fissell, Joe with no last name, Nancy Anderson, time, Bronte. That's another seasoning, Amy Stagall, Stiegel, Skyler Carol, J.R. And Juju from New Mexico, where the fuck is Howell, or J.R. Katherine Park, Christie Hines, Shamar with no last name, Becky Ryzenger, Rosinger, Scotty MCK, Mack, perhaps Caitlyn with no last name, Leslie G. John Ayerio, Maddie with no last name, Reeve with no last name, Deena Wayne, Heather with no last name, Amy Delphin, Jenna Weber, Priscilla Aguilar, Nicky with no last name, Christopher LeSpron, Leah Leia Wells, your parents are Star Wars fans. Good for you. Patrick P Kim with no last name, Aaron Bradford, Anthony Hankel, Mitch Jewski, John Cassidy Mary Hoover, Chuckle with me, Ben Wally, Katie Burfield, Chelsea Rolo, Rolo, yep, Virginia Mundy, Carolyn, say again, love a Rolo, delicious, it's not like that. It's R.O.U. and then the French way, but I had a friend named Rolo too, that we called him that. Yeah, delicious. How do you know it? He's the reason for that four-way stopover at 24 Street and Shay, where he can't be kicked. Exactly, you're talking about it. No reason for it. There's got to be a reason for it. He did it. Carolyn with no last name, CPT Martha Waterloo, Turkey Wing, Julia K. Andrew Petty, Sadie Stevens, Tanna Scott, Marius, and Enter Hagen, the Vagetarians, James Smith with no last name, Lauren Conrad, David Ackerman, Jacob with no last name, Nicole Hitchcock, Carlos Condi, Carrie Piddle, Piddle Cow, Reese Johnson, Charlotte Anderson, Patsy Penn, Penelope, Meisner, Cindy Elton, Curtis Springer, Rebecca with no last name, Tess with no last name, Kim Stolvinga, Brandon Shader, Carrie Ann Connell Gale with no last name, Nate Kloss, Vicki Ward, April Rose, Ethan Bauer, Bill Johnson, and his big apple, Renan Cross, Phoenix Reference. Oh, well, people who lived in Phoenix more than 15 years ago would understand that. To a fun restaurant that closed in 2006. No, it closed after that. I did comedy there. Yeah, I think it was like 2000, oh, yeah, it was dying. That's what they were allowing us to do. All the shit on the walls, oh, my God, covered in grease, yeah, somebody has a wagon wheel from John, that's disturbing. Oh, crazy. Oh, we're in a stop. Bill Johnson is where I stopped. Renan Cross, John Demise, Robin Little, Nicole Lopez, Michael with no last name, Marley Jones, Robert Poe, Black Dog, Beard Oil, their terrific, Melbo with no last name, Kelly with no last name, Tony Hurtado, Daniel Perry, Michael Miller Benjamin, Marcieka, Thomas Mink, Gianna Westberry, Anthony Lucy Brittney, Loray, Stephen Randell, Randall, who knows, Miranda Smith, Kimber and all of our patrons, you guys are the best, thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. We appreciate everything you do for us all the time. Honestly, cannot thank you enough for all that you do. Thank you. Thank you. Come see us. If you want to check us out, social media wise or anything else, shut up and give me murder.com is where you get all that stuff you can find us on there and get tickets for live shows. Follow us. Do anything you can do on there. Buy some merchandise. Get a t-shirt to wear to your show that you're coming to. Whenever you want, come hang out with us. 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