Homicide in Estill County and Eastern KY

Homicide in Eastern KY
The literacy rate in the counties mentioned in the artilce is as low as 25-40%. Whites are the primary residents.

Although the article is nearly 16 years old, murder rates continued to climb due to the explosion of drugs (cocaine/crack/marijuana) in the early nineties and onwards.

Now meth is taking a huge toll across the state.

Blacks only make up 7.33% of KY's population, and very low numbers in the counties mentioned in the article.

John L.


HOMICIDE RATES IN SOME COUNTIES RIVAL BIG CITIES'

Published: Sunday, May 19, 1991


Lexington Herald Leader
Section: MAIN NEWS
age: Al
By Frank Langfitt Southeastern Kentucky bureau
HYDEN -- People wave when they pass each other along the mountain roads of Leslie County. Cars usually stop in front of the courthouse in Hyden to let people cross the street.

Folks here are among the friendliest and most courteous around. And like many in Eastern Kentucky, they think they act a little more civilized than people in big cities.
They are right - except when it comes to killing each other.
From 1980 to 1989, Leslie County had a per-capita homicide rate higher than New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles.

A review by the Herald-Leader found that Leslie and nine neighboring Appalachian counties in southeastern Kentucky had higher homicide rates than many major U.S. cities.

Wolfe and Perry counties had homicide rates of 24.2 and 21.6 for every 100,000 people -- both higher than Philadelphia, Boston or San Francisco.

Clay, Breathitt and Owsley had rates ranging from 2l.1 to 18.6 for every 100,000 - higher than Seattle or Nashville.

And Harlan, Estlll, Knox and Lee had rates of at least 15 for every 100,000 -- twice the state average and greater than Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix, Ariz.; or San Diego.

Leslie County's homicide rate -- 28 for every 100,000 -- was the highest in Kentucky. It was also more than three and four times that of the state's two most urban counties, Jefferson and Fayette.

The 10 Appalachian counties listed above were among the 14 highest in the state.

In some cases, the rates of Appalachian counties were not much higher than those of U.S. cities. But in others, the difference was substantial.

If people in Perry County had killed each other at the rate of people in San Francisco, 25 fewer would have died between 1980 and 1989, data show.

During that period, 69 people were killed in Perry County. Perry's average population for the decade was 31,992, according to census figures.

In determining the city and county rates, the newspaper considered all murders and non-negligent manslaughters compiled in crime reports from 1980 through 1989 by the Kentucky State Police and the FBI. Vehicular and other negligent homicides were not included.

During the decade, the average populations of the 10 Appalachian counties ranged from 5,368 to 39,337, according to census figures. Homicides for each of the 10 counties were distributed evenly throughout the decade, suggesting that the high rates were not due to chance.

"None of this is surprising," said Ronald D. Eller, a professor of history at the University of Kentucky and a leading Appalachian scholar.

**Eastern Kentucky may be rural, but many of its problems -- high unemployment, poor schools and, in some narrow hollows, crowded living conditions - are similar to those in urban areas. **
John L: my emphasis)

The region bas a long tradition of violence fueled by the pressures of its boom-and-bust coal economy, Eller said. Scholars also see links between current levels of violence and the region's turbulent history, including the Civil War and industrialization.

State police and prosecutors think chronic joblessness and high dropout rates have left some people with little patience and few skills to resolve their differences peacefully.
People in Eastern Kentucky "will be nice to you, and if that doesn't work, they will go to the other extreme," said Capt. Douglas Asher, commander of the state police post in London.

Strangers and kin

Outsiders often associate the Kentucky mountains with violence. The famous Hatfield-McCoy Feud is a part of American folklore. The Harlan County mine wars made national headlines in the 1930s, earning it the nickname "Bloody Harlan."


Before heading into the mountains, strangers often ask whether they should be concerned about their safety.

"Only if you are related to somebody," says Jane Bagby, assistant director of the Appalachian Center at UK.

Contrary to popular films like 1972's Deliverance, which portrayed Appalachian people randomly attacking outsiders, the majority of mountain killings occur among friends, neighbors and kin.

The close relationship between killers and victims is a product of the region's economy and landscape. Traveling the twisting mountain roads takes time and money, so people often limit their social life to family and small circles of friends. Many killings occur in homes and neighborhoods as a result of domestic arguments.

In a period of five weeks last winter in Knott County (population 17,906), two husbands were charged with killing their wives and a wife charged with shooting her husband.

'1People kill people they know," said Capt. Tim Hazlette, commander of the state police post in Hazard. "It is a very rare thing for a stranger to kill a stranger in this part of the state.”
When it does happen, it is usually front-page news.

One of the most publicized cases involved the execution-style slayings of two prominent Leslie County men in the summer of 1989. Businessman Eddie J. Moore and merchant John M. Lewis were found at Lewis' grocery store outside Hyden.

Lewis had been shot three times, including once in the head from close range. Moore had been handcuffed and shot in the back of the head. No money was taken from either man or the store.

The random nature of the crime deeply disturbed Leslie Countians, who associate cold-blooded killing with big cities. Police eventually charged two Cincinnati bank robbers who had no apparent connection to the area.

People feel a little less threatened by murder in the mountains because they can often see it coming, Hazlette says. Personal disputes, whether over a property line or a romance, are usually well known in the community.

When Zack Caldwell fired up to seven bullets into Elhannon Jones on a Perry County strip mine in 1989, a lot of people had a notion why. Caldwell had recently beaten Jones out of a lucrative coal-hauling contract. Jones, who had been charged with murder in the past, was bitter and had apparently threatened Caldwell's life.

A local jury acquitted Caldwell last month after he claimed that Jones had fired first. Fanning the flames.
Some people in Eastern Kentucky might be less prone to kill one another if they did not drink so much. State police say most mountain killings involve drugs or alcohol. Like gasoline on a fire, the substances often turn minor disputes into fatal confrontations.

"I can count on one hand the number of homicides I've seen that have not involved drugs or drinking" said Alva A. Hollon Jr., Perry commonwealth's attorney since 1982.

In some instances, assailants are so intoxicated that they later have trouble recalling why they killed. The story of Teddy Joe Davidson is a case in point, Hollon said.

In the winter of 1985, Davidson was 23 years old and worked as a heavy equipment operator on a Perry County strip mine. One day in early February, snow fell across the county, so Davidson took the day off and shot some pool.
Davidson, who had a history of substance abuse and blackouts, drank a half- liter of whiskey, according to court records. He also took some phencyclidine, or Angel Dust, which induces a psychiatric state similar to schizophrenia.

Early that evening near the family home at Tribbey, Davidson got into a fight with his little brother, Larry. When Teddy Joe pulled a 9mm pistol, Larry and his father, Theodore, tried to disarm him.

Teddy Joe killed Larry with three shots, wounded his father in the shoulder and stomach, and winged a bystander in the knee.
"I went into a blackout and the next thing I remember I was in the house," Davidson said in court records. "There were police all around and I walked out and gave them the gun."
When police told Davidson he had killed his brother, he was distraught. He said he did not know why he had done it.

"It just happened," he said. "We argued like brothers, but we loved each other."

Davidson pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and two counts of second-degree assault. He was sentenced to nine years.
Beyond the borders
Clay County Sheriff Edd Jordon thinks employment and violence work like a seesaw in the mountains. When jobs go down, killings go up. Many people get depressed about the future, start arguments and kill each other over nothing, the sheriff says. “I could set up a factory in Clay County and cut the crime rate in half,” Jordon said.

Eastern Kentucky has been one of the poorest parts of rural America for decades. Not surprisingly, many of the mountain counties with the highest per- capita murder rates also have the lowest per-capita incomes.

In 1989, Clay and Leslie had per-capita incomes of $7,869 and $8,148-- the seventh and tenth lowest of the state's 120 counties, according to census figures.

The connection between violence and joblessness appears to stretch well beyond state boundaries. Across the border in West Virginia, the impoverished coal-producing counties of Mingo and McDowell have the highest homicide rates in that state.

The two counties with the highest homicide rates in Mississippi -- Tunica and Jefferson -- are in the Lower Mississippi Delta, arguably the poorest rural area in the nation. Tunica and Jefferson have the fifth- and sixth- lowest per-capita incomes in the United States.

Eastern Kentucky's school systems have traditionally been the state's poorest by most standards, including funding, test scores and dropout rates.

Hollon thinks that some people have not learned basic skills in resolving simple disagreements. In an area that places a high value on personal honor, insults can quickly lead to bloodshed.

"Some slight to me or you might hurt our feelings, but we would be able to talk it out," Hollon said. "But some people perceive it as a major problem and the result often is violence."

'Killings'

When William Lynwood Montell began to study the history of homicide in south-central Kentucky, he found that the people he interviewed did not use the word "murder."

They thought "murder," a legal term for premeditated homicide, was far too harsh and implied a viciousness not usually present in the conflicts, said Montell, a retired professor of folk studies at Western Kentucky University.

Instead, they preferred the word "killing."
"Killing" covered a variety of types of homicide, including premeditated ones that the community considered justified under the right set of circumstances, Montell said.
Many people in the mountains use the word today. When a dangerous character comes to a violent end, state police say, some respond philosophically with the expression, "Well, some people just needs killing."

Prosecutors say the phrase reflects a greater acceptance of violence as a means of resolving differences. It also represents a broader concept of justifiable homicide.

Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Campbell says attitudes toward homicide vary between the two mountain counties he handles, Knott and Magoffin.
"Magoffin County jurors have been much quicker to say that deadly force is justifiable, especially in situations that involve the home and ... property," Campbell said. Land "is sacred and once you come into that area in a threatening manner, to a lot of the jurors you risk deadly force being used against you even in situations where you may not be armed."
From farming to mining
Revisionist historians do not see murder as a native characteristic of the mountains, but more of a response to political and economic changes from outside.
As a border state, Kentucky found itself in the middle of the Civil War with mountain families fighting on both sides. Guerrilla raids and postwar political power struggles led to feuds in a number of southeastern counties, according to Harry M. Caudill, the late Appalachian historian.

For most of the 19th century, the mountains remained a relatively isolated area of self-sufficient farming communities. But the discovery of coal, land speculation and the coming of the railroads brought conflict.

The Hatfield-McCoy Feud may have started over a hog, but historian Altina L Waller argues that an attempt to grab land near a proposed rail line sparked the feud's most violent period.

A sociological study of Harlan County in the opening decades of the 20th century found that the rapid transition from farming communities to company-run coal towns led to an increase in vice and homicide. In the early 1920s, Harlan County's murder rate was 78 for every 100,000, reportedly the highest for any county in the nation.

Deaths in underground coal mines and, more recently, strip mining have continued to harden many mountain people to violence and widespread destruction, said historian Eller.

But if the seeds of violence have been sown from without, most agree that the solutions, including a diversified economy and better schools, must come from within.

"Every generation inherits a whole chest full of cultural goods," said Herb E. Smith, a filmmaker and co-­founder of Appalshop, an Appalachian arts and education center in Whitesburg. "Inside that chest are good things and bad. Some will help us shape our future and some we must discard."

A gun in every house

In the mountains of Perry County sits a roadhouse called The Big I. Next to the front door hangs a sign warning customers that guns and knives are not allowed inside.

Firearms are a part of daily life in Eastern Kentucky, so sometimes people need to be reminded.

Eastern Kentuckians use guns for hunting and self-protection, and many mountain households have more weapons than people. In Magoffin County, Campbell says, jurors of all kinds display an impressive knowledge of firearms.

"Almost down to the little old ladies, they can tell you the caliber of guns and the type of ammunition and the type of result particular ammunition has when fired in a particular weapon," Campbell said.

Firearms account for about 60 percent of the homicides in Kentucky and across the nation, according to crime reports. In Eastern Kentucky, guns are used in up to 90 percent of killings, state police say.

However, it is hard to find anyone in the mountains who thinks that stricter handgun laws would reduce the homicide rate. Unlicensed dealers sell scores of weapons at roadside flea markets, and most in the region consider gun ownership a right of the mountains.
When asked about the Brady bill, which calls for a seven-day waiting period to buy a handgun and was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month, state police shake their heads.

“There are so many firearms, it would take 200 years to use them up," said Capt. Asher.

Herald-Leader staff members Robin Luger and Reba Roberts contributed to this article.



.411 content © 1991 The Lexington Herald-Leader


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