Small Town Murder - Murder From The Shadows - Stab, Kentucky

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

This week, in Stab, Kentucky, when a shot rings out from a grassy knoll, killing a beloved local figure, a mob of residents in pick up trucks chase the killer down. This all leads to a twisted and strange story of crazy motivations, and wild conspiracy that no one can even believe is real. Especially in such a small town. But it turns out, sometimes conspiracies can actually be real, and this murderous tale proves it!!   Along the way, we find out that a "karst fenster" is something to do with water, that even if you're the town hero, there's going to be some people who want you dead, and that small town elections can get crazier than most!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

This week, in Stab, Kentucky, when a shot rings out from a grassy knoll, killing a beloved local figure, a mob of residents chased 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! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Whistman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today and another absolutely crazy twisted, just mess of a murder. Outstanding. With Smalltown 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 on October 3rd.

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.

So 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. And then also November 13th in Terrytown, those are just about sold out. I don't know how many more of those are left. And then Boston, or actually Medford, 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. And that's what we do here. Talk about reviews and the dumbness of them. So that's a lot of fun. Get all of that.

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As soon as you subscribe, you're going to get about 400 back bonus episodes immediately. Then new ones every other week, one crime in sports, and one small town murder. And that's what you get. You get it all. This week for crime in sports.

It's a murder story. It has nothing to do with sports. The only sports connection is the person's family who's murdered to play minor league baseball. Otherwise, it's just a crazy murder story with a murderer who gets caught in a very strange way and in a very strange outfit, we'll say.

Amazing. And 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. So it's a lot of fun, though.

Can't wait to do that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all that. And that's not it. That's not all. Oh, what else you got? We have more. Oh, absolutely. You get everything we put out all three shows, plus express everything, all ad free with your Patreon, no ads. And you're going to get a shout out at the end of the show, too. You bet. Or Jimmy will try his best, but more than likely mess the name up. But that's okay, because he's trying. So that said, 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 called Small Town Murder. So if you wonder, how do 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 of a bumbling police force that doesn't do the right thing and let a murderer go free and

kill more people. We'll make fun of murderers because what else do we have to do? We're going to 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 and clear the lungs, which I have to do extra because I'm still sick.

Apologies for that. I'm all suitor-fetted up and ready to go, though, so that's all right. Sit back, 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 here. Going to 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. Perth. Right in the gut. Yeah. Now, Stab is right next door to a tiny, they're both tiny little places, a place called Shopville. Stab and Shopville are essentially the same town but have two different names for some reason. They share the same fire. It's the Shopville Stab Fire Department.

It's everything they share is together because they're like a half mile away from each other. 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 in the middle of nowhere.

There's no census for them. There's no anything. So we're going to use Somerset stuff. Basically, it's zip code 42501, which encompasses those towns and Somerset and all that kind of thing. 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 delivering what's expected when you, when you, you, you know. of an episode like that. This is in Pulaski 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. Okay. 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.

Ooh. Spirit of hillbilly heroin. Ooh, do you have anything? Are you holding? That's what the ghosts 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 rifling your medicine cabinets. That's all they're doing. In the movie, it's played by Leo from basketball diaries. Yeah, and he's just itchy. him and uh... him and the kid who played fucking uh leo fitzpatrick too the other leo the one from the wire who's uh... bubbles oh yeah guy and from uh kids also where he's also scum back he's good in that shit yeah uh anyway history here the the stab post office

was established in 19202 now 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 at TJ. Yeah, they're 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 someone's 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 the c word god damn it jesus christ so i got one stop it nope don't you dare

it's enough of the back we can't do that no i told you twat i done told you twat ain't going work the c word none of them words are going to work what about the stab all right close enough it's the first one that ain't a curse word it's what you do to her we get it so uh i guess i guess 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 stabs. I like, no, no, no, no. All right, take the ass off. Yeah, that's fun. That's just like, good enough? Okay, good.

So it's shorter. It's terrible, but it's short. And you guys are fine with that. So I like that. Stab is a location of a karst window formation called Short Creek. Okay, a karst window, also known as a karst fencer. This is, I'm just reading a definition. I don't know any of this yet.

It's a geomorphic figure, our feature, found in karst landscapes where an underground river is visible from the surface within a sinkhole. Which is, I had a little spring like this in a yard I had for a house. We lived in 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. Sweet. Reached her hand. No, I reached my hand in. You could see it. It's a hole with 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 got to be things in there, right? It's moving.

Like you see it. It's like flowing fast under there. So it's full enough that there's no like, quote unquote, river bank 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 in there.

And the holes only like this deep to the water. Oh, okay. And scoop it. Yeah, I'm not like reaching my whole arm in there. I'm not noodling the fucking spring water out. You're going to come up with a creature, James. 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 my life. As a child, if an adult told me to do that, I probably would do that. I'd have been like, you're out of your fucking mind. I'm not doing it. So, anyway. I was so gullible. Yeah, that's a problem. So in this feature, a spring emerges, then the discharge abruptly disappears into a sinkhole.

So the word fenceder is German for window, as these features are windows into the karst landscape. So that's how it works there. It's just the short river. It's like a weird length of a football field river. I could talk about this all day. It's fucking interesting. Oh, I keep 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 northeast Ohio, Jesus Christ, people, they jumped a replica of the Dukes of Hazard car. So they took an old charger. A very cool car that's rare, by the way. They dicks, they fucking did that. Over Somersets Fountain Square,

they jumped it like the Duke boys, attracting 35,000. spectators. I did too. I remember seeing it. I saw that. Yeah, it was just last year. 35,000 people came to see that, which is fun. Didn't it fuck up the front end of that car, too? Like, it landed a little, I mean, the front end's very heavy. I don't know how it wouldn't. That's where the engine is. In the show, every time it landed, you just saw the entire front end crumble. I mean, the suspension fell up, everything was a mess. That was a fucking disaster. 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 a chasm while their horn played a song. That's awesome when you're four. That's cool. Anyway, reviews of this town here. Okay, five stars.

I love Somerset because it truly feels like home. The friendly community and 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. Right. It's just old non enjoying their childhood and watching the Duke's of hazard jump.

It's fun. Teenagers, what the fuck is with this car? Why are we doing this? Why is 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. Yeah, I don't think so.

We'd be like, hey, why did they got the flag? we got in the front yard in there. Same flag. Three stars. I was born and raised here. It's an all right size town that has everything you need. People are fairly friendly,

wherever you go. Lake Cumberland, that's 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 money. 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 like. I made a mistake. I made a huge mistake. I left and then failed and then had to come back. Yeah. Those are move back in with your parents. 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 runs school nursing. No culture here. However, if you like chicken and dollar general, it's the place for you. What does that be? They have chicken and dollar general. I don't know. And then 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. The guy from Fantasim. Right, yeah, this is high. It was a poltergeist, right? Tall man, was that what is?

I knew exactly what you were talking about somehow. That's so weird. I think it's the same guy. It might be. Creepy. It might. Weird looking tall. Fantasm is a pinhead guy,

but I think the guy from poltergeys is in that all. Oh, you mean the actor, not the character. Right. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, okay. Like, Hell right. We're very confused and way off the draft.

Oh, Fantasm is, it is him. Same guy? Yeah, I'm mixing up Phantasm and Hellraiser too. Hell right. Look at me knowing very little about horror. Well, when's the last time you watched those movies? We all watched them when we were eight. We rented them and you were, yeah.

30, fuck, plus years. Yeah, totally. And people look to be heavily on drugs, okay? Most people are extremely overweight and people dress like slabs in public. Welcome to America. Yeah, it's everywhere. I don't think that has anything to do with here. Yeah, that's not local.

Have you been to Grand Rapids? Yeah, but anywhere. 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. Their 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. Perhaps that's just trying to keep people away because they're not. They love it there.

Maybe. I don't think so. It doesn't sound like it from everywhere. No, 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.

That's little, yeah. More women than men by far, 52.6% women. So that's way above for a 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%. Race in this town, 92.9% white, 1.9% black, 0.0% Asian.

None of them. They're like, we ran the Lee's out this town five years ago and they ain't come back, and that's that. We have 2.3% Hispanic. Religion here, 50-50 is normal. The rest of the country average. Here, it's 59.6% religious. And not a shock here. The number one religion with a bullet all the way to the top.

43.9% of the people here are Baptist. That's what you're... Wow! It's all bad. Nothing else cracks 4%. It's just Baptist, Baptist and more Baptist. A whole bunch of religion. That's it.

As we know, Baptists are the Catholics of the South. There's everywhere. Unemployment here is about average. Median household income here, not average at all. It's about $30,000 below the average. $39,923 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, which is obviously less than half the rest of the country. So pretty small. And it doesn't matter when you have nothing. Yeah. But I mean, I guess if you make $40,000 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 Stabb 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 T-bowl for each and every B-hole. It is not great looking. I've got to be honest with you. It looks a little broken down. I mean, the livable is 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. Now, here's one in Shopville, or Shopville Road in Somerset. This is four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,856 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. It's got a bunch of irregular stones, you know, built like that.

River Rock? Yeah, I 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 up. off the second floor, which is now a ground level. It's very strange. That's very common

in like... Hill places. Yeah. Yeah. Where you get like, it looks like it's one floor, but when you get to the back, then you've got a walk out basement. That's really cool. This is the opposite of that. Yeah, yeah. This is 2856 square feet, so big place at 1.77 acres, $299,000 for that.

And then finally, six-bedroom, six bath. T-ball for each and every beehole. 5,592 square feet. My God. It's a big house. 1.57 acres, and it's like a big modern-looking, you know, house, tracked housing with the, you know, no trees around it because it's all been knocked down. Built in 2012, $1,250,000 for that.

You're out of your mind. No. You got $40,000 a year. Come on through and take a tour. Good luck, yeah. Strange people knocking on your door. Yeah. Because you're an idiot for buying that house.

House. Things to do. Go to Lake Cumberland is one. And then there's the Moonlight Festival. Oh. This is in downtown Somerset, food vendors, spirits. I guess that's booze, I would hope. Drinks. Live art creation from local and regional artists. I don't know if it was just real superstitious people going. They're going to be spirits there. I have no idea. They come up from the hills. They come up from the hills. Regional artist, an 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 Kersh. He's terrific. Well, there you go. The Big Lula, L-O-U-L-A. Somerset Big Band with special guests,

Spooky Fox and Brando Van Schuyak. Okay. Sammy's the headline. That's a big deal. It sounds like a very big deal for that. 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 DeBorde. Good for you, Becca. You got on there with Mr. Kershaw. Not 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 teenage music singing about teenage love. But unless I'm fucking... Had to pay $5 for a drinking wristband, 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 average. It's pills, dude. This place is overwhelmed with drugs. It is.

What is going on? You ever seen the wild and 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. Wow. That said, let's talk about some murder.

Let's do this. Sorry, 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, Catron. Okay.

Katrin. C-A-T-R-O-N. I've heard it pronounce different ways for some reason here. Sam. Sheriff Sam, everybody calls him. Sheriff Sam. Now, Sheriff Sam is the sheriff of

Pulaski County, which not a lot of people in Pulaski County. So everybody knows Sheriff Sam. It's one of those things. He's about 48 years old in 2002 there. So you can do the math on that one. Was he born about 54 there?

His parents, this is the interesting story. His parents here, his dad was a police chief as well, Chief Harold. Everybody called him. Harold Lewis Catron Sr. 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 Somerset 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 Somerset in 1916, and she's an only child of a lawyer and his wife, Wilson and Florence. She graduated Somerset 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 did, but women were always doing a million things. They were in like 18 organizations and federations and riveting and they're really busy people in the 40s. I mean, guys were at war. So, I mean, they had to do something.

But they got to do everything. They got to do everything. That's what I mean. They had to do everything at home. So she was belonged to all the organizations, the local homemakers, the Republican Women's Club, the rescue squad, the PTA, the all this. Everything you can 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. It's got army pensions, fire pensions. Yeah. This guy dies in action. They're going to be set. He's got it all lined up. And if he lives through all of it, then he's going to inherit his wife's dad's lawyer fortune. They're going to be fine. They're going to be doing well. Now, the kids that they have, they have four children, the Catron's. They have Melly Rachel, girl, 1942. They have Harold Lewis, Jr., who will go by Lewis always. 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's kids. Two boys, two girls. Two boys. She's a boy. No, she's a girl. She's a girl. So it was girl boy boy, boy, girl. That's how they had them there.

Now in the 50s, there's a big bootleggar problem here, which by the way still exists in this area. And now. They're still bootlegging. 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 want freedom and I want this shit when you don't allow adults to buy alcohol.

Right. Sell a beer and then we'll talk. Shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear about it. Yeah. You keep your guns when 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. It's church now. Yeah. Right, right. It used to be because women were tired of getting punched in the fucking. mouth. And all these people drink.

Yeah. Right. That's the other point. 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 because that's not selling it. That's, you're selling a membership. The Elks Club. Yeah.

It's a way around the law as we found, 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 soapboxes here.

Step down off our soapbox. Careful, we've been drinking. So calm down. We've got to step down real careful. Everybody's stand clear while I stuffed it. I am hammered. Because I'm 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, 19th, 1757, 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 48 or 49 Buick, they said.

Yeah. 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.

Lewis, the 11-year-old at the time, He's, got sprayed the arm by pellets, too. That'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 that 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 there. 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 robot will do it. Just go pluck it out. Yeah. Just get a fucking, get a magnet.

Get a magnet. What are we doing here? Just get a big magnet, hold it up, yank that fucker out. Why are we doing this? It's a small hole in his chest and it'll come right out. I just solved everything there. Magnets. It's done.

No, that 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 family says. It was bootleggers going after him here.

Now, Sheriff Sam was only four years old or three years old when 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 go to trial for this, saying it was him. Now, Robert Stevens, though,

the car that did it is registered it's his car so they're saying well it 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 nobody it's his car that it's 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 mistrial as 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 his car. So it's pretty interesting here. A judge here sums up the whole deal. He reviewed the evidence given that the auto belonged to Stevens

by recalling the testimony of Katran, 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 and 38th. The judge said that Katron and his son had testified they both saw the car after the shot was taken and there were two streetlights and a porch light to give a clear view. 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. 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 commandant of not a 69 because the headlights, this one, or on the dollar. Like it might be little details like that 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 was that. Tail lights give away so much.

Absolutely. The judge said there is a terrifying example in this city of organized lawless. He told the jury. 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 gain. Their motive is money.

He blamed the illegal liquor and narcotics traffic in the county. In 1950, 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. 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. Just kill him on the first offense. 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.

Send them to criminal college. That's thanking. Real nice there. So that's what he says. You've got to put them in, you've got to put him out of his circulation with a jail sentence. When they are given a fine, they can see. 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. Now, a friend put it this way

about the whole shooting. 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 pressed on. He went back to work, led fucking, you know, bullet by his heart. 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. Dead. Oh, fuck. Yeah. So dead. Dead, dead, dead. My question is, can you bring that guy back and now try him for murder as opposed to attempted murder before? That's not double jeopardy.

I don't think if it's attempted and then murder, right? Yeah. 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 any time you want. It ups the charge rather than, he's not going in for attempted anymore. No, no. That's definitely murder, though.

If somebody dies later on of the wound, that's definitely it. 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 just became a police officer. So that's how he does it.

Now, Sheriff Sam, in addition to that, he's an Eagle Scout. Yeah. He becomes 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, 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 vaginas. I don't know. Like, I don't know. Those are separate issues. 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 of anything. James, he might just. 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.

Maybe that's not how biology works. Or does he go into police at work because he just loves the handcuffs? That's what I mean. I don't know what it is, but anytime I hear Lifelong Bachelor never moved out of his mother's house, it gets a little Ed Ganey and you get a little like, that's... It's very, yeah. You can't say it's creepy when it's Ed Gein, but it's fine when it's him. You know what I mean?

Just because he's a police. You can't say, or anybody else, because you know the results of that Gien, 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 and a half in a fucking barn. Yeah, well, mom's sleeping. Yeah. You can hide that.

Yeah. So anyway, I mean, that's not a bad thing either way, whether he's asexual, gay, or fucking whatever it is. And 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. He never moved out. He lived with his mother. He seemed perfectly happy with that.

No kids, no wife, no nothing. That's his casserole. I believe it's top tier. Top tier. Green chili chicken enchiladas is what he makes. It's excellent. That's a nice tort. Got the recipe from Laurie Valo and he's very happy.

He sounds like, it sounds like he's like Seymour 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 them. I'm just saying like, it's giving me a Seymour Skinner vibe. I've never met anybody that just lived with their mom forever that didn't have some, they weren't just an incredibly fascinating character one way or another.

That's a, there you go. That's exactly right. It's a very interesting person. And I want to talk to them and ask them everything and they have to be truthful. I want it all. I'll give me it all. So he graduated from Somerset High School, 1971. He earned his Eagle Scout certificate in 67 at 14.

Yeah. So he's all into that. That's fucking impressive to do it that young. No, that's hard. That's hard. There's a lot to do there. 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 their jam. You usually don't make it until you're 18, 19, somewhere in the... there. Yeah. And then, I mean, part of it is that your, your, the idea is to pass that on to the, to the, to the weebelows and Cub Scouts and everybody else. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, yeah, just 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 buttholes. It would be my first fucking, uh, 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, uh, in. in shaping youth in this country,

is that that basically was a fucking farm system to fuck boys constantly. It was? It's so fucked up. Yeah, I mean, well, it went bankrupt and rebrand. I don't even know what it is now. Well, now the Mormons are in charge of the boys. They're the ones controlling?

Yeah. Which we know they'd never fucking get. I don't want anybody in New York. Exactly. 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. 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's some that are men that failed as parents that just want to, if they help these kid be successful, it replaces 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, because 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. 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. Because nobody does. I mean, I want your kids to be successful and all that. Yeah. I want your kid to not be a train on my kids.

Yeah. I'm not going to personally guide them is what I'm getting at. I don't care of that to that way. I want you to do your fucking job. I admire people that do that and don't do anything. Yeah. But the problem is the mix. Huge problem.

You cannot keep that away. If the honey pot to them is a bunch of children, they're going to swarm to it. It's just the way it is. And evidently, nobody thinks this would happen to my kid. Everybody thinks this will never happen to my kid out there in the woods. Absolutely. I met Scoutmaster Bob. He's a real, he's a sweetheart.

Yeah. He had a tray of orange slices, which he knows a bad sign. 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. You have a bunch of the greatest and worst people ever in one group.

Flip a fucking coin because that right there's 50-50, babe. That's right. So he started at the Sheriff's Department for Pulaski County, Sheriff 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 fill his shoes, which makes sense. In 1981, he quits the force.

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 he quit after the election and instead became chief of police in the town of Ferguson, Kentucky in 1982, small town. He holds 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 there was, he didn't, all of his friends said he wasn't like, fuck Johnny Adams. He just, he wanted to be sheriff. Say fuck Johnny Adams. Well, I think he was building his resume. He went to be the chief of a town so he could then be the sheriff. Just being a deputy, I think that's what they were saying. His friends. It was more like resume building.

To quit when he gets in charge, go away and then come back and oppose him. Yeah. That sure sounds like fuck Johnny Adams. It does, but it could have been Johnny Adams or Jimmy Wiseman. It wouldn't have mattered. It's just, it 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 anyway. Yeah. You didn't get to taste a month's awesome. 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. They got a shitload of those. They got a ton of counties. Luckily, most of the sheriffs are probably corrupt, so that's excellent. It's a smaller pool. he's taking a little bankroll. Yes, too many boss hogs out there and Enos and Enos's and Fosco P. Coltrane's that's what happens.

Now, more election wins. He wins in 93. Then there's the 98 election. This is five years later. 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. Or as long as the county and the county can't close. The county can't close. Got to have county facilities.

The state will pay for 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 dole 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, it's just to get yours and get your family in there and help them out.

And that's what it is. Now, Pulaski 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% to 15% every time in these areas. So this area, the May primary is the big deal. And then the November election is, they don't mean care. That's just the, that's just the celebration.

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 a Republican in Baltimore, I should fucking pack my bags. And that's the same thing here. If you can't get 85% against a Democrat in Pulaski County, what fucking are you doing. Yeah. So he, uh, they had an opponent named Kay Stringer in this primary.

Sure. And, um, on election night, this is crazy. Sam was told he lost by 99 votes. Oh, shit. 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 did an official recount because they were like, obviously one vote. We have to recount this shit.

According to the accounts of the race, both people finished. with exactly, now it's a tie. 5,500, or 5,900, or 5,953 votes apiece, perfect tie is what they found in the recount. What? Okay. So Kentucky's law for how to remedy this isn't to do 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 is I ever going to say this? I mean, they should write into their, they should be tie goes to the challenger. Because if you can challenge the incumbent and get as many votes as him. Yeah, it should be like boxing though. If it's a draw, the champ keeps his belt, that's it.

You didn't beat, you got to beat the champ. Yeah. And in the NFL, tie goes to the receiver. Ty goes to the runner in baseball. Maybe that's, maybe that's it. 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 yeah, you didn't beat the guys. Flip a coin. So the county officials flip a coin. And Sam wins the coin toss. So he's the sheriff still. Kay Stringer went to court about this too going. This is ridiculous. This is 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. I spent hundreds of thousands. of dollars to win and 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, the Associated Press said that the county's chief prosecutor, after the election, but before the

coin flip, was indicted on federal extortion charges for shaking down a local pawnbroker for $100,000. It's so corrupt around here, dude. It's insane. It's insane. 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. Who got in trouble on federal extortion charges for shaking down pawnbrokers for political contributions. Okay. Allowing them to sell stolen guns for, if you'd chip me off a piece, fuck that. 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 seat of your ass. Real Duke's a hazard shit.

That's what it is. Yeah. This is the kind of behavior that garners double the violence rate, though. Yes. Because you're allowing shit. And the thing about it is Sam is considered a very upstanding man.

He does not. 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 that. He's the last fucking man. 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 he can't have that because his mother's right there to hit him. She's in the next room. She just doesn't even have his own place. So his radio, his call signal. was Unit 111, which is what his badge number was, 111. The Associated Press later on described him as having an unimposing, as a, quote, unimposing lawman with a shy demeanor and an awkward overbite,

which does not sound. That's a sheriff. That's not the most shining, complimentary. It's weird. It's a skinny Homer Simpson that they just described. Yeah. Yeah. But they described him, I guess, because.

he's not like Mr. I'm 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

Congress person from this area. said being sheriff, as we all know, was Sammy's all. It's his love. It's his job. It was his joy. Yeah. So he doesn't even have his own house, so it's got to be his joy.

Right. 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 30 years. So I thought it said 100. I miss wrote myself. So his brother, Lewis, the one who got sprayed with shotgun pellets on the porch. said that, 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'd 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. I'll run up to the pharmacy if you knew me to. That's insane and incredibly caring, and that's 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 man wears the uniform every day. All day, every day. It's always working. Work seven days a week.

They said the only time she saw him at a uniform was in a photograph because he was a groomsman in somebody's wedding, so he was wearing a tuxedo. She didn't even see him. It was in a photo. Which is funny because I picture him wearing his entire uniform and a bowtie. That's what I pick. Cumberbunt. You got a cumberbun over the...

So he drove an unmarked brown Ford Crown Vic. Brown and yellow were the department's colors. Lovely choices, guys. Jesus. 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. Underneath 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 have it at all.

He's still the sheriff. You got to be, you know what I mean? Where's the last place somebody's going to shoot you at a wedding? While 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. Wow. He just worked all the time. That's all he ever did.

Hates weed. This guy is a fucking hates weed, which is... Marijuana or like... Marijuana hates it. Yeah. 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 pills. 2000-ish, he's doing all this.

It's like, come on, man. Like, wonder why everyone's on pills. They're poor, broke, miserable, no jobs, booze is illegal and you can't get weed. And the fuck else you even do. And the sheriff waged war on marijuana. He got his fucking helicopter pilots license so he could fly over to try to spot weed in the cornfields during the summer. Take it back in March, okay? Worry about the crackheads running around on the ground.

Don't worry about some farmer who let somebody grow a patch of weed in his cornfield. That's crazy. He got a pilot's license to find rogue hauler plants. Yep, because that's a good farmers and cornfields would do that a lot for years to make extra. Especially in this area where there's no fucking money. They do it to make a few extra bucks. And a lot of farmers in the 80s, there's farms survived from doing that. That's how they survived when all the farms were being foreclosed on in the 80s.

That's how they survived. So 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. So stupid. And on Appalachian High's 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.

Yeah. Especially for drugs. One sweep here in the late 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? That's all meth and 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 work on those. Okay, yeah, there's a thousand times more dangerous and awful. The danger alone in the manufacturing of it, that's bad enough. And then doing it. Yeah. But the doing it 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 the... Horrible. It's a horrible, horrible truck. 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 around here. Thank fuck for that. So, yeah, he is... They look at Sam as he is like the... He's a demon, these meth users, because he's... their asses. So 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 Pulaski County, has been dubbed the nation's painkiller capital. Wow. overtaking West Virginia and Florida. Florida, other parts. That's saying something. 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 Coeta Lodge and the Order of the Arrow.

Oh. I don't know what these are. A member of the Somerset-Palasky County Rescue Squad and a Kentucky Colonel. You bet. He's also a Kentucky Colonel, damn it. fries a 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. He's going for his fifth term now. Dang. In 2002, the sheriff's race heats up. Here we go. And he almost lost a minute ago. He almost lost.

I mean, it was a fucking tie. He's only for the grace of tails did he win. Well, for the grace of something. Somebody's thumb flipping a little harder than... Than not. Yeah. And catching it right at the right time. So there's five candidates total in the primary.

There's Sam. There is Sam's very close loser last time, K Stringer, back for a rematch. There is a Somerset police officer named Todd Woods. Or Todd Wood, I'm sorry. So that's three. And there's a fourth one that doesn't really matter. And then there's another guy named Jeff Morris. The dark horse just dragging votes away.

He's at last place by a long shot. And everybody hates him because you have no chance. No. You're just pulling votes, you dick. He barely gets any coverage. 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 he's not a guy.

He doesn't even work as a cop anymore. So it's a little strange here. Now, April 13th, 2002, About 6 p.m. The elections heating up. This is the annual fish fry is underway. This is to raise money and all that. Somerset Lake just plucking fish.

It's at the Shopville Stab Volunteer Fire Department. That's where it takes place. Big thing, annual spring fish fry. It's one of two fundraisers the department holds each year, a fish fry in the spring and a chilly supper in the fall. Well, makes sense. Yep. There's about 350 people there.

there. Frying up catfish, it's selling well, they're raising money. 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 comptroller. Not a debate. 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 apiece. Yeah, no debate and just this is what's good about. It's like how they do elections in Deadwood. 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'm not leaving.

Set up shop and 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, his brother Lewis, is there. Todd Wood's there. Kay Stringer's there. Jeff Morris is there.

All the candidates are there. They're doing it. 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 Katron. 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 sheriff's hand. I'm trying on sticking around if you'll have me. If you like what I do, vote for me, basically.

That's it. A shitload of catfish. I'm going to get back to it. April 13th, 2002, same night about an hour later after all the speeches. About 7 p.m., it's time for the old cake auction, which is a nice thing. Firefighters invite Sam onto the stage to help sell the desserts. Sheriff Sam, he knows everybody.

So, hey, look, is this cake or whatever. So he buys to himself. He buys a chocolate bunt cake, which is, sounds amazing. I love a chocolate bunt cake. That's fucking good. I just love a bunt. Oh, I do too. It's already. 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. So good. It's so good. And Amish chess cake. which I think it makes it look like a board, like it's checker style.

He pays with a $100 bill. So he buys two cakes for $100 bucks, showing he's a magnanimous fuck over here. April 13th, same night, 715. 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. You know what I mean?

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 cakes out there. It's the unmarked Crown Vic. That's what he drives. He sets one cake on the trunk.

Yep. So he had free hand to operate. So he could 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 a good idea. You better go slow. You better go 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 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. Keys still in the other hand. He's also wearing his vest, but that doesn't protect your head, unfortunately. Nope.

So, yeah, one of those people said the cake was still sitting on the car on the trunk lid. That's a judge that was nearby who saw the thing. 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. As soon as I heard a gunshot, I said, that's a gunshot. I mean, if you don't hear a lot of gunshots, so I think it's a car backfiring. I suppose. Yeah, this area, they're like, what's that, about a 30 out six right there, I think?

You hear that? They know gunshots. Again, this is like on the wire when they'd hear something and go, that's a nine. No, that's a 40, man. You know what the fuck you're talking about. Like, you're around gunshots, you know them. This person said,

I turned immediately and just didn't split a second, you know. Sheriff was on his back straight beside his car. There was actually blood spray in front of him. So it hit him. Oh, wow. It's a good shot. Yeah. 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 rifleman. Nah, this is a good hunter. Just, nah. He's pretty good, but this is scary. It's a high-powered, they find. It's a 25-ought-6 round is what hit him. Pretty high-powered just above, obviously, in his head above the vest 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 an odd 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, ran over there. His elderly mother is there. Oh, God.

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 lawman relative, immediate family who's been gunned down. Gun down. And this one is, I mean, he's fucking dead.

I mean, he's dead before he gets the ground. There's no bullet 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 onto his shoulder, climbing on to a motorcycle on the hill and riding off. That's what they say.

No one can identify. They just see a man, camo, rifle. bike man takes off. Yeah, terrible camouflage if everybody sees you, by the way. Right. That's working real well. Why are you wearing snow camo out here? He's got that desert storm shit going on, that brown stuff.

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. Which seems stupid if you want to make sure he's dead. Well, A, make sure he's dead. And B, 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 would have taken off right when 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, this is a quote from somebody else, he hollered out, go get him, boys. And then all the guys 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, pissed off hillbillies, all arm to the teeth, chasing him through the fucking rural roads on a dirt bike. And they're likely jacked up four-wheel drive. They're coming. And these guys are pissed, too. Yeah.

I mean, they were just told, go get them, boys. I mean, 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 Somersets version of Lee Harvey Oswald. Okay.

Because it's such a hard shot and such a long shot. Sam was standing and moving. It's not like he was sitting in a chair somewhere, stationary, he was moving around. So somebody in this area doesn't speak Latin. They just got to shoot and then go, Latin and run off. Exactly, yeah.

I think that's John Wilkes Booth who screamed shit in Latin after he killed Lincoln. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was John Wilkes. Yeah, it's a death to fucking tyrants. Yeah, we always do their whole name, the whole middle and everything. Yeah, so you know who.

That's the way some other poor bastard just named John Booth doesn't get fucking, I think it's specific for that reason, I would think, right? Yeah. 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 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. They 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'm just going to use what they said.

Still lying where he was getting shot. I had him covered up. You can still see the blood run on down the concrete. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's like 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, Kay Stringer's 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 in a haze stupor

for a minute here. They couldn't, they're like, is this shocking? It's crazy. We're at a fish fry for Christ's sake. This isn't like a... The man's holding a bun cake. In the middle of nowhere. Yeah, he's got an Amish chest cake in his hand. Well, there's blood. It's crazy.

He's got a bun on the trunk. Shit's all nuts. So he got a bun in my 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 just can't leave. It's one of those. Keeping you.

We're keeping you because they didn't know. You're legally kidnapped. That's right. Because they didn't know whether, did 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 have 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 questioned 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 interview 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 McWhorter, who's a former Kentucky State police officer who'd come back to local law enforcement to help Sam because they were friends.

That's that. So he was sworn in within an hour to be actually. 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 away in camouflage with a rifle and a motorcycle.

Right. And the Duke boys are in pot pursuit. Yee-ha. Everybody's fucking chasing him. I assume firing guns out the. window up in the air as they do it. Just a just an assumption. Just to let the guy know exactly where they are.

Making sure it works still, you know, just having shot it 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 and the man fucking plow there you go asshole 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. 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 believed him, the guy on the ground. He just hit me with the 77 jig. I think I'm going to stop now. I don't know if he could do it, but he's willing to anyway. He's willing to beat me to death. He's willing to give a shot. He has shown, yeah.

So, 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 Camel. He said, 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 truck. He's all over. He gives up. Well, shit. Half was right. He was right. Well, he was the only guy in camouflage on a motorcycle of the rifle over his shoulder running down the road.

But there's probably a lot of guys in these woods. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? So we don't know 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 dressed like that. Somebody shoots the sheriff from my general direction. Shit. Yeah, I had a nice. Yeah, I had a tree stand right on up there. It was real nice, too. Ruin the whole thing. So later on, they said, yeah, he 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. and said, I'm going to beat you to death if you grab that fucking thing. And he believed him. The rider, Danny Shelley, that's his name, took off his helmet as Hoff approached. Hoff told bystanders to call the police as he killed the sheriff and Shelley responded, I did.

David Hoff said about this, that this is like a decade later, too, when 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 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.

Fair. I don't blame you. Yeah, you just killed my friend, asshole. I'm going to hit you with my truck. I don't blame these people. That's balls to, he's a man just killed not just a cop, the top cop. The top cop. And you're going to just chase him down with a tire iron on your pickup truck?

They hit him with the, the rifle went flying when he hit him with the pickup. Not worried, this guy's going to 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. And this wasn't cops chasing him. This was a posse of pissed off rednecks with bellies 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 was his quote. I don't know exactly what that means, but hope he's all right. Hope you're okay. Yeah, did you get hit by a, like a shrapnel or maybe a piece of it? A little. Did Hoff run you off the road in his 77? Yeah.

You also, do you roll your truck while you went over there? What happened? So by the time a sheriff's deputy finally arrived, the suspects already on the ground next to his wrecked boulder 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 or the deputy here. He takes the man into custody at 7.41 p.m. All right. So about 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 or 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 it. One of the, that's it. One of of the investigator 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. Duh. 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? So, how old is this kid? Uh, that's under a little bit of contention. I believe he is, uh, 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 dates. Didn't keep track.

He's born sometime in the, in the aughts 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. that John Walsh 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 going to 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? Yep, 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. 2000s 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...

the Kentucky State Militia. They literally said he was too much of an, he had too much anti-Semitic content. Oh my God. For the Kentucky militia. Do you know how much anti-submitic content you have to have? They're like, you're saying some slurs.

They're like, talk about blacks more. What's you doing? Just talk about them Jews. Plenty other people are mad at Jesus Christ. You got Mexicans and what did you mean? Enough with the matzabal. Talk about something else for Christ's sake.

Right. And 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 all go to. It was a patriot or shit. Early adopter of it. Early adopt. Yep. Yeah. In the fall of 2001. by the way, during a traffic stop, this Steve Anderson,

opened fire on a Kentucky sheriff's deputy and escaped into the hills. He got pulled over, opened 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 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 who hates law enforcement. And his profile was going to 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 going to air, whatever it is. The problem is with minimal investigation, they said they had. 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 the most plausible conspiracy I've ever heard. And they said it too. They're like, he's missing in the woods. He's a sniper.

This all makes 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, Shell E. Y at the end. Yeah. So his nickname, though, what everybody calls him is pup. Everyone calls him pup. Like a puppy. Yeah, or puppy on Love After Lockup. Yeah.

Who's now dead? Who knew that she was going to be the one that survived? That's crazy. Of the two of them? That's right. The other one died. Puppie survived. No, puppy's the friend.

Puppie's alive. The other one died. You're right. Yeah. Her friend is alive. I forget her name. God damn it. Doesn't matter. I can see her face. Yeah.

The way she talks right now. She's always so mad. I could pick her out of a lineup here. Yeah. So Danny, old 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. Everybody said, real nice kid. He's a big fuck, too.

He's like 6'4, 250 pounds. A big fucking guy. Huge. Pop. Yeah, we'll pup. Big old boy. 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 it.

He ain't from around this area. Everybody said he was a nice kid. His family, not a shit family, decent family, respectable family. He was prom king. Oh. In an area this small, obviously, that's not as much of an accomplishment if you're school has, you know, 5,000 kids in it. It's different, but still, he's prom king.

He's king of these people, anyway. He's also a very good athlete. In his high school yearbook, 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. They like him. They like him. And, yeah, but neighbors. And Eubanks said they didn't really know Shelley or his family very well. One said, quote, they're just not mixers. They don't associate much with anyone. All right.

They're not mixers. Okay. Keep to themselves. He played in county softball leagues for years. One person said he got along with everyone, Danny. Just a nice kid. Everybody said just a real nice kid here. Like I said, 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. Wait, no, not really, because it didn't last very long. No. I guess his knee, he always had a fucked up knee from sports. And he's also heavy and a big guy.

And his knee got fucked up in boot camp. And he was discharged before he ever finished training. He might not have shot around in the Marines. He might have still been running. Yeah. You know, so. Can't get past run. the hill, it's over. It's not going to work. Yeah, to get to the point to shoot things.

Right. Yeah. So he washed out of boot camp with a bad knee and came home to Ubank. And he wasn't really in, didn't go to the Somerset area quite yet. 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 Pulaski County. 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. 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 for like three weeks. Right, but I thought you still get everything for that. No, I don't think so. Burton 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 wasteful. You 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 life. Blow out your meniscus and now you're on my dime. Don't think so. I don't think so. That would be ridiculous. I hope not. I mean, I hope they would pay for, like, to help him 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.

Oh, believe me. He did not serve this country. I'm sorry. He did not. But he wanted to. So bad. Well, so what? Yeah.

You know, I'm not paying for this shit. So he comes home and it's a mess. He's about $20,000 in credit card debt. 2000-ish dollars. That's, you know, $2,000 or $2,000. That's just living. He had no job and no money.

Oh, yeah. So that's just living. 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 injury, 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, he would do everything, he would roll up money and snort-crushed Xanax. He even said that he rolled up a $100 bill to snort-crushed Xanax 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 long time. line of fucking Zanix get on his motorcycle and drive away, which might be why he 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, this is, he's beyond pain killers now. Now he just does pills.

Doing everything. Now he just does pills. Yeah. I've never heard of that before. Imagine, imagine Lee Harvey just starts sucking on a glass dick before he gets out of that. Come to me. Come to me, president. It blows that out the window as he exits the device.

They find a broken crack pipe by the door. So 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. He started selling them. And 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, 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 will trick you with, fuck 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 long. They don't have any pain anymore because their body knows it's not going to get the opiate that it wants. But for a long time, it knows that I make this hurt. Ow, you're going to take the thing I want. Yeah. Yeah. Your brain like, like tricks you. Like a clicker for a dog in trees. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You have like the Metroid brain like pulsating in your fucking head going. That's terrible. It's fucking crazy. Um, so they interrogate him, Danny. They 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 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 a problem. Yeah, 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, uh-huh. So they said, what does that mean exactly?

Why is the sheriff evil? Why are you ridding the world of evil? Fill us in here. Why are you making it like this? Um, so to give us something. Um, 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 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 cotton. by this time. That's his main thing. Zanix is just he does that for fun in between, but oxies are his thing. When people stopped 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. That's Christ. Fingers. No. That's not good. They call them fingers over here. Kenny Fingers White, who was 54 years old at this point, born in 47. I mean, that's 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 fingers. You can't be Dick Fingers either. That's not going to work. There's so many nicknames. The gangsters. Yeah.

So Fingers over here. Yeah. Danny Shelley met Fingers at the Somerset Mall, obviously. According to Danny Shelley, Fingers had pills for sale. Shelly had Coke on him, and they began doing some business together. We're pals now. We're pals. Now, a little bit about old Fingers White here.

He was a bootlegger 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 that you have to carry in your truck or whatever the fuck. So he is the opposite of Danny. He's

5 foot 4. He's a little guy. Fingers is the size of a finger. Five foot four, about 200 pounds though. Oh, he's a little fat fuck. A thumb that you hit with your hammer maybe. He looks like swelled up on you. Swollen fucker.

And also he's a sometime police informant. All the cops know him because basically you can't be a bootleggar 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. Shit. Yeah. He's a mess. A witness later on said that talked about whites, what he called career arc from small time bootlegger.

who would sell liquor in the dry territories and pills like Valium to people, just here and there that bought booze and shit, to what he called a veritable drug kingpin, selling oxycontin, cocaine, meth, Xanax, codeine, whatever you wanted, he got, and he had. Yeah, always. A special agent with the DEA testified that White was a major participant in the local drug trade. And later on, though, all his attention.

attorneys always say that he's not a drug dealer. He makes his money selling items at the Somerset flea market. That's how he makes a living. He makes little bracelets. They're adorable. 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 Oxies at this point, by the way, are really starting to take off as a recreational drug. Oxies weren't around until 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 painkiller that is not addictive at all. 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, if it nums with sceptors, your body's going to crave that. It's, it just makes all the sense that it would be. Like it's, fucking ice cream is addictive. If you get into it enough, you know what I'm saying?

If ice cream can do it without all that, imagine what this shit can 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. Feels better. So, and if you've seen, you know, like I said, wonderful whites, it's, you know, Boom County Maiton

call shaking the pills and they're crushing them up and snorting them though. No one's taking pills. That's not the way to do it. 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 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 bootlegger, spent his early life running liquor, and now he's doing this here. Him and his washed up high school athlete buddy. Pop. 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 who 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 on 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. Right.

So the cops kind of let him operate a certain amount because they need the information. They can help net the, okay. So they like having to know what's going on. 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. 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 he would get in really hot water. So that's all he does, man. A little 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 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 old 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? Taking my four-wheeler. How dare you? That's my only means of transportation.

Yeah. It's got to be. 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 him, but he would brag about committing two murders in another county. Oh. 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

Yeah 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 No girls He never talked to them Was super shit

He just wouldn't talk to girls No girls fucking this guy I knew the guy He wasn't getting laid for a while Put it that way And he said one time They went to South Carolina on vacation And he fuck 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 we said, what's her name, dude? What was her name? And he sits and 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. They'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, it's an aphrodisi. Oh, man.

He could have just said. He could have just said, Laura. And we would have went, we think you're lying. But he said chastity. so then for the rest of high school, we would make fun of him about chastity all. Where's chastity tonight, you fucking loser? We'd pick on him for that.

That's amazing. I don't think women, I don't think 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. 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 that. He's a great guy.

They're certainly playful enough around each other to make fun of each other for fucking too much. They do that too. That's good. Yeah, that's good probably. But it's never not enough. We've never made fun of a dude that fuck too much. Never. Never once. And they've never made fun of a girl who fucks too little. It's interesting. Different values for different genders is how that works. So one night White here told somebody

we know, 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 that. Yeah. That's mine.

So it's very interesting, but there's never any evidence that he had anything to do those deaths as a matter of fact here. Now, Shelley tells them I'm afraid of fingers white. Yeah. Afraid of him here. He said he bragged about killing people. He always carries a gun.

I saw him one time point a 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. Now, 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 said that his IQ is over 70s, good enough to fucking put on trial, basically, for something here. So they said that, you know, 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 way. Or got it out of somebody's shed and they didn't notice. More on the Yamaha, 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 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 is 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 we, not they. Right. Why do you do that? No, that's what Danny's saying. Yeah, but I'm saying is Ken they? No, no, no.

No, yeah, 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. Them and they, 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? 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 micro cassette, one of those little answering machine deals. So the next morning, the police go over to search his house, and we'll talk more in detail about that, there's this tape there. And 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 the, just shit that's trying to use misdirection. And then he's the one who was like, you probably want this tape of mine from my phone calls because I've been taping my phone calls. And they were like, oh, yeah. Sure. 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 find out also, as we'll find out, there's a battery that was purchased for a motorcycle a little bit earlier, where Danny and fingers there, Pupp and Fingers, are on camera at Walmart buying a battery for the motorcycle that Danny crashed on. Oh. Okay. So 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

is 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. That's it. 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. The fifth place guy. Yeah. Now, 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, 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.

Damn it. Damn it. Win Dixie pizza? Shit. 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. A little high quality pepperoni. The cheese, too. Very high quality. So his, his, You call that sausage. Oh, God damn it.

So the first interview, he denies a lot, old white here. He denies it, and then all sorts of shit. Had nothing to do with the shootings now. Yeah. They said, well, where were you? He said, well, I was with Danny Shelley and Jeff Morris earlier in the day. Oh? Working on the campaign.

I'm Jeff Morris's campaign manager. What? That's why I want my campaign manager. to be a tiny fat drug dealer perfect nah excellent the campaign manager manager he's run a lot of successful campaigns okay um so they said well where were you at 7 15 p.m. mister when all this is going down and he said I was shopping with my wife oh he's got a wife I don't know nothing yeah we think he lives with his mother right yeah he's no he's shot he's out with his wife is what he said So when they search his house, the funny thing is after that, they take him down on the station.

Then they go back to search his house. They get warrant and all that shit. And guess who's there? Jeff Morris is there when they arrive. The candidate. Yeah. They're like, that's interesting. So they take him down for a second interview now to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, White.

It's very interesting. They talk to Morris a little bit here. and we'll figure that out. 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. On the ride back, White talks about Danny Shelley talking about blowing his head off, meaning the sheriff. He said, Danny Shelley, said, I'm blow his head off.

So, I mean, that's what I heard. So he's throwing, White's throwing Danny Shelley right under the bus. Now, the motorist. The Yamaha. Who's it registered to? Whose is that? It's Jeff Morris' motorcycle. Okay.

A little about Jeff Morris. Jeffrey Allen Morris, 34 years old. The number five candidate down at the bottom of the polls here. The pole scraper. The dragon votes, piece of shit. Yep, just annoying everybody. He's 34 years old. Apparently, by the way, when Shelley was arrested,

he had the camouflage suit, a rifle with a scope on it. That's how he would he used for the shooting. A cell phone whose last dialed 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 cell phone belongs to who? Jeff Morris. Yes. Not good. All right. So it's bad, obviously. It looks bad, but they don't know if these guys are taking advantage of Jeff Morris, if they said that, you know, they don't know. They've got to be because Jeff Morris doesn't even benefit from this. That's the point.

That's what they said. They said that the motorcycle was, 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? He was a sheriff's deputy to last July, for Christ's sake. Oh, my goodness. So they all know him. It doesn't, it wasn't even supposed to be here today.

So they're investigating all of this and they don't understand it. And McWhorter, the new sheriff who's just sworn in, said that he knew of no ill will between Sheriff Sam and Jeff Morris. There's like, there's no will there. This makes no fucking sense. And they also say both the police and the congressman who's there, all say that Morris is not a suspect. That's not what we're saying. We put his family in protective custody and all that kind of thing. They did find out Shelley 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 his family's 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? Why are you so close with people that are, that have fucking ham radio setups? You know, that's Steve Anderson.

Oh, oh, that was the other guy. That's the other guy. Yeah, yeah. He's gone. So he hasn't been caught yet. We'll finish up his story. Don't worry. We won't leave that ball hanging.

Good, because that's driving me, Christ. I want to know everything about it. That's fucking funny. So they talked to Jeff Morris, and Jeff said he's shocked that the sheriff was shot at the fish fry. I said, I was there for Christ's sake. 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.

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 Shelly 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.

He was going to buy it from me. So I just lent it to him. He said, I had to buy a new battery 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 a bike. He doesn't even know

if he's going to buy. Great point. 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?

But the footage shows Morris and Shelley and Fingers White all at Walmart together. Now, he said, yeah, well, we spent the whole day having campaign signs hanging them up, putting them up, and talking to voters. That's what we were doing all day. He said, quote, Danny 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. Yeah.

And an investigator said, we don't suspect Morris has anything. They said he had loaned the bike to Mr. Shelley. That was it. That happened. 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. Makes your story more fun. 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. But they were like, I don't think so. I know that. And they were like, we know the guy. He's a former deputy. He had no beef with Sam.

I don't get why he would do that. 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. It 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 Kenneth 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. If you want, I'll help you gather evidence against him.

Of course you will, fingers and a piece of shit. Is that why they call him fingers? Because he fingers everybody? I think so, maybe. You know, that area has like long fingers for a tiny guy. I'm not sure. It could be anything, but maybe fingers for that. Because he's the size of a thumb and he just needs some fingers.

They call him swole thumb. That's what they call. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting here. 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, a little more on Jeff Morris, since 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, 65, 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. Better part of two decades. Not from around these parts. That's how it is in these places. That's... Wow. I found that out fast. at North Carolina.

That's how they are. Just will not accept you. No. Yay from around. That, yay from around here, are you? I,

you know how many times people actually said those words to me? So many times. My cousin's experiencing that right now in Nashville. One of the bigger Southern cities.

They just fucking hate people from anywhere else. That's all that's there is people from everywhere else. Everywhere else. Yeah. Everybody's a goddamn tourist. That's not even a tourist.

People move there. They're not from there. That's what I mean. But that's what they consider you. Schlerette's on pedal fucking bikes. Are you kidding me? Be here 15 years and you're a tourist. Fuck off.

That's fucking wild. That's funny. Yeah, they say that an awful lot. So he moved there in 87. He was a high school basketball, really good player growing up, high school basketball player. He was married, Jeff Morris.

He has two young children. 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. The official thing was an internal disciplinary problem, but the chief deputy, Jim McWhorter, later said it involved unauthorized time off.

Now, Jeff Morris says 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 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, and he's five years as a deputy,

so that's his main qualification. Sure. He also, you know, has no money to run, has nobody backing him. He's running against a four-time incumbent who 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. You had no money. Campaigns need just huge infusions of money constantly. A campaign is like a restaurant that just opened. You're just burnt, just get a fire going and shovel money into it.

And it's fucking. For no reward until the very end. Yep. At the end, if you don't win, it's just wasted money. Yeah. Otherwise, at the end, you get a job that pays 60 grand a year that you just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars 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're 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. 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. You were good to me. I'm going to be good to you. But that's not what he wanted after a minute later. White spent between $25,000 and $30,000 on this campaign. Again, 2002 money. Morris put in about $5,000 that he rounded 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, fourths? They're not, they're not spending much. That's the point. Oh.

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. Right. 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, motherfucker, if Kenneth's wife, fingers is on the up. He's the one. Guess who the other signature was? One of the other ones.

No. Danny fucking Shelley. Yep. So that's interesting. Shelly is the guy apparently who hooked them up because Shelley was friends with Morris. He needed money. Shelly knows a guy with money. It's white.

That's how they ended up together. Shelly 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 can do what I want. Impunity, basically. That was 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 winter of 2001 and spring of 2002 riding around Pulaski County, putting up yard signs. And I assume snorting Xanax off the fucking dashboards 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 $10,000 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

and take his from another place. The question he fails on is, are you involved in the plot to kill Sam Katron? That's the one that he fails on. Okay. Detective said, we found you lying about whether you know about the murder of

San Catron and he broke. He completely snapped. You're right. He started doing fucking chunk from Goonies. He just started going off. I've been this happened. I've been waiting to tell you. Yeah.

One investigator said the emotion started pouring out of him and he said, well, I'll tell you what you need to know. Wow. Cracked him. He's not a criminal. That's the problem. He 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. Yes. The only question that we wanted to ask, matter of fact. That's it. So he admitted, yes, I gave him the motor. cycle and I knew what Shelley was going to use it for. Now he admits it. He said, I was afraid.

White threatened me and my family and my children. That's what he said. Oh. I was scared. He said he would keep repeating that forever. 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. Matter of fact, if you give him a 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 sorry, we believe Morris more than we'd believe White anyway. So White hears this over the radio and says, well, I want a lawyer. Give me a lawyer then. The 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 too. 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? What's the extent?

When did you know this? How involved in this were you? So Morris said, okay, fine. During the relationship, that's when I learned that Kenneth White was a drug dealer. Yeah. 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. It's a shit cop. 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 not that point, not put a gun in fucking White's mouth and go, are you really? What are you going to 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 5 foot 4 turd. Little turd guy who sells drugs. Not that 5 foot 4 makes him a turd, but he's a turd anyway. I needs to 5 foot 4. 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 Pulaski 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.

to, which is huge if you could deal drugs with impunity. But he already knew that. Yeah, and sick the sheriff on your opponents. Yeah. You are going to be the kingpin 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 if Jeff won. That's what he was doing for a steady job. So some accounts, by the way, say that he was promised to post in the evidence room, as a matter of fact. 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 to all these people here. And Shelley says that the three men talk several times about killing the sheriff. This wasn't on a whim here. They said that, Shelly said that they talked several times. And White said it was Shelley's idea. as Shelley said it was White's idea. Sure. Kenneth White said,

quote, Shelley said the only way to beat Sheriff Cantron 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. Right. So that's interesting. 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 is the question? Because five people running for sheriff. The incumbent is up there. The second place person is obviously going to be a major contender. Sure. Todd Wood, by the way, the third guy was a working Somerset police officer with no scandals or anything like that.

He's going to get a decent amount of attention. Jeff Morris has got 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 fucking make? Fifth place trying to scam or weasel to get any spot jockey high or... What are you doing?

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 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 the, it's all connected. So Shelley says that several days before the fish fry, I guess that he, Morris and Kenneth White had told him that the sheriff needed our intent. tended to arrest and possibly kill the three of them before election. Oh.

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, that the sheriff was the devil incarnate and that he was 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?

It's a killer's 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 them tomorrow. Yep. And then they decided to do it. That's never worked, right?

Not really. Nope. 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. Shelly and Morris also said that White picked the shooting position. and the escape route. He goes, that's where you shoot him from, that spot right there, and 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. Yeah. So they went to Walmart.

store surveillance cameras show all three of them in the automotive department buying a battery for the bike. And he 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. So 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 Shopville Stabb volunteer fire department, waits for shit to happen. White was supposed to go too to watch, but he didn't. He went home to take his wife 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 was 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 on 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 13, 2002, that's, or I'm sorry, 2002 at 7.15 p.m., that's the shot. And then they said, go get them, boys. They chase them into the goddamn woods. You better not pick that rifle up or I'm going to beat you to death with this goddamn tire iron. Then they have the Walmart tape.

They have the exact battery that the make and model that 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. Kentucky conspiracy. Exactly. Danny was already charged with capital murder at that point. Dang.

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. It's just another way to be charged with murder. Kentucky RICO's. It would make sense.

Kentucky's complicity statute says a person's guilty of an offense committed by someone else when the intention of promoting or facilitating the commission of the offense, He solicits commands or engages in a conspiracy with that person or aids counsels 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. For this area, that's a little much. So here's some town reactions because the town, think about if you're a townsperson, just in this area.

The sheriff is like the sunrise, and you can count on him. Somebody shoots him dead while he's holding a bun 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? Targeted murder by a guy that had no chance? This is fucking wild. Yeah.

Wow. This is a wild scene. The Shopville Fire Chief said the murder has traumatized many residents in the area. Yeah. It's a big deal. 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 he arrested like them. He was a decent guy treated him decently and was just a stand-up guy.

He wasn't a piece of shit. 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. He's a kind person.

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 you. help them get 50 years in prison, but he'd make the arrest and come away with a political ally. Holy shit. He was that good at talking to people where, yeah, 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 that you kind of come away liking the guy, even though he coaxed a confession out of you that's getting you put away forever. Like that police chief that likes us. Like, God damn it, I love that guy.

I love that guy. Yeah, he's great guy. He's an Indie Atlantic, absolutely. He was a keynote speaker the other day. He was holding his dick, taking a fist, and another cop walked in and goes, I heard your name on a podcast. And he's like, oh, I like this. Two cops holding their dicks in full uniform, talking about me and you.

That's hilarious. Yeah, they sent us a bunch of swag and shit. It's funny. Some of the nicest stuff, anyway. Real nice. Great guy. 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 hidden 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 J.P. 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. Fucking does it. That's right. April 18, 2012 is the funeral for Sheriff Sam. And they, it's a really well-attended thing.

Hundreds and hundreds of people there. 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 loudspeakers. It was one of those. It was like Babe Ruth's funeral.

I guess tons of, they said hundreds of cruisers from across the state and 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, there. Yeah, that's on a documentary that they ended up doing there. It's a sad one, yeah. Real sad. They said, we owe Sam Catron 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 going to 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 out of here.

Jimmy Justice. Jimmy Justice, police chief. Old Jim Justice. That's a Pikeville Police James Justice. All alliteration, too. P.P.J. God, man. He said that he had known that Sam's reputation across the state is a no-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. Right. You know, because freedom. Guys, don't have any fucking money 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 on a highway patrol. Yeah, he said he was well respected, a superb law enforcement officer.

That's why he said he wanted to go to the funeral because he heard what a good guy he 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. If I knew the guy, I say I knew the guy.

If I didn't, I didn't. That's it. We all did the same thing. My brother Gerald. Yeah. My brother Norm there who died. Yeah, we're pals. We're big pals, obviously.

If I died, I'm sure he'd say the same. Yeah. 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 Catron, nor should we try. We shouldn't even give it an effort. Don't even try. Forget it.

Now, during the election now, it was 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. 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 do.

assign the next person to go to whatever. So they said that's a distinct possibility that the county clerk said. He said there's going to be a lot of people who still want to 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. That's what's great. Such a beautiful shit. Yeah. So he predicted there will be a large tribute vote for Ketron. He said that if he wins the primary, it's likely the county Republican committee would choose an opponent to face the opponent Norris Whitaker in the fall. Now, Stringer Wooden Calhoun all said they would temporarily suspend their campaign elect. We're not going to campaign actively during the funeral, basically. They said Morris, the other candidate could not be reached for comment. That's because he's in jail because he's.

been arrested. Because 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, the Somerset police officer. 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.

That's, yeah, fuck K. Stringer. That, by the way, is Lewis Katron, standing next to his 86-year-old mom. mother saying this. Holy. 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. Because he's on there while he sits in jail. Todd Wood wins the primary, the one the family backed. Stringer has got to be so pissed. Yeah.

Here's the craziest thing. Jeff Morris received a 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? What the fuck? Sounds like 123 people who've been arrested by Sheriff Sam. I like that guy. Fuck him. Super hate cops.

Yeah. Now the death penalty is on the table and they say they're going to seek the death penalty against all three men. Fuck them all, is what they say. They said the victim was the sheriff, killed in uniform, beside his cruiser, at a public event. That fits the circumstances. Done and done.

Yes. They said, we needed it to be done right. We needed to set an example and show what we're going to do if that takes place in this community. Okay. September 2002, looks like there's going to be a plea deal for Jeff Morris. Oh, he's not going to take it laying down? No, he's not the, he's not the drug guy. here.

But it all goes forward, but then Jeff Morris says, oh, no, no, no, I never agreed to plead guilty. Oh. Bullshit. Now, 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, which is not bad for murder, I would say. But he said, I never agreed to that.

Oh. His lawyer, Robert Alexander, said that Morris changed his mind in the last minute about accepting a sentence of life in prison with the with the possibility of parole after 20 years and he didn't want to 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 them to make that fucking plea. Well, no. They didn't make the plea. They went to the DA with a 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. Wow. 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 going to 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 shit if you do that. He said to do it. Yeah.

Get in trouble a lot. So what do I get out of that, you know? 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 a jury's going to have to sort out. Morris had only met with his attorneys briefly three times in five months. So there's 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.

Uh-oh. With the Courier Journal there, Louisville. His 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 described, 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 him. He's hunching. He then says, I know how it looks, but looks aren't everything. They just describe it. Yeah. They said, well, how does it, 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 are dumbered me in this case.

He said this is a understatement of the year. He should have been more selective in choosing his political allies. Is that right? Think about that one. Not people hang out with murder people. I should, didn't do well with my murder allies. Or 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, a lawyer named Butcher, she's going to butcher this one. She said, she was surprised Morris granted this jail interview. Yeah. She said, and this is the line that'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 yet. So November 2002, Steve Anderson's captured. Remember Steve Anderson, the United Patriot Front Militia Idiot? What did it? Where was he? He was a tip from an America's Most Wanted Viewer.

Got it. Captured him. He was later sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for taking a shot at somebody. Good. January 2003, Danny Shelley takes a plea deal. Wow. He takes a plea. Well, it's for murder.

Yeah. Well, it says this particular deal is to testify against Kenneth White. Really? They're going to let them. they want him. The murderer's going to 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. They all believe that 100%. Manipulated a drug addict to do his bidding for him, which is a little more dangerous. If you give a drug addict enough drugs, they'll do what you want them to do, especially for 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. Yeah. That's what it says. We love a redemption story. Yeah. During sentencing, Danny said, I'm very, I'm terribly sorry for what has happened and for what I've done. Sam's sister said, it's nice to know there's some admittance of guilt, some sorrow, but I would say, still rather have my brother back, obviously.

But still, this family is very classy, by the way, the Contron family. Extremely classy is what they say later. They're decent people, is who they are. They're decent people. So the judge says to Danny, you say, may 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 at a fish fry.

That's pretty good. In a place where they don't take kindly to shooting at the blue. Fuck no, yeah. And also the sister, Sam's sister said that his apology does seem sincere. And they believe 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 dead. Completely devastated by what he did and had no, basically just he woke up in a different life eventually.

It was like, holy, I fucked my life up bad. Cannot believe what he's done. Yeah, and the Katranz eventually accepted his apology as genuine and they're good with him, they said. They forget him. It's wonderful. 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, quote,

this is again the goddamn said 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 plea. What? Oh. They said, listen, you plea, we want white. White's 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. They make this deal. The prosecutor said, I sat down with the family, the Katron family, and the family is

satisfied with the outcome. I'm happy with the outcome. Ultimately, they're the ones who suffer the most. 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. Okay. 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. Right. They say, you, sir, may fuck off. Life in prison, not eligible, eligible for parole for 25 years. Same exact agreement that Danny Shelley got. Now, the original agreement was 20. So he cost himself an extra five by fucking off here. Yep.

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 where that's not the factor anymore, but that's a whole separate issue.

And denied requests for more time to arrange another test. the judge said, quote, the indications are that Mr. White did not cooperate sufficiently with the IQ test 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 proceed. 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 a dad does, you want this poor woman to die. Natural causes or 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, of no way of knowing. It could have been a, her ovary could have exploded. I have no idea.

Perhaps she uses the same things for dad's 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 dead daughter and his dead IQ as well. He's got a dead brain and a dead daughter. Help this guy.

The judge gave White half of the third day of jury selection to be with his family. So you get 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, must 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. And here it is. The prosecutors cast him as the devil of Southern Kentucky. Right. 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 first. He then came right back home. 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 could run his horrible death-dealing business unobstructed. And then they brought this fat weble in and showed the court who he is? Wow. And the defense said, they're making him out like he's, you know, Pablo Escobar. He's a flea market vendor who's being fucking framed by two admitted idiots to save their own neck. He's just a poor flea market vendor.

He runs a pond 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. They said, 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 there's not a day don't go by 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 katron yeah that's what he said um he said i was scared of him meaning white he said white once 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 and hered his judgment. He said he was under stress because he had no job, was worried about federal

drug investigators, was fearful that if he broke away, his family would be harmed, and he was convinced that Sam was a threat because Kenneth White told him so. He said, quote, I was tricked and lied to. They knew I wasn't right. And they used me. I had no control over my thoughts and my actions. They knew I wasn't right in the head. 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. It's that we heard before. He testified he tried to back out and he was told, watched the news. I'm going to kill your whole family. We want to run drugs and alcohol. The defense asked, if you were so terrified, you stood next to Stam 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. It's a deal. He said, because you were talking to Sheriff Catron, you could have said one word to him about Danny Shelley.

Somebody could have been up there and caught Danny Shelley waiting up there with the gun. And that was a good cross-examination. And 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, they had to have Shelley and Morris have no credibility. That's their only hope that they don't believe them. They're admitted killers. They pleaded guilty to escape execution.

Your incentive was, you know, to hand the jury a bigger villain is all bullshit and all that kind of thing. They said he didn't need help or any instigation from 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. Shelly, they said, you know, you can't believe those guys essentially. Right. They've got reasons to want to talk about somebody else. Yeah.

And it's a weak case on both sides, too. It has a weak case for one side, for the defense, obviously, but the prosecution doesn't have a recording, a note, a text, nothing in White's own words where he plots the murder. All he has is Shelley and White. And the fact that everyone said what a scumbag drug dealer he is. Sure. Which, I mean, he's being convicted just as much for being a drug dealer as 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, I mean, what goes with drug dealing 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 sheriff candidate buying a battery for a motorcycle for another guy, not for him. Looks like a nice guy. Yeah. So, the jury

eight women and four men, deliberates less than an hour. Wow. It was not very long for all of this conspiracy, all this shit. They just wanted to fill the paperwork out. He has found guilty of complicity to commit murder. Commit complicity to murder. Immediately his lawyer says he plans to appeal his conviction, blah, blah, blah.

Sentencing, prosecution wants the death penalty here. Killed a sheriff in performance of his lawful duties. What do you want? in cruiser, you know, next to his cruiser, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, campaigning to do it again. Exactly. The prosecution here said Sam Catron was a local official. He was the sheriff.

He was a local public official. You have to go out to there to fish fries. You have to get out in 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 ready to go 10-8 at any time. He was in the lawful performance of a, 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 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. Yep, he said, whether you believe it or not, I didn't.

So Kenneth's speech before sentencing is, quote, not I'm sorry. Not, you know, what I did was terrible and I hope everyone can forgive 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 stance to take?

It's fine to not admit to 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 a field. But this seems like you're, you're fucked. They chatted for an hour. Yeah, they're, you're done. Anyway, they told him, you sir, may fuck off life without parole. Okay.

Without, because it's hard to give the death penalty of 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.

And Lewis, the brother, said, I fully believe that he is guilty and he's getting his due. He was given life without the possibility of parole. And he said that as far as I'm concerned, he got exactly what he deserved. Done. They also said, any time, this is the prosecutor, anytime you make a deal with the shooter,

it's a hard decision to make. But I'm glad to see this is all over and all three are convicted. Now, Sam's family, Lewis said that his mother, who's in her late 80s at this point, Jenny is holding up well. He said he worked part-time as a deputy for his brother, but after he was killed, he decided that losing two members in law enforcement was enough, and I got out. He said nobody wanted me there anymore.

His mother said she was satisfied with the plea agreement. She said, quote, we think it's in the best interest of all the families. Right. Then the mother, the brother and mother here, they were talking about, 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. These people are so nice. Now, that mother, the Hester woman, described the case as heart-wrenching and said she still can't comprehend how her son got involved. in the plot to murder the sheriff.

He said, Jeff worked for Mr. Katron for five years and had a lot of respect and admiration for him, she said. She can't understand how any of this started. 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 Catrone family every single day since this has happened. And they were more than happy to accept her apology as well because they're nice people.

Some of the people 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 realizes the 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. Whenever 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... I was just going to say.

Did people bring their families to that shit? Then, you know what? We can curse as much as we want on broadcast. television then. You tell me to put my cigarette out in the opening of an airport and I'll kick you square in the fucking dick. That's right. I will smoke in my seat in the fucking plane.

I'll smoke on the plane again. I'll smoke on the plane again. 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. Fuck you, you sick bastard. Someone also said some people have said being in prison for the rest of your life is probably a worse punishment than you know capital.

murder. So I'm at peace with it. Yeah, it's shitty. It's got to be torture. 2005, he appeals, White does. He argued that the witnesses were all character assassination. He leaned on Morris's testimony that said he ran drugs and 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 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 badged up and ready to go 10-8, James. Dude, he's ready to 10-8, yeah. Well, this is like last week, somebody's saying, well, you can't rape a corpse, so it ain't rape. That's the same thing that you're getting. When you're making that argument, you've lost the fucking argument long ago. That's terrible. So he said, yeah, his presence served a dual purpose that he was engaged in a monetary deviation from his official duties in. taking cake to his car does not disturb the conclusion.

Just because he wasn't, 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, 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 ineffective. 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 release. in this case. Keep on keeping on. 2014, Danny 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 Abnit 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 sentence.

He's all fucked up in the head. Prosecutors described him as schizophrenic and delusional as well. He didn't know what the fuck he was whatever's problem was. He asked him for help and he's like, I can't help with that. That's too much. November 23rd, 2018 Kenneth White

at 71 years old, dead in prison. Dang. Dead as shit. Fingers is gone. Fingers is going to finger on down the way up to wherever the fuck. So they said, 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. It's sick in here. No, he filed citing overcrowding, double bunking, and bad ventilation. The appeals court turned him down and said the COVID-19 pandemic, an event that just began shy of two decades after he was already in here is not extraordinary circumstance. that entitles him to relief. 2023, this is sad. Lewis, brother Lewis and his wife, Carol,

are killed in their homes from carbon monoxide poisoning. In their home? In their home. In their home, I'm sorry. That's fucked up. Yep, they said a family went to check on them and found them unresponsive in their home. Apparently somebody left a car running in the garage.

No! Silent cars, man. Happens all the fucking time. Loud exhaust saves lives. My 71 Corvette, I have never thought it was fucking off when it was on. Not once. I've got shaking and rumbling when it's on. I've got a metal sign above my door and my mudroom wander.

And when that car is on, you know it. That metal sign is banging on the, I mean, the house is shaking. But still. That's fucking hilarious. Damn it. The congressman, remember the ham congressman there? He said that he said the young man that actually did the shooting, an Oxycontin addict at the time, who later said in essence the drug had taken him over and he didn't realize what he was doing. 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, The, it's called Choices. It's about the Green River Correctional Complex and people in there. And he says to the kids that he's trying to talk to through the camera, more temptations now than what they used to be. And his mother also described Pulaski 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. So there you go. Oh, by the way, there's a 2022, a resolution was filed by the Kentucky General Assembly to make Hal Rogers Parkway Bridge over the Buck Creek and Pulaski, the Sheriff Sam Cotron Memorial Bridge. Rename it. And Kentucky Educational Television produced the Sheriff Sam Cotron story, a 26-minute documentary. Also, it was on A&E's City Confidential and Investigation Discovery's Sins and Secrets. Both Danny and Jeff are eligible for parole next year, 27, right now. One is in Danny's in Southeast State Correctional Complex.

Jeff is in Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. And they're not getting out. They might not. Danny's got a good shot at it. You think so? Absolutely. Danny? 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. I'm scared of him because that young man is a great shot. I agree. I agree totally. But they think of him as the least responsible of the jury. He had the least to gain from it.

And he was just a dumb guy. They stuffed, you know, loaded up with drugs and pushed out there essentially is how they put in it. So anyway, that is stab slash shopbill slash Somerset, Kentucky in a fucking crazy story. Well done, James. Great, Jesus. Jesus. Thank you. That was a wild fucking.

story. So yeah, it was fun. So anyway, if you enjoy that story or any of the stories we tell, get on whatever app you're on, give us five stars. It helps so much. It helps drive the show up the charts. If you're watching on Netflix, double thumbs up it, please, do that. It's been great meeting people, by the way, at live shows who don't even, they've never listened to the podcast. They've only seen it on Netflix. That's crazy. They come up to us because they're like, you're like people we see on TV. So to them, we're just like TV people and the people that know us are like, Yeah, they're jerkoffs who did this shit in their living room when they first started. And now it's gotten bigger.

So that's very funny to do. So thanks, everybody, for coming out to live shows. We had such a great time in Milwaukee and Minneapolis with the crowds. They were just so great. And you can be part of that, too. If you go to shut up and give me murder.com, you can be a part of it right now, actually. Coming up soon. October 3rd, Dallas, we're coming to see you.

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And then November 14th and Boston, again, separate shows there too. So you'll see two different shows if you want to go to both. If you live in Connecticut in the middle somewhere, hour and a half each way, whatever. So that's in Medford on the 14. Get your tickets now. Shut up and give me murder.com. Do it. Then get yourself, well, follow on social media.

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The killer, the way it gets caught is just crazy. It's a story that needs to be told. Then for Smalls Town murder, the trigger treat murder from the, it's from, I think, California in the 50s, but it's people trying to use Halloween to cover murders up, which is pretty funny and interesting and we'll talk about that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all that and you get everything we put out all of our shows. Crime and Sports, your stupid opinions and small time murder 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. God damn now. This week, executive producer, Gary Howard, checking in Livingston, Texas. Gary. I think he's been there a lot. I think he might live. I don't know. Maybe.

He moves a lot, Gary. He moves around. Can't pin him down. No. Yeah, that's what they do. Alan Albrecht, Allison Heimer, Courtney Ducker. Happy hours in Hall or Jall, New Mexico. Oh, boy.

All, like a Pino, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's in Hall, Apeno, New Mexico. In Hall, New Mexico. and Atlanta Zamol. Thank you so much. Elena, you're the best. Thank you.

Other producers this week, Jeffrey Adamanski. Happy birthday. Jeffrey Adamansky. Adamansky. I think that's right. I think I did that right. Good for you. Something Polish.

Hope your birthday is amazing, Jeff. Oh, happy birthday, fuck. Also, Peyton Meadows, Kylie Martinez, Andrew Morgan, Janice Hill, Nathan Rose, Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, Amanda Jenkins, Sarah Kelly, Joe King. Karen would know last name. Sloholstra 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. Yeah. That's a last name. Yeah, there's definitely. Yeah. We found a bunch of those, yeah. I went to high school with a couple.

Saffron. That's a real name too. Orindorf is, uh, Jake's, is his. Saffron Orndorff? Paul's daughter. Yeah. Pile driving people left and right, Mr. Wonderful himself. Is that Mr. Wornful's first name?

No, it's Paul. Right. Yeah. Does he have a kid named Saffron? He might. You never know. I doubt. I can't picture Paul Arndorff naming his kid Saffron.

He's like a redneck. Perhaps. Maybe. I could see like, you know, Orham. Occasian spice mix of some kind you can name him. But not that. Not Saffron.

Michael Torkelson. Noah Schrader, Terry Kincaid, Battles Insights. G. G. with no last name. Teresa Carruthers, Charmaine, Passmore, Kathy Lyons, Julia Bass, or perhaps Bates, Lisa Cothran,

Mallory Christensen, Tyrese with no last name. Probably not that one, right? Probably, I assume. T.M. Rajcovic. Michelle Woodward, Jonathan Cooper, probably not the one Pass Rush are from Broncos.

Michael Rogan, Allison Graves. Cliff Springer, Joy Gray, Jennifer Gerselik, Gerselac, Grizzalack. That's a fun last name to fuck up. Tessa would know last name. Aaron Everett, Jen Demire, DeMire, Matthew Blitz, Melissa, Mike, Carrie Passoretta, U. Takakawa, Takagawa, Melissa would know the last name. Carrie Kay, Stephanie Howell, Liz would know last name.

Chas Fassell, Joe would no last name. Nancy Anderson, Time. Bronte, that's another. seasoning. Amy Stagall, Stiegel, Skylar Carroll, J.R. and Juju from New Mexico. Where the fuck is Hal, or Jowl? Catherine Park, Christy Hines, Shamar would know last name. Becky Risenger, Rizinger,

Rizinger, Scottie MCK, Mac, perhaps Caitlin would no last name. Leslie G., John Ayerio, Maddie would know the last name, Reeve would know last name, Dina Wayne, Heather would know the last name, Amy Delphin, Jenna Weber, Priscilla Aguilar, Nikki would know the last name, Christopher Lesbron, Leah Leah. Lea Wells. Your parents are Star Wars fans. Good for you. Patrick P. Kim would know the last name. Aaron Bradford, Anthony Henkel, Mitch Jeskey, John Cassidy, Mary Hoover. Chuckle with me, Ben Wally, Katie Burfield, Chelsea Rollo, Virginia Monday. Carolyn. Say again.

Love a rollo. 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. They're delicious.

How do you not? He's the reason for that four-way stop over at 24th Street and Shea, where he came a kid. I know exactly what you're talking about. 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 Kay, Andrew Petty. Sadie Stevens, Tannis Scott, Marius Ennerhagen, the vegetarians, James Smith would know the last name, Lauren Conrad, David Ackerman, Jacob would no last name, Nicole Hitchcock, Carlos Condi, Carrie Pittle-Pittle Cow, Reese Johnson, Charlotte Anderson, Patsy Penn, Penelope Meisner, Cindy Elton, Curtis Springer, Rebecca would no last name, Tess would no last name, Jen would no last name, Kim Stolvingia. Brandon Shader Carrey Ann Connell Gail would no last name

Nate Klaus Vicki Ward April Rose Ethan Bauer Bill Johnson and his big apple Renon Cross Phoenix reference Only people who lived in Phoenix

more than 15 years ago would understand that A defunct restaurant that closed in 2006 No it closed after that I did comedy there Yeah I think it was like 2000 Oh yeah it had been 2014 Something like that

Yeah it was dying That's why they were allowing us to do kind of be there. All the shit on the wall stays. Oh my God. Go covered in grease. Yeah.

God. Somebody has a wagon wheel from Bill Johnson. That's disturbing. Ah, Christ. Where did I stop? Bill Johnson is where I stopped.

We know that for us. John Demice. Robin Little, Nicole Lopez. Michael would know last name. Marley Jones. Robert Poe. Black Dog beard oil.

They're terrific. Melboe would no last name. Kelly would know last name. Tony Hurtado. Daniel Perry, Michael Miller, Benjamin Merscheke, Thomas Mink, Gianna Westbury, Anthony Lucy, Brittany Leray, Stephen Randell or 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, 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.

Whatever you want, come hang out with us. Keep coming back. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.