Stuff You Should Know - Selects: What Was the Deal With the Hatfields and McCoys?

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

It was America's most famous family feud, but the history of the Hatfields vs the McCoys is fraught with bias and inaccuracies. Dig into a disagreement in 19th-century Appalachia that became a very big deal around the world, in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's SYS Case Selects, I've chosen our classic episode on the classic feud between the classic families, the Hatfields and the McCoys. It's one of the more interesting stories of American history and it's way more nuts than you even thought. And I

don't know about you though. I just want to put a little bug in your ear. Every time I hear the name Jim Vance in this episode, I always want to follow it in my mind with Vance Refrigeration. See if that happens to you now that I've said that. I hope you enjoy this one. It's a classic, as I said, so enjoy your way. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant is staring at me right now. It's making me a tad uncomfortable. Jerry's over there. I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my head. So this is Stuff You Should Know. Where would you like me to look? But in my ear. Oh that's always so weird. Try it, try it. Someone's like looking. Are you doing it

right now? Like right at your hair. I find this comfortable. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Try my other ear. Oh yeah, that's the stuff. The right, oh I'm sorry, that's your left ear. That's my left ear. All right, I'll remember that. Look, watch this Chuck. After seven years. Can you see that I can wiggle ears independently? Yeah. Drives you me crazy. So you sit around and do it probably. I try not to. Like a good husband. Chuck. Yes. We have a bit of an announcement here. Yeah, you talking about what we just heard? Yes. Yeah. We are in the room with either a Hatfield or McCoy. Jerry doesn't know which family she's related to. She just knows that she's related to one of them. Yeah, like literally right before we press record, she's like, oh by the way, I'm

related to one of these families. I'm just not sure which. Right. And a family member told her, but she. Cousin Tyler? Was that who was? I don't know. I think that's what she said. A cousin. I get the impression from Jerry's story though that she's sort of like glazed over and that's why she doesn't know. Right, but she does carry a six-shooter on her hip and that explains that. It says McCoy on the barrel. Yeah. So maybe. Right, but does that mean that it's a bullet from the McCoys or for the McCoys? Good point. Mystery remains, you know. Good point. So we are talking about the Hatfields and the McCoys. For those of you who don't live in the United States, you probably have heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys. It's a pretty

legendary feud. Yeah. Right. We've heard of some of your history, UK, Australia, Matthew Flinders. There's a name drop for you. Yeah. So hopefully you've heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, there was a big miniseries a few years ago on television. Yeah, with Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton and apparently it was really dramatized. Yeah, like it's in fictionalized. Yeah, and it's cinematized and little, not quite fully accurate, but at least they brought attention to the feud because it needs it. Agreed. So the Hatfields and the McCoys is a family feud, so much so that in 1979, the Hatfields and the McCoys were on the TV show Family Feud, apparently for a full week from where I saw. And I read that legend has it

that it didn't actually inspire the TV show, but I didn't get good verification on that. No, and there have been other family feuds, right? But none are as famous as the Hatfields and the McCoys, although at the time there were more famous family feuds, but the Hatfields and the McCoys just took it to another level. Yeah, because all of the murder. Yeah, there was a lot of murder. It was mountain folk versus mountain folk. Families that had been intermarried and worked for one another and had lived together for decades, if not longer, alongside in this little area along the Sandy River, I believe, the Big Sandy River, in something that's called the Tug River Valley. And on one side, mostly, the Hatfields lived on the West Virginia side

in Logan County. And right across the river on the other side in Kentucky, the McCoys lived in Pike County. And that's how it was for days gone by. Yeah, and they were not new to the United States. So I guess it wasn't the United States then, was it? Yeah, okay. Sure it was. We're talking about the 1850s, 60s, 70s. I was way off then. But they came to America many, many years before that. Apparently the Hatfields were some of the very first to come to the new world from Northern England. And the McCoys are obviously from Germany. Well, the Hatfields were originally the Heathfields in England. That sounds way more British. Yeah, but you know how you do. You come over to America and you dumb it down a little. I know Heath Ledger changed his name

to Hat Ledger when he got here, didn't he? R.I.P. And the McCoys come from Scotland, of course. You could probably figure that out. Moved to Ireland before they came to the new world. And the first known McCoy was John McCoy in America. When was that? 1732 from Belfast, Ireland. So did they move directly to the Tug River area? Is that where they settled? No, the McCoys first settled in Maryland where he was a prominent landowner. And I think the Hatfields first moved to Tug Valley in 1820 and the McCoys in 1802 with their 12 kids. So really, these families had grown up living and working with each other. It was not just these two families in the area. There were plenty of other families, but they were neighbors,

coworkers, boss and employee. They were husbands and wives. They intermarried. They were living together for decades. I think the two that originally settled at Tug Fork were the actual parents of the two main protagonists or antagonists. I guess they were both. Yeah. They were both pro and and and. So the story, our story really kind of begins around about the Civil War. This area of the Tug River Valley was mostly Confederate. And both the Hatfields and the McCoys were Confederate sympathizers, if not outright Confederate soldiers. The antagonist or protagonist, the patriarch of the Hatfield family, when the story begins, his name was Devil Ants Hatfield, right? Yeah. That was his nickname. His real name was William

Anderson Hatfield. Yeah. But Devil Ants, what a cool name. Yeah. And I saw a couple of different explanations for where his nickname came from. But my favorite one was that his mother said he was so mean the devil himself was scared of him. Yeah. I saw one that said he was six feet of devil and 180 pounds of hell. They had stupid sayings back then. Yeah. It didn't quite add up. Especially in the backwoods of Kentucky and West Virginia. They just said stuff. They just made up names, as we'll see throughout this whole episode. But Devil Ants himself was a, he was, from what I saw, he was described as somebody who took life by the horns, right? Sure. He was very much a self-made man. He became a pretty wealthy timber merchant over

the years. But he was, he was a violent man. And he was a, well, he had some violent tendencies, for sure. Yeah. And if you want to trace back the reason for the Hatfield-McCoy feud, there isn't, I think, from everything I read, there isn't like one single thing. It's often blamed on the pig deal, which we'll hear about coming up. That seems to be the one that historians point to the most these days, though. Yeah. But it's sort of a convenient way of telling the story, because like what, what better way to kick off a feud than like with a stolen pig? Right. It definitely, there were other problems or issues between these families before then,

right? Yeah. But the point is, there are a lot of different things going on. And one of them was, like you said, was Devil Ants made a lot more money than McCoy as a timber guy. So on the other side of the river in the Kentucky side, Pike County, Kentucky, there were the McCoys. And at the time that Devil Ants was the patriarch of the Hatfield Clan, a man named Randall McCoy, old Randall, was the head of the McCoy Clan across the river in Kentucky, right? Yeah. I just get the sense that he had his sort of smaller business and was always a little bit envious of the larger timber business across the way. Oh, very much so. He was, the way that I saw him described was if Devil Ants was a man who took life by the horns,

old Randall was somebody who got hooked by life's horns. And he was very bitter about his lot in life. Gotcha. His father, I saw, was described as didn't much care for work, didn't leave his kids anything. Yeah. So his son had to be a self-made man, but he was a self-made man who never really made himself. He married a woman named Sarah, and Sarah's father died and left them some land. And he was able to homestead on that. So that's how he was able to establish himself was through his wife's inheritance of her father's land. But it was enough to set him up. They were fine. They weren't prosperous, but they weren't like just completely poverty-stricken like Randall had grown up. Right. But just across the river and

this other family that he had to deal with and work with and just kind of see and interact with was a man who had made himself and definitely Randall was bitter about that idea and the comparison between himself and devil ants. Yeah. And I think some of the McCoys even worked for some of the Hatfields, which is always going to be a little tense when you feel like maybe that feeling of superiority comes over one family because you're working for me. Right. Yeah. So there's definitely like you're saying tension, right? And you can point to maybe these guys coming into their own as the heads of the family when the tension really started. Yeah. For many years, historians pointed to a specific incident as the source of the family feud, but that's

since been abandoned. So like we said, the Civil War is about the time when this story really starts in earnest and most of the Tug River Valley was Confederate. Devil ants and possibly Randall McCoy were part of what were called the Logan Wildcats, which was a militia. But during the Civil War, they were an actual like army unit of the Confederate army. Yeah. And that's all where devil ants was even the leader in one place, but I didn't get that verified a bunch either. So it very least was in the brigade. Right. And I got the impression that if he wasn't a leader, he was a de facto leader because that was just his type of personality. Devil ants don't answer to nobody. Right. You answer to him. That's right. That was a great devil ants, by the way.

So I think the leader of the Logan Wildcats is another character who will come up later and his name is Jim Vance. Yeah. So Jim Vance, he was not a very great guy from what I can understand, but I'll let him paint his own picture. Okay. How's he coming in? He will in a little bit. Instead, we're going to focus on a guy named Aza Harman McCoy. And this guy, I don't have a beat on. He decided in just complete contrast of the place where he grew up, he was going to join the Yankee Union Army. Yeah. And he did. Yeah. But he broke his leg and left the service after, I think, a year. Yeah. But while he was in service, his commanding officer in the Union Army ordered him to fight devil ants because there was rumors that he was a confederate

spy. Oh, yeah. So Harman fights devil ants, loses the fight. And I didn't get a sense on what kind of fight it was, whether it was like a gun battle or whether he literally just like spit on his boot and like took a swing. I'm not sure. I don't know if that was even in the miniseries. So they get in a fight, he loses, and then the Union troops went after devil ants at that point, which is really what caused a lot of the early issues. And then later on, Harman shot a friend of devil ants while stealing his horse. So in turn, he killed Harman's commanding officer in the Union Army. Okay. There's a lot of bad blood. The guy was like literally General Bill France was peeing off his porch like I do, and devil ants shot him in cold blood.

I hope that does not happen to you. I really hope so, too. It'd be a bad way to go. It gives you pause, you know? Yeah. So after the war, after Aza Harman McCoy came back home, I did not realize that tensions were already that high. I had the impression that it was just because he fought for the Union. I didn't know he had been made to directly target devil ants, right? Well, devil ants and the Logan Wildcats basically sent Aza a message saying, watch yourself, because we're coming for you. And he very wisely went off and lived in a cave for a while. He hid out. And so with this guy, you're like, why did he go fight for the Union? Was he an abolitionist? No, he had a slave, and the slave kept him alive by bringing him food

and stuff while he was in the cave. So I have no idea why he went and fought for the Union. It's weird. The fact that he did, though, meant that his own relatives, his own McCoys, including Randall, his brother, really were just kind of like, yeah, the Logan Wildcats are out to get you, and you brought this on yourself. So we don't really feel for you. And they didn't apparently make much of a problem or much, they didn't take issue with it when the Logan Wildcats tracked him down in the cave and killed him. Well, he was actually coming home when they killed him. I think he finally thought like, surely after all this time, they've forgotten about this troglodyte. So he was walking home to see his family

that he hadn't seen in years, and Jim Vance shot him. That's how long he was in the cave? Well, that might have been part of the war as well. But it said a few years. Man alive. So, well, actually, man dead. Aza Harman McCoy is killed by the Logan Wildcats. And apparently, at first, everybody thought it was Devil Ants who did it, but he turned out to have been bedridden at the time, so he had an alibi. And they think instead that it was Jim Vance who led it and probably killed Aza. Yeah, who was Devil's uncle. Okay. And strong ally, Jim Vance was. So Aza Harman's dead. The first shot has been fired in the family feud. So thought the historians for years. And then I guess after interviewing actual Hatfields and McCoys, they realized that,

no, actually the McCoys were like, he brought it on himself. Yeah. We made peace with this. And no charges were even brought in the murder of Aza McCoy. Yeah, I saw one article that described it as a murder agreement, which apparently used to have that, like blood in, blood out, and everyone's like, all right, even Stephen. Okay. So done. Yeah. The first death has occurred in the Hatfield McCoy feud, but it has nothing to do with the Hatfield McCoy feud. Technically, yes. That seems like a pretty good time to take a break, don't you? Agreed, sir. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're

at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to

say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet

and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we're back. And Aza Harman's dead. Things are whatever between the Hatfields and McCoy. Nothing big has gone on, even if there were any sort of skirmishes or little fights or run-ins or that kind of thing. I get the impression that the families, when they saw each other, there was like a slight percentage that the sides were going to get in at least a

fist fight. If not take like pot shots at one another with their guns. I just think they probably just didn't like each other very much from the beginning. Right. So it's possible those things went on. Nothing big happened though until the pig, the pig incident. And apparently it wasn't just one pig. It's what it's been boiled down to, but it was several. Yeah. And it was a big deal. If you think about a pig stealing a pig is not a big deal at the time. There's a book called The Feud by Ding King. Ding King? Dean King. Ding King. Said it's so weird. Dean King. And he said, where was their next meal going to come from and how could they feed the children in the winter? They were lucky enough to have one pig

or razorback for sell or trade. The proceeds were used to acquire flour, sugar, coffee, sometimes shoes or boots for their families. It was a mainstay for the family. So these days you hear a pig or even a couple of pigs and you think what's the big deal. But in the region at the time, these pigs were very valuable. So it was a big deal. Right. I saw a... And in a front. I saw a dude on... Well, yeah. And that was another thing. Again, we're talking about backwards Appalachian folk in the 19th century. There was a lot to the idea that you had stolen their property. Yeah. Which as it should be. But even that aside, I saw this historian on a CBS Sunday morning clip from a few years ago. And he explained,

like, you can feed a sizable family for a month with a single pig. Yeah. And this guy stole several pigs. So the guy who was accused of stealing the pig was... Who was it, Chuck? Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield. Okay. Right. So old Randall himself said, Floyd Hatfield, cousin of devil ants, I know that you stole those pigs and I'm taking you to court. Well, they went to court. The problem is the local magistrate was a Hatfield. But in this guy's favor, his name was a preacher. It was his first name, I believe. And he was basically what amounted to the local judge in the Tug River Valley. He tried to make it a fair trial. Is he the one that placed it in McCoy land?

Because the trial took place in McCoy territory. Yes. Presided by Hatfield, though. Right. And he made sure that the jury had six Hatfields and six McCoys on it. He did. And nobody else. No joke. Yes. So weird. But he was trying to make it as fair as possible, right? And so they had a trial where Floyd Hatfield was tried for hog theft. Have you ever had something stolen from you? Sure. Like, you know, not hugely valuable, but... Yeah. It's one of the things that irks me most. It's very irritating. There's something about, like, just someone taking something that you worked to buy

that just really boils my blood. Now, imagine if they took that thing that you worked to buy and they were directly taking food out of your child's mouth at the same time. Yeah. It'd make you mad. I'd pull a Hatfield. The weird thing is, is that the McCoys and the Hatfields at this point are saying, we will let the... We will leave it to the courts. Yeah, yeah, sure. So they did go to court. They did try to have a fair trial, or at least the preacher did, preacher Hatfield. Preacher judge. Right. It's confusing. And the jury was split, except for one who was a McCoy who sided with the Hatfields.

His name was Selkirk McCoy, another made-up name. And Selkirk, he voted that, because of a guy named Bill Staten, who had testified that Floyd had not stolen the pigs, he said, you know what? I'm not going to contradict Bill Staten. I know him to be truthful or whatever. Sure. Plus, I work for devil ants in his logging operation. I'm going to vote pro Hatfield and exonerate Floyd. And Floyd got off and all Randall went nuts. Yeah. Staten was the main witness and he was a relative of the McCoys, but he was married to a Hatfield. Right. So, and while they did intermarry, I saw that there was way more marrying within the family to avoid intermarrying. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of first cousins. Yeah.

That were, when you watch that family feud clip, you can go find it on, I'm sure on YouTube, but there was a mental floss article that we found that had it embedded at the bottom. Yeah. That's where I first heard about it. That when they're introducing the families, they keep introducing one another as like kissing cousins. This is a kissing cousin, Diane. Right. And other families are saying that. It's 1979. So, yeah, there was a lot of like intermarriage within the family itself. Well, they were probably just joking, right? No. No, on family feud, you don't think? The guy didn't sound like he was joking. Did he kiss his cousin on TV? No, but Richard Dawson kissed her.

He kissed everybody. That guy kissed any woman who had stand still long enough. What a flirt. Love Richard Dawson. So, yeah, RIP. Yeah. He didn't change his name, even though he was British. Well, you don't know that. That's true. Could have been Richard Dimson or Chumlee Dawson. That's a great name. So, old Randall has just lost this court case. Yes. And even worse, he was made to pay the Hatfields court costs for taking him to court. And remember, we characterized old Randall as a kind of a bitter man. Anytime life handed him lemons, he just squeezed them into his eyes without anger, right? Yeah. And he went on for this for

basically years about how this was a miscarriage of justice, how Floyd had stolen his hogs. And so now, anytime Hatfields and McCoys, depending on their allegiance to the Klan, or Klan's, anytime they saw each other, they were shooting at one another. They were getting into fights. They were throwing rocks. Like one of devil aunt's sons was standing there when old Randall rode up once. And old Randall started railing on him about how Floyd had stolen a hog. And the McCoys or the Hatfields son grabbed a rock and just threw it at old Randall's mouth, just crushed his mouth with a rock, because that's what you did back then. Yeah, it was sort of like, you killed my brother Harman, but you stole my hog, you know?

I'm cool with the brother killing. Like Harman had it coming, but that hog never hurt anybody. Yeah, we were going to eat it. So did we cover the fact that Staten two years later was killed? This is inaccurate. Oh, is that not true? Bill Staten Jr. was killed. Oh. Bill Sr. was not killed in this skirmish. This is another big... Was that retribution though? Uh-huh. Okay, for his pause. Yeah, because remember, after the hog incident and the hog verdict, the Hatfields and McCoys did not fight it out right then at the magistrates office. At Judge Preacher's place. Right. But at any time the Klan saw one another, they would shoot at each other, they were getting fights, they would take rocks to the faces,

and then it culminated finally in this really truly violent incident between Bill Staten Jr. and Paris and Sam McCoy. Right? Okay. So Bill Staten Jr. is out hunting, sees these McCoy sons and says, oh, I'm in a world of trouble. Yeah. I better take a shot at one of them, and shoots Paris McCoy in the hip. And Sam McCoy was like, you shot my brother, you're going down, and he shoots Bill and wounds him, and then goes over and executes him, point blank in the head. And this is Bill Jr. Bill Jr. See, I got another article that said it was Bill, but it also said he's Bill Staten, so I'm starting to doubt all kinds of accuracy. There's a lot of inaccurate stuff. So I got, I think the description of that incident from

a really great book by a guy named John Ed Pierce. It's Days of Darkness, Colin. So you know it's legitimate. The feuds of Eastern Kentucky. Yeah. So there's been like serious blood shed here now. One of the, and this is direct retribution for the hog stealing verdict. A man has been executed, point blank in the head, and the two McCoy boys just tried to get away with it. Yeah. So blood is spilling. Fast forward a bit to 1882, and three of Randall's sons are attacked, stabbed 26 times, and shot Ellison Hatfield, who was Devil's younger brother to death. Right. And that was on election day, and election days were like drunken affairs. Do you remember when, I think in the bars episode, we talked about how like, what was it? You get people drunk and

doing something to the planners? Yeah, bumbo. Planting the, plying the planters with bumbo. Yeah, plying the voters with bumbo. Yeah. Man. But it was election day, so everybody would get super drunk. And when you get two clans that don't like each other, super drunk in the same place, they get in fights, and people get stabbed 26 times, and then shot in the back. Yeah. So those three sons of Randall were actually arrested, and were presumably going to go to trial, but vigilaniism took hold, and they were kidnapped on the way to the trial by the Hatfields, and they said, we're going to take care of this our way. Yeah. And they like, I don't know if they let them get away with it, but they got away with it. No, they did not let them get away with it.

This was a huge turning point, right? When the Hatfield, or the McCoy boys, were intercepted by the Hatfields and taken across the river to West Virginia, which is basically like taking them to Fortress Hatfield. Yeah, country justice was going to happen. Yeah, but devil ants vowed that if Ellison made it and didn't die, he would not kill these Hatfield or these McCoy boys. Yeah. But Ellison succumbed to his wounds and did die. And so they took these McCoy boys out and tied them to trees and shot them, I think more than 50 times or something like that. Yeah. So you were saying like they got away with it, not for lack of trying, right? It basically set off this huge, huge issue. Like this was even for the Tug River Valley, Chuck, this was pretty flagrant frontier

justice. You're not supposed to do this. There's a magistrate named Preacher who's supposed to settle this kind of stuff, right? So a guy named Perry, what was Perry's name? Perry Klein. You know what? This is too big. We need to take a break. All right. And get to the story of Perry Klein. Okay. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was

born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're back, Chuck, and we have a new guest. His name is Perry Klein. Come on in, Perry. You're an attorney. He was married to Martha McCoy. And here's the deal. Years before, there was a situation where Perry Klein was cheated out of, I think, 5,000 acres of land. Was he cheated? I didn't know if he, if it was actual like justice, because he had supposedly been cutting timber from Devil Lance's timberland. Well, here's the deal. Every thing you read will say it depends on who you sympathize with is how you think Perry Klein and really all of them

were viewed. So I read articles that said that he was cheated and articles that said he wasn't cheated. And I think the family's still today, like, while there is a piece, which we'll get to, they still disagree over Perry Klein's role. Okay. So, but Perry Klein was married to McCoy. Actually, Aza Harman McCoy's widow, right? Yeah, Martha. And so he had lost 5,000 acres, really? Yeah. That's how much he was forced by the court to cede to Devil Lance for allegedly cutting his timberland. Yeah. So he had a retribution in mind as an attorney. Right. So when the Hatfields executed the three McCoy boys, Perry Klein used it as a chance,

depending on how you look at it, he either used it as a chance for retribution or his family allegiance was stirred up. And he being an attorney had contacts with the governor, Governor Bunker, I believe, of Kentucky and said, Governor, there's some horrible stuff going on down here that's being perpetrated by some West Virginians against some law-abiding Kentuckians. Yeah. And you guys need to do something about it. And it worked, actually. Yeah, they reinstated the charges and basically put out awards on the head, bounties on the head, arrest bounties, that is, of the Hatfields, including six feet of Devil and 180 pounds of hell himself. Yeah, Devil Lance himself, his sons, some of the family allies, like his uncle,

Jim Vance. I think there were 20 men who had indictments against them. And since they had indictments against them and they were hanging out in West Virginia, they had bounties on their head. And one of the bounty hunters, the main bounty hunter who came around, it was a problem that they had bounties on their head because any crackpot who wanted to could come and take shots at those guys. And it was happening quite a bit. Yeah, they wanted to collect some dough. Right. But there's one guy in particular who is a real thorn in their side. His name was Mad Frank Phillips. And Frank Phillips was a bounty hunter extraordinaire. He was about as legally gray as you can get and still not be just on the darker side of the spectrum.

And he made it basically his personal war to get as many Hatfields across the river into Kentucky as he could. So he would carry out raids on the Hatfield stronghold in West Virginia and basically just abduct Hatfields and bring them to Kentucky so that they could be put in the Pike County Jail. And while he did this, he was also executing people left and right. Like Jim Vance, he shot and wounded, saw that he just wounded them, walked around from behind, and while Vance was begging for his life, shot him in the head. And like this is Frank Phillips MO, he would execute you just as soon as he would capture you. Yeah, and this was becoming a big deal in the press at this point. Newspaper started carrying the stories and became

by all accounts like national news and legend. Like it was everyone knew about the Hatfields and McCoys by this point. Right. And the press apparently very much sided with the McCoys. They painted the Hatfields to seem like backwards murderous rednecks who just caused trouble everywhere. They went and painted the McCoys as innocent law abiding victims of this whole feud. And the whole legend, like you're saying, like this is all, it all begins about right here when there was what amounts to almost a war between Kentucky and West Virginia, because Frank Phillips kept going and getting people and bringing them back to Pike County. And West Virginia got involved and the two governors were basically standing toe to toe almost about to go invade, send

national guard troops in across the border. But instead they left it to the courts. And actually this court case about whether it was legal or not for Frank Phillips to have abducted the Hatfields and taken them to the Kentucky jail, reached the Supreme Court actually. Which is pretty amazing. It is. And the Supreme Court said, you know what, it probably is illegal what happened, but Kentucky is a sovereign state and there's really nothing West Virginia can do about it. So go ahead and try them. But before the trial actually, and while these abductions were going on, these raids carried out by Frank Phillips, the Hatfields, like I said, it was a big deal of them that there were bounty hunters out to get

them. And they came up with a plan to just end the whole thing in 1888. A murderous killing spree is what they came up with in January of 1888. A group of Hatfields said we're going to attack Randolph McCoy and his entire family. Cap, little Cappy, double aunt's son, and an ally to Jim Vance kind of led the way. And they ambushed them at their home on New Year's Day, 1888. Randolph actually escaped, which is, they were kind of coming after him and he's the only one who escaped. Well, they were coming after the whole family. Yeah. Like their whole intention was to just murder this whole family and get rid of the problem. Yeah. And Randolph was the key guy, he actually got away. His son, Calvin, daughter, Alephair were killed in what they called crossfire,

but they were, you know, let's get real. And his wife, Sarah, suffered a crushed skull. She was beaten so badly. Yeah. So they set the house on fire. Alephair opened the door to put the fire out and she was shot and killed. And then her mom, Sarah, wanted to come and comfort her dying daughter. And when she came out, they beat her head in with the butt of a pistol. I think Cap Hatfield did. And then Calvin provided cover for his dad and ran to attract their gunfire so his dad could get away. And it worked, but Calvin died as a result. And then two other daughters, McCoy daughters survived. So Randolph and two daughters survived this attack on his family. And this was when it was like, if the press wasn't paying attention before, now they

really were. And basically everybody was outraged at this. And like this legend, Chuck, is 100 something years old, right? Yeah. And it's easy to kind of see these people as caricatures or, you know, just historic. But when you think about what the Hatfields plan to do and tried to do to the McCoys, in that case on New Year's 1888. Yeah, the New Year's Massacre is what it was known as. That's like objectively despicable, no matter when it happened. Going after an entire family to kill them? Yeah, to wipe out a legal entailment, you know? Yeah, it's fair to say. It is. And it really kind of brings home like the actual humanity of all of this, you know? Yeah. So it went all the way to the Supreme Court and they decided, you know what, these Hatfields

should be tried. And in 1889, they were tried and eight of the Hatfields and their supporters were sentenced to life in prison. And one, Ellison Mounts, who people think is the son of Ellison Hatfield. And his first cousin? Yeah, was actually sentenced to death. And the one issue here was a lot of people now think he was a kind of escape goat because he was mentally challenged and maybe an early false confession happened. Right, exactly. And he actually really, his was, if he didn't do it, or even if he did, he really got screwed over by the prosecution. They said that if he confessed and cooperated that he would get a lighter sentence, when really he was the only one who confessed and he was the only one who was hanged. Yeah. So, and his dying words,

I think, were the Hatfields made me do it. And they hung him. Yeah. And there were no public executions at the time, but that did not stop hundreds of people, thousands even, from coming out and watching anyway. Right. So it was a public execution. And what's odd though is the, so 10 men had been captured by Frank Phillips and had been indicted and tried. And nine of them got life in prison. Ellison Mounts was hung. And this was apparently enough to, I guess, mollify Randall McCoy. At first, I think he tried to like rail against the verdict, but ultimately, it was enough to just calm him down. And he went and lived a quiet life, quiet haunted life as a ferry operator, I think, and lived to like age 88. Yeah. And about a year later,

it was when the families both said, enough is enough. It's called a truce. And from, I think it was an 11-year period, almost 24 people were killed in both families. Wow. Like close to two dozen folks over an 11-year period. That's legit. Yeah. That's a family feud right there. That's a big feud. And Develance lived to a ripe old age too. He lived to, I think, 83 or something like that. 73. That's not that old. Well, he was born again at 73. I think he lived into his 80s. Oh, really? But he was paranoid for the rest of his life because I think there were still bounties on his head. So he moved to an island and carried a rifle with him at all times for the rest of his life. Well, if you look at pictures of the families, they all had their

guns. I mean, that's what you did back then. Yeah. But it's funny to see a picture of like 20 people and 12 of them are brandishing weapons. That's right. Right? Yeah. In the one photo that will ever be taken of them, they've got their gun out too. So since then, they've been all over the place in pop culture. We mentioned family feud. There was an Abbott and Costello movie in 1952. Buster Keaton did a movie too. Oh, really? Happy old McCoy. Yeah. He was on, oh, not Looney Tunes. Excuse me, Mary Melodies. Big distinction, but still Bugs Bunny. Nowadays, there are even some medical professionals who think that there was a condition that the McCoys had that led them to be violent.

What? It's called Von Hippel Lindau disease. And these geneticists study dozens of McCoy descendants and said they have a really high rate of this disease. It's inherited, it's rare, produces tumors in the eyes, ears and pancreas. And a notable side effect is high blood pressure, racing heartbeat and increased aggressive behavior, increased fight or flight hormones. And it was the McCoys that may have had that because from everything I've read, it seemed like the Hatfields would have been the one to have that. Wow. Maybe I'm a victim of contemporary press bias, media bias. You got anything else? I got nothing else. There's other stuff. There's plenty of stuff that I'm

sure we didn't hit. And you should go read some of the cool books written about this stuff. I got one more thing actually. Oh, here it comes. World War II, Life magazine used the families as a way to unite America's war effort by featuring them in a big photo spread. The Hatfields and McCoys, like working together in factories for World War II. That's awesome. Yeah. And they, I think they even met recently and like, they're still out there and they're still meeting and talking about this and disagreeing, friendly disagreements on people like Perry Klein and who's the other guy? Mad Mad Munt. What was it? Mad Frank Phillips. Mad Frank Phillips. Who, remember I said he was legally gray? Yeah. He married a McCoy who ended up,

who had had a baby with John C. Hatfield. They ran off together and got married. Yeah. Frank Phillips and Nancy McCoy and ended up being prosperous bootlegers in the region. Wow. Well, and there was also a spurned romance too that led to tensions. I forgot about that. Yeah, Rosanna McCoy and John C. Hatfield. Yeah, they had a little trist. And a child together, but the child died, I think aged eight months from measles. But he kicked her to the curb before that. And then went and married her cousin Nancy. Although there were no curbs back then. He kicked her to the riverbank. To the creek side. Yeah. Again, we could probably keep doing this for another 45 minutes,

but we're not. If you want to know more about Hatfields and McCoys, just go search it in your favorite search engine. And since I said search engine, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this just a nice little email of thanks from a nice person. Okay. Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I'm a young 30 something who lives in Burwin, Illinois. I just recently started listening to podcasts and came across how stuff works in you guys. I'm a nerd at heart and your podcast feeds my inner beast. I listened to you on my way to work on a train at sounds like Dr. Seuss at work again. And then on my way home from work. I'm so addicted to learning new things, scrolling through the feed is exhilarating

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