MAX.

“…it would probably take days and days and days of all the stuff that went on. I know the federal judge back there, when they, with the sheriff and all them, you know, everybody, like you said, there was instant justice. Jimmy Renfro had bodyguards on him. He had a guy named Max, I can’t remember Max’s last name, at the time, that killed four or five people for him, crap like that.

All the judges and everything was all in, all in it. I remember, they had a trial, they had a trial and they went up to Louisville with the trial, and the judge, the federal judge said if he had his way about it, that he would take Bell County and fence it off and make it all one federal prison it was so bad.” (excerpt from 2019 interview with former CIA contractor and colleague of Jim Renfro and John Asher)

April 16, 1988 Courier-Journal
March 31, 1989 Lexington Herald-Leader
Curley was a petty criminal, not a murderer.
July 23, 1988 Lexington Herald-Leader

“Handy used to have a bodyguard, and it was rumored that Handy ordered him to kill an ex-convict who had served his time and was released from prison and whom Handy felt threatened by. I can’t remember the man’s name, but he drowned in Laurel Lake and it was ruled an accident even though the man had no history of fishing or swimming there.” (confidential source, 2016)

G.M.C. II is allegedly deceased.

The Cover-up: connections and coincidences in the Betty Carnes murder

As it would turn out, Vance Mills’ name would be mentioned one time in all the court proceedings against Delmar Partin for the murder of Betty Carnes. What I’m sure most court spectators heard as an innocuous statement, I see it as a gateway to the truth as to what really happened to this 37-year-old mother.

Betty Carnes’ husband, Phillip Carnes, had just begun working at a store owned by Vance Mills a few weeks before his wife’s killing.

Phillip Carnes’ boss at this store was Donnie Baker. The same Donnie Baker who had been charged with hiring out the Black Horse Lounge arson hit in 1989; Baker was out on appeal when Betty was murdered. Approximately a month and a half after the murder, Donnie Baker’s appeal for the arson conviction was rejected and he was sent to prison for 15 years. At least it was so ordered at the time.

Now, before his wife’s murder, Phillip may have been having employment issues due to a bad back. He states in court transcripts he had held a couple of different jobs within the last year or so, and that his new job was with “Judy Baker’s husband.” It does sound like his potential to earn income was being affected by his health. He testified under questioning by Delmar Partin’s attorney, Gary Crabtree, that:

“Donnie had leased the store off of Vance Mills…I talked to him about it and he said he would let me try it because I have, I have quite a bit of problems with my back and I have certain problems about if I stand for a while or sit for a while, or if I do certain things, you know…I told him [Baker] I would try, I would try that job to see if I could do that job.”

Incidentally, I would also discover Judy Baker and Betty Carnes had been close friends at one time; Judy Baker used to work at Tremco. However, Judy was not working at Tremco when Betty was killed, and Judy stated their friendship had cooled after the birth of Judy’s son.

Phillip Carnes’ connection to Vance Mills and Donnie Baker is significant, as well as his wife’s friendship with Donnie Baker’s spouse, Judy. Remember, Mills had been under investigation for importing “large quantities of marijuana and cocaine from Mexico to the United States.” It’s very possible that as Judy Baker’s friend and confidant, Betty may have been privy to many secrets concerning Vance Mills and Donnie Baker’s ventures together.

At any rate, Phillip Carnes, who was already having employment trouble, begins a new career at a store owned and ran by hardened criminals. Sounds like something law enforcement should look into, doesn’t it?

They did not.

Remember, all that is required in a cover-up is for people like the Kentucky State Police and Tom Handy to not investigate, that which they should have investigated. I can confidently say the Betty Carnes murder was covered-up and this is why:

Tom Handy, the man who prosecuted Delmar Partin for a crime he did not commit, never told anyone, not the judge, not the defense attorneys, and not the jury, that Phillip Carnes’ boss, Donnie Baker, was a violent criminal for hiring out the arson of the Black Horse Lounge in June of 1989.

Tom Handy further participated in a cover-up when he did not disclose Phillip Carnes’ boss, Donnie Baker, was working as a criminal informant for his office and the Kentucky State Police during the time of Betty’s murder. The Knox County Commonwealth Attorney wrote an affidavit to the Henderson County court in the spring of 1994 advocating Baker’s early release from prison because of that relationship. It worked. Baker was relieved of his 15 year sentence for arson-for-hire and was paroled a little over a year later.

Even Delmar Partin’s own defense attorney, Gary Crabtree, had to have known about Donnie Baker’s violent past and relationship with Tom Handy: Michael Goforth, Gary Crabtree’s law partner, was Donnie Baker’s attorney who prepared the document for shock probation for the arson conviction which included the Commonwealth’s affidavit. This all while the Crabtree and Goforth firm is supposed to be providing the best representation they can offer to Delmar.

Remember what the son of the prosecutor in the arson case said about Donnie Baker:

“I know that ring that was involved in that Black Horse thing, it was a Eastern Kentucky group that had moved over and was using the Black Horse as a front. And they were a pretty dangerous group…we were pretty convinced at that point that they were, that there was, they were at least planning some sort of assassination attempt on my father, to the point where the police wanted him to wear a bulletproof vest into court…”

At the scene of the crime…

I wish I could say this was the only disturbing twist to the story, but what I’m about to tell you? That’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Donnie Baker was with the coroner Jerry Garland, at the Tremco factory for hours that night while the victim was missing, and before the body was found. Let me re-iterate that: a violent criminal was with the Knox County coroner (who, incidentally, would never be called to testify) that night at the factory while Betty was missing, hours before her body would be discovered. One eyewitness told me:

“Everybody was wondering what Jerry Garland was doing there when there hadn’t been a body. And Donnie, you know, he had no business whatsoever cause he wasn’t a cop, or a coroner, or nothing…”

Why do you think Donnie Baker and Jerry Garland were there together? Jerry Garland, an oil man, was far from being pure as the driven snow. His partner in G&M Oil was none other than Vance Mills. Rumors of prostitution and gambling at Garland’s gas stations were rampant, at one point even earning him charges of promoting gambling.

Are you still inclined to believe Delmar Partin committed this crime?

Noteworthy financial transactions after the Betty Carnes murder

It’s possible these transactions were entirely coincidental in regards to the timeframe of Betty’s murder. Therefore it is also possible they were not coincidental. The financial players are significant, the timing is significant and in the interest of scrutiny, I think notable enough to mention here.

A little over a month after Betty’s murder, Donnie and Judy Baker buy a pretty expensive property in Lancaster, Kentucky:

And then, nine months later, it appears they sell the same property to Vance Mills’ and Jerry Garland’s oil company, G&M Oil, for a profit of what appears to be approximately $27,000.

Coincidence? Entirely plausible. Did the original loan to purchase the property come from Vance Mill’s bank, American Fidelity? That’s another great question we may eventually be able to answer.

The other financial transactions that left me scratching my head have to do with Tom Handy, the prosecutor himself. Handy owned the Holly Bay Marina on Laurel Lake with his brother. Within three months of the murder trial ending, owners of a neighboring marina had drawn up papers incorporating the name “Holly Bay Marina and Resort,” indicating the property was no longer or was soon to be no longer in the Handys’ possession.

Now I’m sure this is all entirely coincidental, but it turns out the family who would succeed the Handys as owners of Holly Bay, also sold explosives under the name of a business called “Farmer’s Supply.” That is not that eyebrow-raising; being in coal country, explosives are necessary. What is fascinating is that trial transcripts indicate the original barrel that held Betty’s body would end up being taken to a magazine at Farmer’s Supply. (A magazine was where explosives were held in storage.) Why was the barrel taken here of all places? What, if anything, was in the barrel when it was taken there?

Did Jerry Garland own this property and merely lease it to Farmer’s Supply? Note: J.M. Hall is kin to these business owners:

Even though the owners of the neighboring marina (and Farmer’s Supply) obviously have experience running a boat dock, they still paid a $50,000 “consultant on goodwill” fee to Tom Handy himself after they took over his family’s marina.

Again, I’m sure all these connections are coincidental. But notable, nonetheless, just for the sheer fact all have some uncanny link to the murder of Betty Carnes.

Lingering questions someone needs to ask

What father allows his teenage daughter to make a missing persons report about her mother, his wife, and doesn’t even accompany her to the police station?

What father would let his teenage daughter accompany two other, defenseless women, in the middle of the night, to a man’s home he believed kidnapped his wife, to accuse that man of such a crime? What father would do that? I don’t think any parent would do that. I think Phillip Carnes knew from the start Delmar Partin was never a threat to anyone. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

 

The good, the bad, the ugly: the Delmar Partin jury

I was mystified how any jury could convict a man with no physical evidence, no time to commit the murder, and clearly contradictory statements given by testifying witnesses.

I felt the jury had somehow been compromised.

Because I was not from the area, I knew I would have a hard time getting the people of Knox County to open up to me about any relationships these jurors might have had with people involved in this case. Under voir dire, prospective jury members are supposed to disclose any connections or ties to the defendant, the victims family, the Commonwealth Attorney’s office, law enforcement, and witnesses:

People v. Cangiano, 131 Misc. 2d 930, 931 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1986) “One of the basic functions of voir dire is to determine whether any of the prospective jurors is related to or knows one of the parties or lawyers in the case or a prospective witness.”

So I went another direction.

First, the jury qualification form asks the potential jurors, ” Has a claim for $500 or more ever been made against you or a member of your family?” Mr. Ken Long had marked “no,” but court papers show he and his wife filed for bankruptcy in 1991, with the case being closed in September of 1994, about a month after the end of the murder trial.

When prospective jurors gathered at the courthouse, the judge, Roderick Messer, under voir dire questioning, asked potential jury members if they, or a family member, have ever participated in a criminal case either as a witness, a defendant, or in any other capacity.

How many of them were truthful?

Take Joseph Kush. Married to C. Faye Kush, who was listed as a defendant on a federal tax evasion case filed in March of 1994, Kush would be chosen as a jury member for Delmar Partin’s trial in August of 1994.

Or Christine Branstutter Smith, also chosen as a jury member for the Partin trial. Her brother, Lewis Branstutter, was charged with attempted murder and robbery in 1984, then later was indicted in a fuel-tax fraud scheme in 1990. The December 11, 1990 Corbin Times Tribune newspaper states that the indictments in the scheme “resulted from a two-year investigation by the Kentucky State Police; the Internal Revenue Service; Tom Handy, commonwealth’s attorney for Knox and Laurel counties; and the U.S. attorney’s office.” Didn’t Tom Handy recognize the Branstutter name at any point during the jury selection process?

Neither Kush nor Branstutter Smith disclosed to the judge or attorneys during voir dire that they had relatives who indeed had been, or were, defendants in criminal cases. Why? In the end, these two jury members would be chosen as alternates and would not end up deciding Delmar Partin’s fate. However, it is still very troubling why they would not disclose these facts under voir dire when required to do so.

Juror Glenda Lickliter, however, was a seated jury member. Not only was she not truthful under voir dire questioning, ultimately leading to her seat on the jury, did she purposefully omit information on her jury qualification form in order to help secure that seat on the jury?

The jury qualification form asks potential jurors to “list all members of your immediate family by relationship.” Lickliter lists two daughters and a son.  But there is one son missing from her list: court records show he was charged with theft by unlawful taking in 1989. (At that time, he was living with his parents, according to the Kentucky State Police file.) Then, in December of 1993, he was charged again, this time with “theft by failure to make required disposition.” Why wasn’t his name included on the jury qualification form with his brother and sisters? Why didn’t Lickliter disclose this son had been involved in criminal cases when questioned under voir dire? 

Furthermore, Judge Roderick Messer asks potential jurors, “Have you or any of your family members been the victim of a crime?”

The same son that Lickliter failed to disclose to the judge and attorneys was involved in criminal cases, was also the victim in a “terroristic threatening” case filed in November of 1993. Lickliter never disclosed that information either.

It was clear Delmar Partin’s right to a fair jury trial was denied. Disclosing this information under voir dire would not have necessarily disqualified Lickliter from serving on the jury. What it did do, however, was prevent Delmar Partin’s defense attorneys from probing potential biases she may have had against someone in Partin’s position: biases formed by her own experiences she may have had in dealing with her son.

It would be three years after my initial research into Glenda Lickliter’s voir dire answers that I would unearth the most fascinating discovery of all about this juror: she and her husband are named in one Billy Don Giles’ obituary: they are called a “special brother and sister in Christ,” indicating a close friendship with Mr. Giles. Mr. Giles’ sister is Bonnie Sue Giles Anders, best friends with Karla Espinal, girlfriend-turned-federal-informant to well-known drug kingpin Jerry Allen Lequire, who spent 30 years in prison for a Columbian cocaine smuggling operation. You can learn more about Giles-Anders’ role in Jerry Allen Lequire’s formidable enterprise that amassed some $280,000,000 (never found), here.

Even though the connection between the Lickliter family and the Giles is stunning, it was not something that voir dire questioning would have predicated she disclose. Still, this connection is fascinating to me, because I had already started to discover other connections to both Lequire’s and Drew Thornton’s drug empires to the rats’ nest I had stumbled on in southeast Kentucky.

A good juror…

I had the pleasure of speaking with another juror by the name of Geraldine McNeil, who provided insight into the jury deliberation portion of the trial. Here is an excerpt of our conversation:

“I felt it was wrong the whole time, and I was one lone person and I let them push me. I am so sorry. I worried about that forever after it was over, and I didn’t know what to do about it or anything. And I let the rest of them push me to get out of there because they wanted to leave and didn’t want to stay. I was young, I had no jury experience, and if I did wrong, I am so sorry. But I firmly believed that he was not guilty.

I asked her if anyone else in the jury room argued for his innocence, and she said she couldn’t remember, but stated, “I felt like everybody was against me. I felt I should have done something or said something, and I didn’t.”

Put yourself in Geraldine McNeil’s shoes. Was a lonely position to be in.

What if Geraldine McNeil had had an ally in her fight for Partin’s innocence? What if fellow juror Glenda Lickliter’s seat had been filled by someone who was honest under voir dire questioning, someone who didn’t want to send an innocent man to prison, someone who was interested in the truth and not getting home to their own bed? Partin’s fate would most likely have been very, very different than we find it today.

25 years of a man’s life has been taken from him, dishonestly and unjustly.

The problem with wrongful convictions in southeast Kentucky goes well beyond corrupt police officers. This corruption is at the very core of the justice system in southeast Kentucky. How many juries in Knox and Laurel counties over the last 44 years were comprised of people who were not truthful under voir dire questioning? I would wager it is more the norm, than the exception.

The son of Robert Cato made an interesting point in his father’s obituary. (Robert Cato was a defense attorney, at times to organized crime figures. He was also a very good friend of Tom Handy and Judge Roderick Messer.) Cato’s son said this about his father:

“He enjoyed the fact that when you picked a jury in Eastern Kentucky, last names mean something.”

 

 

Depraved Indifference: discrepancies in the Betty Carnes’ autopsy

Below is the Kentucky Missing Persons Report submitted by Kim Carnes, daughter of victim Betty Carnes of Barbourville, KY. Note that the daughter indicated the victim wore dentures.

Now compare the missing persons report to the appropriate section of the autopsy:

My hope is these documents speak for themselves and cast further doubt on those responsible for this investigation and prosecution.

Writer and author Matt McGough said it best regarding an unrelated murder case and the corruption of law enforcement:

“‘Covering up’ makes it sound like…something active is required of those detectives to cover something up. A coverup doesn’t require anything active. A coverup requires refusing to investigate what is obvious you have a responsibility to investigate.” (protected under Fair Use doctrine)

*Please note: all records are available to the public via FOIA requests to the appropriate agencies

Depraved Indifference, Part 2: The autopsy of Betty Carnes…or was it?

“How can this possibly be another body?”

Someone once told me George Nichols, the former chief medical examiner of Kentucky, was a grade A asshole. So I can’t say his response to my question, “Could the body of Betty Carnes have been switched?” was out of the norm for his personality. But even though I told Dr. Nichols if by small chance this did happen, it would have been through no fault of his own or his office, he was still indignant at my question.

The first indication something seemed screwy with the Carnes autopsy was the examiner’s statement: “The body is that of a…white female appearing to be older than her offered age of 37 years.” Noteworthy because Betty was a beautiful, desirable woman; Delmar was not the first man to be romantically linked to the married mother of three. The autopsy went as far to call the pubic hair “focally gray.” Delmar emphatically tells me, “She did not have the body of an older woman, she was in excellent health and shape.” He says her hair color was the same color all over, and that he never understood the “focally gray” comment in the autopsy.

The height of the victim is also missing in the report. The body also lacked defensive injuries, which could be explained if she was knocked out from behind. But I couldn’t explain what I discovered next.

Do the dental records match?

George Nichols’ autopsy report states the body’s “natural anterior dentition is present and is in excellent repair.” In other words, the body’s front teeth were natural and in good shape. But Delmar says Betty wore a partial front plate, and that her front teeth couldn’t have been natural. Nichols goes on to describe the tip of the tongue (drying) and notes blood is within the mouth. When I question Dr. Nichols’ about the false teeth, he is caught off-guard and says maybe he just missed it. Maybe, I think. I’m starting to get curious, though, how a renowned forensic medical examiner can make a mistake that large, especially when he detailed the inside of her mouth so well.

Dr. Nichols’ statements only beget new questions.

During our first and only telephone call, he mentions Walter Hopper, the coroner, asked his office to come retrieve the body. But Walter Hopper was not the coroner of Knox County!

Walter Hopper and his family did operate funeral homes. But according to trial transcripts, Betty’s body was not being held at the Hopper family’s funeral homes. The body was at Hampton’s Funeral Home in Barbourville; at the time there was no mortuary for the coroner’s office in Knox County.  I can’t explain Walter Hopper’s role in contacting the Kentucky Medical Examiner’s office when he had no official capacity to do so.

The Hopper name had been brought up to me before, by a woman who had worked with Betty. She told me she had heard a rumor: Charles Hopper of Hopper Funeral Home, and Betty were seen together at a nightclub in Cincinnati. Charles was Walter Hopper’s nephew.

I can’t help but feel there is a connection. Especially considering Charles Hopper’s mysterious death three days before Delmar’s trial for Betty’s murder began.

The last time I had any contact from George Nichols was after I emailed him to point out that Hopper was not, in fact, the coroner of Knox County at that time. I received a voicemail from him not long later:

This is Dr. Nichols. I’m calling you as you asked me to. I can tell you that I remember nothing more than what our discussion was. My notes that are available through the M.E. office do not reflect anything…much more than that since it was such time was removed. (?) And the only other person who would know more than that was David Jones, who was my executive assistant, who went and fetched the body and brought it back from London to…uh, um, uh, greater London Kentucky to uh, the Louisville office. David has since died. I gave his eulogy and he’s been buried. So. There’s no other available information. So. You can pursue this as much as you want, but you’ll, there’s nothing I can inform you of that I haven’t already informed you. Sorry. Period. Bye.”

Dr. Nichols’ voicemail message presents another problem for me: the body wasn’t located in London, Kentucky! It was in Barbourville, a forty minute drive and another county away. Barbourville is not a part of the “greater London Kentucky area.”

When I first brought these irregularities with the autopsy to Nichols’ attention, he suggested there was a remedy for sorting it all out: they keep the DNA of every body autopsied on file at the medical examiner’s office. He requested I send him the information I had.

Below is a portion of the letter I sent him:

Dr. Nichols:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain why I think the wrong body may have been autopsied. I cannot stress enough this would have been through no fault of you or anyone in your office.

You asked me, “How can this possibly be a different body?”

You mention you knew about traffickers shipping drugs in dead bodies. The same people that can do that to a corpse would have no scruples about switching a body to get away with murder. When I show you the victim’s connection to an international organization that was using the ‘dead body scam’ to ship drugs, you’ll understand why the odd discrepancies in the autopsy are alarming to me.

I believed Nichols’ duty to truth and his profession would compel him to get to the bottom of the discrepancies.

I waited impatiently for a response. When none came, I emailed him to follow up. I called and left a message with his secretary. Still, no response. Only when I sent him the email about Hopper not being coroner did I finally receive the before-mentioned voicemail from him.

Discrepancies in the autopsy aside, my own interaction with Nichols leaves me unsettled. He wants me to believe the answers I seek are dead and buried with his executive assistant, David Jones. Unfortunately, David Jones passed away 10 days after I sent Nichols the follow-up email asking him to contact me concerning the information I sent him.

 

Depraved Indifference: the Murder of Betty Carnes and the Wrongful Conviction of Delmar Partin

When I began studying the case of the tragic 1993 murder of Betty Carnes in Barbourville, Kentucky, an interesting piece of information popped up early in my research. A local millionaire, seemingly without any close ties to the victim, displayed an unusual interest in the murder trial. The family of the accused, Delmar Partin, could not understand this businessman’s interest in the trial. I was intrigued. What was the connection between Vance Mills, owner of a local hotel, gas stations, coal companies and even a bank, and beautiful 37 year old factory worker, Betty Carnes?

What I would discover over the next several years would be adequately described by one interviewee as “a rats’ nest” that had been infesting southeast Kentucky for decades.

The first question I usually get asked when I try to talk to people about Partin’s wrongful conviction, is why and how did I get involved? The answer is, purely by chance. I was doing research for this blog when I read a newspaper article about the murder and trial, and it shocked me Partin had got convicted with no physical evidence, clearly not enough time to commit the crime, a tenuous motive and arrested after a mere two hour investigation.

Unfortunately, I have no formal experience in lawyering or investigating, and that hurts my credibility. Maybe that’s why I can’t find any help for Partin.  I’ve asked attorneys, private investigators, journalists, even law enforcement. But I don’t discount the fact more than one person in this cast of characters has ties to U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers, occupying the Commonwealth’s seat in the House of Representatives since 1980. Is it a coincidence the crime syndicate I would eventually learn about has been operating in southeast Kentucky for about as long?

The depravity of the individuals involved in this story doesn’t help my credibility. It’s hard to fathom people could be so vicious, so inhumane to other human beings… even harder to believe upstanding members of the community could be involved. When you hear stories like this, you hope the messenger is crazy, that people couldn’t possibly be so evil.

So, in the spirit of meeting crazy head-on, I’ll share one of my more eye-opening conversations with a man who knew some of these Kentucky organized crime characters intimately; in fact he was, at one time, under investigation with them by the FBI. A well-respected upstanding businessman who has given back generously to his community, I trust what he tells me. He was never charged in that investigation. He was horrified when he found out the extent of his associates’ crimes. He despised these men and the evil they did.

He was also a former CIA contractor.

He had mentioned a hit man (Max) that ran a Middlesboro mortuary during one of our conversations, and I decided to bring the subject up again. He responded,

“I’ll never forget that guy, I’ll never forget him. He was probably Renfro’s age at that time. I’ll never forget, Johnny Asher said to me one day, ‘We got it figured out back here. You kill a hog, we could never figure out how to get paid when he squeals. But we learned how to use every part of that hog when we’d kill him. But we could never figure out how to get paid for the squeal.’  I couldn’t figure that out for a long time. What in the heck does he mean by that?

“Then they had offered me, ‘If you ever die, we’ll give you a free funeral. If any of your friends ever die, we’ll give them free funerals.’ Well that’s almost unheard of. That’s real southern hospitality they showed me at the start. I didn’t know they was gonna take these people and stuff them full of guns and drugs and network them through the whole country. That’s what they got caught for. And they didn’t get jail for it! What you are dealing with, it’s pretty serious stuff.”

This is the crime syndicate I believe is responsible for Betty’s Carnes’ murder and the subsequent wrongful conviction of Delmar Partin.

This group also has ties to the unsolved murder of Richmond, Kentucky’s Monroe Brock, former owner of the well-known nightclub, “The Maverick.”

It’s hard to believe so many connections in this story are all coincidences.  At what point do we begin to question if there is, indeed a conspiracy?

Tom Handy, Commonwealth Attorney and Partin’s prosecutor, knew there were more likely suspects in the Betty Carnes’ murder case. Why were these suspects not investigated?