Category: Danny Casolaro: The Octopus

Unknown Location: former East Tennessee limestone mine being repurposed for…?

Note the massive curtains to the left and right of the limestone pillar. This location, somewhere in East Tennessee, is purported to be a full two miles underground.

I was visited…

I’m almost certain one of the former officials I’ve been researching, writing about and criticizing, came to my hometown last December. He was waiting for me outside a grocery store, leaning on the car next to mine with his arms crossed, with the faintest hint of a smile.

He wished me “Merry Christmas.”

I was carrying a couple bags of groceries that took a few seconds to throw in my trunk. He was gone by the time I slipped behind the wheel.

I knew the experience was out of place, but it wasn’t until a short time later I realized he strongly resembled one of the men I’ve studied in newspaper articles and on websites, trying to piece together the deep and longstanding corruption within the southeast Kentucky justice system.

You don’t expect someone you’ve examined from afar to show up in a Kroger parking lot, waiting for you. He was uncannily fit for his age. His appearance, impeccable. Quite congenial in his greeting, he clearly had no fear coming face to face with me.

I too, exhibited no fear at the time because:

1. off-the-wall stuff has been happening to me for years now, and while I can pick up on it in a second, I’ve become a little desensitized to it and,

2. it just didn’t dawn on me until I left the parking lot who the man appeared to be.

It unnerved me. (I loathe saying that.) I basically put my whole blog on “unpublished” status over it. I’m trying to get the courage to repost all the posts.

Two quotes I have about ‘fear’ on my refrigerator:

  1. “What you are afraid to do, is a clear indication of the next thing you must do.”
  2. “Fear is wisdom in the face of danger.”

Any courage you can will my way, I deeply appreciate. Thanks for reading and sticking around.

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.