Crossdressing Bankrobber Caught

Well, that was fast! The crossdressing bankrobber reported on here yesterday has been captured. Troy Lear of Brodhead is being held at Madison County detention center on three counts of 1st degree robbery, having confessed to the robberies of a bank in Berea, a Danville Check Exchange, and a Richmond hotel. According to WTVQ-TV's report:

Surveillance pictures taken at the scene show the suspect wearing a wig, a green coat with fur trim and makeup. The pictures also show the suspect using a silver semi-automatic handgun to rob the bank.

We had a witness that was at the scene that got a tag number that identified the vehicle," Chief Gregory said.

Police were able to use that tag number to track down the suspect's vehicle at a Berea KFC on Friday.

Crossdressing Bankrobber

Does Central Kentucky have a crossdressing serial robber? On Thursday, a man in drag entered Cumberland Valley National Bank & Trust on Big Hill Road in Berea, brandishing a handgun and demanding money.

The robber, who got away, was described as a tall thin white man, about 6 foot 2, probably in his 30s. Part of the money was recovered after he dropped some of it on the way to his getaway car.

Two other recent robberies have taken place in Richmond and Danville, by a similar man wearing women's clothing.

Prisoners Burn Northpoint

Friday night, a riot erupted at Burgin's Northpoint Prison, resulting in four injured and the building moderately damaged by fire. According to the Associated Press, "Officials would not say what caused the rioting".

According to a reader post made to a WLEX-TV news report:

"I have a brother there. I spoke with him at approx. 8 o'clock an he described it as hell breaking loose. It seems that the inmates that have become irate are angry because they feel that the eating conditions are deplorable which are causing the inmates to become sick. however the alternative is to purchase their food from the canteen which is being raised constantly by it's vendor Aramark. Leaving the inmates unable to purchase the vending food and they are angry and hungry".

The Danville Advocate-Messenger is reporting that the prison had been on lockdown since Tuesday, when one group of inmates assaulted two others. On Friday, some inmates started setting fires in trash cans as a sign of protest. It's also being reported that some prisoners were allowed to smoke cigarettes, and that this could also be blamed for their having access to matches. (Great. The anti-smoking fanatics among us will probably have a field day with that one.)

Interestingly, it's being reported that the kitchen and canteen were totally destroyed, and that it seemed to be the centerpiece of the arson attack. This may or may not lend credence to that WLEX reader comment about the riot being related to intolerable food quality. Still other sources are claiming the melee was racially motivated.


Northpoint has a pretty interesting history. According to their website's "About us" page, it was originally constructed as the Kentucky state mental hospital. In 1941, the Pentagon assumed control of the facilities and made it a military institution for Army soldiers suffering from psychiatric illness. Towards the close of the war, the site became a compound to contain Nazi POWs, probably including some for Operation Paperclip, a then-classified program to recruit Nazis into service for our own military-industrial complex. The Government renamed the site "Darnell Hospital" for their purposes, not sure why.

The Kentucky Department of Corrections took control of the property (which consists of 551 acres and approximately 50 buildings) in 1983 and it became Northpoint, a medium-security institution with a stated capacity of 1,256 inmates.

I'm also a little confused about the prison's whereabouts. News stories alternately refer to it as being in Burgin or Danville, and Google Maps actually lists it as being in both. Northpoint's website gives their address as being 710 Walter Reed Road in Burgin, yet Google Maps clearly shows that 710 Walter Reed Road is actually at a halfway point between the two, closer to Faulconer. Chalk it up to vaguely-defined rural boundaries, I reckon.


There's a cemetery on Northpoint's sprawling grounds, dating back to the Darnell days. According to findagrave, only two of the graves are identified with names and dates, and that there used to be an abandoned cremation oven on the premises until approximately 1982. From geneaological records, we do know some of the names of the many people interred here, which findagrave also has available here.

The Sherley Family Plot

Recently spent another day on safari, deep in the heart of darkest Cave Hill, just before a rainstorm of Biblical proportions dropped on my head.

Visited the Sherley family plot, which has a doorway-to-nowhere portal that I find very interesting for a lot of reasons, probably deeply ingrained in childhood pop culture imprinting of walking through magical doorways (The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Trek, Land of the Lost, etc.) and maybe a few past lives as well.

Z.M. Sherley's grave is also very eye-catching, being a roughly hewn round-ish boulder with his name spelled out in copper appliques in an exquisite font. Z.M. Sherley's name is a memorable one to local historians, not just as a Civil War figure, but for his involvement with U of L's Medical Department and The American Printinghouse for the Blind, for the ferryboat named after him, and for his philanthropic contributions that helped maintain and beautify Cave Hill Cemetery itself during his lifetime.

According to the book Gould's History of River Navigation by Emerson W. Gould, Z.M. Sherley had an identical twin named Thomas, and so identical were they that not even Thomas' wife could tell them apart. Thomas drowned in the Mississippi River while transporting cattle via barge.

Meanwhile, George Douglass Sherley's grave - a large stone cross laying flat on the ground - has a great inscription: "Whatever is, is Best". It immediately struck me as almost Buddhist-like in its transcendent acceptance, but I did a little research and found it's actually quoting a Rosicrucian poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

I know there are no errors
In the great Eternal plan,
And all things work together
For the final good of man.
And I know when my soul speeds onward,
In its grand Eternal quest,
I shall say as I look back earthward,
Whatever is, is best.

George Douglass Sherley was a writer and poet who attended Centre College in Danville, and authored several books including The Valley of Unrest, The Inner Sisterhood, and A Spray of Kentucky Pine.

400 Mile Yard Sale Across Kentucky

I live for yard sales, flea markets, junk stores, auctions, trading posts, antique malls, and such. And in this economy, "secondary market" stuff is quickly becoming primary.

So it should come as no surprise that you'll find me somewhere in all the hubbub of the 400 Mile Yard Sale across Kentucky.

The sale follows Highway 68 (though there's always plenty more yard sales going on in the periphery each year) from Maysville to Paducah and hitting all points in between - including Paris, Lexington, Nicholasville, Wilmore, Harrodsburg, Danville, Gravel Switch, Lebanon, Campbellsville, Glasgow, Bowling Green, Cadiz, Hopkinsville, and Benton. Yee-haw!


(By the way, Catclaw Theatre is having a yard sale this weekend at 2107 Lakeland Road in the Anchorage area of Louisville. Come on down and say howdy! And if you can't make it, make a donation!)

The Dollhouse Museum

Next time you're anywhere near Danville, KY, swing by to check out their swanky new Dollhouse Museum.

Even if you're an all-American he-man red-blooded male who thinks dollhouses are girly stuff, give it a chance and prepare your senses for the disquietingly vertiginous feeling of walking amongst expertly prepared miniature buildings and people. It's like you're Godzilla walking through Tokyo (except Tokyo looks more like Little House on the Prairie or Wuthering Heights).


Actual dolls don't interest me so much, but I'm obsessed with miniatures in general (I know, I know, I'm obsessed with a lot of things), like the teensy-tiny pictures on the wall, the miniscule frying pans and ears of corn no bigger than a pinky fingernail on the tiny kitchen tables. If you haven't really paid attention to craft miniatures, like in the minatures aisle at Hobby Lobby, you probably don't get what I'm talking about. Immerse yourself in this museum and you might develop the same fascination with ever-diminutive size and scale and proportion.

They have a playroom for kids to actually get hands-on with some more durable examples of dollhouses, and a gift shop filled with books about dollhouse culture and miniature culture.

They're at 344 Swope Avenue and you can call 'em at 859-583-8000 if you get lost on the way. As Melvin Goins used to say on his WSKV radio show, "Tell 'em *I* sent you *by!*"