Man Goes Fishing, Catches Bison Skeleton

According to the Associated Press, a man named Charles Ruphard from Owensboro went on a fishing trip but instead wound up hauling home a giant intact bison skeleton.

Ruphard and his wife, Lee, went fishing June 10 and decided to walk along a river bank, which he declined to identify to protect the site. Ruphard told The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer his wife saw some bones sticking out of the bank about 10 feet from them and realized the bones were large.

"You could see places of bones sticking out for 7 or 8 feet, and we thought this could be interesting," Ruphard said.

William Silvia, a University of Kentucky animal science professor and researcher in the school's College of Agriculture, reviewed photos of the bones, then retrieved them. Silvia said the bones were a bison, and a colleague who is a state parks naturalist believes that the animal is less than 10,000 years old.

Two hundred years ago, Bison were plentiful in Kentucky, but became scarce in these parts around the very early 19th century. There are several efforts to reintroduce them to Kentucky, with herds at Big Bone Lick and Land Between the Lakes (pictured above.)

Kentucky is also home of the nation's largest bison-farming operations, the Kentucky Bison Company in Goshen.

Man Called Daveiss

Kentucky's Daviess County is named after Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, the Grand Master of Freemasonry in Kentucky. And no, that's not a typo - his name was actually spelled "Daveiss", despite it uniformly being misspelled as "Daviess" on everything from roads to schools to courthouses to entire counties. This would also suggest that the correct pronunciation of his name would be like "Davis" and not "Davies".

Daveiss was something of an eccentric sort, preferring to practice law dressed in the buckskin outfit of a frontiersman. He was the first lawyer west of the Appalachians to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and he wore his woodsman suit even there. Far from being appalled, at least some were apparently impressed with something about Daveiss: he ended up marrying Chief Justice John Marshall's sister Nancy while he was in town!

Daveiss became the U.S. District Attorney for Kentucky, and relentlessly pursued Aaron Burr. In 1806, Daveiss brought treason charges against him but Burr somehow managed to get those charges dismissed thanks to his slick attorney: Henry Clay.

Despite being opponents in the courtroom, Clay and Daveiss were brothers in the lodge: they were both fellow members of the Freemason Lexington Lodge #1 in Fayette County. (And Chief Justice John Marshall was also a Mason - the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia, in fact.)

Strangely, at the age of 47, Daveiss volunteered to fight with the Indiana militia in Tecumseh's War and was killed at the Battle of Tippecanoe. The Freemasons have erected a monument sign dedicated to him on the battlefield site.

Missing Hands (and other stuff)

With a topic like this, I thought maybe this would be a good occasion to use this image of Kali.

UnK reader "Old" posted a comment to yesterday's entry about the mysterious death of Secret Service agent Gary Joe Bergsen:

"I don't know if you know much about this, but there have been reports of people going missing in between Jackson County and Rockcastle County in recent years and if they find the bodies they generally find that their hands have been cut off."

Well, removal of a corpse's hands is an antiquated gangster-style method of making identification of a body difficult, apparently done by persons who forgot about toeprints, teeth, DNA, and other identifying factors. I don't know of any instances of it of occuring down in Jackson/Rockcastle counties, but I don't doubt that such cases exist. We tend to only hear about the ones where the bodies remain unclaimed and unidentified, on websites that keep track of John Does and Cold Case Files, such as:

Henderson: "The remains of a severely beaten young man who had his hands and feet cut off and his teeth knocked out remain unidentified despite an earlier, false identification in 2007 that named the victim as Indianapolis area resident Scott Michael Morris."

Madison County: "1993. White male between 25 and 30. Asphyxia from bag tied around head with belt. Missing hands. ESTIMATED YEAR OF BIRTH 1963-68."

Grant County: "1989. White male in 30's. 6 1/2 feet tall and weighed 220 lbs. Body found in tobacco barn. Hands cut off and multiple gunshot wounds, blow to the head. ESTIMATED YEAR OF BIRTH 1949-59."

Last November, I also reported on a case where the body of a male with hands and feet removed was found in a briar thicket in Daviess County.

The Labyrinth of Sacred Oak Grove

For some whose frame of reference for the word "labyrinth" would be a muppet musical starring David Bowie, a couple of quick notes:

A true labyrinth is an elaborately winding path, either one that is rendered as an image or one that is a literal 3-D path one can follow on foot.

Some labyrinths are not just open paths, but completely closed-in corridors or tunnels, such as the one built to hold the Minotaur in Greek mythology, or the one in which the detective monks find themselves lost in Umberto Eco's classic The Name of the Rose. In both stories, the heroes find their way out of the labyrinth by winding a thread by which one's steps can be retraced. (Incidentally, this is precisely where we derive the modern term "clue" - from "clew", an ancient nautical term for cord, rope, twine or thread.) Technically, these were maze-type labyrinths, with multiple path options branching off.

What we're concerned with here is the open-air path style of labyrinth, an excellent example of which can be experienced at the Sacred Oak Grove, an alternative-spirituality retreat in Sorgho, KY, Daviess County. The Labyrinth of Sacred Oak Grove is based on the one in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Chartres, France, built in 1201.

Sacred Oak Grove's mission statement is "to create, improvise and nuture a sacred transformational environment, in order to remember, validate and illuminate our divine connection". It's the project of Clarice O'Bryan, who describes herself on her website as "teacher, healer, dancer, intuitive masseuse".


There's also a smaller, but very interesting, open-path labyrinth at Hopscotch House, a women's retreat off Wolf Pen Branch in Prospect.

Skull found in Daviess County

A few days ago a human skull was found in the Sorgho Baptist Cemetery, off of State Route 1554.

Daviess County Sheriff Officers came to Sorgho and recovered the skull for analysis. According to County Coroner Bob Howe, the skull was that of a human male.

The sheriff's officials have ruled out foul play in the belief that the skull was "probably" related to construction going on nearby, resulting in an unmarked grave being accidentally stirred up. So, uh, where's the rest of this guy? Is anyone looking? And should foul play be ruled out so quickly when it's some dead guy's head we're talking about here?

According to WEHT-TV, Howe also provided an alternative to the construction theory, pointing out that it's a "common problem" for cemeteries to have gophers digging into old caskets and unearthing bones.

Er... okay. Gophers, he said. Gophers. Right.

Maybe a patella or a fragment of ulna, but do little gophers really unearth and cart off entire skulls? And at the risk of sounding repetitive and pedantic, where's the rest of this guy?

The Bridges of Kentucky

For those of you who have an unexplainable obsession with bridges - and I know you're out there - the "street view" feature on Google Maps can be quite a handy toy, allowing you to traverse Kentucky's bridges virtually.

Madison-Milton Bridge, Milton, KY

Cumberland River Falls Bridge, Whitley County, KY

Boonesboro Bridge, Boonesboro, KY

Sherman Minton Bridge, Louisville, KY

Clark Bridge, Louisville, KY

Gordon Hill Pike Bridge, Corbin, KY

Paducah Bridge, Paducah, KY

J.R. Miller Blvd Bridge, Owensboro, KY

Lake Barkley US 68 Bridge, Cadiz, KY

Clays Ferry Bridge, Clays Ferry, KY

Ironton-Russell Bridge, Ashland, KY

Roebling Suspension Bridge, Covington, KY


And while Google currently doesn't let us street-view the William H. Natcher Bridge in Daviess County, we do get to go underneath it, at least:

Cold Case File: Hands and Feet Removed

From the Kentucky State Police Cold Case Files:

Cold Case of Unknown White Male - Body found January 7, 1990.

Victim: Unknown white male, 5'6" to 5'7", 125—140 pounds, brown hair, eyes are possibly blue, hands and feet severed and were missing.

Location: 2 1/2 miles Northwest of Philpot, Daviess County, Kentucky.

Unidentified white male homicide victim was found nude, shot six (6) times, hands and feet severed. Victim had been severely beaten, some teeth knocked out. Hands and feet were never located and victim has never been identified.

Detectives are requesting help from the community or anyone who might have information on the Murder of Unknown White Male - 2. Anyone with information can contact the case officers Lt. Pat Isbill, Sgt. Jason Kirk, or Det. Marc Carter with the Kentucky State Police Post 16 Henderson, Kentucky at (270)-826-3312 or e-mail them at Lt. Pat Isbill, Sgt. Jason Kirk, or Det. Marc Carter.