Kentucky KKK ordered to pay $2.5 Million

A few days ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $2.5. million dollar verdict against a Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group for the brutal beating of 16-year-old Jordan Gruver.

Gruver was attending the Meade County Fair in Brandenburg (a small town located right outside Fort Knox) when he was attacked by IKA (Imperial Klans of America) Klansmen who were there to hand out KKK recruiting leaflets. According to the SPLC's website:

The jury deliberated for nearly seven hours before delivering the verdict against IKA Imperial Wizard Ron Edwards and two former IKA members, Jarred Hensley and Andrew Watkins, both of whom served two years in state prison for assaulting Gruver. The SPLC earlier reached settlements with Watkins and one other Klansman.

The verdict included $1.5 million in compensatory damages — apportioned among Edwards, Hensley and Watkins — and $1 million in punitive damages against Edwards.

The SPLC argued in court that the Edwards and the IKA incited the racial hatred that led to the attack at the Meade County Fair in Brandenburg in July 2006.

Several Klansmen were at the fair on a recruiting mission when they spotted Gruver, who is a U.S. citizen of Panamanian descent. They threw whisky in his face and called him a "spic." Gruver, who stood 5-foot-3 and weighed just 150 pounds at the time, was surrounded, beaten to the ground and kicked by the Klansmen, one of whom was 6-foot-5 and 300 pounds. He was left with a broken jaw and arm, two cracked ribs and multiple cuts. He now suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome and has permanent arm and jaw injuries.

During the trial, the SPLC demonstrated how the IKA and Edwards fostered an atmosphere of hate and violence. The IKA's compound in Dawson Springs, Ky., is home to Nordic Fest, an annual music festival that brings together Klansmen, skinheads and members of other violent hate groups.

Edwards and Hensley's numerous tattoos were visible during the courtroom proceedings, including "Fuck S.P.L.C." [Southern Poverty Law Center], "Death to ZOG" [Zionist-occupied government] and "Aryan Justice." Hensley has the word “violence” tattooed on his knuckles, “murder” on his neck, and a swastika on his arm.

According to their own websites, the Kentucky IKA has taken part in Louisville meetings with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a frightening group which are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun:

"Members of the IKA including an Imperial Officer attended the June 16-17 Council of Conservative Citizens conference in Louisville, Kentucky. There were many exemplary speakers at this event (Don Black, Paul Fromm, Sam Dickson, Col. Robt. Slimp, Dr. Ed Fields, James Edwards, Dr. Brent Nelson, Kevin Lamb, and others) and there was music to enjoy as well. Don't let the word "Conservative" or the formal attire give you the wrong idea – these gentlemen aren't your typical conservative buffoons. The speeches given were absolutely revolutionary and quite informative. The IKA made many important contacts networking at the conference which will prove beneficial to future endeavors."

The IKA's Kentucky compound had previously been raided in 1999 by the FBI, the ATF, and the Kentucky State Police, and Edwards made a bizarre rant about it on his website here.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, SPLC is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups. You can help support them with your donations by clicking here.

Thought Screen Helmet

I first encountered Michael Menkin's Stop Alien Abductions site many years ago, and it doesn't seem to have changed much since then. The site offers instructions for a crudely conceived idea called a "Thought Screen Helmet" which somehow is supposed to protect you from alien abductions by wearing it on your head. According to the site:

The thought screen helmet scrambles telepathic communication between aliens and humans. Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can't communicate or control humans, they do not take them.

The thought screen helmet has effectively stopped several types of aliens from abducting or controlling humans. Only two failures from standard thought screen helmets have been reported since 1998 for people being abducted by aliens themselves. A third failure in 2005 was from a cloth helmet with a smaller area of Velostat which had a Velcro strap which was easily removed by an alien-human hybrid.

A fourth failure in 2007 was with a frail woman who had her helmet removed by two alien-human hybrids who snuck up behind her, tackled her and forcedly removed it. The helmet still works for people being abducted by aliens, but not by their alien-human hybrids who are now integrating into our societies.

I recall emailing the webmaster of this site around 2001 or so, inquiring how the helmet can protect the human brain from alleged telepathic control when it doesn't cover the entire head. Such "telepathic rays", if they really did exist, would be just as able to go through a person's face as the top of their head. In fact, it would be far easier for these rays to penetrate the face, because of the openings in the skull. The response I received was a very angry, hurt, lashing-out rant (in all capital letters) telling me I was obviously an idiot who knew nothing about the complex ways in which the alien-human hybrid conspiracy technology really worked. Okay, fair enough.

The photo shown here is one of Menkin's satisfied customers, captioned "Alien Abductee from Kentucky wearing a Thought Screen Helmet", and bearing this endorsement:

"Since trying Michael Menkin's Helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control. Now my thoughts are my own. I have achieved meaningful work and am contributing to society. My life is better than ever before. Thank you Michael for the work you are doing to save all humanity."

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.

Big Bone Lick

Big Bone Lick, so named because of the Pleistocene megafauna fossils found there, is one of Northern Kentucky's most popular attractions. The mammoths and other creatures are believed to have been drawn to this location by a prehistoric salt lick. Although the area is quite beautiful, and the fossils on display are amazing (including a 1,000 pound Mastodon skull), Big Bone Lick's primary claim to fame for most would seem to be the double-entendre of its name.

The Big Bone Lick state park is located in the small town of Big Bone in Boone County.

Lexington to Louisville in Under Five Minutes

I can't really fault someone for going to all the trouble to video a dashboard view of the drive from Lexington to Louisville and then speeding it up to 15 times faster, giving the impression of traveling at the speed of sound (approximately 750-825 miles per hour), because I've done a lot more pointless things in my time.

T.C.'s Tombstone

Pictured here is a primitive homemade grave marker in Madison County's Richmond Cemetery, bearing only the initials "T.C." spelled out in marbles. The rest of the grave is decorated in a folk-art mosaic of broken soda pop and Milk of Magnesia bottles.

You can find T.C.'s grave by veering all the way left after entering the cemetery's front gates, and following the path that runs parallel to the railroad tracks. (The grave of Walter Tevis is on this same path as well.)

The Nameless Grocery

This grocery store is located in Wildie, KY, Rockcastle county. It bears no sign and has no name, and gives no indication that it is in business of any sort, aside from the Pepsi machine on the front porch. Last time we were inside the store, there was actually very little for sale except a rack of snack cakes, some bread and produce, and some soda. The store is often full of old-timers sitting around talking conspiratorially. I dug it.

Natasha Cornett's Satanic Cult

What is it about Kentucky that seems to foster crew after crew of dangerous teenage Goth-loser-wannabe occultists? In 1998 the activities of yet another gang of self-styled spawns of Satan made national headlines, as 19-year-old Natasha Cornett and her Pikeville posse pleaded guilty to a triple homicide.

In April 1997, Vidar and Delfina Lillelid, along with their 6-year-old daughter Tabitha, were driving home from a Jehovah's Witnesses event when they stopped at a highway rest area. It was here that they were accosted by Cornett and her Korn-listening kooks. The entire family was later found, shot to death, in a ditch along a dark rural gravel road a few miles away.

The gang - Natasha Cornett, 19, Crystal Sturgill, 18, Karen Howell, 18, Jason Blake Bryant, 15, Dean Mullins, 20, and Joe Risner, 21 - were caught and arrested near the Arizona-Mexican border a few days later, driving the stolen Lillilid family van.

In police custody, Cornett declared herself to be "the daughter of Satan", and confessed to a blood-letting satanic ritual at the Colley Motel in Pikeville. Self-mutilation was a key part of the sect's activities, and when arrested, Cornett had around 20 cuts on her right arm and around 50 on her left. The group believed that communication with Satan was only possible during these self-cutting rituals.

Cornett also confessed that it had been the group's intent to carry out a cross-country murder spree, and specifically named the film "Natural Born Killers" as an influence.

A documentary about the kids, entitled Six, is available on DVD. The film raises a number of disturbing points, such as the fact that Cornett had previously been committed to the Charter Ridge mental hospital in Lexington and diagnosed as bipolar and dangerous, yet was released because she had no insurance.

Little Enis

For many of us, our first exposure to the lore of Carlos "Little Enis" Toadvine came by way of Ed McClanahan's great book Famous People I Have Known. In it, McClanahan devotes an entire chapter to the memory of the less-than-famous Toadvine, and started a posthumous legend for the man that just keeps snowballing today.

When I first got hooked up to 'teh interwebs' in the 90s, there was zero information to be found on this elusive mystery man, reknowned for his Elvis impersonations and his idiosyncratic guitar-picking method. Enis was left handed but did not restring his guitar to accomodate this; he simply learned the chords as-is. And instead of gripping the guitar from beneath the neck and biting down on the strings, he "walked" on the strings from above, in a sort of tapping technique that predated Eddie Van Halen.

Today, however, the beauty of the internet age is that even Carlos Toadvine gets his day in the cyber sun, and there's a fantastic site called Gary's Country that gives the man the treatment he deserves. There's photographs galore, many of them straight from the Toadvine family albums, and best of all - mp3 files!

Enis' peculiar country-rockabilly act played an important part in Lexington's local music history, being a regular at the Zebra Lounge, the Continental Inn, The Palms, and someplace called "The Night Light". Does anyone know where in Lexington this alley is that he's sitting in the above photo?

The Vest-Lindsey House

There's been reports that the Vest-Lindsey House, located at 401 Wapping Street in Frankfort, is haunted by the ghost of George Graham Vest.

I'm not sure how these ghostly identifications end up getting made. Did a ghost say, "hello, I'm George Vest"? Did an eyewitness recognize an apparition as resembling that of Vest's old photos? Or - more likely - did someone hear a weird noise late one night and decide that all of the people who occupied the home over the years, it must logically be the ghost of its most famous occupant, back to haunt his boyhood home for reasons known only to himself?

Of course, this whole area of Frankfort is filled with spooky old haunted historic homes, and I am not of the opinion that a ghost is required to stick to his own turf. I'm sure the area is crawling with spirits at any given time, but who knows whose they really are, where they're going, or what they're up to.

Vest himself was an interesting character, at any rate. As an attorney, he risked his life to defend a young African-American man from bogus murder charges. The man was acquitted, but a local lynch mob burned him at the stake anyway. Yet as a statesman, Vest sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and became a Confederate State Senator for Missouri.

Today, Vest is most remembered for having coined the phrase "a dog is man's best friend" during the Burden v. Hornsby trial, defending a man whose hunting dog, "Old Drum", was shot and killed by a landowner on whose property the dog had trespassed.

Deb Hyer, The One Man Band

Whoa Nelly! I just stumbled upon an eBay auction for a strange hitherto unknown-to-me record by one Deb Hyer, on the great Lexington LEMCO label. Lemco flourished from, I believe, the late 50s to the mid 70s. It's a safe bet that Hyer, like most of Lemco's artists, is Kentuckian, and I'm highly intrigued by his "One Man Band" act.

And lo and behold, a Google search shows that some enterprising soul with a taste for the obscure is offering a RAR file of the album online.

But I'm obsessed now and want more actual information about Mr. Hyer. Who the hell is he? Is he still alive? Why was he named "Deb"? Does a treasure trove of unreleased tapes exist??

PBS Piece Now Online

The recent KET/PBS segment on Louisville Life about yours truly is now available on the web via streaming video by clicking here. I was powerfully hung over during the seated interview portions, having closed the place down at Seviche Goose Creek the night before. There was supposed to have been a day of shooting footage at the Pope Lick trestles, but that fell through because of my car exploding in my face last month, after which I spent a couple weeks hiding from the world, doing nothing but zoning out on the couch eating gelato and watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

Producer Jayne McClew did a great job with the piece, though, especially considering how little I gave her to work with. I'm also glad I managed to work in lots of opportunities to show footage of the Mellwood Art Center.