Wicked Western Kentucky

Western Kentucky has always had a dark side, despite being the “Birthplace of Bluegrass Music.” Mary James Trotter, an arrested moonshine—selling grandma, remarked to a judge that she “simply had to sell a little liquor now and then to take care of my four grandchildren.” Rod Ferrell led a bloodsucking vampire cult in Murray, Kentucky, and traumatized parents of the 1990s. In the early morning of July 13, 1928, at the “Castle on the Cumberland,” seven men were put to death in Kentucky’s dea...