The Bluegrass Conspiracy

by Sally Denton

  Though suspecting that Campbell must have ulterior motives, Ralph decided he could use the group of men he had earlier recruited and trained to gear up the Bonnie Kelly/Henry Vance investigation. His only disappointment in the crew was the fact that Terry Barnes— who he had previously reprimanded—had been returned to Special Operations while Ralph had been less involved with the team.

  Strategically, Ralph thought it was time to shift attention away from Lambert onto Bonnie Kelly. If handled right, the Gene Berry murder case could “open the whole can of worms.”

  Ralph believed that the Company’s Kentucky nexus was finally coming unglued, and that with pressure properly applied upon the right individuals, their world would start to crumble. Everyone was vulnerable: Bonnie Kelly, Mike Kelly, Drew Thornton, Bradley Bryant, Henry Vance, Harold Brown, and a slew of others who were practically stumbling over each other to plead guilty in Fresno. Any one of the Lexington individuals, Ralph felt certain, could help solve Melanie Flynn’s disappearance and Ray Ryan’s murder; infiltrate Lambert’s drug organization; expose corruption within the Lexington Police Department; shed light on the network of mercenaries training at Triad; locate the source of massive quantities of weapons, apparently embezzled from various military bases, and transported to Central and South America; and identify the financial investors in Kentucky who fronted the capital used to purchase the necessary airplanes, landing strips, refrigerated trucks, and yachts, and put up the collateral to give the Colombians in exchange for the loads of marijuana and cocaine.

  It was the latter group of individuals who Ralph believed needed to be taken down—the lawyers, bankers, politicians, horse breeders, and prominent Lexington businessmen—who were the real kingpins. But they were untouchable, segregated by several strata of underlings who fell under the control of Drew Thornton.

  It appeared that the hierarchy of the Company was now headed by Drew and comprised of importers and transporters. Someone else was in charge of national distribution, though it wasn’t clear who had replaced Bradley Bryant in that capacity. Still others were responsible for supplying the local elite—the jet-setting racehorse crowd—and for compromising the cops and public officials through bribery and blackmail. That’s where the women entered the picture: Girls from Cincinnati, Lexington, New York, and Florida, who lured politicians into dangerous dalliances. Then there were the enforcers—the thugs who killed witnesses, snitches, prosecutors, and anybody else who knew too much and wasn’t keeping his mouth shut.

  So whom did Drew report to? Ralph found himself wondering almost obsessively. He had never considered Drew Thornton to be much of a self-starter. Drew’s psychological makeup was one of allegiance, Ralph was certain that Drew took his cues from someone else. Like the ninjas he revered, Drew was comfortable only while serving a superior system.

  How did a guy such as Drew Thornton, reared with the belief that national policy and the American way of life should not be questioned or criticized, justify his activities? How did he transform his personality from the fanatical zealot pursuing long hairs and pot smokers in 1970 to becoming one of the nation’s largest wholesale marijuana and cocaine importers? Had Drew’s decision to join the police force been a calculated stepping stone for a life of crime? Or were the Lexington Police, as Drew often claimed, merely a cover for his real role as a covert operative for the CIA? Ralph’s only hope was to cultivate a source deep within the group.

  The first time Ralph’s eyes landed on Betty Gee he saw a pudgy, timid, sweet-dispositioned girl who was the product of a stereotypical eastern

  Kentucky upbringing. One of Bonnie’s many siblings; Betty was several years younger than her zaftig sister. She had spent her years on the outskirts of Bonnie’s more adventurous life, tagging along with her big sister and brother-in-law through their nefarious episodes. Along the way she had seen and heard a lot. She knew Bradley Bryant, Drew Thornton, Henry Vance, and Bill Canan, and all the rest of Mike Kelly’s friends. In fact, several of Mike’s buddies had made sexual advances to her throughout the years, and some had been successful.

  Mike and Bonnie had made her feel a part of their group, though her perpetual status as a kid was so deeply ingrained that it created a permanent sense of inferiority. They trusted her with their secrets in an offhanded way. Through their unguarded remarks, Betty Gee was told what happened to Melanie Flynn; where illegal automatic weapons were buried; which police officers were on the take; and the mechanics of sundry dope deals. Through her own observance, Betty had inadvertently learned the ins and outs of big-time drug smuggling and contract murder.

  On the April day in 1982 when Ralph Ross headed across a bumpy country road to interview Betty Gee, even he underestimated the vastness of her knowledge and the potential value of her testimony.

  “A friend introduced us,” is all Ralph would ever tell anyone, declining to identify the go-between.

  Ralph knew that Betty was easy prey. Things were falling apart around her. Hollimon and Taylor had both confessed and fingered Bonnie. Betty had been arrested with Bonnie and Taylor a few weeks earlier in Fort Lauderdale when agents from the FDLE discovered a .44-caliber magnum pistol on the floor of their automobile. Charges had been dropped but Betty felt the heat anyway. By this time Ralph knew that Betty had accompanied Bonnie to K-Mart to steal the records of the ammo purchase. He knew that Bonnie had told Betty of her plans to kill Berry. Facing murder conspiracy charges herself, Betty was a pretty scared kid. She knew it was only a matter of time before she would be arrested and she didn’t feel a sense of loyalty or protection from her older sister’s organization.

  As Ralph played his good-guy routine with Betty, he found she was relatively easily persuaded to cooperate. Finally, realizing she was between a rock and a hard place, and that Ralph Ross had the wherewithal to send her to jail, Betty agreed to talk about what she knew.

  After a slow start, she ultimately poured out her heart to Ralph, as handfuls of witnesses—male and female alike—had done before. She succumbed to his unassuming manner, his soft-spoken, fatherly method of interrogation. Terrified of retribution by Bonnie’s criminal associates, she found solace in Ralph’s promises of protection. Determined not to do anything that would harm her sister and fearful of the wrath of the rest of her family, her tears were soothed away by Ralph. He assured her that now was the time for Betty to think only of herself and the possibility of a lifetime in jail for her role in the grisly murder.

  But Ralph worried about Betty’s pliability. He had seen plenty of witnesses like Betty Gee before. Vulnerable and uneducated as she was, her cooperation was only guaranteed to whomever had physical custody of her. She could just as easily flip-flop, Ralph thought, and become a double agent—working both sides against each other. The key was to keep control of her, Ralph knew. He immediately arranged to take her to Lexington where her notarized statement could be obtained.

  When Ralph Ross and Betty Gee arrived at the office of Commonwealth Attorney Larry Roberts, both were surprised and disappointed by the presence of a Lexington police detective, who had apparently been invited by Roberts to participate in Betty’s interrogation. With good reason, Betty Gee was frightened for her life. She was afraid of her brother-in-law, Mike Kelly, and of Henry Vance and Drew Thornton. Betty was savvy enough to realize that Kelly, Vance, and Thornton would know the details of her testimony within hours, thanks to their spies in the Lexington Police Department. Yet, even as Ralph promised to protect her, he knew she was right. “I’ll do everything I can,” he told her. “No one will touch you. You just tell the truth and don’t worry about anything else.” Besides, Ralph thought, you don’t have much choice. Betty complied, providing a lengthy, detailed statement that, unbeknown to her, would be the final nail in Bonnie’s legal coffin.

  A week earlier Bonnie had been arrested in Lexington and charged with first-degree murder. Wearing a bulletproof vest, she had appeared calm and confident at a
brief extradition hearing, at which papers signed by Governor John Y. Brown, Jr., ordered her remanded to the custody of the state of Florida. Afraid there would be an attempt on her life, Florida police had asked Kentucky authorities to do everything within their power to guarantee Bonnie’s safe arrival in Fort Myers. The Lexington police, under Bizzack’s direction, organized two sets of automobile convoys: One to transport Bonnie from the courthouse to Blue Grass Airport, and the other as a decoy to mislead the swarm of news reporters and television crews.

  Incarcerated in Florida under intensive protective custody while awaiting trial for the murder of an enormously popular state prosecutor in what appeared to be an airtight case, Bonnie’s conviction was nearly a fait accompli. Henry Vance’s memory had conveniently quavered following Bonnie’s arrest, and he was no longer certain he had seen Bonnie on the night of the murder. Ralph had persuaded Betty that there was nothing in the world that Betty could do to hurt Bonnie. There was, however, one thing that Betty could do to help her sister, Ralph added. She could save Bonnie from the electric chair.

  With the preponderance of evidence against her, Bonnie’s only possible bargaining chip would be a sentence reduction. Since murder is a capital offense in the state of Florida, it was highly likely that Bonnie would receive a death sentence if convicted. If, however, she were willing to testify against Henry Vance for providing her with the murder weapon, or to implicate Drew Thornton or any other co-conspirators, Ralph felt certain the judge could be persuaded to spare Bonnie’s life.

  Ralph’s mission with Betty, then, was to induce her to convince Bonnie to talk—not only about the murder of Gene Berry, but about a decade of violence in central Kentucky.

  Late one evening, Ralph pulled his car up to a stoplight near the Lansdowne Shopping Center. As he reached down to change the radio frequency, he glanced over at a car rolling to a stop beside him. He and Drew recognized each other at the same moment.

  Their staring match became more uncomfortable with each passing second. Afraid that Drew might pull a gun, or something equally regrettable, Ralph decided to make the first move. He pressed the button to roll down his window, watching as Drew did the same.

  “Hey there,” Ralph said.

  When Drew accompanied his response with a smile, Ralph continued.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, just riding around,” Drew answered.

  Ralph’s men had Drew under surveillance, and had been in radio contact with Ralph. Ralph knew that Drew knew that Ralph was in the area because of the surveillance. But both men played out the string, pretending that their meeting had been a chance encounter.

  “Why don’t you and me go have a beer?” Ralph said, gesturing behind him at a bar called Brewbakers.

  Drew nodded in acquiescence and the two rivals headed their cars into the parking lot.

  As they entered the bar, Ralph noticed that the woman who was with Drew was accompanying him into Brewbakers.

  “Do you mind if she joins us?” Drew asked. Ralph turned toward the woman he recognized as a “Sharp”—but he wasn’t sure if it was Rebecca or Sally.

  “If we’re going to have a conversation, it’ll be one on one,” Ralph replied emphatically. “There aren’t going to be any third parties. We’re going to be even up. Otherwise, we might as well forget it.”

  Drew directed his friend to a seat at the opposite end of the room. Drew and Ralph took seats next to each other at the bar, each intentionally ordering a beer instead of something stronger.

  Before they had had time to take a sip, two of Ralph’s men entered the establishment and planted themselves at the other side of the bar from Ralph and Drew. Nervous about this unplanned meeting between their boss and their target, the two fidgeted while awaiting some kind of signal from Ralph. Ralph winked at them, and they inferred from his gesture that they should sit tight until further notice. Each ordered a Coke since they weren’t allowed to drink on duty. Drew looked in their direction as if to acknowledge that he knew they were cops.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” Ralph asked Drew. “Waiting around for your trial?”

  “I don’t hold anything against you, you know,” Drew answered, avoiding getting sucked into revealing anything to Ralph about his activities. “You and I are not that different. You do what you have to do and I do what I have to do. We both have to remain loyal to our personal convictions. Regardless of the consequences.”

  Ralph was slightly surprised at Drew’s amiability and candor. Was his lack of animosity genuine? He listened carefully, often finding himself nodding in agreement as Drew spoke of his ideology and survivalist philosophy. He was a survivalist who thought the world was facing economic collapse, he told Ralph. His actions, Drew emphasized, were always in direct accordance with his personal dogma. He never deviated from his beliefs, Drew told Ralph. The ends justified the means.

  “Dealing drugs and killing people don’t really fit in with any moral convictions I know of,” Ralph answered.

  “We’re just part of two different systems,” Drew responded, hinting that his actions were sanctioned by someone or something superior to both men. “We’re more alike than you want to admit.”

  Ralph thought it useless to attempt to extract any valuable information or specific details from Drew. It was obvious to both men that they were playing a mind game in order to defuse what might have been a volatile exchange.

  Upon finishing his one beer, Drew stood to leave. “Do me a favor,” Drew said. “No matter what happens, just make sure she never gets hurt,” Drew said, gesturing toward the Sharp woman.

  The month of May 1982 would be the absolute worst time in Ralph Ross’s entire life. It had started out fine—almost too good to be true. As happens in Kentucky every spring, the landscape that year burst with almost obscene beauty. Accompanying his boss, Neil Welch, to the Derby, Ralph was able to observe the betting habits of the state’s bigwigs, who were unaware of being in the scope of Ralph’s suspicious eye.

  For the first time in a decade, Ralph had a bona fide Company insider in the form of Betty Gee. He had placed her in the protective custody of one of his female detectives, who was shuttling her in and out of motels and safe-houses around northern Kentucky. As soon as Betty had given the Florida people everything they wanted on the Berry murder, Ralph started working her on the Kentucky matters. He arranged for a backhoe and went with her to Mike Kelly’s farm in Jessamine County. She led Ralph to a spot where she had been told that a machine gun, which had been stolen from the home of a coal company executive, was buried. Ralph’s men dug and, sure enough, they found it. She said she had been told by Bonnie and Mike that if Henry Vance or Drew Thornton ever came to her and said they needed the gun that she should lead them to the burial site. She had never seen the gun before, she said, but had been told it was buried a certain amount of steps from the fence line.

  One by one, Ralph checked out the particulars of Betty’s statement. He had no reason to disbelieve the things Betty had said, for she had enough sense to know the magnitude of trouble she could face if she lied. But Ralph was by nature a cautious man, and was reluctant to become overly excited. In his typically methodical fashion, Ralph focused on the credibility of her allegations and possible loopholes. She claimed under oath that Drew Thornton and several other Lexington police officers had used Mike Kelly’s residence as a general meeting place where large amounts of drugs were frequently stored. Betty also said that dozens of two-way radios that had been stolen from the Lexington Police Department years earlier were stored at Kelly’s house on Mount Tabor Road. Ralph had long been interested in the case of the missing walkie-talkies; he had been told by his sources within the Lexington police that Drew Thornton had been the suspect in the theft but the department had refused to investigate the case. Betty also said that Vance, Mike Kelly, and Bill Canan had bombed the home of a chief jus
tice of the Kentucky Supreme Court. Ralph was able to verify that such a bombing had indeed occurred ten years earlier, but had resulted in no injuries and no arrests.

  Encouraged by the retrieval of the illegal machine gun, Ralph was anxious to pursue Betty’s professed knowledge of Melanie Flynn’s disappearance. Melanie had been causing problems for the group, according to Betty’s version of events. Melanie was evidently rebelling against doing Drew’s dirty work.

  Betty said she had been told by her sister Bonnie that Melanie Flynn had been murdered and was buried in a rock quarry at the bank of the Kentucky River. One day, Betty had been in a car with Bonnie driving to Halls-on-the-River—the restaurant and local hangout just downriver from Jimmy Lambert’s cabin. As they passed a cave at the side of the road, Bonnie had pointed and said, “That’s where Melanie Flynn is.”

  On a crisp May afternoon, Ralph’s men again followed Betty Gee to a remote location, this time with even more excavation equipment. As they pulled to the side of the road, they were less than a quarter of a mile from Jimmy Lambert’s cabin where Rebecca Moore had last been seen alive. Ralph found the similarity of the quarry with the description provided by the psychic about Melanie Flynn’s deathbed eerie. He thought of the psychic’s vision—the underwater rock cliff; a deep horseshoe cavern; Melanie’s body bag attached to a steel girder.

  For hours, the state police team searched the quarry. But five years had passed and the cave had been flooded more than once, making it nearly impossible to find anything. Ralph couldn’t hide his disappointment. He knew he had to call an end to the search; but as he did so he sensed that he was saying good-bye forever to the possibility of finding Melanie Flynn. If she ever turned up, Ralph thought, it would be entirely by accident.

  Despite the failure to find Melanie Flynn, Ralph’s investigations were shaping up nicely. Drew Thornton was subpoenaed to Louisiana where his buddy Richard Merrill had recently been indicted on drug charged. Drew dyed his hair gray, and sported a bushy, fake mustache, platform shoes, and a three-piece suit when he appeared before the federal grand jury in New Orleans so that co-conspirators wouldn’t recognize him and think he had become a snitch.