Behind the Yellow Tape

by Jarrett Hallcox

  Seeing that setting on English Mountain up close was a truly remarkable experience. And even though it had been a year since they had dug up Kelly Sellers, you could still smell a hint of death in the air. That smell never, ever completely dissipates. A distinctly somber mood hung over us as we walked down to the roots of that overturned tree. There was an unplanned and unrehearsed moment when no one spoke and no one moved. Eventually we began speaking again, and we talked at length about the case, all of us wondering aloud how Blair must have felt as he drove his truck over the ragged terrain exactly 2.1 miles from his house, nostrils still filled with the stench of bleach and—given his story—at one point probably seeing Kelly sit up in the back of his truck bed in his rear-view mirror. How she must have felt as he dragged her probably live and very battered body over that uprooted tree as she bled out into the tarp, spending her last few minutes on earth buried alive. And how did he do it? There were no drag marks to be found. Did he throw Kelly over his shoulder and carry her down there by himself? John Wayne Blair is not a big man. Did he have help burying her? We may never fully know. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a killer will confess to everything but the “how.” So far, Blair has admitted to nothing. Nevertheless, the conversation gave us all a chill as we considered just how cruel people can really be.

  When we started back up the hill to leave, the CSIs began reminiscing about their time at the academy and telling tall tales exaggerated by time. They told us they wouldn’t trade their experiences for anything. These people truly epitomize what it means to be a “good ol’ boy”—a gender-neutral term, of course. It means that you work hard, you play hard, and you help others when you can. Yes, these guys can be rambunctious, but they are some of our closest friends and greatest allies. It doesn’t matter what we ask for; anything we ask, they will do it for us. And even though it’s been a few years since Sevier County had a CSI come through the program, a mysterious mason jar filled to the brim with a clear liquid always seems to make it to an academy class—even if for medicinal purposes only.

  2

  The Crying Game

  BOONE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, KENTUCKY

  Boone County is the northernmost county in the state of Kentucky, and it sits right on the bank of the Ohio River. Founded in 1798, it is currently one of the fastest growing counties in the country. Boone County was named after Daniel Boone, a frontiersman from Tennessee. The county seat is Burlington. Though Boone County has the feel of a small town, it can have the crime of a large metropolitan area because Cincinnati is directly across the river. In fact, the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport sits right in the heart of Boone. The Boone County Sheriff’s Office is the second-largest agency in the state and one of only two sheriff’s offices in Kentucky accredited by the KACP (Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police). The average time it takes Boone County detectives to make an arrest is less than sixteen hours. The crime scene investigation team consists of one forensic technician, one detective, and two patrol officers.

  I want the truth!” a crazed Tom Cruise yelled at Jack Nicholson in the classic military courtroom drama A Few Good Men. The movie is filled with rich theatricality and poignant drama, not unlike many courtrooms across the country. Somewhere, every day, a prosecutor is working on a case, studying the facts, trying to put a criminal behind bars. And at the same time, a defense attorney somewhere is trying to poke holes through an argument for putting a criminal behind bars. The American judicial concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is geared almost entirely to the rights of defendants—their state of mind and their actions. Unfortunately, the victim often gets lost in the mix, buried under six feet of dirt and forty feet of briefs. But there are pockets all across the country where justice still means punishing people for the bad things they have done. We were fortunate enough to find one of those pockets in Boone County, Kentucky.

  “There’s a lot of stuff we know should be here but it’s missing—not just a murder weapon.” This is how prosecutor Linda Tally Smith of Boone County, Kentucky, began her closing argument in the Beckham hotel murder case. It is not unusual for Linda to turn her back to the judge and begin a vigorous, tear-filled rant not only about why the defendant should be brought to justice but also about why the family of the victim should be brought peace. She sometimes falls to her knees, like a Church of God parishioner overcome with the Holy Spirit about to speak in tongues. An old southern Kentucky gentleman prosecutor once told her to do that when she could, almost certainly guaranteeing a victory when performed just right. Not every judge puts up with the teary closing, though the Supreme Court has determined that lawyers are human (a sometimes disputable point) and are therefore allowed to show emotion in the courtroom. But—to use a local southern expression—that dog sometimes doesn’t hunt in Kentucky, and Linda’s been warned by more than one judge about crying in the courtroom (she refers to this as the perils of being a “chick prosecutor”). She just turns her back to the judge, flips a mental bird and, though verklempt, continues pressing on with her argument just waiting for the prime opportunity to fall to her knees.

  We met prosecutor Linda Tally Smith on the second floor of the Huntington Bank building in Boone County, Kentucky. It’s an odd place for an office that houses the most powerful woman in the entire county. At the time of her election to office in 2000, she was the youngest and only female prosecutor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The county is hardly known for its liberalism—in fact, Boone County has the largest Republican population in the state. Smith’s own Republicanism is illustrated by several prominently displayed autographed pictures of “W” holding each of her three kids. Yet the Dixie Chicks CD—the all-girl band from Texas that famously clashed with the Bush administration—on Smith’s desk also speaks to a certain amount of youthful liberalism, and that aura certainly permeates her entire office. Exuberance and playful banter reign supreme here and signify in many regards the “new way” of doing business in this area; a law enforcement renaissance, so to speak.

  Linda had always wanted to be a prosecutor, even as a child. “I remember the big ones,” she says, while checking the continuous stream of e-mails that ding on her computer, referring to the many cases she can recall having followed during her Kentucky childhood. One in particular, the Eugene Gall murder case, happened in 1979 when Linda was nine years old. Gall kidnapped twelve-year-old Lisa Jansen as she walked to school, then raped and shot her. That violent crime had an incredible impact on Linda and has stayed with her throughout her life. A Boone County jury found Gall guilty, though he was mentally impaired, and sentenced him to die—the first person sentenced to death after the reinstatement of the death penalty in Kentucky.

  The case floundered for more than twenty years on appeals, Gall never paying his penalty, until the case finally wove its way through the court system in 2001. Ultimately, the original decision was overturned because of the unconstitutionality of not considering Gall to be insane. “It’s a true American tragedy,” Linda told reporters after the decision came down. A case like that one is what makes Linda who she is. But even in her wildest dreams, she never thought she would be the commonwealth’s attorney by the young age of thirty. But sometimes destiny cannot be avoided, and things work out for a reason. Married with three kids, Smith wears her prosecutorial blue blazer in court with a pink blouse to “show her feminine side,” confident and considered by many to be the most intimidating person they have ever met. “It’s amazing to me that people think that,” Linda tells us as we joke about a questionable e-mail she forwarded to her male colleagues in the office. To us, she’s just like we are—hardworking but laid back, loves to laugh. Just don’t end up on the wrong side of the fence in her county. As the Boone County CSIs, who are also graduates of our program, say, “She is a bulldog, and she bites.”

  In times past, before Linda was elected to office, the defense lawyers in the area ruled the roost. According to Linda, the term prosecutor had become largely trivialized, and de
fense attorneys took control, informing the prosecution what they would take as a plea deal, instead of the prosecutors making the offer themselves. Often, that’s how the cases would be adjudicated; unfortunately, this is still a common practice. The reasons are many, but it can frequently be attributed to burnout, either from the police making good cases that lazy prosecutors won’t prosecute or from bad cases that the prosecution can’t do anything with. Eventually, one or both give up and take an easy deal. “I don’t think you guys realize the effect the academy has had on building better cases,” Linda goes on to explain. “In the past, the focus was always on making arrests and hoping we got more from there. To be truthful, some of the best evidence we got in murder cases was after a defendant was arrested and he was sitting in jail blabbering to other inmates—jailhouse snitches were our best witnesses in those cases. But that’s all changed.”

  Boone County Sheriff’s Department, Kentucky, personnel: Tim Carnahan

  and Brian Cochran, along with Boone County prosecutor Linda Tally Smith.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  In 2002 Sheriff Michael Helmig of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, in Kentucky, decided that his department would have the best crime scene unit in the country—period. In order to do that, he first wanted all of his crime scene investigators to get the best training available, and so he sent them to the National Forensic Academy. Once they graduated from the academy, he dedicated them to working crime scenes exclusively. Today three graduates of the program work in his department, two specifically dedicated to the unit—Detectives Tim Carnahan and Brian Cochran. And Linda works very closely with them, not only to understand the cases they work but to better understand what they do to gather the evidence—and how they do it. That way, she can talk intelligently in court about the case. Many prosecutors across the country view their offices as private islands, completely separate from that of law enforcement. “I’ve never believed that, because I believe it is my job to work closely with them to build better cases,” Linda says, almost frustrated with her counterparts. And it really is the evidence that makes or breaks a case.

  “I tried a homicide case one time where I only had Polaroids of the crime scene and that was it,” Linda said to us, with a smirk. “Not to mention that when I needed copies of the photographs for the defense for discovery, they took Polaroids of the Polaroids.” (Note: This was not the year 1960, but the year 2000!) “The resources the training provided encouraged them to try things out, like [using] plenty of film, et cetera.” Now, it’s almost the opposite problem in Boone County—too many pictures. But you can never have too many pictures of a crime scene, and you can never collect too much relevant evidence. In fact, since the graduates have begun practicing their craft in Boone County, murders have been solved at an unbelievable clip. Within forty-eight hours of a crime, the Boone County investigators often have a case made and a suspect behind bars. In the Boone County Sheriff’s Office, 68 percent of all violent crimes were cleared by the criminal investigation division. According to the department’s annual report, there has not been one unsolved homicide since 2001. Compared to the national average for clearing homicides—40 percent—that’s incredible. And murders don’t happen very often anymore in Boone County. The word is out among criminals: stay out of Boone County. John T. Snow sure wished he had.

  “I knew I was in trouble when I saw the Boone County sign,” a heavily medicated John T. Snow slobbered from the Kentucky State Penitentiary, the prison where he is currently serving a life sentence for brutally killing Patricia Volpenhein. “I got friends in Kenton County [a county adjacent to Boone] who got ten years for doing something like what I did, but you guys hung me out to dry here.” Snow had been out of prison for only six months when he found himself back in jail again, this time for life. He was well aware of the potential price he’d pay by dumping Volpenhein’s body into Boone County. But with darkness looming and a taillight out, not to mention a dead body in the bed of his truck, he got nervous. He stopped just short of the county sign, in a field adjacent to a dump, and dragged her lifeless body onto the ground into what he thought was Kenton County. Unfortunately for him, he dragged her a little too far.

  Part of Linda’s plea agreement with the defense not to seek the death penalty in Snow’s case included allowing the Boone County CSIs to interview Snow on tape to discover what really happened on that terrible Saturday. Killers rarely if ever tell exactly how they did it—but Snow was proud of what he did and how he tried to cover it up.

  “Why did you move her body?” Detective Tim Carnahan asked Snow during the interview. John Snow had originally shot, stabbed, and killed Patricia Volpenhein in a different field, then transported her body to the one where she was found. “Because I knew those shell casings would get me caught; you guys could get my prints.” Snow had moved Volpenhein’s body because he knew that his fingerprints could be lifted from the spent shell casings. Like many prisoners who have nothing better to do while in prison, Snow had also watched too many crime shows on TV.

  “I should have used a revolver,” a visibly frustrated John Snow continued to tell investigators. Shell casings aren’t ejected from a revolver. They stay in the chamber, unlike a pistol, which can eject the casings up to several feet away. Snow would never have moved the body if he hadn’t been concerned about the cops finding his prints on the casings, something he’d seen on a television show. But Snow’s paranoia was what eventually did him in. According to investigators, it might have been weeks, even months, later by the time the body would have been discovered in its original location. By then, the case would have been cold, and Patricia Volpenhein’s killer might never have been found.

  Snow and Volpenhein’s relationship had been borne out of necessity—she needed heroin, which Snow willingly paid for; he needed sex, which she gave in exchange for the drugs. So they worked out a barter. But it’s hard to have a monogamous relationship when you are an addict in constant need of that next high. Unfortunately, John Snow was a very disturbed and jealous person, and when Patricia failed to call him back one day, he decided then and there that he would kill her.

  The next day, Volpenhein made the call that she had promised the day before, wanting what she always wanted—more heroin. And Snow obliged, driving her over into Cincinnati, a growing hotbed for heroin ever since the feds had tightened the drug laws for possession of crack. Once she got her fix, they headed to a field for what Volpenhein thought would be her sexual payment for the heroin. Little did she know that it was a place Snow had considered, from the moment he’d seen it years earlier, “a good place to whack somebody.” They drove up to the secluded spot and parked the truck. At some point when the two of them had left the vehicle, he casually shot her in the head, and when she went down—“flipping,” as he put it—he shot her again in the left temple. “She kept snoring,” Snow told the detectives, agitated. Her “snoring” was actually her agonized breathing. She was still clinging to life, despite being fatally wounded by two bullets to the brain. It was clear from watching the interview that the “snoring” had driven Snow crazy; he rocked back and forth as he talked about it. He’d then pulled a cheap knife from his pocket and tried to slice her throat lengthwise like cutting an Easter ham, but the knife was too dull to penetrate the skin deeply enough to finish the job. Instead, he turned to brutally stabbing her several times in the throat. Yet she continued to breathe and “snore.”

  Feeling that he’d wasted too much time on killing Volpenhein, Snow crawled on the ground, looking for those damn shell casings that he would never find. Panicked, he decided that he couldn’t take the chance of those shell casings being found with his fingerprints all over them, so he had to get her body out of that field. His mind raced. In a manic frenzy, he went on a shopping spree, buying plastic tarps, clothes, gloves—all in preparation for disposing of Volpenhein’s body. Little did he realize that his actions created more evidence, tying the murder to him.

  After purchasing the items he tho
ught he would need, Snow waited for darkness to fall before he went back to the field to retrieve Volpenhein’s body. When he arrived, Volpenhein had finally ceased breathing, and he began to carry out his ill-fated plan. He wrapped her in both of the tarps and struggled to get her into the bed of his truck. Once that was complete, he headed down River Road to the mighty Ohio. “I wanted to throw her in the river,” Snow told the detectives. The Ohio River has long been a repository for many a perp’s victims, harking back to the days when the mob influenced the area. But “I couldn’t find a spot on River Road,” Snow lamented. Fishermen dotted the banks at various intervals along the river, so he couldn’t find a safe spot to stop his truck and dump the body. Frustrated, Snow gave up on his original plan and kept driving in the darkness. And then another fear overwhelmed him. He remembered he had a taillight out. He began to panic even more as he rounded the bend on River Road, which connects Kenton County to Boone County. When his headlights hit the “Entering Boone County” sign, his heart sank. He knew he was in trouble. So he pulled over immediately, swerving to the left into an open field. He jumped out of his truck, ripped down his tailgate, and pulled Volpenhein’s body onto the ground. Having been so afraid of leaving his fingerprints on the shell casings, he knew to wear gloves when he moved her body. He’d worn them when he removed the tarps from the packaging. He’d worn them when he rolled her lifeless body onto the first tarp and had kept them on as he wrapped her tightly into the second one. He’d worn them when he struggled to get her body into the back of his pickup truck. He’d even worn them as he drove alongside the Ohio River looking for the perfect dump site. But with too many scenarios for his borderline IQ to process, he forgot to wear them as he dumped her to the earth and into Boone County.