The Bluegrass Conspiracy

by Sally Denton

  Preston, a military school graduate, was reputed to be a reckless and spoiled playboy who sought his thrills through the hazardous sports of rock climbing, skydiving, and car racing. The darkly attractive heir took to wearing a uniform consisting of a white knit turtleneck under a white shirt, with a black suit and black combat boots.

  His slicked-back hair, moody silences, and sardonic wit set him apart from Lexington’s more gregarious country club set. Yet his bloodline cemented his membership in the very society that he scorned. Despite his rebellious stance, he was determined to follow the family tradition: To maintain the reputation of Hamburg Place as the most important horse-breeding farm in the bluegrass.

  Initially, Anita made an attempt to fit in with Preston’s society. More understated in her earlier years, people gossiped about the barefooted, bleached blonde that Preston dragged home on a motorcycle. Ostracized by the traditionally staid horsy set, for many years she had remained a shy backdrop to the increasingly unsociable Preston. In 1964 she gave birth to their son Patrick. With her role as a mother, Anita finally seemed to have found her own voice. She immersed herself in the bloodstock business, voraciously reading everything that had been published on the subject. She came to realize that the breeding and training of racehorses was nothing more than a high-stakes gamble.

  In the late 1960s, the Maddens started to run with the international jet set. They spent most of their time in New York and Los Angeles, where Anita felt more comfortable than in Lexington. She idolized the people she met—the television soap opera stars and sports figures, artists and entertainers—and invited them to Hamburg Place. She justified this lifestyle as promotion of her business: People who could afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on frail and pampered thoroughbreds did not run in mundane social circles, she contended.

  Through her rich Lexington contacts Anita hooked into the Las Vegas crowd of gamblers, strippers, organized crime figures, and celebrities—a relationship that would irreversibly change the tenor of Lexington’s party circuit from one of Southern civility to raucous vulgarity. In 1969, Caesars Palace opened the most gaudy, glitzy, outrageous establishment in Nevada’s gaming history. Featuring fantasy suites and barely dressed waitresses, Caesars set a new standard of garishness even for Nevada gambling. Since the days of widespread illegal gambling in Kentucky, there had been a close connection between Kentucky and Las Vegas. Anita’s friend Cliff Perlman owned Caesars, and had recruited numerous Kentucky natives for top casino positions. With the advent of Caesars, Anita began frequenting Vegas, where she met her new circle of friends.

  She became particularly close to Leslie de Keyser, a designer of scandalous clothes who called herself Suzy Creamcheese. Defending the shocking outfits that had become Anita’s trademark—leather jackets trimmed with rooster feathers; rhinestone-monogrammed sunglasses; sequined gowns plunging to burgeoning cleavage; capes covered with mirrors—Anita once remarked, “I do what pleases Anita.”

  She began hosting more and more parties, at which she made late entrances donning flamboyant Creamcheese creations. Her pre-Derby parties developed into annual bacchanals that gained international recognition. She considered horse racing a vehicle through which she could indulge the fantasies of her friends and clients and in the early 1970s she concocted erotic themes for her uninhibited bashes. The irony of these sexual obsessions, by a woman whose wealth was dependent upon the sexual performance of her studs and fecundity of her mares, was not lost on her guests. Preston, on the rare occasions when he attended Anita’s parties, withdrew to the sidelines and watched his wife gyrate on the dance floor. Preston’s haunting attendance, his contemptuous smile and black outfit, discomfited many guests.

  Anita hired Omnibus Productions to create the environment for her elaborate festivals. The Philadelphia company that produced special events for Caesars Palace and other Vegas casinos attended to Anita’s entertaining needs, to the tune of millions of dollars. Every year, the legendary estate was transformed to accommodate a new theme. At the “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” party, based upon the elegant decadence of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, Anita wore a borrowed, 111-carat, coffee-colored diamond called the “Earth Star.” In different years, themes included “The Great American Dream,” at which Hamburg Place was decorated with oversized credit cards and thousand dollar bills; “The Fountain of Youth,” and “Dipsomania.”

  Photos of the celebrities drawn to the parties, including Muhammad Ali, Bert Parks, Sissy Spacek, Al Hirt, Ann Margret, Mike Connors, Connie Stevens, Phyllis Dlller, and more, received prominent placement in the Lexington Herald.

  Members of Lexington’s more sedate establishment were offended by the nude mermaids, the wrestlers wearing sado-masochistic uniforms, streakers, and erotic films. They chose to boycott Anita’s, attending instead the more traditional annual events hosted by socialite Marylou (Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt) Whitney. The Whitneys—who are Anita’s rival party-givers and competing horse breeders, held their parties on the same day, but the crowd was always decidedly more genteel: One comprised of diplomats, national political figures, and international industrialists. Her voice tinged with both naiveté and sarcasm, Mrs. Whitney once told a reporter the Madden’s Derby Eve carnival was “nice for those who don’t have a private party to go to.”

  Anita spent several evenings a week at the Library Lounge in Lexington, the disco owned by her good friend Jimmy Lambert. Wearing low-cut, clinging blouses with slit skirts and spike heels, the fiftyish woman danced uninhibitedly to rock-and-roll music. Rarely accompanied by Preston, Anita was usually flanked by University of Kentucky football players and wrestlers. The Library was Lexington’s undeniable “in place,” where narcs and druggies mingled and cops were provided with drinks on the house.

  Ralph Ross had been receiving reports about Madden’s infamous parties for years, Not only were her parties attended regularly by governors, state legislators, mayors, and narcotics agents including Drew Thornton and DEA regional head Harold Brown, but off-duty

  Lexington police officers moonlighted as security guards at the annual events. Ralph harbored the fantasy that one day he would have the clout to raid Hamburg Place.

  The year Melanie disappeared; the one thousand invitees to Anita’s party were instructed to wear either black tie or “your favorite fantasy.” “A Garden of Secret Delights” was held under a 150-foot yellow-striped circus tent decorated with exotic animals that had been stuffed by a famous Chicago taxidermist. Ms. Creamcheese wore whips and chains, and Anita wore a backless and sideless white crystal-beaded scrap of material.

  Melanie’s absence was conspicuous to Anita’s inner circle. She had attended many of the previous parties, and had become a staple around Hamburg Place. Ralph knew that Melanie frequently used Anita’s guest facilities as a refuge, and that the two women had become very close. Exactly how close was never actually determined. A Louisville reporter claimed to have been lunching with Anita in Lexington in the fall of 1976 when Melanie entered the restaurant. The two women were said to have engaged in a private conversation, leaving no doubt as to their intimacy. But following Melanie’s disappearance, Anita, like Bill Canan, strove to deny all but the most casual of relationships. “I hardly knew her, of course,” Anita told the Kentucky Post, “but she always seemed to be such a kind girl.”

  Police at one point in the investigation had asked to search Hamburg Place for evidence of Melanie, but politely retreated when Anita refused access. “‘I think the police must have actually believed I would hide her,’” she told the Kentucky Post. During the controversial August 1977 interview, reporter Tom Scheffey asked Anita Madden directly if she and Melanie Flynn had ever engaged in a lesbian affair. “‘Were you indeed lovers as she’d [Melanie] have her friends believe?’” Scheffey asked her.

  “ ‘Lovers?!’” A tangle of confusion and amusement swept around Mrs. Madden’s clear handsome face.

 
“Her brow wrinkled in bafflement and she got up quickly to let out a dog—Dribbles—that was scratching at the door.

  “ ‘No, I’ve never particularly gone for girls,’ she said as she sat down again composed.”

  Detectives investigating Melanie’s disappearance returned to Hamburg Place in the summer of 1977 when they implored Anita to help locate Sonny Collins—the former University of Kentucky football superstar and reputed lover of Anita whose name was in Melanie’s address book. Anita refused to cooperate, and neglected to inform them that, in fact, Collins was en route to Hamburg Place at that very moment. Then a running back with the Atlanta Falcons, Collins was keeping a low profile since the recent surfacing of his name in connection with a kidnap, murder, drug, and point-shaving scandal at the University of Kentucky. Police eventually located and interviewed Collins about Melanie’s disappearance, but the details of that interview were never revealed.

  Though Ralph Ross suspected that Anita possessed valuable knowledge about Melanie—if not specifically about her disappearance, then at least about her lifestyle and enemies—he had neither the evidence nor the social standing necessary to infiltrate her web. What, if anything, Anita Madden told police about Melanie Flynn remains a secret, and was not provided to Ralph. He was forced to admit that the Flynn case was going nowhere. Except for graffiti messages that read Bill Canan killed Melanie Flynn spray-painted on walls near the University of Kentucky campus, the case had come to a standstill.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lexington, Kentucky looks like paradise. Acres of grass as green and tender as a golf course putting green surround hilltop mansions. New Circle Road—a beltway enveloping the city’s heartland like a moat— attempts to separate the wealthy landowners from the encroaching strip centers and fast-food joints that are symbolic of the rest of the state.

  Little girls growing up in Paducah and Hazard focus their sights on Lexington as the Tara of their fantasies. Adolescent boys from the state’s rural tobacco farms look to Lexington as an oasis in a state of poverty and ignorance—the lively playground of the idle rich. “Coloreds,” as blacks are still called by most white Lexingtonians, look longingly from ramshackle rented houses on the West Side of town to the manicured lawns and center-hall colonial manors situated along tree-lined boulevards.

  Combining the traditional superior feelings of Southerners with the uniquely gorgeous landscape of the bluegrass, Lexingtonians consider themselves and their region the cream of the crop—not only of Kentucky, but also of the nation.

  Despite their feigned attempts to downplay their snobbery, Lexingtonians are as obsessed with family bloodlines as with the genealogy of their horses. They are boastful of their pedigrees and keenly aware of each other’s places of birth. They judge each other on the basis of who their daddies and granddaddies were, and the counties from whence they came. What is confusing to outsiders is the graciousness and politeness with which these sometimes-harsh judgments are dispensed. Describing a professional colleague, one lawyer said with a smile: “The acorn never falls far from the tree. His daddy was no-count so what more could he be?”

  Horse traders and coal operators come and go. But the long-established families of central Kentucky—the scions of the original landowners—have never been unseated by the influx of wealthy Arabs and nouveau riche. Some relative newcomers, though, such as Jack Kent Cooke, Nelson Bunker Hunt, John Galbreath, and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, have smoothly blended into the fold.

  Money alone does not guarantee induction into Lexington’s coveted inner circle. But it doesn’t hurt. It is more common than not for the elite to entertain a mixed bag of power brokers, dotting their social events with public figures, prominent attorneys, successful businessmen, and local media celebrities. Despite the unassuming down-home charm, however, it does not go unnoticed at such affairs which guests seem awkward with the fingerbowls or oblivious to the appropriate placement of the tableware upon completion of dinner.

  Claiming an affinity to England, Lexington society bestows the most dignified of names to their sons, names that sound as if they were rich sauces: Brownell, Breckenridge, Bentley, Cameron, Landon, Buckner, Preston, Catesby, Austin, Blake, Wickliffe. Their daughters—given sweet names such as Rebecca, Mary Jane, Sally Ann, and Betsy—are reared to be more free-spirited debutantes and hostesses than their staid Yankee counterparts. Even their homes are christened with names suggestive of royal dynasties: Beaconsfield, Buckram Oak, Castleton, Barrister Hall, Avondale, Paxton Place.

  Blessed with a mild climate and perfect soil, Lexington is the reigning thoroughbred horse capital of the world. Bred for the “sport of kings,” the sleek and frail thoroughbreds thrive on their bluegrass diet. Drinking the limestone-laced water and grazing on the special grass rich in phosphorous and minerals, the animals develop strong tendons, resilient muscles, and light but solid bones. Black and white plank fences glide gracefully, rising and falling over the lush greenery, separating paddocks and estates. Massive maple trees stand at the edge of clear pools of water, as groups of young horses prance in the pristine fields.

  Long before the sexual prowess of four-legged animals became the cornerstone of the economy, Kentucky’s early settlers used the unusual limewater to concoct a distinctive whiskey. During the Prohibition era, incestuous networks were created to transport the liquor to the infamous speakeasies of Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and New York. The connections were bequeathed to family heirs, becoming more and more sophisticated with the passage of time. Houseboats that communicated with each other by two-way radio, and dropped off their drug loads at remote airstrips replaced the barges that bulged with whiskey barrels, moving slowly down the river under the cover of darkness. Massive fields of marijuana were cultivated in the same fertile land that produced the world’s richest tobacco.

  The horse farms, too, have evolved with age. A spin-off of the Old South of the plantation days, Lexington landowning society stubbornly resists change. Accustomed to a pampered lifestyle—made possible first by slaves and then by low-paid servants—many horse farm owners face increasing difficulty maintaining their image. They resent the influx of people, developers, and modern ideas. But the reality of modern America—with its high costs of wages, real estate, and provisions—was swallowing their way of life by the late 1970s. A fortune was needed to paint the miles of fences, to groom the fields, feed the horses, pay the trainers and domestic staff, and continue the lavish entertaining. To meet these extravagant financial demands, some farm owners have subdivided their property—once considered a fate worse than death. Others incorporated and sold shares.

  Some turned to drug smuggling.

  Against this backdrop, what happened to Andrew Carter Thornton II is not surprising. Raised on the picturesque Threave Main Stud horse farm, Drew had the good fortune to be included in Lexington’s protected, leisured class. Somewhere along the way he acquired the belief that he was the King of the Walk, and that everyone outside his class was trash under his feet. He had access to the best Lexington had to offer: “The Club,” the parties, the daughters of the wealthiest families. But that would not be enough for a guy with an innate sense of superiority. Drew Thornton had to prove that he was even better than the best.

  Childhood friends recall nothing startling about Drew Thornton’s youth that would be a prologue to his life on the razor’s edge. Some remember him as a painfully self-conscious, clumsy, and shy lad who was embarrassed to be seen in his horn-rimmed glasses. Others say he exhibited a remarkable proclivity as a horse trainer from an early age.

  But most that knew him in his seminal years have difficulty conjuring up anything more than an average, likable kid with the usual quotient of mischief. At what point in his life Drew became the thrill-seeker for which he would later become legendary is murky at best.

  As a child, Drew was a loner. He stayed to himself, apparently immersed in his imagination. If he didn’t know you
well, he didn’t know you at all. That distant personality became more pronounced as the years went by, mixing with a sense of bravado. Drew would always take the risk—ride the horse the fastest, take the first dive from the high board. At the age of ten he jumped out of a hayloft wearing nothing but a Superman cape. Knocked unconscious by the act, Drew was undeterred. Over the years, he would play war games with live ammunition; parachute illegally from television towers and cliffs; “pull low” while skydiving, waiting to open his chute within fifty feet of the ground; fly airplanes at altitudes beneath the radar level.

  Whether by actual violence or carefully cultivated body language, Drew Thornton projected an air that he was not to be messed with. Obsessed with victory and domination, he became known in Lexington for the mind games he played. He seemed to gain personal power by intimidating others, and stories of Drew’s implicit threats were rampant around Lexington. Surprisingly, the threats seem to have rarely materialized, begging one to wonder why he was capable of instilling so much fear.

  On the one hand, he seemed to have derived pleasure from his blustering, but on the other, he was loved by many for his compassion, sensitivity, and loyalty. He enjoyed helping friends who had fallen on hard times, but his critics say he did so in order to command them, as well as to inflate his sense of self-worth. Once, he fractured his leg in a parachuting accident because he had taken measures to avoid children playing near his intended target.

  Some girlfriends claim he beat them. Others say that physical violence against a woman or child was anathema to Drew, who they claim was the consummate Southern gentleman. What is consistent are references to his mercurial temper and a tendency toward violent outbursts—traits he apparently inherited from his father, Carter Thornton.

  Born October 30, 1944, while his father was away in military service, Drew spent his infancy in Louisville at the home of his mother’s parents. When his father returned from World War II, he claimed his tiny family and moved them to Paris in Bourbon County. Carter and his wife, Margaret Cummins, leased Threave Main Stud. Several years later, the Thorntons managed to buy the farm. The tranquil setting seemed an ironic site for the spawning of a vicious and mean-spirited boy.