The Bluegrass Conspiracy

by Sally Denton

  The two then waited for Metts to return. When Melts came back to the house, he sent his family out to a movie. As soon as the three men were alone, Ralph described the electronic equipment to Metts.

  “If for some reason you can’t get May to stay in one of these two rooms,” Ralph told Metts, “then be sure to carry your briefcase with you wherever you go.”

  Shortly before May’s scheduled arrival, Ralph and his buddy disappeared to the upstairs bedroom. Punctual, May blustered into the mansion with his mouth moving a mile a minute. Ralph listened carefully to the hour-long conversation, while also monitoring the electronic equipment.

  “I want to declare peace,” May said to Metts. “This is a privileged conversation. Right? Neither one of us is going to quote the other.”

  “That’s right,” Metts lied.

  Bill May plunged right in, first detailing at least one prior meeting that had apparently taken place between May and the governor to discuss the highway contracts.

  “I told Johnny that Frank Metts was trying to take away my business. Johnny said don’t worry. You two will get along fine. You’re just alike.”

  Bill May presented an arrangement under which Metts and May could settle their differences while both saving face.

  “I’m gonna lay it on the table, “ May said to Metts. “I want to be paid our arrears, that’s $15,000; our 1979 negotiated fee, that’s $212,000; or else pay us a lump sum to get us out of the picture… twenty-three years at $100,000 a year, or $2.3 million.”

  Ralph eavesdropped carefully, as Bill May hinted that he didn’t need to bribe Frank Metts because he had already paid his dues. When he contributed $23,000 to the Brown gubernatorial campaign, May claimed he had been guaranteed future state highway contracts.

  “Let me get down to hard knocking now of what I’d like to expect of you. First, let’s go back to the beginning. Johnny, when he announced for governor at the airport in Louisville, called me and asked me to be for him. Then I talked to Larry [Townsend]. I said ‘you’re the money man.’ I give him $10,000 up front. I give him $3,000 on the final action. I just want to be left alone. I thought I had an arrangement with Larry Townsend where I’d be left alone,” May said, referring to Brown’s current Secretary of Commerce and former campaign manager. “That arrangement included Route 3, it included the turnpike inspections. It included everything!”

  May continued, delineating the contributions he had made, including one to Frank Metts’s wife, Sandy. “I put up the 13,000 bucks, I paid off a $7,000 club bill…and then, Sandy tagged me for a thousand bucks for Rosalynn Carter and Phyllis [George Brown] tagged me for a thousand bucks. “

  Ralph listened as the words rolled off Metts’s tongue. Metts contended that any campaign solicitations had been made only because May had the reputation of a big contributor—no strings or promises attached.

  “I don’t want you to act so fucking naive, Frank.”

  “John Y. called me on Monday and gave me your phone number. He said ‘Frank, if you made a commitment [to Bill May] I know you’ll live up to it.’ Hell, I didn’t make any commitment!’’

  May hinted to Metts that he had retained lawyers to research the possibility of filing a libel suit against Metts.

  “I don’t like being threatened,’’ Metts responded, clearly agitated at May’s tone.

  “I have bought a position to the extent that I ought to be able to maintain the position I had when you all came in,” May said.

  Ralph’s ears perked up when he heard the phrase that would resound through his head for the next several months.

  I have bought a position.

  “Bill May sure as hell thinks he already bribed someone,” Ralph said to his investigator as they unhooked the wires.

  Upon May’s departure, Ralph and Metts dissected the conversation. Both men looked at the tape as if it were a hot potato. Metts picked up the phone to call Neil Welch. He briefly described the taped conversation, and then handed the receiver to Ralph.

  “Ship it up here and we’ll listen to it,” Welch said, discouraging lengthy discussion.

  After checking into a hotel, Ralph stayed up until 3 a.m. making a copy of the tape. Early the following Sunday morning, they drove to the airport—the tape in Ralph’s satchel. No flights were available, due to the busy holiday traffic. Forced to wait two days for a reservation back to Kentucky, they took the tape over to the freight counter at Delta.

  Ralph kept the original tape, and placed his copy in a padded envelope to be shipped to Blue Grass Airport, where Neil Welch awaited its arrival.

  “When we returned to Kentucky on Tuesday,” Ralph recalled, “Welch told me he and an FBI agent had listened to the tape at the airport in Lexington. They then played it for a prosecutor. ‘We don’t have a federal case,’ Welch told me.”

  Ralph was nonplussed; the allegations seemed clear enough to him. Once he was back in his orange-wallpapered office, he retrieved the original tape from his briefcase and played it again and again.

  Ralph went back to Welch the next day. “The man said he bought his position. I think we need to reevaluate this,” he said to Welch.

  Succumbing to Ralph’s determination, Welch directed him to play the tape for the Kentucky State Police legal counsel. “Sure enough, the lawyer ruled that there had been a violation of state law,” Ralph recalled. “I took the lawyer’s opinion back to Welch and recommended that we prosecute Bill May and Commerce Secretary Larry Townsend under the state bribery statutes. I knew it wouldn’t look too good for the governor, but I figured let the chips fall where they may. Welch nodded, mumbled something, and said he’d think about it.”

  Every day, Ralph expected Welch to give him the go-ahead on the case. When the days turned into weeks, Ralph interpreted Welch’s silence as a tacit instruction to drop the case. Sensing it would come in handy someday, Ralph took the original tape recording to his apartment and dropped it into a brown paper bag filled with other micro-cassettes he had saved through the years.

  Turning his attention away from politicians, Ralph decided his time would be better spent chasing crooked cops and drug smugglers.

  PART TWO

  BOOK ONE

  Soured Mash

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The buxom Kentucky woman called a local attorney from a pay phone in Punta Gorda, Florida.

  “Are you sure this is the correct address for Gene Berry?” the woman asked the attorney, rattling off a number located on Melbourne Street in the quiet residential area of Charlotte Harbor.

  Satisfied, she returned to the rental car that was idling nearby. To the driver, who thought the woman’s name was Brenda Rankin, she said: “We’ve got the right house.”

  Richard Hollimon, the driver, once again drove a triangular route from U.S. 41, north to Melbourne Street, over to Harborview Road, and back to U.S. 41. For the second time, they passed the ranch-style house, checking for escape routes. The house sat placidly on the bank of the Peace River, surrounded by a high wooden fence. A tan car was parked in the driveway, its numerous antennas stretching into the air. The tulips that had been so carefully tended by the state prosecutor who owned the house were just beginning to bloom. The dyed-brunette woman squinted in order to read Berry on the mailbox.

  It was 6:45 p.m. on a Saturday evening, January 16, 1982. Dusk. Many of Berry’s neighbors were home, she noted.

  In the car, “Brenda” changed into a navy blue jogging suit, pulled on a wig, placed a pair of large sunglasses on the bridge of her nose, and picked up the 38 special that had been given to her by longtime friend Henry Vance. The thirty-nine-year-old straight-laced, top aide to the Kentucky Speaker of the House and respected adviser to former Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll had initially agreed to carry out the assassination, and had even accepted ten thousand dollars as a down payment for the job. Vance had sent two
men to Florida to scope out the situation, but two days earlier, they had backed out for some reason. Vance returned Brenda’s money, providing her instead with a weapon and instructions.

  Shoot the target in the head and in the heart at close range, he had told her, and use wadcutter, or hollow point, bullets. He had shown her how to wipe the gun and the ammunition with WD-40 motor oil, so that no fingerprints could be found, and told her to throw the gun into saltwater afterward.

  As “Brenda” and Hollimon approached the neighborhood for the third time, the woman instructed her driver to park the car on nearby Shady Lane and to wait for her there. As she walked toward the house, she thought about what Vance had said: “Aim the gun right at his eyes.” Nervous, she wondered if she really had the courage to kill someone.

  First she prayed. Then she knocked on the front door. Within seconds, Eugene Berry opened it.

  “Are you Gene Berry?” she asked.

  “Hi, how are you?” Berry politely greeted the woman, recognizing her as Bonnie Kelly—the wife of Mike Kelly, whom he had recently prosecuted on drug-smuggling charges.

  “You remember me?” she asked, pulling the gun out from behind her. She lifted it up toward his face, but couldn’t make herself look him in the eye. Suddenly panicking, she lowered the gun. Berry tried running back into the house and Bonnie opened fire. She shot him twice as he backed away, and one more time in his heart after he fell to the floor.

  Trudi, Berry’s wife, had been seated on the couch in her living room when the bell rang. As she walked toward the entryway to see the visitor, she heard two gunshots ring out. She dropped to the floor and crawled on her hands and knees to the kitchen and dialed the operator, but then let the phone drop limply, too terrified to speak. Hearing the gurgling, dying sounds her husband made, she ran to him. Over his shoulder Trudi saw his assailant: at the same moment she heard one more shot fired. Blood splattered the carpet and walls; their collie and Chihuahua were barking wildly. For a brief instant, the two women were locked in a gaze. Bonnie had intended to kill Trudi as well, but seeing her this way, helpless and vulnerable at the side of her slain husband, Bonnie’s conscience bothered her.

  Instead, she turned and ran down Melbourne Street looking for her getaway car. As she ran, she found herself yelling, “Call the police,” hoping to distract attention from herself.

  Waiting for her, Hollimon had heard at least two shots fired from where he was parked. Instinctively, he started to flee, turning his car in the opposite direction. Suddenly, “Brenda” appeared in his headlights. Even then, he considered not picking her up. What was he doing in this crazy situation? he wondered. He was no killer. But reason overtook him. He knew he was a dead man if he didn’t follow his orders.

  “Is he dead?” Hollimon asked as soon as “Brenda” jumped into the front seat. He whipped the car around and headed for Interstate 75.

  “I don’t know, but that last shot should have got him. There was blood squirting everywhere. He’ll be dead by the time the paramedics get there.”

  “What happened?” Hollimon asked, not sure he really wanted to know.

  “I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door,” she answered. “He came to the door carrying a puppy. He was smiling, real friendly. I kept my head down. When I pulled the gun out he panicked and tried to run. I shot him and he stumbled.” She described how she had crossed the threshold chasing him, and then met the wide, scared eyes of his wife. “She was in a state of shock, like she was wanting to scream. I shot him again and again. I wanted to make sure he was dead.”

  In her moment of excitement Bonnie Kelly confided in Richard Hollimon. She told him she had considered cutting off one of Berry’s ears as a trophy. That’s what Henry Vance had suggested to her. She even told him her name was not really Brenda Rankin. She was the wife of the Big Man, she told him. Hollimon had been around the southern Florida drug world for a long time. He knew immediately that she was referring to a bushy-haired, 350-pounder named Mike Kelly.

  As rehearsed, Hollimon headed north for the county line. Once they crossed over from Charlotte County into Sarasota County, Hollimon drove onto a side road to search for a place to dump the weapon. Bonnie directed him to park next to a canal, where she tossed the gun, her jogging suit, and her wig into the pale blue brine.

  That night, Drew Thornton, Henry Vance, and others waited at the Lexington residence of Mike and Bonnie Kelly. Bonnie had earlier left a message on the answering machine, saying simply: “It’s done.”

  When she called back later, Stephen Taylor—a friend of the Kellys—answered on the first ring.

  “I shot the mother-fucker,” Bonnie said, recognizing Taylor’s voice. “It’s done. I don’t know whether he’s dead or not.” Bonnie did not yet know that the forty-six-year old lawman had died within seconds. “I tried to shoot him in the face but he threw up his arms. I don’t know if he recognized me. I don’t know if his wife recognized me either.”

  Taylor nodded at Drew, indicating the mission had been accomplished. Edgy, the full impact of the murder struck Taylor for the first time. He knew the Florida police would suspect him immediately. He was scheduled to go on trial in Florida two days later, to be prosecuted by the dead man—Eugene Berry. Mike Kelly wouldn’t be a suspect, since he was already serving his jail time. And who would think of Bonnie? Bonnie had fled to Sarasota, and was scheduled to depart Florida for Lexington on a Delta Airlines flight the next day, using her assumed name of Brenda Rankin.

  Satisfied so far with the way events had progressed, Drew and Henry Vance took charge of the next phase: The alibis.

  For nearly an hour, Drew had been using pestle to methodically grind shards of glass. When the mixture was as fine as salt, Drew placed the mortar on the coffee table. Vance took a razor from his briefcase and motioned for Taylor to approach him. Handing him the razor and a Quaalude, Vance told him to channel a gash, first across his face, then down his arms, and then to rub sandpaper on the wound. Ignoring the oozing blood and Taylor’s grimaces, Drew poured a layer of glass into the open wounds.

  When Drew had finished his laborious carving, Taylor went outside to the driveway. There, John Kelly—Mike’s brother—and Betty Gee— Bonnie’s sister—stood next to John Kelly’s car. Vance and Thornton had battered the ‘67 Dodge with a crowbar and smashed the windshield, creating the impression it had recently been involved in an accident.

  Under instructions from Drew and Vance, John Kelly and Stephen Taylor, to whom Vance had administered a Quaalude so he’d be groggy, drove to a previously determined Lexington intersection and ran the car into a utility pole.

  Then they waited.

  Within the hour, traffic detectives arrived to routinely investigate the one-car accident. Taylor feigned unconsciousness. Surreptitiously, he checked his watch. By 2:15 a.m. he was safely ensconced in the emergency room at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Already, a police report was being filed, referring to his automobile accident. Soon, there would be medical paperwork as well, describing the head, face, and chest injuries he had received in the accident, for which a physician dutifully treated him.

  Not only had Taylor created an alibi for his whereabouts the night of the murder, but he now had an excuse as well for not appearing in court on Monday.

  When a midnight phone awakened him call—an increasingly common occurrence these days—Ralph was asked to locate all Kentucky members of the Company. “They’ve shot Gene Berry,” Ralph was told by Florida cops with whom he had become familiar during the Mike Kelly drug investigation. “You’ve got to help us round everyone up.”

  The night of the murder, police issued a Be-on-the-Lookout, or BOLO, for a car with Kentucky plates. A composite drawing of a woman jogger, based on eyewitness reports, was widely distributed and published in local newspapers and on television stations. Police were pleading for an unknown woman who had been seen joggin
g in the Berry neighborhood around the same time of the murder to make herself available for questioning. Trudi Berry told police that judging from the inflection in his voice, her husband had recognized his killer, and that it had been a woman. Police had no idea who the woman could be. Her description was that of a five-foot-five woman with an ample bust and wide hips. Investigators quickly learned that a woman matching the composite drawing had been seen in the courthouse the previous week. The woman had been observed removing her wig after leaving the courthouse; she then put the hairpiece inside her coat, fluffed up her hair, and drove away.

  Within hours of the shooting, Florida authorities had already zeroed in on Mike Kelly, even though he was incarcerated, and his buddy, Stephen Taylor. Ralph was provided with a physical description, date of birth, and other statistics for Taylor. Taylor, Ralph was told, had met and befriended Mike Kelly in jail—whereupon the two men plotted the murder of the man responsible for putting them both behind bars. Taylor was subsequently released from jail, but was facing prosecution by Gene Berry the Monday following the weekend

  Berry was killed. To Ralph, it sounded like a replay of the Judge Wood-Jimmy Chagra nightmare.

  Initially, evidence was sketchy. Police had found a set of motel keys on a bridge nearby. The motel owner confirmed the patrons had driven a car with Kentucky plates. But divers dragging the Peace River failed to retrieve a weapon.

  More than sixty law enforcement officers conducted the largest manhunt in Charlotte County history in search of the mysterious female jogger. Concentrating their search efforts in the area surrounding the middle-class, residential area where the murdered father of five had lived, police boats trolled the nearby Peace River, and trained dogs sniffed the property—all to no avail.

  Florida police wanted to avoid the Lexington police, and to work exclusively with the Kentucky State Police, Ralph was told, because of the suspected involvement of several former Lexington police officers in the murder conspiracy.