The Bluegrass Conspiracy

by Sally Denton

  Don Powers was waiting for Ralph when he returned home that morning. Together the two of them set about trying to determine what the bottom line was. Who had set him up? Terry Barnes? Commissioner Campbell? Henry Vance? Where was Neil Welch? One thing was obvious: Both the Henry Vance and Jimmy Lambert investigations would come to a screeching halt now that Ralph was out of the picture.

  Powers had obtained a copy of an affidavit in support of the search warrant that had been signed at two o’clock that morning. Ralph shook his head in disbelief as he read it:

  “Affiant has been an officer with the Kentucky State Police for a period of ten years and this information and observations contained herein were received and made in his capacity as an officer thereof.

  “On May 18, 1982, at approximately 10:15 a.m. affiant observed Ralph Ross attach a telephone receiver to a pen register located in the back bedroom of his apartment. After the receiver was hooked up a red light came on and Ross said, ‘Someone is talking right now.’ Ross then listened to a telephone conversation between two females. After the receiver was hung up Ross stated to affiant, ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about this. We could get five years in the pen for it.’

  “At approximately 6 p.m. on May 18, 1982, Ross told affiant that ‘Vance was burning the phone up. He’s calling lawyers and everyone. He said he wasn’t going anywhere tomorrow except to Frankfort to pick up some things.’

  “At approximately 8 p.m. on May 18, 1982, affiant observed Ross listen to a telephone conversation between persons, one of whom Ross stated was Bobby Richardson [Speaker of the House]. Ross also told affiant that earlier in the evening he had listened to a telephone conversation between Henry Vance and an unidentified party. Ross also said that he planned to hook up a recorder to the listening devices.

  “On May 19, 1982, at approximately 11:25 a.m. Ross told affiant that Vance burned the phone up last night, Canan called and the shit got heavy. They were giving me down the road.

  “On May 19, 1982, at approximately 1 p.m. affiant observed the wiretapping equipment still in place in Ross’s bedroom and at approximately 10 p.m. that date affiant photographed the equipment.

  “Signed: Sergeant T. C. Barnes.”

  “The first thing I’d better do is get a lawyer,” Ralph said to Powers, never dreaming such an endeavor would be nearly impossible.

  Ralph spent that last week of May in a frenetic attempt to comprehend the severity of his situation. Within days of his arrest, a state grand jury had returned an indictment against him, charging him with twenty-eight felony counts: One count of installing eavesdropping equipment, and twenty-seven counts of eavesdropping. If convicted, Ralph knew he could face a lifetime in prison,. Almost immediately, it had become evident that Welch had been the intended target of the investigation. The prosecutor had offered Ralph a total dismissal of the charges against him if he would implicate Welch. “You give us Neil Welch and you can walk free,” they had told Ralph. They wanted Ralph to admit to the wiretapping and testify that he had been operating under Welch’s directions and that Welch had ordered the pen register and wiretap, Those who had framed Ralph also wanted Welch out of the state of Kentucky before he netted any political bigwigs, Ralph assumed.

  Of alarming concern to him was Neil Welch’s reaction—the man acted as though he had never heard of Ralph Ross. Welch made no attempt to contact Ralph or offer support, either emotional, professional, or legal. Ralph felt completely in the dark about his situation, learning more from newspaper accounts than from anyone else. The simmering interdepartmental feud between Justice Secretary Welch and State Police Commissioner Campbell became combustible following Ralph’s arrest, as charges and countercharges made front-page headlines every day. “While Welch has admitted being familiar with the Vance probe,” the Lexington Herald reported, “he has said that the State Police were responsible for Ross’ activities. State Police Commissioner Marion Campbell has vigorously denied that, saying Ross still reported to Welch.” A story in the Louisville Times challenged Welch’s denials: “…Numerous officers say Ross reported directly to Welch and no one else. ‘Everybody in the state police knows it,’ said one top-level police official. Ross was in Welch’s office ‘at least three days a week,’ and had his own office down the hall.”

  Reading between the lines, Ralph saw the makings of a scapegoat. The real target was Welch. Irked at being kept in the dark about the Vance investigation, Campbell had relished the idea of arresting Ralph Ross and thereby embarrassing Welch. It had been Campbell who had insisted that Ralph retake control of the surveillance team; Campbell who insisted that Terry Barnes be reassigned to Special Operations. But why? Ralph wondered.

  Ralph’s feelings about Welch’s public response were mixed. On the one hand, he realized that deniability was often necessary in a criminal investigation. He could understand Welch’s need to insulate himself from any alleged illegalities. Such was the nature of the business, and Welch was famous for his ability to distance himself from his underlings when it was expedient to do so. But on the other hand, Ralph felt abandoned by his superior. When he read in the paper that Welch had requested the FBI to enter the wiretap investigation, Ralph thought that maybe Welch was trying to assist him from behind the scenes. Ralph had little faith in the district court system in Lexington where the judges, jurors, and prosecutors had incestuous political and personal affiliations. Ralph thought he could get a fair shake in federal court, and he assumed Welch was trying to help him out by getting the case transferred. But Larry Roberts, the commonwealth attorney, was fighting hard to keep the case. Roberts had never liked Ralph and knew that Ralph didn’t trust him. Meanwhile, the FBI found the charges were groundless, and the U.S. attorney didn’t want to prosecute the case, so Roberts won out.

  The case was a political hot potato. Ralph began to panic when, by late summer 1982, he realized he was not going to be able to obtain first-rate legal counsel. No one wanted to take the case. He approached every major law firm in Lexington and they all turned him down. The reason given was conflict of interest. The lawyers were friends of the Vances. Or the Thorntons. Or the Kellys. Or Jimmy Lambert’s. Ralph became more and more depressed as he approached attorneys in other Kentucky cities. Intimidated by the staggering fees of more than a hundred dollars per hour, he feared his defense could cost as much as fifty thousand dollars. The state police maintained a special fund to assist troopers who incurred legal problems as a result of their official duties. But Ralph was hearing rumors that state police officials intended to deny him eligibility for the compensation. Without financial help from the state, Ralph could face personal bankruptcy. But even destitution did not frighten him nearly so much as his inability to retain a lawyer. He knew that he needed a special type of attorney—a fighter, not a fixer.

  Finally, a Frankfort attorney named Bill Johnson agreed to take the case. Ralph was initially skeptical of Johnson’s close friendship with Commissioner Campbell, and uneasy about the fact that Johnson had defended many of the white-collar criminals whom Ralph had arrested in the past. But Ralph’s options were limited. Besides, Johnson’s country-lawyer courtroom finesse had earned him a statewide reputation.

  Immediately, Johnson encouraged Ralph to accept the state’s plea bargain offer to have the twenty-eight felony counts dropped. “Hell no,” Ralph said with characteristic outrage. “Let’s go fight it out in the courthouse.”

  In the weeks following Ralph’s arrest, a swirl of controversy arose over whether or not Governor John Y. Brown, Jr., had listened to the twenty-seven conversations Ralph had allegedly tape-recorded. Reports circulated that Welch had played the tapes for Brown at Brown’s behest. But in his testimony before the grand jury, Welch was vague about the incident, stating only that the governor knew more about the tapes than Welch did.

  Governor Brown refused public comment about the tapes, but ordered Welch, Campbell, and Powers to submit to lie dete
ctor tests regarding their prior knowledge of the wiretapping. Welch and Campbell both claimed to have passed the tests, though the results were never released to the public, and Powers refused to take the polygraph. Ralph was told that Welch failed one polygraph and the results of the second one were inconclusive. It was during this time that the governor was overheard at a function remarking about Welch: “I can’t get him back in his cage.”

  When United Press International reported that Ross had earlier recommended disciplinary action against his accuser, Terry Barnes, the governor denied that Ross’s arrest was a vendetta. “‘This doesn’t mean anybody was out to get anybody,’ Brown said in a short interview…Brown said that he did not want to imply any guilt by Ross, but said that wiretapping “will not be tolerated in this administration. I don’t know anything that is more distasteful.’”

  In early December 1982, Ralph bellied up to the bar at Brewbakers. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Drew Thornton jumping up from a table and heading out the door. Ralph stole a glance at Drew’s drinking partners, and his heart skipped a beat as he recognized Henry Vance and Jimmy Lambert. They were eyeing him and squirming in their seats as if trying to figure out if Ralph had purposely, or accidentally, invaded their territory.

  “How you doin’?” Drew said, as he slid onto the barstool next to Ralph.

  Ralph figured Drew must have left the bar momentarily to get rid of his “piece”—for Drew had just been released from the Federal Correctional Institute in Lexington where he had spent 120 of his 180-day sentence. If he were caught in a bar carrying a gun, he’d be sent right back to the pen.

  “Pretty good…considering,” Ralph answered. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  This, their second chance meeting, would be the last time the two men would ever speak. They would see each other one more time, when Drew Thornton would take the witness stand a few days later in Ralph’s trial and point his finger across the room at Ralph and say: “That’s the man who sent me to prison.”

  “I can’t say that I’m sorry about all your problems,” Drew said.

  “No,” Ralph said, kind of chuckling. “Don’t ‘spose you would be.”

  “I do hope you don’t have to spend any time in the can,” Drew said, with uncharacteristic sincerity. “It’s not a good place for a cop to be.”

  “How’d you spend your time in there?” Ralph asked him.

  “Mostly trying to keep in shape. I read a lot of books and I worked out all the time, I ran. Lifted weights. Did my t’ai chi. It was a long four months.”

  Ralph nodded his head in understanding if not sympathy.

  “Well, good luck to you,” Drew said, popping up off his stool so fast that Ralph instinctively stiffened. “Like I said, I hope you don’t have to pull any time,” Drew said, courteously offering his hand to his archenemy. “But I hope you get your ass sued.”

  Snow fell against the windshield as Ralph maneuvered his car into a parking spot near the courthouse. Not until Ralph saw the television stations’ vans with their rooftop microwave dishes set up for live shots did he believe that he was really going to stand trial.

  For the first time since his arrest, he almost broke down. Ralph had harbored hopes that the judge would dismiss the indictment; that someone would save him from this humiliating circus. But when he saw the swarm of broadcast and print reporters milling about, he realized this was a show that was destined to go on.

  The courtroom scene was a microcosm of Ralph’s life. Gathered together, as if waiting to watch the gladiators, were his friends, enemies, and family members. An invisible magnet seemed to pull people to one side or another of the courtroom as at a wedding, dividing them in accordance with their loyalties. Ralph’s sisters, his daughters, and his mother huddled together, flanked by several of Ralph’s surveillance team members who were scheduled to testify as character witnesses for him. Across from them were Henry Vance, Drew Thornton, John Bizzack, Terry Barnes, and prosecuting attorney Larry Roberts. Wearing his uniform of khaki pants and navy blazer, his penny loafers gleaming, Vance paced the halls like a high-strung hunting dog. He scowled at everyone, true to his role as the outraged victim whose constitutional rights and privacy had been invaded by Ralph Ross.

  The upcoming trial had the air of the best entertainment in town, promising high drama. A total of sixty-four witnesses—including Governor John Y. Brown, Jr., Neil Welch, two assistant U.S. attorneys, and the state’s top law enforcement officials—had been subpoenaed to testify. Because of the political undercurrents, as well as the expected exposure of the inner workings of a fascinating international narcotics ring, the trial provided an arena for curious spectators.

  Brown had asked that he be allowed to testify through deposition, rather than in person. But the judge had ruled that the governor would be “well advised” to obey his subpoena. The judge then announced that he intended to hear testimony until late every evening and on weekends if necessary, in order to complete the trial before the Christmas holidays began. Remarkably, the judge only allowed an hour and a half for voir dire. A jury was selected and the trial got underway on the first day. Following several motions, the attorneys offered differing portraits of Ralph Ross in their opening statements. The prosecutor described Ralph as an overzealous Lone Ranger cop who trampled on the civil liberties of his targets. Defense attorney Bill Johnson painted a portrait of a conscientious law enforcement officer who had been framed by a disgruntled underling. Johnson admitted that Ralph had monitored Vance’s phone calls with a pen register—for which he had a court order—but suggested that Terry Barnes, who possessed a key to Ralph’s apartment, was responsible for taping the telephone conversations in question. Johnson described Barnes as a “very disturbed person” who had once told the state police commissioner that he had hallucinations of “ghosts and hands coming out of a wall.”

  Testifying at night on the second day of the trial were Governor Brown, who claimed never to have heard the tapes, and Welch, who seemed to backtrack on his grand jury testimony, claiming he had no reason to believe that the governor had listened to the tapes.

  The question of who had heard the tapes, and when, was of utmost significance to Ralph’s defense. He believed that someone had tampered with the tapes before the trial. Of the twenty-seven conversations in question, none substantively reflected Vance’s involvement in a murder and drug conspiracy, fueling Ralph’s suspicion that the conversations had been purposely selected for their inconsequence. Ralph contended that the tape-recorded conversations were not in sequential order—which he attributed to the fact that the state police had not followed normal investigative procedure. At least two of the conversations were taped while Ralph was in Florida.

  But prosecutor Larry Roberts pointed to the lack of substance on the tapes as evidence that Vance was not involved in the murder and drug conspiracy, but was a hapless victim of Ralph’s renegade tactics. The prosecution called several witnesses the second day of the trial, who turned out to be better witnesses for Ralph, including several federal prosecutors.

  Finishing off the first day of testimony, State Police Commissioner Campbell took the stand and confirmed Barnes’s reported sighting of ghosts and hands. With that, Ralph’s hopes for acquittal surfaced as Barnes’s veracity surged to the forefront of the case.

  On the second day of trial, the prosecution elicited testimony demonstrating that the evidence in the case had been properly handled, attempting to dispel notions of tampering. Several state police witnesses who had aided Barnes in setting up Ralph testified that they were afraid and jealous of Welch’s God Squad.

  In his cross-examination, Johnson intimated that there were locations other than Ralph’s apartment where someone could tap Vance’s telephone line with a handset. He also asked why the state police never tested the tapes to prove they had been made on Ralph’s tape recorder. The state police hadn’t even dusted the
m for fingerprints, Ralph’s attorney pointed out.

  Barnes took the stand on the fourth day. While admitting that he didn’t like Ralph, Barnes denied that he had framed his former boss. During Barnes’s testimony, Ralph became concerned that Johnson was not being aggressive enough. When Ralph suggested certain lines of questioning that he thought Johnson should pursue, Johnson reminded Ralph that Johnson was the lawyer.

  “We’ve got four police officers who are obviously lying,” Ralph said that night to Christie, “and my attorney won’t even challenge their credibility.”

  On that day, the trial was thrown into chaos. Vance pleaded with the judge not to play four conversations in open court: Two of the taped conversations were between Vance’s wife and her sister, and related to the emotional problems of Vance’s daughter; a third conversation was about a domestic situation involving Vance’s sister-in-law; and the fourth tape related to a conversation between Vance and a coworker regarding the job performance of a fellow legislative aide.

  In an emotional entreaty, his voice quaking, Vance addressed the court: “They delve into the life of a twelve-year-old girl who didn’t ask to have her name thrown around, who didn’t ask for Ralph Ross to bug her father’s phone.” Vance complained that a public airing of the tapes would only serve to further invade the privacy of the participants.

  Johnson argued that Ralph’s right to a complete defense hinged upon full scrutiny of the evidence. Ralph needed to refer to the entire contents of the tapes in order to prove he didn’t record them, Johnson said.

  The judge ruled in favor of the defense, creating an air of excitement in the proceedings as spectators anticipated the Vance’s dirty laundry being hung on the public line.

  But the jurors and audience listened in apparent disappointment and boredom as the twenty-seven conversations were played. Ranging from casual discussions about Mrs. Vance’s natural-food diet, to a relative’s marital problems and their daughter’s instability, the conversations were almost embarrassing in their triviality—common gossip and cattiness that anyone would dread having publicized.