The Bluegrass Conspiracy

by Sally Denton

  The only suggestion that Vance was involved with the Company surfaced with two long-distance calls from Drew, who had been awaiting sentencing in Fresno at the time. During one conversation, Drew complained about the report prepared by the federal probation officers that referred to the relationship between him and Vance. When Drew asked Vance if things were going well at his end, Vance replied: “There’s been more crap in the paper, stuff I’ll talk to you about later—the kind of crap you’d expect.” A week earlier, news stories had appeared implicating Vance in the Berry murder. The second call from Drew to Vance was brief, only long enough for Drew to ask

  Vance to return his call from another phone, as if Drew knew Vance’s phone was tapped.

  But after listening to five hours of recorded drivel, on the fifth day of the trial the testimony took a turn for the defense, as a dramatic fourteen-minute conversation between Betty Gee and Bonnie’s attorney was played. State police during their raid on Ralph’s apartment had seized the tape. Since it had been made with Betty’s consent, the taping was not illegal; but because it had been obtained as part of the prosecution’s evidence, Ralph’s attorney insisted that it too be played.

  Whatever stature Henry Vance enjoyed in the community was severely shaken by the Gee tape. For the first time, Vance was linked by testimony to the cold-blooded assassination of a public official.

  Vance held his head in his hands as he listened to Betty’s voice reverberate through the loudspeakers in the courtroom. At times he patted his wife’s hand as she wept soundlessly. The jurors were clearly surprised by the blatancy of Betty Gee’s claims, alternating glances from Vance to Ralph.

  At the beginning of the conversation, Bonnie’s lawyer asked Betty to sign a statement disputing the reports that Vance had given the gun to Bonnie. Betty refused, saying, “I know for a fact that Henry Vance gave Bonnie the gun.”

  “She told you that?” the attorney was heard asking Betty. “The gun or a gun?”

  “The gun that was used to kill the guy,” Betty answered. “Henry Vance is really involved in it all.” She asked the lawyer if he knew about Vance “hiring two guys to kill that guy down there”—an apparent reference to an earlier attempt on Berry’s life.

  Later in the tape, Betty Gee said that both she and Bonnie feared for their lives. “Henry Vance has said he isn’t going to jail for anyone. She [Bonnie] said she had signed a contract with several people, and if she didn’t do what she was supposed to, that I would be the first to be killed,” Betty said.

  After another day during which jurors heard testimony from Drew Thornton, Rebecca Sharp, Henry Vance, and everyone else whose conversation had been recorded, the prosecution rested its case on a somewhat sour note.

  After the Betty Gee tape, Ralph felt positive he could convince the jury of his innocence. With a sense of security he decided to take the stand in his own defense on the seventh day of trial.

  For three and one half hours Ralph calmly answered questions put to him by attorneys for both sides. Exhausted and haggard, his gray suit hung loosely on the massive frame that had lost too much weight too fast. The once jovial face had the appearance of a grieving widower, the dark circles under the eyes belying his stature.

  Yes, he had accompanied Neil Welch to the state legislature to propose legalized wiretapping. But no, he had not wiretapped Vance’s telephone in retaliation because Vance had lobbied to defeat the bill.

  Yes, it was true that the month-long surveillance of Vance had failed to turn up any evidence that Vance had committed a crime. But the purpose of the Vance investigation, Ralph said, was to ascertain Vance’s relationship with other suspects in the Berry murder.

  Yes, he had installed the court-ordered pen register and used a call-monitoring device to check that the equipment was working properly. But no, he had not listened in on any of Vance’s conversations.

  Ralph admitted that in addition to the pen register, he had also attached a bird dog—an electronic tracking device—to Vance’s Mercedes-Benz sports car. But everything he did in connection with the Vance investigation, Ralph declared, was done within the boundaries of the law.

  Asked if he had recorded the telephone conversations that had been played for the jury, Ralph responded: “No, sir. I did not.”

  To the contrary, Ralph testified, he had witnessed Terry Barnes listening to Vance’s conversations on two occasions, and had reprimanded Barnes for so doing.

  When the examination turned to the night of his arrest, Ralph paused to gain composure. But as the questioning proceeded, Ralph found he could not maintain control of his emotions. Clearly, he had not yet come to grips with the reality that his own agency had turned against him. As he began describing that fateful night’s events, he tried to distance himself from his words. But when he relived crouching in fear in the parking lot of his apartment building, reaching for his magnum to fend off the two men who were moving toward him, his voice cracked. He realized then that it had been a grave mistake to take the stand.

  His hands quavering, he swallowed as he tried to stifle a sob. When he couldn’t suppress the tumult in his mind, Ralph turned to the judge.

  “Sir, could we take a recess?” he asked.

  Before the judge ruled, Ralph was out of his chair and ducking behind an exhibit stand. His nineteen-year-old daughter Christie ran to embrace him, as the jurors and spectators watched the emotional disintegration of a once solid man.

  Ralph listened in disbelief as his attorney told the court he would rest the case without calling more than a dozen of Ralph’s character and alibi witnesses.

  By the end of his testimony, Ralph felt totally uncomfortable with his legal counsel. He remembered his initial concerns about Johnson’s relationship with Campbell and wished he had trusted his instincts. But what had his choices been? He hadn’t been able to convince another lawyer in the state to take his case, so what could he expect?

  Ralph couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that his own lawyer had betrayed him. Suddenly, conviction seemed foregone. He had never felt so vulnerable in his life. He had a sinking feeling that he had placed his future in the hands of his enemy. Whenever Ralph had raised his concerns with Johnson, his lawyer hinted that it was perfectly natural for a man in Ralph’s position to experience paranoid apprehension. It seemed to Ralph that Johnson had handled the prosecution witnesses with kid gloves; that he incorrectly decided against calling some of Ralph’s best character witnesses and that he failed to raise objections during Ralph’s cross-examination. Johnson assured Ralph that he was doing everything within his capacity.

  The three days of jury deliberation were hell for Ralph Ross. By this point, he was sure the fix was in. He would be convicted, he knew, because everything was against him—even his own lawyer. As do most criminal defendants, Ralph blamed his attorney for the mess he was in. “He’s the best prosecuting attorney the state had!” Ralph told relatives.

  Ralph thought Johnson had been remiss in neglecting to elicit expert testimony that would have proven the tapes were not made in his apartment. He felt Johnson had not been forceful enough in his cross-examination, and questioned Johnson’s decision to rest the case without calling character witnesses.

  Ralph paced the halls as he waited for the jurors to return their verdict. They must be hung, he thought, for three days was much too long to decide. He watched as the bailiff popped his head in and out of the room, delivering notes from the prosecutor to the foreman. He watched as the jurors were allowed to come and go as they pleased, not having been sequestered. He had never seen such antics, and wondered at the propriety of outsiders contacting jurors during deliberation. He suggested to Johnson that perhaps they should move for a mistrial. No use, he was told. This was the epitome of bluegrass justice.

  On the second day, the jury sent a note to the judge requesting a guarantee that Ralph would serve no jail time if the j
urors found him guilty. When the judge responded that it was not within his rights to make such a promise, the jurors returned to their room for another day of battling.

  “The jury has reached a verdict,” the judge announced finally. It was midnight on the third day—a week before Christmas.

  Ralph stared at the jurors as the foreman read their results. Guilty on fourteen counts of illegal eavesdropping. Not guilty of installing the wiretapping equipment, and not guilty on the additional ten counts. Three other counts had been dropped following motions during the trial. The jury urged leniency in each instance, recommending the minimum sentence of one year in prison on each of the fourteen counts.

  The verdict made neither rhyme nor reason to Ralph. Why would he be guilty of some but not others? To Ralph, it seemed an all or nothing situation.

  The judge dismissed the jury, pounded his gavel, and set a sentencing date for after the New Year.

  Ralph didn’t dread the sentencing nearly as much as he expected, so relieved was he that the trial was behind him. After experiencing the most miserable and depressing Christmas of his life, he was happy when 1983 finally rolled around.

  In early January, Christie organized a surprise party for her dad’s fiftieth birthday. She had invited Ralph’s friends from the FBI, the

  U.S. attorney’s office, and the state police. Most responded that they had prior engagements for that particular evening, but their thoughts were with Ralph. Neil Welch didn’t even acknowledge the invitation, and there was an unspoken directive in the FBI that it would not be politic for any agent to appear at the event. The federal prosecutors sent their regards, but indicated they felt their presence would not be appropriate at the party of a convicted felon.

  Despite the attitude of his colleagues, Ralph was touched by the turnout of friends and family. Wearing a white pullover V-neck sweater and tan slacks, he faced the crowd that had gathered in the recreation room of his apartment complex. As he looked around the room he saw people he had known in high school; loyal members of his surveillance team; his sisters, brothers-in-law, and nieces; his daughters; a few troopers who were proud to be aligned with Ralph; and some informants who had become friends, including Betty Gee. His voice cracked when he tried to speak.

  “I just want to thank everyone for coming, and making this a right nice party.” Naturally taciturn and slightly shy, Ralph swallowed hard and moved away from the center of attention. For the first time in several months Ralph felt his life returning to him. As he headed for the bar that was set up on a buffet table, he realized that the end of his ordeal was truly in sight. He filled a glass with Maker’s Mark bourbon and silently toasted his guests.

  On the morning of January 28, 1982, Judge George Barker called his court to order. Nearly every seat was filled in the spectators’ section. The day before, Barker had denied motions by the defense for a new trial, a reversal of the verdict, and reduction of the charges from felonies to misdemeanors. “I don’t believe Mr. Ross deserves to be put in jail,” the judge said, beginning an unusual thirty-minute commentary.

  Barker said that in all his years as a judge he had never received so much mail urging leniency for a defendant. He had also been presented with a petition bearing 2,800 signatures that had been circulated in three central Kentucky counties. A grocer from the county seat of Ralph’s hometown who had initiated the petition told the judge that “putting a former state policeman in prison would be the same as murdering him.”

  The judge indicated he had received similar pleas from people who didn’t know Ralph Ross personally, including four of the jurors who convicted him. “There is no question but that Mr. Ross enjoyed and still enjoys an outstanding record of faithful service, of dedicated service to his state,” Barker said. He then quoted from one letter that referred to the irony of Mike Kelly’s recent release from jail upon the reversal of his drug conviction. “Justice is strange,” the letter said. “The courts turn the crooks loose and convict the guys trying to catch the crooks.”

  Although the judge said he believed that Ralph was “entitled to leniency,” he suggested that a request to have his conviction reversed should be directed to Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. “If I were governor,” Judge Barker said, “I might be inclined to give clemency in this case.”

  Judge Barker then sentenced Ralph to a total of six years, but further reduced it to one year of unsupervised probation.

  One thing Barker neglected to mention was the six-page presentencing report that had been compiled by probation officers. Delving into Ralph’s personal and professional background, the report detailed Ralph’s long history of service to both the FBI and CIA. Such intelligence connections lent credence to the theory that Ralph’s investigation into Kentucky corruption might have been national in scope. The eavesdropping equipment in Ralph’s apartment had flustered the prosecution, since it had been stamped: Property of the U.S. Government. They wanted to know how Ralph had obtained wiretapping equipment that belonged to the federal government, and whether it belonged to the FBI or CIA. When questioned about where he had gotten it, Ralph would say only that he had picked it up at a federal building in New York City. When asked who owned it, he claimed not to know.

  Ralph spent the months following his trial in a fog of disbelief, anger, and sorrow. He dwelt constantly on the early days of the Kentucky State Police—back when it was an outfit to make one proud. Now, he felt ashamed to have been associated with such a group. Where could he go from here? The thought of future law enforcement was a moot point, for even if he wanted to, as a convict he could never again be employed as a police officer. His career destroyed and his personal life empty, Ralph somehow managed to preserve his conviction that he was right and that he would eventually be vindicated.

  With hindsight vision, he blamed himself for allowing Terry Barnes access to something as sensitive as a pen register. The only guilt Ralph would admit to was the exercise of bad judgment, and he became obsessed with his shortsightedness concerning Barnes. Barnes had been a disciplinary problem more than once. He had falsified reports and lied about the number of hours he had worked. He refused to follow orders, and had once been charged with insubordination. Ralph should have considered the powerful vengeance of a male ego scorned. Ralph knew that Barnes was the type of guy who needed constant supervision; so how did he allow Barnes to insinuate himself into what Ralph thought was a secure system.

  Ralph chastised himself for being remiss in checking out Barnes’s background. As it turned out, Barnes had worked the streets of Lexington in the early 1970s with Henry Vance, Drew Thornton, and Bill Canan, and had remained friends with them for more than a decade. Barnes had even once been accused by his undercover informants of selling drugs—a fact that Ralph could have ascertained had he taken the time to peruse Barnes’s personnel file. Ralph had recognized Barnes as a wild card, but had never suspected him of being a mole. Ralph should have taken more care in choosing his battles and his soldiers.

  Ralph dwelled as well on Welch’s continuing silence. Perhaps Welch, along with Ralph’s many friends in the FBI, would help him in some back-channel fashion. Or had they already done so? Is that why his sentence had been reduced, and he had received special dispensation to carry a gun? After all of his years in service to the federal government—assisting both the CIA and FBI in dozens of investiga-tions—Ralph couldn’t believe Welch had left his “right hand man” twisting in the wind. He fostered a secret expectation of salvation in the form of Neil Welch. At the beginning, on the surface anyway, it had seemed to Ralph that Welch adopted the attitude: “To hell with Ralph Ross. I’ve got to save my own rear end.” But Ralph hoped that had been a facade, and that Welch had failed to respond because he was powerless to salvage his own reputation, much less that of Ralph Ross, in the political atmosphere that surrounded the case.

  “Mr. Ross?” Ralph turned around from the lunch counter at a Lexington cafeteria.r />
  “Mr. Ross?” the man repeated, holding out his hand and introducing himself. “I don’t know whether or not you remember me, but I was one of the jurors in your case.”

  Ralph narrowed his eyes until he could conjure up a recollection of the man’s face. Several months had gone by since his trial.

  “I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’d like to talk to you a minute if you don’t mind,” the man said.

  Ralph nodded at the stool beside him, but the man remained standing.

  “You know,” the man had said, “the people on the jury wanted to turn you loose. In fact, we were all going to, except for one person. That’s why we kept sending notes to the judge asking if he’d go easy on you. Because this guy insisted that if we didn’t convict you that he was going to see to it that we had a hung jury, which would mean the next jury would really sock it to you.”

  Ralph listened as the man effusively apologized for the jury’s actions, intimating he had later come to believe the case had been rigged.

  “I just thought you should know this,” the guy said, and then turned and walked away.

  Ralph had often wondered if there had been jury tampering, for the verdict hadn’t made sense. Nothing about the case had made sense, for that matter—the charges or the verdict.

  At least this man’s version offered a semblance of explanation: The case had been fixed. There had been one holdout determined to hang tough.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ralph’s diary and personal notebooks, which were seized by state police when they raided his apartment, had thrown a monkey wrench into Ralph’s criminal case. Expecting to find references to the Henry Vance surveillance, investigators were stunned to find notations about Jimmy Lambert and Governor John Y. Brown instead.