By PETER FERRARA
Record Columnist
They found his body hanging from a tree here in the Daniel Boone National Forest. 51 year old Bill Sparkman was a single father, part-time teacher, and census volunteer. The cause of death was asphyxiation. Except for a single word, his death might not have attracted much attention. But written across his chest was “FED.” That’s what brought the FBI into the case.
Was Bill Sparkman killed because he worked for the federal government or did he simply wander into the wrong place in nearby Clay County? What caught my eye was the headline story in the Herald Scotland news-paper: “U.S. Official Murdered in Kentucky—Land of Meth and Moonshine.” That a Scottish newspaper would be running this account under that heading says bad things about our image in the eyes of much of the world.
The report states that Sparkman had been warned of the danger by a man who worked with him at the Johnson Elementary School. Gilbert Accairdo, a retired state trooper, says he told the victim:
“I recognized the inherent dangers of going to someone’s house and (them) not knowing what you’re about,” he is reported to have said. “The thing I stressed with Sparkman was to make sure people know you are just there to gather statistics. The area he went into is isolated, with no phone service. So I said: `Hey, be careful when you’re over that way.’ He was so naive, though, always looking for the good in people.”
Dave Breyer, of the regional FBI office in Louisville, is trying to play down the idea that a hatred of the federal government played a part in the murder. “I think to give the impression that he was strung up because he was a federal employee is giving a bad impression to the nation,” the paper reports. But it goes on to state that continuing FBI involvement in a “routine homicide” two weeks after it happened is “highly unusual.”
Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies in nearby Whitesburg, said people in Southeastern Kentucky are independent but are not anarchists. “It’s not like people round here have Rush Limbaugh neck tattoos. There has been a quick assumption people here hate their government. (But) if you look at the rates of military service, the number of people who have served and died in the Middle East, it shows that is not true.”
“Clay County,” Davis continued, “is one of four eastern Kentucky counties with an average income less than that of Kazakhstan, Uruguay, or Cuba... The life expectancy (here) is less than Mexico or China.” The newspaper went on to add: “An economy in transition, following the loss of thousands of coal mining jobs, cannot compete with the black market in illegal drugs. (Local reporter) Carl Greene said it was just as likely Sparkman stumbled upon a drug operation.”
“The mountain people grow a lot of marijuana,” he said. “There are methamphetamine labs there.... It is an area where the law is sometimes ignored.”
The newspaper account goes on to add this: “In the Prohibition Era of the 1920’s and 1930’s—the nearest courthouse was famous for trying more moonshine cases than any other in the land. For the time being, all census collection in the area has been suspended. The FBI, working in tandem with Kentucky state police, is refusing to rule anything out, including the possibility that Sparkman was unlucky enough to meet someone just as their anger at the Washington establishment boiled over.”
John Berry, who runs the Office of Personnel Management in charge of the survey, said he was confident Sparkman’s killer would be brought to justice. “If this is an assault on a federal employee, the full force and weight of the federal government will come down on these perpetrators as hell hath no fury,” he said. “By God, it will not be tolerated.”
My guess is that Sparkman’s killer, like so many others, will get away with it. I was told long ago by a former Sheriff : “If you want to get away with a crime—kill somebody. If you want to get caught—rob a store.” I’d be surprised if this victim was murdered for being a federal employee. More likely, he stumbled upon a drug or moonshine operation.
What does it say about us that a newspaper in Scotland is running this sad tale under the “Meth and Moonshine” heading, referring to this neck of the deep woods? To me, it’s just one more black eye on a region that already suffers from a lot of negative stereotypes. I have lived in the Daniel Boone National Forest for a pretty long time. The people here may be a proud and isolated bunch, but they are decent and honest and we deserve better. Too many think of this area as a locale for “Deliverance” and home turf of “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
It ain’t so, world. We’re just like everybody else—trying to get through this terrible economic crisis and struggling to make ends meet. Strange as it may sound to some, I think the time has come to stop putting moonshiners in jail. That also goes for non-violent drug users. If for no other reason than it is driving us broke, we need to legalize pot and moonshine so we don’t keep filling our jails and prisons with wacky-weed users and white lightning guzzlers. We’ve already got 2,250,000 folks behind bars—1% of our population!
If moonshine and pot were placed under a federal licensing program and the tax money collected applied to drug education and treatment, we’d all be a lot better off. I wonder when or if we’ll ever see a politician with the guts to stand up and say “Enough!” to this part of the phony, ineffective, and costly “War On Drugs.”
Even meth, Oxycontin, heroin, and other terribly abused drugs need to have those who are addicted to them receive treatment instead of incarceration. No less a Conservative icon than the late William F. Buckley, Jr, founder of The National Review, called for such legalization.
Regrettably, we still live in a time when such a common sense response to an overwhelming problem is demagogued as being “soft on drugs.”
Assuming he was murdered for stumbling into somebody’s illegal enterprise, how many more Bill Sparkman’s are going to die for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Will we have to change our license plate motto from “The Bluegrass State” to “Land of Meth and Moonshine”?
