Wicked Western Kentucky

By Richard Parker

Western Kentucky has always had a dark side, despite being the "Birthplace of Bluegrass Music." Mary James Trotter, an arrested moonshine-selling grandma, remarked to a judge that she "simply had to sell a little liquor now and then to take care of my four grandchildren." Rod Ferrell led a bloodsucking vampire cult in Murray, Kentucky, and traumatized parents of the 1990s. In the early morning of July 13, 1928, at the "Castle on the Cumberland," seven men were put to death in Kentucky's deadliest night of state-sponsored executions. Join award-winning author Richard Parker as he takes you on a journey through fifteen of Western Kentucky's most nefarious people, places and events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jan 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781439674291

Richard Parker

Richard Parker is Professor in the Institute of Social Medicine at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and the Sociomedical Sciences Division of the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, as well as Director of the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association (ABIA). Regina Maria Barbosa is Coordinator of Research on Women's Health at the Institute of Health and a Research Scientist at the Center for Population Studies at the University of Campinas in São Paulo. Peter Aggleton is Professor at the Institute of Education at the University of London.

Book preview

1

MICAJAH AND WILEY HARPE

These men were ravenous boasts rather than human beings, and the details of their numerous and devilish crimes would fill a large volume. They were ignorant and degraded, and in disposition, rapacious and cruel as wolves.

—Breckenridge News, January 17, 1883.

The Harpes, also spelled Harp in some sources, were probably the most wicked human beings to ever set foot in Kentucky. Many criminologists have labeled them America’s first documented serial killers. Their murderous rampage took an estimated thirty-nine lives—including one of their own infants. They have earned this label because they often killed their victims for the fun of it, leaving behind the victims’ possessions. The pair and their nearly wicked wives escaped law enforcement several times—often by sheer luck. They are forever ingrained in western Kentucky’s frontier history because of the beheading of Micajah Big Harpe, whose head was placed on a pole as a warning to other outlaws and murderers who traveled the Kentucky frontier.

Micajah Big and Wiley Little Harpe were most likely born in North Carolina, but some sources offer different accounts of their origins. There is also conflicting information on whether they were brothers or cousins and whether they participated in the Revolutionary War. These scrupulous facts do not negate the thievery and murderous activities the two carried out in Kentucky. The pair first entered Kentucky via the Wilderness Road after fleeing a murder they committed near Knoxville, Tennessee. They were accused of killing a man and filling the cavity of the man’s chest with rocks—a signature they incorporated in other murders.¹

Illustrations of frontiersmen resembling the Harpes. From A Peep at Washoe by J. Ross Browne in Harper’s Monthly Magazine. Public domain.

In Kentucky, the Harpes saw their opportunity to kill for the supplies they needed. While traveling on the Wilderness Road, the two came across a peddler named Peyton, who had a horse and ample supplies. The Harpes murdered Peyton and left his body on the side of the road, covered by tree branches, and took his provisions and horse. The two then instructed their wives to meet them at a designated spot, a ploy they would use many times as they fled law enforcement and vigilante posses. Once the two rendezvoused with their wives, the group traveled farther on the Wilderness Road. There, they met two travelers from Maryland named Bates and Paca. The two men agreed to join the Harpes and travel together to ensure both groups were safe from Native raids or robbers along the road. As night began to fall, Micajah decided it was best for the group to camp for the night. As Bates and Paca walked ahead of the Harpes, the two silently pulled their rifles out and shot the two travelers. Bates was immediately killed, and Paca was injured. Bloodthirsty and looking to finish the job, Micajah pulled out his tomahawk and plunged it into Paca’s head, killing him instantly. The two disposed of Bates’s and Paca’s bodies in some underbrush directly off the road, taking their clothing and valuables.²

The Harpes murdered several other people in eastern Kentucky, which led to their eventual capture by law enforcement officers. The pair and their families were taken to Danville and jailed. The two quickly found a way to escape from the jail, leaving their families behind, but they instructed them to meet up at Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, located on the Ohio River, at a later time. After escaping from the jail at Danville, the pair traveled through western Kentucky, toward Cave-in-Rock. In western Kentucky, the brutality and frequency of the Harpes’ murders increased, and they stopped murdering solely for goods and started murdering for the fun of it. After a while, the residents of Danville took pity on the Harpes’ wives and children and provided them with supplies and a horse. The women promised the residents of Danville that they were traveling back home to Knoxville, Tennessee, but changed course as soon as they neared the Green River. After trading their gifted horse for a canoe, the women paddled down the Green River to the confluence of the Green and Ohio Rivers in Henderson County, Kentucky. They told those they encountered that they were widows traveling west. Once they arrived at Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, the women played an instrumental role in helping the infamous pirates of the Cave lure flatboats to the shoreline. There, the pirates would raid and often kill the passengers on the flatboats, stealing their supplies. The Harpes were not immediately able to reunite with their wives and children, as posses and other law enforcers were constantly pursuing them.³

While the Harpes were still on the run, making their way to Cave-in-Rock, the two continued their murderous rampage. First, they killed a man named Dooley in the central portion of Kentucky, near Edmonton. Next, near the Little Barren River and Bowling Green, Kentucky, the two killed a man named Stump. As the Harpes were traveling through western Kentucky, the governor of Kentucky James Gerrard issued a $300 reward for the Harpes’ capture or their dead bodies. The reward for the Harpes contributed to the formation of a new group of men called the Exterminators, who wanted to capture the pair and any other outlaws roaming the countryside of western Kentucky. The group was led by Captain Young, who organized them in Mercer County, Kentucky. Even though the Exterminators never managed to capture the Harpes, they did succeed in capturing thirteen to fifteen other western Kentucky criminals. The Harpes quickly absconded from Kentucky after learning of the newfound bounty on their heads, and they headed toward Illinois to meet their wives.⁴

When Micajah and Wiley left Kentucky and arrived in Illinois, they killed three men in cold blood as they sat around a campfire. Within a few days, the two arrived at Cave-in-Rock and reunited with their wives and children. The Harpes also found numerous other outlaws at the Cave who were also on the run from the Exterminators, who were still pursuing outlaws in Kentucky. At Cave-in-Rock, the two did not stop their wicked ways and continued to inflict death on all who crossed their paths. The Harpes attempted their first murders at the cave when two passengers on a flatboat heading down the Ohio River got off on the Illinois side and climbed a bluff to admire the Kentucky landscape on the opposite side of the river. The Harpes crept up behind the two and pushed them off the cliff. Astonishingly, the two passengers survived the fall and hurriedly headed back to their flatboat to leave the cave. The infamous Cave-in-Rock pirates enabled the Harpes to murder more people by providing them with the victims they robbed. One such example occurred when the pirates managed to rob a flatboat as it made its way to Smithland, Kentucky. The pirates spared only the captain of the flatboat, killing all others on board. As the pirates sat around a campfire, celebrating the spoils of their robbery, the Harpes took the captain to the top of the cave and forced him to take off his clothes. The two then placed the captain on top of a blindfolded horse and tied him down. They then forced the horse, at full speed, to gallop off of the top of the cave. The horse and the captain went crashing down in front of the place where the pirates were celebrating around their campfire. After this display of extreme cruelty, the pirates forced the Harpes and their wives out of the cave. The Harpes naturally headed back to Tennessee and western Kentucky to continue their homicidal ways.⁵

During the summer of 1799, after leaving the cave, the Harpes and their family secured transportation down the Ohio River to present-day Paducah and entered the Tennessee River Valley. Once back in Tennessee, the two began their murderous rampage, killing a man and a girl near Knoxville. These murders attracted the attention of a posse that chased the Harpes back to Kentucky, near present-day Mammoth Cave. The group hid out for several weeks inside of the caves before they reemerged. The Harpes briefly returned to Tennessee with the posse disbanded and continued their cold-blooded killings.⁶

After committing various murders throughout the Knoxville area, the pair headed back into central Kentucky, murdering along the way. Once back in western Kentucky, the Harpes entered the Russellville area. There, the pair found two brothers, whose last name was Trisword, their families and two enslaved people, camping eight miles outside of present-day Adairville, Kentucky. The Harpes—and possibly two Cherokee Natives— killed the Trisword group early in the morning. Surprisingly, one of the Trisword brothers managed to escape and ran to Adiarville and notified law enforcement. When the authorities arrived, they found the Trisword group stripped bare and some bodies that were badly mangled. Mortified by the gruesome murders of the Trisword group, the sheriff of Logan County William Steward organized nearly a dozen men to capture the Harpes. As the posse headed south, toward Tennessee based on their information, the Harpes were on their way north.⁷

An illustration of emigrants traveling on the Ohio River via a flatboat. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

On the run once again, the Harpes took no chance with being captured. In one of the most wicked events to ever occur on Kentucky soil, around three miles northeast of Russellville, Micajah Harpe murdered his or Wiley’s nine-month-old child because they would not stop screaming. Showcasing his authentic diabolical ways, Micajah took the poor child by the ankles and slammed their body repeatedly against a tree until they died. He then threw the baby’s body into the woods. Micajah and the others, remorseless, continued north, eventually making their way into Henderson County, Kentucky.⁸

In Henderson County, the group found shelter in a small cabin on Canoe Creek, around eight miles north of the Red Banks area. The Harpes went undetected until John Slover, who was hunting near Robertson’s Lick, noticed the two rather bloodthirsty men and immediately reported his encounter to his friends. Slover and his friends quickly dismissed the notion that the men were the Harpes but concluded they were most likely up to no good. Meanwhile, the Harpes continued slaughtering innocent Kentuckians, killing a man named Trowbridge who was traveling to sell salt to a farm near the mouth of Highland Creek. The Harpes murdered Trowbridge and disposed of his body in a stream.⁹

A map showing the locations of entrances to Mammoth Cave. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

When word of Slover’s peculiar encounter with his new neighbors reached General Samuels Hopkins, Hopkins doubted it was the Harpes but wanted to know more about the nefarious-looking men. He sent a few of his men to watch the cabin on Canoe Creek to see what the two men were doing in the area. After about a week of observing the cabin without any activity, Hopkins’s men concluded that the two men were not the Harpes. They also did not witness any of the women or children connected to the Harpes and decided it was time to end their observation of the cabin. Unknown to Hopkins’s men, the Harpes had sent their families to a safe location with a plan to meet up later.¹⁰

Deciding to leave the cabin and meet up with the rest of their family, the Harpes headed to Deer Creek. At Deer Creek, they had dinner with James Tomkins, claiming to be Methodist preachers. To keep up the rouse of being men of God, Micajah even said a prayer, blessing the food. Tomkins admitted that he was low on venison meat during the dinner because he had exhausted all his black powder. Micajah poured powder from his own powder horn in a rare display of graciousness and gave it to Tomkins. This small amount of powder would later play a pivotal role in the capture of Micajah.¹¹

An illustration of an entrance to Mammoth Cave. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

After the civilized dinner, the Harpes left Tomkins’s house and headed for the homestead of Squire Silas McBee, who was the justice of the peace. McBee played a pivotal role in helping eradicate other outlaws from the area, and for this, the Harpes had a plan to butcher McBee. The two waited until nightfall to make their move through the moonlit woods to McBee’s house. Fortunately for McBee, his pack of dogs spotted the Harpes and