Execution Eve. William Buchanan
from his pocket and flipped it open. Spitting in his hand, he began to hone the blade against his palm. “Gawdamighty, Hank . . . this trip might turn out to be worthwhile after all.”
Throughout the afternoon, between eating and swilling booze, the two men described to the preacher and the storekeeper the gruesome reception they planned for the sheriff.
At 4:40, a distant whistle signaled the arrival of the inbound train. The man called Hank perked up. “Hey, Ed, let’s take the hayseed’s nose back to Charley.”
Fingering his knife, Ed heartily endorsed the idea. “Maybe Charley will give us a bonus,” he said, and they both settled back to wait.
Minutes later the front door opened and a gust of frigid air swept through the store. Crowding the doorway from hinge to latch, a giant man stooped low to clear the lintel and entered the room. The newcomer was wearing whipcord trousers with legs stuffed in the tops of size-15 lace-up boots. His heavy plaid Mackinaw coat, to which was pinned a six-pointed star, was buttoned snugly around his 22-inch neck. His broad-brimmed gray felt hat would have served any lesser man as an umbrella. The mackinaw was drawn back on the right side to reveal a holstered, silver-plated, stag-handle Smith and Wesson .44 Special revolver that looked every bit as formidable as the man wearing it.
The two scofflaws sat transfixed as Sheriff Buchanan stomped snow from his boots and walked over to them. He laid a ham-sized hand in front of Ed and tapped the table. “Put that knife down right here, son. If you boys got guns, lay them out here too . . . now.”
Two snub-nose .38s immediately appeared on the table.
The sheriff grasped each man by the shoulder, welding them to their seats. “Where’s your friend?”
“Down . . . down by the depot,” Ed said. He mentioned the name of a woman who lived in a shanty at the edge of town.
Buchanan picked up the knife and the pistols and put them in his coat pocket. “You boys just sit right here. I’m going to get your friend, then we’re all going to catch the evening train back to Morganfield.”
The sheriff turned and strode out the door without looking back.
Ed and Hank looked at each other sheepishly. At the counter, Reverend Self and Storekeeper Vaughn were grinning ear to ear.
After a long while, Hank said, “Ed, I thought you were going to cut him up.”
“Oh, sure,” Ed retorted, “and I thought you were gonna take his nose back to Charley.”
The two looked at each other for a moment. Then, with a resolute shake of his head, Hank exclaimed, “Ed, I’d rather climb a thorn tree naked with a bobcat under each armpit than rile that big son of a bitch!”
The story is not apocryphal. It happened. And it became part of the legend.
One who heard it was Governor Ruby LaFoon.
LaFoon came into office during hard times. A relentless depression gripped the land. Across the nation, desperate men tramped the roadways by day and huddled around hobo fires by night, fruitlessly searching for livelihood in an era gone haywire. Committed to change, LaFoon was contemplating remedies not popular with the political Old Guard who saw their privileged status threatened. He wanted a man of courage in his office as a buffer between himself and the power brokers. He sent for Jess Buchanan.
Buchanan arrived in Frankfort on an unseasonably warm but cloudy day. As he left the train station to hail a taxi he passed a clothing store that catered to large men. On display in the window was a single-breasted seersucker jacket, size 58 Extra Long, special sale price, $6.50. Buchanan looked woefully at his frayed blue-serge coat. He took out his wallet and counted his money. He had his return ticket and enough money for supper, but if he bought the seersucker jacket he wouldn’t be able to afford to take a taxi to the Capitol, a mile and a half up the hill on the other side of the Kentucky River. Still, for an interview with the governor. . . .
He relented and entered the store.
Fifteen minutes later he emerged proudly wearing his first new coat in six years and began the long walk up Capital Avenue.
He had gone about a half-mile when he felt the first raindrops. A minute later he was caught in a blinding downpour, and he still had a mile to go.
Governor LaFoon was at his desk that day when his secretary stepped into his office. “Governor”—she barely suppressed a giggle—“you must see this.”
LaFoon, who never tired of telling the story, described the sight: “There were a dozen or so legislators and lobbyists waiting in the lounge. In their midst, towering above all, stood Jess Buchanan. He was drenched to his skin, his hat had collapsed down around his ears, and he was standing in a ever widening puddle of water. He was wearing a seersucker coat that had shriveled up about ten sizes too small for him. It lacked about a foot of closing across his belly. The bottom had shrunk up to his belt, the sleeves had shriveled at least six inches up his wrists. It was truly a comical sight. But you know what? No one of those hard-nosed jackals out there was laughing. I hired Jess on the spot.”
He stayed with LaFoon for two years, then in 1934 he was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal for Western Kentucky, where his reputation as a lawman spread. In 1935, U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings offered Buchanan a promotion and his pick of districts west of the Mississippi River. Buchanan declined on the grounds that he could not leave his native state.
In 1936, newly elected Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler, faced with growing unrest over primitive penal conditions, called Buchanan to Frankfort and asked him to take over the job of warden of the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville.
Buchanan had known Chandler since the governor was a youngster. He liked and admired him. Still, he demurred.
Sensing the reason, the young governor said, “I understand your reluctance, Jess. Our penitentiaries have been run like Banana Republics. No one knows who’s in charge. Hell, Ruby LaFoon had to promise those convicts down there ham and eggs for breakfast to keep them from taking over the joint. Well, I not going to give in to that sort of blackmail. If you take the job at Eddyville, you will be in charge. I’ll back you all the way.”
It was a persuasive proposal. Buchanan accepted.
♦ ♦ ♦
Kentucky’s maximum security prison sat high atop a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River in the small town of Eddyville in the western extremity of the Bluegrass state. In June 1936, one month after his fifty-third birthday, Jess Buchanan arrived to take charge at the institution. He was not prepared for what he found.
Conditions at the prison were shocking. The fortress-like “Castle on the Cumberland” housed the dregs of the state’s criminal element. Among an inmate population of 1,262 (jammed into facilities built for 800) were murderers, rapists, armed robbers, child molesters, kidnappers, gang lords, recidivists, and other assorted thugs. Mixed indiscriminately with this hardcore element, often sharing the same cell, were youthful first-termers incarcerated for minor offenses.
Sanitary conditions were deplorable. Litter and debris cluttered the prison yard and the four cellblocks. In the kitchen and dining hall, where summer temperatures sometimes reached 130 degrees, the stoves, cooking utensils, floors, and eating tables were caked with filth. One cook’s sole duty was to fish cockroaches out of the food before it was delivered from the kitchen to the dining room.
The bare-subsistence diet, 1,000 calories per man per day, was mostly carbohydrates. Rampant among the inmate population were diseases of the skin, eyes, lips, membranes, mouth, throat, and bones.
Unaffected by these irritants were the “Moguls.” Living in relative splendor in well-furnished cells on the top tier of Cellblock Four, a score of pampered convicts slept on innerspring mattresses, came and went within the confines of the prison as they pleased, ate food delivered from the outside, and, in some cases, had convict servants to attend to their needs. Politically or financially powerful, or having feared underworld connections, the Moguls received deferential treatment from inmates and