There was no other choice than to leave Georgia. The police harassment and false arrests weren't going to stop and if I stayed surely I'd be locked up in an institution forever, whether it was prison or hospital. My husband and his attorney were initiating most of it, but the landlord whose family was involved in drugs was helping them out.
I'd heard rumors there in Warner Robins of cocaine frame jobs that got innocent folks imprisoned. Surely if I stayed there it would happen to me. At the time I believed Warner Robins must be particularly saturated possibly because of the airplane landing strip my landlord was affiliated with, and then maybe because it was an air force town. Not long after I left there was news 26 air force jets had been grounded for carting drugs at Langly, so I wasn't far off in my suspicions.
Initially my lawyers were George Childs and James Knight of Marietta, and Childs had said Mike Broadbear, the ex's attorney was a "railroad accident attorney." I recall asking Childs what it meant and whether Broadbear created accidents for people who caused the railroad trouble. Being a railroad corporate wife, I knew how seriously the ultra-conservative railroad took accidents and injury lawsuits, but surely they weren't so inhuman as to threaten and intimidate people with false arrest who'd been injured. Like Cobb County police, the railroad is also self insured.
Cocaine was the last incident to ruffle my household in 1998, and a parole named Fred Grant had gotten involved with my sons and then proceeded to bring a large amount of cocaine into the house. I told my husband, "We need to contact police about Fred," and my husband had responded quietly, "I took care of Fred."
I wondered whether the Railroad's police took care of Fred the same way they'd taken care of my speeding ticket, but from that response, I suspected worse––the possibility that my husband was involved with organized crime. He hadn't been acting the normally. Later I learned from my elder son his father had mentioned the fact he'd seen more cocaine than my son could ever imagine seeing. Strange that he'd never mentioned it to me.
He'd been to Brosnan Forest, Brosnan being the Southern Railroad exec who established it and the railroad's own band, The Lawmen. "The Forest" was a gathering spot and preserve for railroaders, vendors and their families. I never was there, but was told the ponds were stocked with plenty of fish, and the ducks were baited to be shot. Then the game was cleaned and carefully packed for the executives by African American men dressed in white jackets, Old South style.
December 1997, the last band I heard before the horrors began in my life were The Lawmen at a Christmas Party sponsored by Vice President, Engineering, Phil Ogden. He was adorned in cowboy hat and boots and without the demeanor one would expect of a man in his position. Cobb County commissioners were there along with railroaders and vendors. I specifically remember Itis of Birmingham on whose plane we'd ridden to Jekyll Island. He was an older man but did come to speak with me personally, which was very nice.
My husband could never understand how Phil Ogden managed to stay in Atlanta, while all of the other executives of his level were in Norfolk, Virginia.
When I arrived in Kentucky music was everywhere. And a few years later I found that coincidentally Mr. Ogden was on the board of directors of a business I was living not a city block from, R.J. Corman.
With the people I met, musical names were constantly dropped as "friends" like Elton John by Bill Casey; Ricky Scaggs by Bruce Prater, and Jimmy Buffett by Mike Johnson. The list continued but there were also drugs everywhere. I mentioned it to my son, and he said, "They're all on pills up here."
I thought to myself on arrival in Kentucky I'd have to be my own cop. The cops were involved with the mobs here, it was obvious nearly from the minute I'd arrived. But surely here was the root of what had happened to my younger son. If they killed or kidnapped him, then baited me here to kill me, to cover it all up––for the BIG BOYS who initiated it all.
"You don't mess with That Railroad," one man had said in Georgia. I didn't understand what he meant, but I'd been raised in Virginia when "That Railroad" was Norfolk and Western. N&W didn't have that conservative Southern mentality and air until after it merged with Southern.
Bill Casey had said, "We are the cops," in one breath while mentioning the trouble he'd been in cocaine in another.
I figured I must be on the Georgia Fred Grant cocaine trail even in Kentucky, and it was certainly following me. These had to be the ones involved with the situation with my boys, both musicians in Atlanta.
Later I'd be approached by more musicians Tommy Schlette, Tommy Doyle, and others suggesting Florida more than once.
Naples, Florida is a special place. I was there in 1973, and told, "There is a woman who lives here, and she's so rich she's built a house out back for her cats." Naples is where several people were destined when the COMAIR plane crashed at the Bluegrass airport, 2006 not long after Tommy Schlette was found dead in Grant, Florida. At least two who died, didn't normally fly out of Kentucky on a Sunday morning - Charles Lykins and Tim Snoddy.
Naples is the home of road baron Leonard Lawson's son; and it's also where attorney and preacher, Mike Conover of Kentucky spends his winters, as a preacher. His sons ran Quality Quarters motel where I first was dropped in Richmond, Kentucky and then moved on to run Conover's nursing home in Harrodsburg. One of them was rumored recently caught involved with drugs in the apartment above Conover's Kentucky Cowboy Church at the old Opera House.
More than one person had tried to lure me to Florida from Kentucky but I knew better than to go there. It's been filled with crime and the potential for it with thousands of miles of boat docks since I was there in the 1970's. Folks must retire in Florida for more than one reason. Even in 1973 it was protecting criminals.
So when I went to Richmond, Kentucky to speak with the folks at Criminal Justice training, I was actually returning some things that had been stolen by drywall workers, including Elmer Begley who was employed by Mr. Prewitt. At first Criminal Justice said they'd send someone out to pick up the belongings, but then asked that I drive the stolen goods there, personally.
They thanked me, shook my hand, took my picture holding up the stolen shirt, and sent me home believing they would clean up the area where I'd experienced so many horrors with my animals. I had given them stacks of papers of information, and all I'd been suffering.
Nothing ever happened, and the locals kept up with the sabotage and horrors.
Since the year was 2001 and none of my problems stopped after speaking with those authorities, I figured they were involved in the crimes, any investigations had been quashed, or both. After reading that John Bizzack headed Criminal Justice, and the book "the Bluegrass Conspiracy," there wasn't a doubt in my mind.
I'd called a year or so later and asked for Detective Jude, whom I'd spoken with personally in the visit. He had retired.
When a police organization acts as though it's taking a cause, and tackling crime, and then doesn't it will lead a person to keep quiet believing an underground investigation is ongoing. It's just another tactic, and I'd experienced so many with respect to the justice system and "the law," I'd come to believe this country is and was and will continue to be: a Narco Republic.
At the onset of my Kentucky experience a female attorney had warned me, "You be very, very careful. There are attorneys in Kentucky who will get you killed." She was leaving the state, and I recall thinking to myself, "Lawyers get folks killed?" It was another astonishment after being a corporate wife and removed from the "real world" for 23 years.
Twelve years later, and twelve years older, and twelve years sicker, my Mother would say, "Live, and learn."
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