A Dark and Bloody Ground: A True Story of Lust, Greed, and Murder in the Bluegrass State - Darcy O'brien

Descriere

n nAn Edgar Award-winning author's true crime account of a grisly string of killings in Kentucky--and the shocking spectacle of greed that followed. n n Kentucky never deserved its Indian appellation A Dark and Bloody Ground more than when a small-town physician, seventy-seven-year-old Roscoe Acker, called in an emergency on a sweltering evening in August 1985. Acker's own life hung in the balance, but it was already too late for his college-age daughter, Tammy, savagely stabbed eleven times and pinned by a kitchen knife to her bedroom floor in Fleming-Neon. Three men had somehow managed to breach Dr. Acker's alarm and security systems and made off with a substantial amount of money he had stashed away over his lifetime. n n The killers--part of a three-man, two-woman gang of the sort not seen since the Bakers--stopped counting the moldy bills when they reached $1.9 million. They found that all the cash came in handy soon after when they were caught and needed to lure Kentucky's most flamboyant lawyer, the celebrated Lester Burns, into representing them. n n An arresting look into the troubled psyches of these criminals and into the depressed Kentucky economy that became fertile territory for narcotics dealers, theft rings and bootleggers. --Publishers Weekly n n First-rate . . . The smell of wet, coal-laden earth, white lightening, and cocaine-driven sweat arises from these marvelously atmospheric--and compelling--pages. --Kirkus Reviews n n O'Brien creates a fascinating portrait of the mountain way of life and thought that forged the lives of these criminals. --Library Journal n