http://a-loon.blogspot.com/2010/03/its-small-world-in-south.html
Friday, January 28, 2011
Ralph Ross Obituary
Here is a link to the Obituary of Ralph Ross and other newspaper articles about the Bluegrass Conspiracy. Another article talks about his pardon.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Bluegrass Conspiracy: Where are they now?
Jamiel "Jimmy" Chagra--
In 1996 his brother Joe, having served six years in a federal prison for conspiracy in the Judge Wood murder, dies in an automobile accident near El Paso, Texas. Less than a year later, Jimmy's wife Elizabeth, who was serving a thirty-year sentence for plotting to kill the judge, dies in prison from complications of ovarian cancer. Acquitted of the Wood murder himself but found guilty of conspiracy charges involving both drugs and obstruction of justice, and of still another murder, the last surviving Chagra brother serves out his life sentence at a maximum security federal penitentiary.
In 1996 his brother Joe, having served six years in a federal prison for conspiracy in the Judge Wood murder, dies in an automobile accident near El Paso, Texas. Less than a year later, Jimmy's wife Elizabeth, who was serving a thirty-year sentence for plotting to kill the judge, dies in prison from complications of ovarian cancer. Acquitted of the Wood murder himself but found guilty of conspiracy charges involving both drugs and obstruction of justice, and of still another murder, the last surviving Chagra brother serves out his life sentence at a maximum security federal penitentiary.
Melanie Flynn--
In 1993 her mother breaks a sixteen-year silence about the disappearance, calling a radio talk show to accuse the Lexington police of ignoring significant information she provided them in 1977. Mrs. Flynn is especially critical of then-Captain John Bizzack for his role in the case. "I have given Bizzack and many of your police officers," she tells Lexington Police Chief Larry Walsh on the air, "names, dates, addresses, and events, that nobody seemed to care about." The mother also tells a WKYT TV reporter that she believes the Lexington police themselves were "involved" in her daughter's disappearance and murder. Mrs. Flynn speaks out after her daughter's name is repeatedly mentioned during the drug trafficking trial of Bill Canan. According to several witnesses at the trial, Canan, the Lexington police officer who had been the last person to see the missing woman alive, had implied that he had been involved in her death. Yet at the time he was never interviewed by Lexington detectives. In the summer of 2001 the case of Melanie Flynn remains unsolved.
In 1993 her mother breaks a sixteen-year silence about the disappearance, calling a radio talk show to accuse the Lexington police of ignoring significant information she provided them in 1977. Mrs. Flynn is especially critical of then-Captain John Bizzack for his role in the case. "I have given Bizzack and many of your police officers," she tells Lexington Police Chief Larry Walsh on the air, "names, dates, addresses, and events, that nobody seemed to care about." The mother also tells a WKYT TV reporter that she believes the Lexington police themselves were "involved" in her daughter's disappearance and murder. Mrs. Flynn speaks out after her daughter's name is repeatedly mentioned during the drug trafficking trial of Bill Canan. According to several witnesses at the trial, Canan, the Lexington police officer who had been the last person to see the missing woman alive, had implied that he had been involved in her death. Yet at the time he was never interviewed by Lexington detectives. In the summer of 2001 the case of Melanie Flynn remains unsolved.
Rex Denver Hall--
The former Lexington narcotics officer is convicted in 1998 on federal cocaine charges of cocaine smuggling and is serving a life sentence.
The former Lexington narcotics officer is convicted in 1998 on federal cocaine charges of cocaine smuggling and is serving a life sentence.
Bluegrass Conspiracy: Where are they now?
John Y. Brown, JR.--
After a bitter divorce from Phyllis in 1997, the next year he weds his third beauty queen, a 1998 Miss Kentucky, Jill Louise Roach, who is 27 years his junior. The lavish ceremony beneath the white plantation columns of Brown's mansion on Old Cave Hill Lane is attended by former Governor Brereton C. Jones, Preston and Anita Madden, F. Lee Bailey, his son John Y. Brown III (Kentucky Secretary of State), and other local notables. "Man can't live alone," Brown tells the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Once you're a family man, you need a family to survive." In 1991, with country music entertainer Kenny Rogers, he has founded Kenny Rogers Roasters, an international chain of wood-roasted chicken restaurants said to have average annual sales of a million dollars per unit, and two years later launches another chain in South Florida called Roadhouse Grill. By the mid 1990's he sells his stake in both concerns to what the Miami Herald describes as a "Malaysian conglomerate." Along the way through the decade he has been a guest of his old friend, President Bill Clinton, in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. In the spring of 2001 he plans to build yet another restaurant chain radiating from Florida, this one with former University of Louisville football coach Howard Schnellenberger, to be called "Coach Schnellenberger's The Original Steakhouse and Sports Theater," where patrons may dine on steaks, chicken, ribs, and lobster while watching sports on six-foot-by-eight-foot video screens. "Life's full of opportunity," the 65-year-old ex-governor and onetime presidential aspirant says at his third wedding, "if you look forward and not look back".
After a bitter divorce from Phyllis in 1997, the next year he weds his third beauty queen, a 1998 Miss Kentucky, Jill Louise Roach, who is 27 years his junior. The lavish ceremony beneath the white plantation columns of Brown's mansion on Old Cave Hill Lane is attended by former Governor Brereton C. Jones, Preston and Anita Madden, F. Lee Bailey, his son John Y. Brown III (Kentucky Secretary of State), and other local notables. "Man can't live alone," Brown tells the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Once you're a family man, you need a family to survive." In 1991, with country music entertainer Kenny Rogers, he has founded Kenny Rogers Roasters, an international chain of wood-roasted chicken restaurants said to have average annual sales of a million dollars per unit, and two years later launches another chain in South Florida called Roadhouse Grill. By the mid 1990's he sells his stake in both concerns to what the Miami Herald describes as a "Malaysian conglomerate." Along the way through the decade he has been a guest of his old friend, President Bill Clinton, in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. In the spring of 2001 he plans to build yet another restaurant chain radiating from Florida, this one with former University of Louisville football coach Howard Schnellenberger, to be called "Coach Schnellenberger's The Original Steakhouse and Sports Theater," where patrons may dine on steaks, chicken, ribs, and lobster while watching sports on six-foot-by-eight-foot video screens. "Life's full of opportunity," the 65-year-old ex-governor and onetime presidential aspirant says at his third wedding, "if you look forward and not look back".
Phyllis George--
Rebounding from her acrimonious divorce from John Y., she is reported by News-day in the fall of 1998 to be living in Manhattan in a "sumptuous 5th Avenue apartment." She has written a book called Living With Quilts, and boasts of having 100 quilts and other Kentucky folk art in a spare room in her Manhattan home. She has also had a brief stint with CBS, where she suffers numerous gaffes, is excoriated by critics, and would be fired after only eight months when she perkily suggests on air that a falsely accused rapist and his purported victim give each other a hug--albeit with the network reportedly paying the balance of the $1 million in George's three-year contract. Like her ex-husband, she maintains close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House, giving the latter an expensive pin in one of the gifts Mrs. Clinton fails to report as required by law. Meanwhile, New York society columns portray the 1971 Miss America as prominent both socially and politically, dating Charles Gargano, a leading Republican and chairman of the Empire State Developing Corp., as well as hosting a lavish Washington party for dignitaries of both the outgoing Clinton regime and the incoming administration of George W. Bush, Jr. By the summer of 2001, George is reportedly courted both by national Democratic leaders to run for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, and by the Kentuckians to run for Governor in her own right.
Rebounding from her acrimonious divorce from John Y., she is reported by News-day in the fall of 1998 to be living in Manhattan in a "sumptuous 5th Avenue apartment." She has written a book called Living With Quilts, and boasts of having 100 quilts and other Kentucky folk art in a spare room in her Manhattan home. She has also had a brief stint with CBS, where she suffers numerous gaffes, is excoriated by critics, and would be fired after only eight months when she perkily suggests on air that a falsely accused rapist and his purported victim give each other a hug--albeit with the network reportedly paying the balance of the $1 million in George's three-year contract. Like her ex-husband, she maintains close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House, giving the latter an expensive pin in one of the gifts Mrs. Clinton fails to report as required by law. Meanwhile, New York society columns portray the 1971 Miss America as prominent both socially and politically, dating Charles Gargano, a leading Republican and chairman of the Empire State Developing Corp., as well as hosting a lavish Washington party for dignitaries of both the outgoing Clinton regime and the incoming administration of George W. Bush, Jr. By the summer of 2001, George is reportedly courted both by national Democratic leaders to run for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, and by the Kentuckians to run for Governor in her own right.
William Taulbee "Bill" Canan--
On January 15, 1994 the forty-seven-year-old former Lexington narcotics officer is sentenced to seventeen years, eight months on federal drug charges. An FBI search of Canan's apartment on Garden Springs Drive in Lexington has turned up more than a score of arms, a blow gun with steel-tipped darts, stiletto knives, a police badge, a bag of cocaine, and hundreds of cassettes apparently containing tape-recorded conversations which are coded and indecipherable to federal agents. Also found are books on weapons and explosives, including a three-volume set entitled How To Kill, a hand-drawn chart labeled "Canan's Alley" showing a bulls-eye ringing photographs of various local officials, and a confidential publisher's manuscript copy of The Bluegrass Conspiracy. At the trial, a DEA agent has sworn that Canan was never affiliated with the agency, while other witnesses testify to his drug-dealing and his own dark inferences of killings, including the murder of the still-missing Melanie Flynn. "A vengeful man at the center of a tangled web of fear and intimidation," as the Herald-Leader describes him, the shackled Canan, wearing a trademark blue windbreaker and black Lee jeans and defended by a court-appointed attorney, smiles cryptically and rocks incessantly in his chair at the defense table. When later interviewed in prison by federal agents about the Melanie Flynn case, he smirks and says only: "That names sounds familiar".
On January 15, 1994 the forty-seven-year-old former Lexington narcotics officer is sentenced to seventeen years, eight months on federal drug charges. An FBI search of Canan's apartment on Garden Springs Drive in Lexington has turned up more than a score of arms, a blow gun with steel-tipped darts, stiletto knives, a police badge, a bag of cocaine, and hundreds of cassettes apparently containing tape-recorded conversations which are coded and indecipherable to federal agents. Also found are books on weapons and explosives, including a three-volume set entitled How To Kill, a hand-drawn chart labeled "Canan's Alley" showing a bulls-eye ringing photographs of various local officials, and a confidential publisher's manuscript copy of The Bluegrass Conspiracy. At the trial, a DEA agent has sworn that Canan was never affiliated with the agency, while other witnesses testify to his drug-dealing and his own dark inferences of killings, including the murder of the still-missing Melanie Flynn. "A vengeful man at the center of a tangled web of fear and intimidation," as the Herald-Leader describes him, the shackled Canan, wearing a trademark blue windbreaker and black Lee jeans and defended by a court-appointed attorney, smiles cryptically and rocks incessantly in his chair at the defense table. When later interviewed in prison by federal agents about the Melanie Flynn case, he smirks and says only: "That names sounds familiar".
Bluegrass Conspiracy: Where Are They Now?
I found some info on the characters in The Bluegrass Conspiracy. Some is dated and I did not verify the facts. You can let me know if you have found additional info.
John Bizzack
John Bizzack moved on up to become head of Kentucky's Criminal Justice Training program, donating money heavily to political candidates while noted also, as a country music song writer. His wife of 35 years died on the COMAIR plane crash at the Bluegrass Airport in 2006 where 49 south bound people perished.
He's been quite successful, even though implicated in much of the cover up documented in Ms. Denton's book. His family was connected through business to Leonard Lawson who just stood trial for a bid-rigging scandal in the Transportation Department, State of Kentucky.
Both Ralph Ross and Leonard Lawson used the same law firm. While Ross lost his wiretapping case, Lawson won with much protection from the judge (Forester) who gave directions to the press that Lawson would be sure to have a "fair trial." Forester also stated at the trial's onset that the whistle blower (Rummage) who had implicated Lawson was already discredited.
It goes on and on. and locally fearful folks say, "The same ones running the BGC then, are still running it. even today."
He's been quite successful, even though implicated in much of the cover up documented in Ms. Denton's book. His family was connected through business to Leonard Lawson who just stood trial for a bid-rigging scandal in the Transportation Department, State of Kentucky.
Both Ralph Ross and Leonard Lawson used the same law firm. While Ross lost his wiretapping case, Lawson won with much protection from the judge (Forester) who gave directions to the press that Lawson would be sure to have a "fair trial." Forester also stated at the trial's onset that the whistle blower (Rummage) who had implicated Lawson was already discredited.
It goes on and on. and locally fearful folks say, "The same ones running the BGC then, are still running it. even today."
John Bizzack--
He retires from the Lexington Police Department after 25 years, and becomes "Dr. Bizzack" in 1993 having obtained a "PhD in Administration/Management " from Walden University in Minneapolis, known for its correspondence degrees. In 1996 Kentucky Governor Paul Patton appoints him State Commissioner of Criminal Justice Training. By the turn of the century Bizzack boasts authorship of some six books dealing with "leadership" in criminal justice affairs, including one listed with Amazon.com as Police Management for the 1990s: A Practitioner's Road Map, and reportedly lectures widely on professional standards for police officers. He owns Bittersweet Station, a imposing cattle farm on Winchester Road, is known as an enthusiast for British luxury sports cars, and not least is celebrated as a composer of country-and-western music, winning the Hank Cochran Song Writing Contest for his "Courage to Say Goodbye".
He retires from the Lexington Police Department after 25 years, and becomes "Dr. Bizzack" in 1993 having obtained a "PhD in Administration/Management " from Walden University in Minneapolis, known for its correspondence degrees. In 1996 Kentucky Governor Paul Patton appoints him State Commissioner of Criminal Justice Training. By the turn of the century Bizzack boasts authorship of some six books dealing with "leadership" in criminal justice affairs, including one listed with Amazon.com as Police Management for the 1990s: A Practitioner's Road Map, and reportedly lectures widely on professional standards for police officers. He owns Bittersweet Station, a imposing cattle farm on Winchester Road, is known as an enthusiast for British luxury sports cars, and not least is celebrated as a composer of country-and-western music, winning the Hank Cochran Song Writing Contest for his "Courage to Say Goodbye".
Friday, January 7, 2011
The Best of the Best of 2010
On Sunday January 2, 2011 the Lexington Herald-Leader ran an article about the best books of 2010 by Colette Bancroft from the St. Petersburg Times. Here are the highlights.
- Best Novel-A visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Best Real Life Thriller-The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- Best Crime Fiction-Djibouti by Elmore Leonard, I'd Know you Anywhere by Laura Lippman, Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane, and The Reversal by Michael Connelly
- Best Good Novel That Could Never Live up to It's hype-Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
- Best Scary Hilarious futuristic satire with a tender heart-Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
- Best Audio Book-Life by Keith Richards (read by Johnny Depp)
- Best unexpectedly successful comeback-Autobiography of Mark Twain, volume 1
- Best Surprise-The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O'Hagan
- Best Last Act-The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Half Broke Horses
I want to correct the phrase that I quoted from the book. I should have quoted, "Push and Pray" instead of push and pull. That makes better sense. See if you can find it in the text.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Half Broke Horses
Half Broke Horses can be described in 1 word. ADVENTURE. I enjoyed the book especially because it is a true story about a very fearless, determined woman. There were parts that were funny and unbelievable. Jeannette Walls signed my copy "Push and Pull" and I didn't know what that meant until I reread the book and found the phrase in the text. What did everyone else think about it?
Sunday, January 2, 2011
It's a New Blog
Chicks 'N Hens Book Club has been in existence for over 2 years. We meet monthly to discuss a book. Each member takes turns in choosing books and we read a variety of genres. For 2011, I would like all of the members of Chicks 'N Hens to be able to comment on our books. Not everyone can make it to the meetings each month and I would love to hear what you think about the book club book and any other books that you might be reading.
For January 2011, we are reading Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. I just finished reading it and want to hear what you think.
For January 2011, we are reading Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. I just finished reading it and want to hear what you think.
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