An Edgar Award-winning author's true crime account of a grisly string
of killings in Kentucky--and the shocking spectacle of greed that
followed.
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. Three men had breached
Dr. Acker's alarm and security systems and made off with the fortune he
had stashed away over his lifetime.
The killers--part of a three-man, two-woman gang of the sort not seen
since the Barkers--stopped counting the moldy bills when they reached
$1.9 million. The cash came in handy soon after when they were caught
and needed to lure Kentucky's most flamboyant lawyer, the celebrated and
corrupt Lester Burns, into representing them. Full of colorful
characters and desperate deeds, A Dark and Bloody Ground is a
"first-rate" true crime chronicle from the author of Murder in Little
Egypt (Kirkus Reviews).
"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
"The smell of wet, coal-laden earth, white lightning, and cocaine-driven
sweat arises from these marvelously atmospheric--and compelling--pages."
--Kirkus Reviews
"O'Brien creates a fascinating portrait of the mountain way of life and
thought that forged the lives of these criminals." --Library Journal
