Word: harlan
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...sense, Ambrose Metcalfe had courted death; he was a black-haired, buck-toothed gunman with insolent eyes and heavy fists and he had recklessly made enemies. Violent life and violent death had been a part of-Harlan County since clannish men with Anglo-Saxon names had settled in its isolated creeks and hollers after the Revolution...
...Likker. The quarrels which killed him began after Harlan County voted dry in 1942, and moonshiners, "red likker" men and gamblers began scheming and fighting for its coal miners...
...step: he organized a county police force to compete with the sheriff's office. Big, mean, 29-year-old Ambrose Metcalfe, who had served as a sergeant in an armored division during World War II, became its captain. He swaggered out to "throw the fear of God" into Harlan County...
Sneering, he went on scourging the lawless, demonstrated his contempt for Harlan County's rulers by roughing up Sheriff Jim Cawood's son, throwing him in jail and accusing him of being drunk during a football game. One of his deputies quit, became chief of police at Evarts (TIME, Dec. 27), was promptly killed. Five other Evarts police chiefs quit or were arrested. Metcalfe paid no mind...
...second or so later he was lying on the street, bleeding from five bullet wounds. He died on the way to Harlan Hospital. Sizemore and Jackson were politely arrested by the state police, jailed, and released last week on $15,000 bail; though Metcalfe's wife cried that she had seen them shoot her husband, they produced witnesses who vowed they were chatting indoors when the shooting occurred, Harlan County did not think things would go hard with them. Although killings in Harlan County (pop. 75,000) average 40 a year, only four men have been executed for murder...