Preserving the Record

Homicides by firearms--not counting shooting in self-defense--have long run at an average rate of around 40 a year in Kentucky's Harlan County (pop. 71,750). But last week, for the first time in 132 years, the circuit court clerk posted a criminal docket (for May) without a single murder case on it.

Harlan's miners and mountaineers were astounded, and Circuit Court Judge Astor Hogg just had time to get his jaws ajar and allow it was "the beginning of a new era" when the Beach boys, who dabble in bootlegging, drove into downtown Harlan, the county seat, and fired six bullets into 45-year-old Avery Hensley, a former cop. In the words of Kentucky's standard indictment form, Avery Hensley "did then & there die." Six hours later, Avery's stepson Joe Hensley was sitting in a parked car outside the bus terminal when two Harlan policemen and a friend got out of a police car and walked over. One of the three shot him through the head. At week's end, a special grand jury returned murder indictments in both cases and put them on the May docket. Harlan's 132-year record was still intact.

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