Introduction
Two women died on Briery Knob It was 1980.
The year the Rainbow Family came to Monongahela National Forest in Pocahontas County, a small backwater county on a doorstep to West Virginia.
Just a few miles outside of town, on Route 219 known as Seneca Trail by the locals, a van stopped and asked the female hitchhikers, "Where ya' goin'?" The mountains can alter viewpoints. The ladies smiled at the two men in flannel shirts and jeans and transportation to save some time. The men grinned at two young women, ready to party and have some fun. Both were wrong. The females edged into the van through the sliding side door and sat on a collapsing air mattress.
To carry moonshine, marijuana bales and the occasional girlfriend, the back of the van sat empty -- except for the mattress. Chatting as they followed the twisting mountain highway, the girls mentioned their boyfriends, both black, wanted to make the trip but his work called. While locals remained in denial, outsiders found racism alive and well in Pocahontas County and the rest of Appalachia.
The news these two pretty ladies found romance with black boyfriends didn't set well with either of the men. Things haven't changed in the "hills and hollers." Racism is still around.
A few days later, a hunter found the women. It would be thirteen years before the District Attorney indicted anyone.
Even then, everyone wondered if they indicted the right man. Especially one law enforcement officer who doggedly pursued the truth.
In 1977, as porn publisher Larry Flynt and his local attorney, Gene Reeves, Jr., walked to the Lawrenceville Court House where Flynt stood trial for obscenity, Joseph Paul Franklin watched through the scope of his rifle..
Firing one shot, Flynt went down when the bullet sliced his spinal column. Another shot felled Reeves and he would recover.
Joseph Paul Franklin, a drifter, a confessed serial killer and a racist targeted Flyynt because of a photo spread in Hustler. Franklin found the images of a mixed-race couple engaged in simulated sex too much and Flynt's attorney found himself to be collateral damage.
Despite Franklin confessing to the shooting, city law enforcement never indicted, let alone put him on trial. The cops who interrogated him believed Franklin's confession was genuine. It is said Franklin killed at least 22 persons between 1977 and 1980. Every murder targeted minorities and most law enforcement authorities took Franklin at his word.
Some years later, Franklin admitted using a .44 caliber Ruger pistol to kill hitchhikers Nancy Santomero, 19, of New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Iowa as they headed to a gathering of a back-to-nature group, the Rainbow Family, in the Monongahela Forest in Pocahontas County.
The sheriff in Hillsboro never charged Franklin for the "Rainbow Murders". Fate stepped in and another man, found himself arrested, tried and sentenced to life in prison for the murders. A jury sent Franklin death row for 15 years where he waited his execution in the state of Missouri for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon. Franklin died by ethal injection on November 20, 2013. Joseph Paul Franklin still owned some twisted good. In the years before his execution, he planned, and carried out, a scheme, to get the real killer freed with a $2 million settlement for false imprisonment.
Appalachia is Ronald Regan country. The region wasn't always Republican. In 1960, Jack Kennedy carried the nation after convincing the poor and the coal miners Catholics don't have horns, eat small animals and children or bow to Papal pressure.
Life would remain backward for years. In 1983, citizens swooned and went orgasmic over Reagan and believed when the Gipper said, "When Fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of liberals."
Appalachia's self-image as a benign hegemon is deeply rooted like the trees growing on the ridges.
Years later, without a Muslim around for miles, the homegrown would fear Mexicans and Muslims. The nearest Mexican was 139 miles away in Charleston, and none of the villagers had ever seen a Muslim in person.
Fueling their fears with too much alcohol, the citizens remained happy in their ignorance, as they met their friends at Fiddlehead's Bar and Grill to drink beer, talk dirty and burp.
Otherwise, they gather at the high school baseball field to listen to Rush Run Philharmonic Viney Mountain Bluegrass Boys, pat themselves on the back and proclaim how "good 'Muricans" they are. Many would gather at the summer home of William Luther Pierce, the white supremacist who took over the National Youth Alliance in 1967 when George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated. Splitting with the National Youth Alliance in 1974, Pierce started looking for a headquarters for his group, The National Alliance.
He found a home in Hillsbror and drew white supremacists from across the county. In 1978, Pierce wrote The Turner Diaries, a novel about violent revolution in America that ended with the extermination of non-white races.
It was in Pierce’s compound where two racists would meet and form a bond of friendship over their mutual racism, bigotry and mutual love of guns.
But we get ahead of the story.
1980's Pocahontas County didn't differ much -- socio-economically -- than 1880's Pocahontas County. Life didn't change much in one-hundred years. People without indoor plumbing could still be found, and it was still against the law to marry your first cousin.
Fucking is called "having relations," in Appalachia. It's fine involving between 2nd cousins. A couple will find themselves bound for hell if they diddle someone closer on the family tree. A horny redneck needs to ask Preacher Johnson down at First Baptist to sanction the opportunity to "know" someone in the Biblical sense. If you catch the preacher when he and the Widow Brown weren't "fornicating".
Other than catting around, Preacher Johnson was a sufficient pastor. He always made sure to end his sermons at ten minutes before noon so the Baptists may beat the Methodists to the all-you-could-eat buffet at Golden Corral in Lewisburg.
Besides hunger pangs, Baptists and Methodists enjoyed two differences. The Methodists would speak to people in the liquor store, and Baptists never made love standing up. They didn't want people to think they were dancing.
Work in Pocahontas County tended to be as cockeyed as religion. Grafton, the owner of the feed and seed, is known to slide a customer a Mason jar of shine to load his truck, giving Grafton the time to sit and smoke a cigarette.
More than one wife has caught Mavis, the waitress with the giving heart at Kuntry Kafe, rubbing up against a good old boy, letting him cop a cheap thrill in hopes of a bigger tip.
The barber Granite gives great haircuts in the morning, but a person arrive by noon before Granite enjoys too many nips of gin and the hairstyles become long and irregular.
That summer, American Greeting Card ran an ad in the Pocahontas Times for a merchandizer in Marlinton, the county seat, 23 people from Hillsboro applied. Each was hopeful for the position which paid minimum wage, $3.10 an hour, for three-hours of work a week. Commute time not included.
Come Sunday morning, Grafton, Mavis, Granite and the other 'God-fearing' folk of Hillsboro could be seen in church singing "Nearer My God To Thee." Grafton, as usual, was off-key while Mavis and Granite played grab-ass under the choir robes.
The gears of religion, sex, and work, lubricated with plenty of illegal moonshine and lawful beer, kept Appalachia humming in 1980, and it was this environment into which two young ladies hitchhiked -- and would never leave.
Again, we get ahead of the story.
Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'
And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive
The Bee Gees 1977
Hippies streamed in for the Rainbow Gathering in Pocahontas County in 1980. The annual event, first held in 1972, in Estacada, Oregon attracted late-comers to the counterculture aura of the 60s and aged hippies who had been in the vanguard during Haight-Ashbury.
It also drew two girls. Nancy Santomero, 19 and Vicki Durian, 26, from the concrete canyons of New York City and the corn fields of Iowa.
In their world both were restless. World events conspired to nudge them closer to the edge of their comfort zones. John Wayne Gacy in Chicago, rioting in Miami, and though they wouldn't live to see it, John Lennon would be shot to death by a fan outside his apartment building.
Nancy left New York because disco left her cold. Nancy always felt disco to be the sustained thump of a moron knocking in an endless nail. At least that's the way she thought of it.
Vickie's mom, with dreams of being an author, flew into a diminutive airport enclosed by corn fields and pastures, eager to carry out the two rules her father gave the night before she left: "Waste two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then return home and get married."
The day her future husband appeared, she forgot about writing or ever going home.
City people made the most fuss about the charms of country life Vickie believed.
Once she nurtured the dream of joining Bike Ride Across Iowa and never stopping. Yearnings, like corn, die if they're not cultivated.
The morning they left Vickie's mother kissed them goodbye and waved until they vanished around the corner.
Now would be a predictable place to say she felt an ominous feeling descend, but an omen would be too obvious. Besides, it would be a lie.
The girls rode their thumbs to Moline where a trucker provided a ride to Indianapolis where he would rest for two days and see his family.
Outside Chillicothe, Conrad, a seasonal pot smuggler, stopped. Out of work and disabled, Conrad's idea of patriotism centered around a redneck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.
Conrad figured he could get lucky with at least one of the girls, so he shared the pot with abandon. They stopped at a diner where Conrad bought each a meal and slipped them both a $100 bill.
The closest he got to a little loving disappointed him. A kiss on the cheek and a promise to stay in touch.
Destiny's next link came in the form of 69-year old Elroy and his wife, Martha. A Mormon couple and freelance missionaries from Levan, Utah., they offered a ride all the way to the West Virginia state line. But after 5 miles and 20 minutes of sermonizing about waywardness of youth, too much sex and not enough religion, Nancy feigned sickness. They were put out on the shoulde. Neither wanted to ask why the couple's hometown was navel -- spelled backward.
Near Jackson, another trucker carrying a Ferris wheel and a cotton candy machine pulled over and gave them a ride all the way to to the State Fair Grounds in Fairlea, near Lewisburg, 45-minutes from Hillsboro, the closest town to the Rainbow Gathering.
About the time the rain started, a white van pulled over. The rider nodded out the window and asked, "Jeet?" Shaking, Nancy and Vickie stared at each other.
"Huh? What?" asked Nancy wiping the rain from her eyes.
"Jeet?" repeated the traveler. The girls stood quiet, staring. They overheard the driver say something, but couldn't understand.
The passenger, wearing a blue-plaid flannel shirt, leaned further and asked slow and forceful like talking to a developmentally challenged third-grader, "I-SAID-DID-YOU-EAT?"
The rain came harder, and the girls shrugged as they climbed into the back of the van.
Turning on the windshield wipers, the driver, wearing a red-plaid flannel shirt and mullet, peered in the mirror and said, "Gaw-damn. It's pouring like a cow pissing on a flat rock."
Grinding the transmission, Blue-Plaid and Red-Plaid opened some beer, handed two to the girls and lit a joint as they drove into the night.