Oakie
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Hello and greetings. I've been attempting to register here for at least a year now, but didn't receive my confirmation e-mail, even though I clicked the "resend confirmation e-mail" button a number of times.....so I finally gave up. While perusing WS last night, I decided to give it one more try, and by some miracle, my confirmation e-mail appeared in my inbox!....so here I am.
I lurked here for years before deciding to join up. What impelled me to do so, was the following case, an unsolved triple murder that occurred in Trapp, KY, in 2010. The police have made no headway, and the case has gone ice-cold. The case has received less news coverage than it deserves. Here is an article from the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader newspaper, which contains all of the (scant) information thus far publicly revealed:
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/counties/clark-county/article44085438.html
WINCHESTER — Gay Edge goes to the cemetery each day and talks to her dead son, Clayton.
Carl and Crystal Reese take refuge in their faith to ease the loss of their boy, Robbie.
John Browning hired a private detective to dig into the circumstances surrounding the death of his son, Dustin.
But answers and justice have eluded these parents in the year since March 21, 2010, when the three men in their 20s were shot and killed in the rural Clark County house where they slept after a bonfire party.
"I can honestly tell you, we know no more today than we did the night it happened," said Crystal Reese, Robbie's mother.
The party was held at Clayton Edge's home on Pine Ridge Road, a winding lane through woods and fields about 15 miles southeast of Winchester.
Edge, 23, raised goats, earned rental income from a house in Winchester, and did lawn care work. He also earned money from fees he charged for vehicles to park in a lot across from the ballpark where the Lexington Legends play. His wife, Samantha, had moved out a few weeks before and taken their then-1-year-old daughter, Maddison.
Robbie Reese, 24, lived with his parents in Clark County, worked for Stanley Pipeline, and had known Edge since elementary school.
Dustin Browning, 21, lived with his mother in Bath County and worked in construction. He knew Edge from pool tournaments in Winchester.
Gay Edge said she last spoke to Clayton by telephone after 4 a.m. on the 21st. She'd heard chatter on a police scanner about a vehicle crash and wanted to be sure her son hadn't been in the accident. She knew he and Reese had gone to Lexington on Saturday before the early Sunday morning party.
"He said, 'Mom, there's just me and a few people having a bonfire,'" Gay Edge recalled.
Later that Sunday, friends found the three dead in the house. Dustin and Robbie were downstairs, Clayton was in an upstairs bedroom. Each man had been shot once in the head, Gay Edge said.
"According to the coroner, they never woke up," she said. "He says they never knew what hit them."
No 'legitimate suspects'
The grisly killings are uncharacteristic for Clark County, a largely rural community of 36,000 people better known as the home of Ale-8-One, the regional soft drink bottler. Clark County reported only five murders from 2005 to 2009, according to Kentucky State Police statistics.
It's somewhat unusual for a homicide to be unsolved. State police cleared 77 percent of the murders they investigated in 2009, but the clearance rate has been as high as 93 percent in 2005. (Annual figures for 2010 have not been released). Most murder cases are cleared because the culprit is known, recognizable, or in some way associated with the victim.
That's the problem in this case. "We really don't have any legitimate suspects," said Chris Short, one of two state police detectives investigating the triple murder.
"I mean, throughout this past year we've had some persons of interest that we've looked into, but nothing panned out," Short said.
There has been no shortage of theories about why the three were killed. Most of this speculation centers on drugs and drug-trafficking. The families of the three young men have heard these stories, too, but dismiss them as unfounded.
"Robbie's my boy, but if he was on drugs, I never knew it," Carl Reese said. "I knew he drank a little bit because I'd see a beer can in his truck. But he never drank in front of me. People say he was taking pills and stuff, but if he did, he hid it good. I never saw any at home, never saw any lying around in the basement or on his dresser or anything like that."
That Robbie Reese lived in his parents' basement and was constantly borrowing money from his father tells the Rees-es he wasn't trafficking.
"If he was a big pill man, he would have been driving a big Cadillac or a brand-new Dodge truck rather than a broken-down truck," Carl Reese said.
Likewise, John Browning said he finds it unlikely Dustin sold drugs.
"I ain't going to lie to you: Dustin smoked pot. I do know that," John Browning said. "But as far as him being a big-time drug dealer, no, he never done anything like that."
Detective Short said the talk of drugs is "just rumors."
"We don't have any evidence that any of them were involved in trafficking or anything like that," Short said. "I don't have anything to substantiate that they were transporting pills."
Clark County court records show no drug charges for Reese or Browning. Edge was charged in 2005 with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Another theory voiced on Internet chat is the "Mexican mafia" executed the three, which Short characterized as a rumor "we've heard a dozen times." Again, there is nothing to confirm that, he said. The origin of that may have to do with a Mexican-born man who helped Edge raise goats.
Then there is speculation that a transaction had gone wrong involving those goats. Another rumor has it that one man got his nose out of joint when another guy was too friendly with a girl at Edge's bonfire party.
Short calls these rumors, too. "Any time we get something like that, even if it's off the wall, we look into it," Short said. "You can never tell.
"You try to keep an open mind," he added. "You try to think of everything possible. You don't want to get blinders and miss something. But really, we do not know the motive at this time."
Gay Edge said she believes the shooting was related to the party. "But according to everybody at that party, nothing happened," she said. "Nobody got mad at nobody."
Desperate for another pair of eyes to look at the case, John Browning said he hired a private investigator from Western Kentucky and paid him $6,000 for two weeks' work and expenses. The Brownings won't identify the investigator but say he is the one who turned up some information about a girl who might have sparked some jealousy at the party.
A $7,500 reward is available for a tip that leads to an arrest. Crime Stoppers offers $1,000, and another $6,500 has been raised privately, John Browning said.
But no arrests have come. Angie Browning, Dustin's stepmother, finds that frustrating.
"It's hard to see all these other deaths and murders and everything else, and ... they've caught the person the next day," she said. "How in the world can they not catch the one that shot three? I mean, how is it possible?"
A year of coping
Without answers, the survivors have coped in different ways over the past year.
Gay Edge, a school bus monitor, said she talks to her son when she visits his grave in Winchester Cemetery.
"I tell him about everything that happened through the day," she said. "What the weather is like. How his little girl is doing."
And she performs duties that she thinks Clayton would do if he were alive.
"Like with his child — would he go pick her up and take her somewhere?" Gay Edge said. "If I think he would, then I'll go get her and take her somewhere, where he would take her. Not really what a grandmother would do, but what a father would do."
The Reeses smile as they tell stories about their son, whom they described as a hard worker.
"Give him an Ale-8 and a bag of Grippo's (barbecue chips) and he was good to go," said Carl Reese, a mechanic. "He'd leave the house at 6:30 or 7 o'clock, and some nights he'd work until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning before he'd come in. And then he'd get right back up at 6 o'clock and go again."
The Reeses said members of the Pentecostal church they attend in Winchester have helped them through the pain.
"Without my faith I would have never made it," Carl Reese said, his voice cracking. "If it wasn't for the Lord in my life, after what happened to my boy, I would have taken that truck out there and I would have drove it into a tree or over a bridge. He gives me strength."
As for John Browning, he acknowledges he does not sleep well, but stays up until 2 or 3 a.m. "I pace the floor all night long," he said.
He has written to America's Most Wanted, the TV show, to encourage producers to do a segment on the triple homicide.
In the meantime, he and his wife, Angie Browning, operate MADD Graphixz, a Winchester store that makes custom T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, signs and banners.
What hurts, John Browning said, is when the store is called upon to produce a memorial T-shirt or plate for a young person who has died in a vehicular crash or some other tragic circumstance.
"That's what kills me, when I have to do one," Browning said. "It brings the pain back all over again. It doesn't matter how they died. A life's a life, no matter how you look at it."
Photos of the victims, and the house they occupied, are at the linked article.
I lurked here for years before deciding to join up. What impelled me to do so, was the following case, an unsolved triple murder that occurred in Trapp, KY, in 2010. The police have made no headway, and the case has gone ice-cold. The case has received less news coverage than it deserves. Here is an article from the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader newspaper, which contains all of the (scant) information thus far publicly revealed:
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/counties/clark-county/article44085438.html
WINCHESTER — Gay Edge goes to the cemetery each day and talks to her dead son, Clayton.
Carl and Crystal Reese take refuge in their faith to ease the loss of their boy, Robbie.
John Browning hired a private detective to dig into the circumstances surrounding the death of his son, Dustin.
But answers and justice have eluded these parents in the year since March 21, 2010, when the three men in their 20s were shot and killed in the rural Clark County house where they slept after a bonfire party.
"I can honestly tell you, we know no more today than we did the night it happened," said Crystal Reese, Robbie's mother.
The party was held at Clayton Edge's home on Pine Ridge Road, a winding lane through woods and fields about 15 miles southeast of Winchester.
Edge, 23, raised goats, earned rental income from a house in Winchester, and did lawn care work. He also earned money from fees he charged for vehicles to park in a lot across from the ballpark where the Lexington Legends play. His wife, Samantha, had moved out a few weeks before and taken their then-1-year-old daughter, Maddison.
Robbie Reese, 24, lived with his parents in Clark County, worked for Stanley Pipeline, and had known Edge since elementary school.
Dustin Browning, 21, lived with his mother in Bath County and worked in construction. He knew Edge from pool tournaments in Winchester.
Gay Edge said she last spoke to Clayton by telephone after 4 a.m. on the 21st. She'd heard chatter on a police scanner about a vehicle crash and wanted to be sure her son hadn't been in the accident. She knew he and Reese had gone to Lexington on Saturday before the early Sunday morning party.
"He said, 'Mom, there's just me and a few people having a bonfire,'" Gay Edge recalled.
Later that Sunday, friends found the three dead in the house. Dustin and Robbie were downstairs, Clayton was in an upstairs bedroom. Each man had been shot once in the head, Gay Edge said.
"According to the coroner, they never woke up," she said. "He says they never knew what hit them."
No 'legitimate suspects'
The grisly killings are uncharacteristic for Clark County, a largely rural community of 36,000 people better known as the home of Ale-8-One, the regional soft drink bottler. Clark County reported only five murders from 2005 to 2009, according to Kentucky State Police statistics.
It's somewhat unusual for a homicide to be unsolved. State police cleared 77 percent of the murders they investigated in 2009, but the clearance rate has been as high as 93 percent in 2005. (Annual figures for 2010 have not been released). Most murder cases are cleared because the culprit is known, recognizable, or in some way associated with the victim.
That's the problem in this case. "We really don't have any legitimate suspects," said Chris Short, one of two state police detectives investigating the triple murder.
"I mean, throughout this past year we've had some persons of interest that we've looked into, but nothing panned out," Short said.
There has been no shortage of theories about why the three were killed. Most of this speculation centers on drugs and drug-trafficking. The families of the three young men have heard these stories, too, but dismiss them as unfounded.
"Robbie's my boy, but if he was on drugs, I never knew it," Carl Reese said. "I knew he drank a little bit because I'd see a beer can in his truck. But he never drank in front of me. People say he was taking pills and stuff, but if he did, he hid it good. I never saw any at home, never saw any lying around in the basement or on his dresser or anything like that."
That Robbie Reese lived in his parents' basement and was constantly borrowing money from his father tells the Rees-es he wasn't trafficking.
"If he was a big pill man, he would have been driving a big Cadillac or a brand-new Dodge truck rather than a broken-down truck," Carl Reese said.
Likewise, John Browning said he finds it unlikely Dustin sold drugs.
"I ain't going to lie to you: Dustin smoked pot. I do know that," John Browning said. "But as far as him being a big-time drug dealer, no, he never done anything like that."
Detective Short said the talk of drugs is "just rumors."
"We don't have any evidence that any of them were involved in trafficking or anything like that," Short said. "I don't have anything to substantiate that they were transporting pills."
Clark County court records show no drug charges for Reese or Browning. Edge was charged in 2005 with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Another theory voiced on Internet chat is the "Mexican mafia" executed the three, which Short characterized as a rumor "we've heard a dozen times." Again, there is nothing to confirm that, he said. The origin of that may have to do with a Mexican-born man who helped Edge raise goats.
Then there is speculation that a transaction had gone wrong involving those goats. Another rumor has it that one man got his nose out of joint when another guy was too friendly with a girl at Edge's bonfire party.
Short calls these rumors, too. "Any time we get something like that, even if it's off the wall, we look into it," Short said. "You can never tell.
"You try to keep an open mind," he added. "You try to think of everything possible. You don't want to get blinders and miss something. But really, we do not know the motive at this time."
Gay Edge said she believes the shooting was related to the party. "But according to everybody at that party, nothing happened," she said. "Nobody got mad at nobody."
Desperate for another pair of eyes to look at the case, John Browning said he hired a private investigator from Western Kentucky and paid him $6,000 for two weeks' work and expenses. The Brownings won't identify the investigator but say he is the one who turned up some information about a girl who might have sparked some jealousy at the party.
A $7,500 reward is available for a tip that leads to an arrest. Crime Stoppers offers $1,000, and another $6,500 has been raised privately, John Browning said.
But no arrests have come. Angie Browning, Dustin's stepmother, finds that frustrating.
"It's hard to see all these other deaths and murders and everything else, and ... they've caught the person the next day," she said. "How in the world can they not catch the one that shot three? I mean, how is it possible?"
A year of coping
Without answers, the survivors have coped in different ways over the past year.
Gay Edge, a school bus monitor, said she talks to her son when she visits his grave in Winchester Cemetery.
"I tell him about everything that happened through the day," she said. "What the weather is like. How his little girl is doing."
And she performs duties that she thinks Clayton would do if he were alive.
"Like with his child — would he go pick her up and take her somewhere?" Gay Edge said. "If I think he would, then I'll go get her and take her somewhere, where he would take her. Not really what a grandmother would do, but what a father would do."
The Reeses smile as they tell stories about their son, whom they described as a hard worker.
"Give him an Ale-8 and a bag of Grippo's (barbecue chips) and he was good to go," said Carl Reese, a mechanic. "He'd leave the house at 6:30 or 7 o'clock, and some nights he'd work until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning before he'd come in. And then he'd get right back up at 6 o'clock and go again."
The Reeses said members of the Pentecostal church they attend in Winchester have helped them through the pain.
"Without my faith I would have never made it," Carl Reese said, his voice cracking. "If it wasn't for the Lord in my life, after what happened to my boy, I would have taken that truck out there and I would have drove it into a tree or over a bridge. He gives me strength."
As for John Browning, he acknowledges he does not sleep well, but stays up until 2 or 3 a.m. "I pace the floor all night long," he said.
He has written to America's Most Wanted, the TV show, to encourage producers to do a segment on the triple homicide.
In the meantime, he and his wife, Angie Browning, operate MADD Graphixz, a Winchester store that makes custom T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, signs and banners.
What hurts, John Browning said, is when the store is called upon to produce a memorial T-shirt or plate for a young person who has died in a vehicular crash or some other tragic circumstance.
"That's what kills me, when I have to do one," Browning said. "It brings the pain back all over again. It doesn't matter how they died. A life's a life, no matter how you look at it."
Photos of the victims, and the house they occupied, are at the linked article.
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