1540
The area is said to be where Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto's expedition wintered in 1540 and 1541.
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FILE 427 / 28 September 2023 / 170 MIN / full
Going on down to Tennessee this week... Lawrenceburg, Tennessee... in southwestern Tennessee... This is in Lawrence County, so Lawrenceburg of Lawrence County. about 0:05:03
The area is said to be where Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto's expedition wintered in 1540 and 1541.
about 0:06:50The Chickasaw Nation sold the area to the US government in 1816.
about 0:07:14Davy Crockett moved here from East Tennessee around 1817 and served as Justice of the Peace, colonel of the militia and a state representative.
about 0:07:20Crockett established a powder mill on Shoal Creek, then called the Sicomo River; the site is now David Crockett State Park.
about 0:07:32The area is said to be where Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto's expedition wintered in 1540 and 1541.
about 0:06:50The Chickasaw Nation sold the area to the US government in 1816.
about 0:07:14Davy Crockett moved here from East Tennessee around 1817 and served as Justice of the Peace, colonel of the militia and a state representative.
about 0:07:20Crockett established a powder mill on Shoal Creek, then called the Sicomo River; the site is now David Crockett State Park.
about 0:07:32After the Second World War the Murray Ohio Manufacturing Company, makers of bicycles and outdoor equipment, moved here and built a factory and assembly plant.
about 0:08:19The town calls itself the birthplace of southern gospel music.
about 0:08:25Downtown has a statue of Davy Crockett, a replica of Crockett's office, and one of only two Mexican-American War monuments in the United States.
about 0:08:3362.5%
Biggest faith: Baptist residents, 31.6%
about 0:12:13White 87.1% · Black 6.1% · Asian 1.4% · Hispanic 4.1%
Ethnicity can overlap race.Property crime
▲ more than double the national average
Violent crime
▲ almost double the national average
Three-bedroom one-bath house, 1,024 square feet on 0.3 acres
about 0:15:06Three-bedroom two-bath house, 1,400 square feet
about 0:15:30Three-bedroom two-and-a-half-bath house, 3,115 square feet on two and a half acres
about 0:16:00"more than double the national average"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2023 about 0:20:19
"almost double the national average"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2023 about 0:22:15
"11,460"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:11:25
"almost 53%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:11:45
"fewer than normal"
Comparison: "normal". No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:11:51
"higher than normal"
Comparison: "normal". Direction: above.
As told in 2023 about 0:11:51
"far more than normal"
Comparison: "normal". Direction: above.
As told in 2023 about 0:11:51
"87.1%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:02
"6.1%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:02
"1.4%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:02
"4.1%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:02
"17.1%"
Comparison: "last election". No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:58
"81.9%"
Comparison: "last election". No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:58
"1%"
Comparison: "last election". No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:58
"62.5%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:13
"31.6%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:13
"0.0%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:12:25
"5%"
Comparison: "national average, which is less than 4%". Direction: below.
As told in 2023 about 0:13:12
"$33,463 a year"
Comparison: "about half the national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2023 about 0:13:26
"34%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:13:34
"76"
Comparison: "100 is regular and average". Direction: below.
As told in 2023 about 0:13:44
"$186,600"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:13:46
"$780 a month"
Comparison: "well below the national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2023 about 0:14:07
"$139,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:14:19
"$87,300"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:15:06
"$209,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:15:30
"$469,900"
No direction stated.
As told in 2023 about 0:16:00
3.0 / 5 · average of 4
“A beautiful place to live and grow, and an amazing place to grow up as a child and go on to a good future in Tennessee.”about 0:09:23
“Very encouraging schools and teachers, but the population has little to no education; the reviewer promises more training, education and entertainment, and more family-friendly activity.”about 0:09:40
“An average town in Tennessee with a Walmart and a hospital.”about 0:10:22
“Lawrenceburg is the used car capital of the world.”about 0:10:34
“Hated growing up here; no opportunities, almost nothing to do, rampant bigotry and no intellectual or adventurous outlets; cannot get out fast enough.”about 0:10:46
He was constantly in trouble as a boy, and in his y teens his family sent him to live with an uncle in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. At high school he sang in a band that played local dances, and after graduating he moved to Nashville to try to make it as a musician, forming a group called Libido. The band went nowhere, and by 1980 he was drifting between Nashville and Lawrenceburg, making money from counterfeit goods, stolen property and drugs, and presenting himself as a man connected to the New York mob.
The silver was fake. The three men abducted Hudson and his wife, Liz, at gunpoint from the parking lot of a Nashville hotel.
Passarella returned to Lawrenceburg, moved into the Crockett Senior Housing Complex, a subsidised block for people over sixty-five, and began playing local functions with a band called Survivor. He also sold prescription pills, obtaining them through a nurse practitioner and a pharmacist, and sold marijuana supplied by a man named David 'Daisy' Dover.
She joined a police force briefly after school, left it, and by the age of twenty had three children and a string of failed marriages. From the middle of 2013 she sold pills for Passarella herself, taking over from Howell, and the two became close. She later said they loved each other but were not intimate.
By 2015 Passarella was sixty-nine and in poor health. He had been in hospital with pneumonia and atrial fibrillation, and from 14 to 26 April he was in inpatient rehabilitation at National Health Care Corporation Lawrenceburg, discharged when his insurance ran out. He could stand only with difficulty, walked about two hundred feet with a rolling walker, and had poor balance. On 18 May he missed his one o'clock therapy appointment, arrived at three, was found to have blood pressure of 168 over 82 and was sent home without therapy.
She said she grabbed a hammer from under the bed, struck him, and then stabbed him twice in the neck to make sure he was dead. The front door was unlocked. He found Passarella on his bed in a pool of blood and called 911 at 8.50 p.m. The chief of police was among the first two officers on the scene. Passarella had been struck more than twenty times in the head with what appeared to be a claw hammer; part of his right ear was torn off; his throat had been cut twice, puncturing his jugular vein; and he had been alive throughout, for ten to fifteen minutes of beating. A bread knife was in his right hand with no blood spatter on it. His mobile phone was in the toilet, a bottle of bleach stood on the counter and a butcher knife was missing from the block. A kitchen chair under the ceiling light suggested someone had changed a bulb. Prescription medication and cash were missing.
She said she had been walking the dog. She said she had eaten dinner with Passarella on the 18th and had not seen him since, and mentioned a manila envelope in his apartment. It contained Tennessee Bureau of Investigation discovery documents naming Passarella as a supplier of several pounds of marijuana a week to David 'Daisy' Dover. That lead went nowhere, as did a tip about Sean Tierney, known as Big New York, who was with his family in North Carolina at the time.
Months passed. That evening her former landlord, Carl Rawdon, called police: he had found a plastic bag buried in a chert pit behind her old trailer. It held an Austin Peay University bag, a yellow and black claw hammer partly wrapped in a black latex glove, a black-handled knife, a white-handled knife matching Passarella's kitchen set, a lacy grey wrap, a white New York T-shirt, a leopard-print shirt, a striped towel and four pill bottles, three in Passarella's name and filled on 27 April 2015. The DNA from the glove was limited and inconclusive, and no identifiable prints were recovered.
In the first she said Shane Hughes had argued with Passarella over pills and killed him while she was in the bathroom, and had buried the evidence to frame her. In the second she said her fiance Jonathan Howell had done it and that she had cleaned the scene. In the third she admitted killing him herself but claimed self-defence: he had pushed her to the floor, threatened her and her children, said wise guys were coming, and she grabbed a hammer from under the bed and swung it, then stabbed him twice in the neck to be sure. She said she took the knife, phone, towels and clothes, threw the phone in the toilet, planted the bread knife in his hand, buried the bag behind her trailer and threw her red-clay-covered shoes behind Hilltop Market.
The pathologist testified that the blunt force trauma was so severe that Passarella would almost certainly have been rendered unconscious, and the blood-spatter evidence showed no spatter around the chest of drawers, indicating the blows came from behind; the knife in his hand had no blood on it. She is held at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.
1982 / Nashville, Tennessee
As told in the episode, on 28 September 2023.
Accused
Accused
Accused
May 18, 2015 / his apartment at the Crockett Senior Housing Complex, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee
As told in the episode, on 28 September 2023.
Accused
Public places are marked on the map.
crime scene
about 2:33:45hospital
about 1:04:51business
about 0:48:41other
about 1:41:14business
about 1:59:42police
about 1:36:53crime scene
about 0:33:50other
about 0:07:32landmark
about 0:07:32landmark
about 0:08:33