1807
Madisonville was founded in 1807 and named for James Madison, Secretary of State at the time.
about 0:06:59The story
Madisonville, Kentucky, sits in western Kentucky, about an hour and forty minutes from Nashville, in Hopkins County. It was founded in 1807 and named for James Madison, then Secretary of State, became the seat of Hopkins County in 1808 and was incorporated in 1810. Farming, tobacco and later coal and manufacturing shaped the town, and on 15 November 2005 a tornado tore through it, destroying part of the city including the home of former Boston Celtic Frank Ramsey. At the time of this story it had a population of 19,533, was 80.4 per cent white, and was 58 per cent religious, mostly Baptist.
During the Second World War she worked on fighter planes as a Rosie the Riveter, and in 1950 she opened the first Dairy Queen franchise in Madisonville. She invested the proceeds in property, buying, repairing and renting out houses, and became a millionaire. She was a flamboyant and generous woman, famous for mink coats with the head still on, bright red hair and diamond rings, and she lent money to relatives and tenants, keeping every loan in a spiral notebook in purple ink. She rarely evicted anyone and often let rent ride for months. In 2003, in her eighties, she became engaged to Dr Robert 'Bob' Feniman, a retired ophthalmologist from Evansville, Indiana, whom she had met through church circles.
Behind that life he was a compulsive gambler. In 2002 he visited casinos 236 times and lost more than a million dollars, much of it borrowed from Ann. By January 2003 his ledger debt to her was $97,386, and she had lent more than $200,000 to family and friends in total.
On Saturday 11 January Ann lent him another $9,700, and he gave her a $1,200 cheque as a token payment. That night he lost the whole $10,000 at a high-stakes blackjack table near Louisville, and he knew the cheque would bounce.
They spoke briefly in the car park and she mentioned that she was cooking pork chops. She left at seven, drove the six minutes home to North Main Street and was seen pulling into her driveway at 7.05. He was let in, and the two went down to the basement. There, the prosecution later argued, he asked her not to cash the cheque. She refused. He struck her from behind with a mining hammer or similar tool, then stabbed her 97 times with a serrated hunting knife. Many of the wounds were inflicted after she was already dead; her skull was shattered beyond counting and the knife went through her body into the concrete floor. She had defensive wounds on her forearms.
Tammy asked where he had been; he said he had had to take care of something and went to bed. The knife went under his mattress.
On Monday morning Dr Bob called Ann at nine, got no answer, and drove the fifty miles from Evansville. When knocking brought no response he called Earl, who lived nearby. The two men found the spare key under a bush, let themselves in, and Earl went down to the basement, where he found his sister face down in a pool of blood. He called 911. The town had not had a murder in twenty years. The autopsy found 97 stab wounds, a smashed skull and defensive wounds; time of death was put between seven and eight on the Sunday night, based on a partly digested pork chop dinner. Nothing had been taken: her diamond rings and the cash in her purse were untouched, and there was no forced entry. She would not have opened the door to a strange man, so the police looked for someone she knew.
They cleared Dr Bob, whose landline records placed him in Evansville at 7.15, 7.30 and 7.45. They cleared her sister Grace, 62 and dying of cancer, who had been bitter that Ann was healthy and rich while she was dying, but who was far too ill to have done it. They cleared Earl, who had an alibi with several witnesses. They looked at Robert Prince, also called Joseph K, a mentally unstable tenant behind on rent who called Ann in the night about ghosts in his attic and was being evicted, but he was in Tennessee, 200 miles away, on convenience store video, and had just had elbow surgery on his dominant arm. They looked at Wayne Shelton, her handyman, who owed her $400 and had a shady past; he was interviewed and polygraphed and showed no deception.
Then Jeff Hibbs called. He was calm, admitted borrowing about a hundred thousand and said he did not remember the $1,200 cheque. He said he got home at 7.25. A search of his house found two burner phones, one used only to contact a casino cocktail waitress with whom he was having an affair, and a custom-made serrated hunting knife under his mattress, consistent with Ann's wounds. His bank records showed that he never had $1,200 to cover the cheque, and that he had lost over a million dollars gambling in 2002.
Tammy repeated the 7.25 story at first, then broke down. Confronted with the affairs and the scale of the losses, she said, 'He told me to say seven twenty five,' and then that he had actually come home closer to nine.
In February 2005 America's Most Wanted aired the story. In April or May an American tourist in the Hotel Del Rey saw the programme on mute and recognised the man playing blackjack two tables away.
The defence, led by Tom Osborne, argued that the case was entirely circumstantial, with no DNA, no fingerprints and no eyewitness identification, and attacked Tammy's credibility and Roulet's. He maintained his innocence.
Tammy remarried, raised the children alone and changed her name. Mary Kinney Branson, wife of Ann's nephew Jack, wrote Murder in Mayberry in 2008. Ann is buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Madisonville.