Jason Dearen - Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, a Deadly Disease

OCTOBER 2012

ALBANY, KENTUCKY

The gravedigger arrived just after sundown, the night already full of the trills of crickets and katydids. He headed to the top of the cemeterys hill and pushed his shovel into the earth quietly, chunking out the grass and weeds on top before hitting soil. He was careful not to attract the attention of the residents of the small homes adjoining the site or of those in cars traveling along North Cross Street, the towns nearby thoroughfare.

The deceased was a judge, Eddie Lovelace, and his funeral a few weeks earlier had lasted hours, with what seemed like the entire 2,000-person town in attendance. State troopers, farmers in bibbed overalls and boots, even a man the judge had sent to jail twice came to pay their respects.

Two weeks before his death, the judge had still been presiding over criminal cases in the Colonial-style courthouse a few blocks from his house. The seventy-eight-year-old still walked three miles every morningthe same route down to the Talbott Funeral Home, then over to the Clinton County Hospital. Eleven days before his funeral he had collapsed after stepping off his porch to retrieve the Lexington Herald-Leader from the mailbox. He had staggered to his feet and made it back to his kitchen, paper in hand, calling to his wife, Joyce, and waking her up. She immediately noticed that his face looked different. My legs just arent working, hed said. She hurried to call her daughter, Karen, a nurse who lived down the street.

The next day, as Lovelace lay in a hospital room at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a neurologist confirmed that hed had an atypical stroke, in an unusual part of the brain.

A few days later, his speech had become too garbled to understand. Then he lost his ability to breathe or move his extremities. When his granddaughter asked for a thumbs-up, he managed only a weak response. Doctors still saw brain activityhe was in therebut he was locked in.

The judge died a week after arriving at Vanderbilt. The cause of death was listed as unknown, and he was buried a few blocks from his small house on Lovelace Street, which had been named in his honor.

Less than a month later, the gravedigger scooped out a couple of feet of dirt before his blade reached the top of Lovelaces cement vault. The weight of the earth above it had already created a tight seal, but a few swings from a sledgehammer cracked the vault open, interrupting the quiet.

The next morning, a hearse drove three hours north to Louisville, where the body was unloaded and taken into a low-slung mortuary building. The exhumed corpse was eased onto a stainless-steel table. The judge was still dressed in his robes, a gavel in his right hand. A key to the front door of his house was in his pocket, where he always kept it.

The medical examiner cut open the remains and studied each major organ. Multiple areas of the judges brain showed evidence of hemorrhaging. As the pathologist reached the top of the spine, he noticed a growth covering the base of the brain stema microorganism, a translucent jellylike mold.