Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky

1May 3, 2003Although the sun was bright, the unrelenting summer heat had not yet arrived. It was nearing 2 pm in Scottsville, Kentucky, and Luke Goodrum was just getting up. Luke's routine was to wake up late, hang out with his girlfriend, Brittany, until she went on cashier duty at Food Lion, and then play video games until she was free. It was Derby Day, but Scottsville is about 100 miles and a world away from the Triple Crown race in Louisville.Luke had stayed up late the night before playing video games and drinking beer with one of his high school buddies. He knew that he would have to go to Bowling Green, a much larger town twenty minutes northwest, with Brittany -- in part to appease her for the night before when she had stopped by in the middle of a game. Luke had been extremely drunk and ignored her for the pixilated football players on the screen.Luke showered and got ready, admiring himself in the mirror. He was twenty-one years old, six feet two inches tall, with dark blond hair and brown eyes. His 180-pound frame was cut from lifting weights. If he wasn't playing sports he was watching them. The amount of food he consumed was akin to a professional football player -- he drank a gallon of milk each day by himself. Luke was garrulous, often smiling, and spoke in a heavily accented, rapid-fire drawl littered with double negatives and tenses out of whack. When Luke spoke, words burst out of his mouth with no spaces between them, a natural auctioneer. He had the air of a good ol' boy with a touch of hip-hop. A thin patch of a goatee sprouted below his lower lip; sideburns extended halfway past his earlobes. Luke was handsome and he knew it, and never had a problem with girls. In fact, Brittany had picked him up in the first place.About eight months before, seventeen-year-old Brittany Stinson was cruising "the strip" in nearby Glasgow with a carload of girlfriends when she noticed Luke in the passenger seat of his friend's truck. Like many roads in so many small towns, "the strip" was a street gilded with fast-food franchises and telephone poles where the teenagers went on weekends. Brittany followed them into the McDonald's parking lot, leaned on the truck, and introduced herself. The following Monday, after school, Brittany went to Luke's apartment. They had been together ever since.Luke liked being with someone as outgoing as he was, but he was admittedly more struck by her body. Brittany was about fivefeet, five inches tall and petite. "Except for her butt," Luke pointed out to his buddies.Luke folded a white bandanna with blue print and wrapped it around his forehead -- it reminded him of both Axl Rose and Tupac Shakur. He phoned in a delivery order to Domino's and watched TV while eating the pepperoni pizza. Some of the garlic dipping sauce dribbled onto his T-shirt.Although rather oblivious to it, Luke embodied a curious amalgam of each tier of Scottsville society. Currently out of work, Luke had held a litany of blue-collar jobs, such as house painter and truck stop attendant. None of his posts lasted long. Luke would either get fired, or more commonly, abruptly quit. He supplemented his wages by moonlighting, selling marijuana and, on occasion, cocaine.Through his mother's second marriage, Luke was also connected to the richest and most well-known family in Scottsville, the Turners. Donna Dugas's second husband, Bruce Dugas, was a grandson of Cal Turner, the founder of the Dollar General store chain (essentially a less-discerning Kmart). The no-frills emporiums have shelves haphazardly stocked with a variety of discounted everyday items -- loofahs, toothpaste, nails, clothing -- just about anything imaginable. One of the first stores occupies a cornerstone of Scottsville's modest downtown square. Semitrucks emblazoned with the stark black on yellow dollar general emblem on their trailers careen down the roads as they are dispatched from the giant warehouse on tVan Meter, William is the author of 'Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky', published 2009 under ISBN 9781416538684 and ISBN 1416538682.