THE DESCENT OF DANNY SHELLEY

No One Could Have Imagined He Would One Day Kill The Sheriff

SOMERSET - In the spring of 1989, Danny Shelley put on a white tuxedo
and escorted the prom queen to the big dance at Pulaski County High
School.

In the spring of 2002, he put on camouflage and hid in the woods as he
waited to kill Pulaski County Sheriff Sam Catron.

Drugs accounted for that tragic transformation. A lot of
drugs.

By his late 20s, Shelley had become dependent on pain pills after a
knee injury and was a significant drug dealer, selling cocaine,
Ecstasy and prescription medicines such as OxyContin to make money and
support his habit, snorting crushed pills to stay high and out of pain.

He said he kept up the abuse right to the end, using a rolled-up $100
bill to snort crushed Xanax off the gas tank of a motorcycle he would
use to flee the shooting.

He said he snorted some more as he lay by a log in the woods, waiting
for a clear shot as Catron left a community fish fry.

When he saw Catron walk to his brown patrol car 80 yards away, Shelley
put the cross hairs of the sight on his high-powered rifle on the
sheriff's head and squeezed off a shot, the way he had been trained in
the Marine Corps.

It is not unusual for people to slide from using prescription drugs
legally to abusing them, and then selling them to keep the money and
drugs coming in.

That "American tragedy" is not unique to Shelley, said his attorney,
Mark Stanziano.

With the assassination though, Stanziano said, "he's off the scale in
terms of what the drugs have done to him."

If you had known the Danny Shelley of 1989, say people who did, you
would not believe what he had become by 2002.

Tangy Stogsdill, the prom queen in 1989 at Pulaski County High School,
had asked Shelley to escort her because her boyfriend could not attend
the dance. Shelley was well known at school because he was so
friendly, Stogsdill said.

"You couldn't have met a nicer guy," she said.

The 1989 yearbook called Shelley "one of the sweetest guys" in the
county and listed his hobbies as softball, swimming, fishing and going
four-wheeling. The editors chose to run his photo larger than the
pictures of most seniors that year.

"He always has something nice to say to everyone he talks to," the
yearbook said.

Shelley played basketball in high school but quit after bone spurs in
his knees required surgery.

His yearbook advice to underclassmen: "Stay in school and it will be
over soon." But he stopped attending Somerset Community College after
one semester, then worked at construction jobs and at a battery
distributor and a vending-machine company before joining the Marines.

After growing up hunting in rural Pulaski County, he was one of the
top marksmen in his unit. He liked being in the service, he said, but
the Marine Corps discharged him in late 1992, after less than a year,
because of the recurring bone spurs in his knees.

He worked in construction and various other jobs after coming home,
and he attended vocational school to study industrial
maintenance.

By the fall of 1996, he was living in Lexington and making good money
- -- an average of $586 a week -- maintaining machinery at Louisville
Forge and Gear in Scott County, according to state records.

Then a fall started his fall.

Shelley was working on a machine in March 1997 when he slipped and
fell 10 to 15 feet. He hyperextended his left knee backward when he
landed, according to a claim he filed with the state Department of
Workers Claims.

He underwent several surgeries in the next year and was prescribed
pain pills, according to state and federal records.

It did not take long to figure out many other people had an appetite
for pills, and how tempting -- and easy -- it was to make money off
them while he was out of work and receiving only intermittent
partial-disability pay. Shelley started selling pills after someone
approached him, he said.

"People come up and offer you ungodly amounts of money for pills," he
said. "There's 80-year-old women out there sells their pain pills."

Shelley later told the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that he
started selling the Tylox pain pills he was prescribed after his first
knee surgery in 1997. Worker's compensation benefits paid for the
medication and then, on at least five occasions, Shelley sold batches
of 40 pills for $10 to $12 a pill, according to the DEA file.

He also got hooked on pills because of pain from the surgeries, stress
over financial problems and because he was upset that a physical
problem had again cost him a job, Shelley said.

He had drunk alcohol and smoked marijuana before, he said, but had not
taken harder drugs. He found the pills took care of not only his sore
knee but the emotional stress as well.

"You can forget everything," Shelley, 32, said during an interview
last week at the Casey County Detention Center, where he was held
during the recent trial of Kenneth White, a co-conspirator in Catron's
murder. "The least little thing bothers you, you run to them."

It got so that if he did not have a pill every few hours, he would get
chills and sweats, Shelley said: "It's what I got up thinking about.
It's what I went to bed thinking about."

Shelley built a significant illegal drug business, according to his
own admission and information from the DEA.

He was a middleman who developed contacts to bring in cocaine, Ecstasy
and pain pills from Mexico, Florida and elsewhere. He traveled out of
state to pick up drugs and also ordered thousands of pills over the
Internet to be shipped to Pulaski County.

He took his first trip to Mexico to get prescription drugs after he
and another dealer saw on CBS's 60 Minutes a story about how it was
possible to do that. Shelley borrowed $2,500 from a bank in Somerset
to get started and crossed the border at Laredo, Texas, buying Valium,
Percodan and other pills, he told the DEA.

He later started dealing in OxyContin, which in those days brought $1
a milligram on the black market, or $7,200 for 90 of the 80-milligram
tablets.

The money and drugs kept him "high and happy" and allowed him
adventures such as travel; there was also an adrenaline rush to
dealing drugs, he said.

Much of the money went back up his nose, though, and drug dealers in
Florida stole $30,000 from him, running out the back door after he
handed over the money for Ecstasy, Shelley told the DEA.

Shelley said his drug business ended abruptly in July 2001, when drug
police confronted him.

Four months earlier, United Parcel Service employees had trouble
reading the address on a package from Mexico bound for Danny PDG Co.
at the home of a friend of Shelley. The initials stood for "Puppy
Dog," the name Shelley had picked up in a better time.

UPS employees opened the package and called police after finding more
than 4,000 painkillers and antidepressants inside. Agents from the DEA
and state police began investigating Shelley, and he confessed
immediately when they later came to talk to him.

"He was very scared," Jody Hughes, a DEA agent, said in court
testimony.

Shelley was not the main target, though. Police wanted him to help get
Kenneth White, a drug dealer in southern Pulaski County who had a
history of avoiding charges by cutting deals to inform on other
people, according to court testimony.

Shelley said he had first met White at Somerset Mall. White had pills
for sale, and Shelley had cocaine. They began doing business.

The DEA said Shelley was an informant, but Shelley described his role
as a confidential witness, giving information on people who informed
on him, including White.

Shelley, however, said he told White about the investigation because
he wanted advice on how to deal with the DEA. White turned the tables,
going to the DEA himself and offering to become an informant.

Shelley said that helped keep him tied to White, because he thought
the older drug dealer had some clout with the DEA.

The other hook was pain pills.

Shelley said he stopped dealing drugs when police confronted him --
but he did not stop needing drugs. White kept him supplied, he said.

Shelley said White wanted him around because of his drug contacts. By
early 2002, as both remained free months after drug agents had
contacted them, they had also begun working together for Jeff Morris
in Morris' bid to beat Catron in the sheriff's race.

Morris was a former deputy under Catron, but he had been forced out
after being accused of taking days off work without permission.

Morris and White allegedly formed an alliance because they both wanted
Catron out of the way -- Morris so he could beat his old boss and be
sheriff, and White so he could have the county's top cop in his pocket
to protect his drug dealing and bootlegging.

Shelley said the two thought they could defeat Catron straight up at
the ballot box, albeit with a good bit of illegal campaign spending by
White. They handed out fliers together at flea markets and the
courthouse and held rallies and painted campaign signs in White's basement.

Morris and White talked of using the sheriff's office for extortion
schemes. Morris told Shelley he would put him in charge of the
evidence room, granting access to hundreds of confiscated pills.

As the campaign went on, though, talk surfaced of killing Catron.
White and another man told Shelley they had seen Catron at the Bob
Evans restaurant in Somerset and the sheriff had said he would "drop
them" before the election, Shelley said.

White claimed to have a tape of the conversation but put Shelley off
when he asked to hear it.

Shelley said he heard White try unsuccessfully to get an associate to
arrange Catron's murder for $10,000. He offered another man $5,000 and
a car, but could not arrange the deal, Shelley said.

So then Morris and White started manipulating Shelley to make a
pre-emptive strike at Catron, Shelley said.

Morris told him Catron was a child molester. That struck a chord,
because Shelley had been victimized by someone outside his family.
White told him Catron was a threat to them.

"He had to get me scared to where I would protect myself," Shelley
said.

As Shelley and Morris shot pool in White's basement one night, Morris
said he thought White was going to give him $10,000 to shoot Catron.

Shelley said he told Morris he was not interested in the money, only
in whether killing Catron was the right thing to do. Morris walked
around the table, Shelley said, and told him, "I'm a Christian and
you're a Christian, and there ain't nothing wrong with killing Satan."

Shelley said he went along with the plan because his judgment was
impaired by drugs; he was under stress because he had no job and was
worried about the DEA; he was fearful that if he broke away, White
would harm his family; and he was convinced Catron was a threat.

"I was tricked and lied to. They knew I wasn't right, and they used
me," he said. "I had no control over my thoughts and actions."

The details of killing Catron came together a couple of days before
April 13, 2002, when he and other candidates were due to attend a
community fish fry at the Shopville-Stab Volunteer Fire Department.

Morris and White bought shells for Shelley's high-powered 25.06 rifle.
The day before the fish fry, the three went to the fire station to
scout the layout.

They considered having Shelley run into a cave near the fire station
and hide after the shooting. Then White pointed out a place on the
wooded hillside overlooking the fire station and told Shelley that
would be the place to hide the getaway vehicle and fire the fatal shot.

The day of the shooting, White and Shelley went to Morris' house, and
Shelley took a short ride on Morris' motorcycle, which they had
decided that day Shelley should use to flee the shooting.

Shelley said he did not have much experience on large road cycles, but
Morris and White might have thought he did because he wore a
Harley-Davidson cap.

After the three met at Wal-Mart to put a new battery in the cycle,
Shelley went to hide in the woods near the fire station.

He waited for hours as hundreds of people gathered for the fish fry,
with music, short speeches by several candidates for local office and
a cake auction to raise money for the fire department.

Shelley said he watched white clouds float by in the spring blue sky
and talked to himself.

"I's gone" on the drugs, he said.

Then he heard an announcement that caught his ear, something about the
event's winding down. He saw Catron walking to his car, carrying two
cakes he had bought.

Morris and White had told Shelley not to hurt anyone else. Catron was
in the clear when he got to his car.

Shelley knew from Morris that Catron always wore a bullet-proof vest,
so he would have to shoot him in the head. Shelley had the sling of
his rifle wrapped around his arm to steady it, with the barrel propped
on a woven-wire fence.

"With my mind gone and my judgment, I guess I reverted back to my
training," Shelley said.

He says he does not remember putting his sight on Catron, though he
has told others he does remember aiming to shoot Catron between the
eyes.

"I remember the boom. It was like he was there and then he was gone,"
he said.

He ran up the hill to the motorcycle, running over some small cedar
trees as he tore out. As he headed east on Ky. 80, the people who
watched in horror as Catron lay dead in the road could see the killer
fleeing.

Several people jumped into cars and trucks to try to catch him. Within
minutes, Shelley hit a wet spot on a winding country road he had
turned onto and wrecked the motorcycle.

A man who had been at the fish fry caught up with Shelley and stood
over him with a club until police arrived to arrest him.

Shelley admitted right away he had shot Catron, still thinking he had
not done anything wrong.

"At the time I thought it was either me or him," he
said.

Reality started coming back after he quit using drugs cold turkey in
jail, crying and hurting so badly he would rather go through a year of
boot camp than do it again, Shelley said.

He now knows that Catron was not a threat to do anything but enforce
the law.

Shelley thinks that if he had made it back to White's that night as
planned, White would have taped him making incriminating statements
about the murder. Then Shelley would have been killed and whoever did
it would have claimed self-defense, Shelley said.

Shelley pleaded guilty in return for a sentence of life without parole
for at least 25 years. So did Morris, but White denied he was involved
and went to trial.

A jury convicted White in less than an hour. Jurors accepted an
argument that White played the lead role in the plot, recommending a
sentence of life without parole.

These days, Shelley, a muscular 6-foot-4, gets agitated when he talks
about how White and Morris manipulated him.

"That's what's so hard about being in here. I know what I done was not
my own thoughts," he said. "I just want everybody to see that wasn't
me."

He calls White his worst enemy and laughs about supplying testimony
that helped convict him.

"I beat him at his own game," Shelley said.

Shelley said he hopes that the fact he confessed, helped find
witnesses against White and provided testimony will mean a lower
sentence for him someday.

"That's all I'm asking is a fair shake," Shelley said.

Eddy Montgomery, the prosecutor, said Shelley already got a good deal
in a case in which he could have faced the death penalty.

Montgomery and Lewis Catron, a brother of the slain sheriff, said they
would not endorse cutting Shelley's sentence.

Catron said he agrees Morris and White manipulated Shelley. He also
said he appreciates Shelley's remorse.

Catron said, however, that Shelley did not have much choice in owning
up to the crime, given the evidence. Shelley could have gotten out of
the murder plot, he said:

"He didn't have to pull that trigger."