IN QUIET CORNER OF RURAL KY., AMBITION, DRUGS AND DEATH

Political Rivals Are Charged In Killing Of Popular Sheriff

SOMERSET, Ky. - Until he was killed last Saturday in the most lawless way -
shot in the head by a sniper's bullet as he left a fish fry and political
rally at a tiny volunteer fire department - Sheriff Sam Catron was the law
here.

In nearly two decades as sheriff of Pulaski County in rural southern
Kentucky, Catron seemed to be always in uniform, always on duty. Any
rumbling of trouble was met with the familiar solution: Better call Sam.

But Catron's slaying showed that life as a small-town sheriff never is that
simple in a place where decades of persistent poverty have warped local
elections into raw grabs for power and patronage and fueled a
well-entrenched illegal drug trade.

Behind Catron's death, authorities charged this week, were a political
opponent and two supporters of a rival campaign.

One was a man arrested last year on drug charges and accused of peddling
the prescription painkiller OxyContin; the other was an aspiring police
officer who might have been promised a job as a sheriff's deputy in
exchange for pulling the trigger.

"You've got three people, and everybody's got their own motivations," said
Kentucky State Police Detective G. Todd Dalton, the lead investigator in
the case.

The rival candidate, "his motivation was to be sheriff, and at any cost I
guess. The others, well, their motivation was to get their friend in office."

To do that would mean somehow knocking out the front-runner. And that was
Catron, just as it had been in four previous elections, reaching back to 1985.

An unimposing lawman with a shy demeanor and awkward overbite, Catron had,
over time, become legendary for his singular devotion to the job.

Thousands Mourn

"Being sheriff, as we all know, was Sammy's all," U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers,
a Republican from Somerset, told the more than 2,000 mourners who attended
Catron's standing-room-only funeral yesterday.

"It was his love. It was his job. It was his joy."

Instead of a traditional hearse, Catron's casket was carried out to one of
the county rescue squad's ambulances, draped in black bunting.

As his helicopter whirred overhead, and onlookers poured out of stores and
schools and houses to watch, scores of police cars led the procession to
the cemetery where Catron was to be buried, in a grave next to his father's.

A bugler played taps. Hundreds of officers from across the state and
country stood at attention for a 21-gun salute.

And a 911 dispatcher made one last call: "Dispatch to Unit 111, Pulaski
County Sheriff Sam Catron." After a moment of silence, they sounded the
page again. "Dispatch to Unit 111 - you have fought the good fight."

For two days, Catron lay in state in a convention center auditorium, and
hundreds of people paid their respects by filing past Catron's open casket
and the trappings of his life and career - his 1967 Eagle Scout
certificate, newspaper clippings from his first run for sheriff, even his
unmarked, brown Ford Crown Victoria cruiser, freshly washed and waxed.

Flags flew at half-staff and brown and yellow ribbons - the color of the
department's uniforms - fluttered on lamp posts and lapels. The Wal-Mart
set up a photo tribute at its main entrance.

Hand-lettered signs in store windows said: "We'll Miss You Sam."

Dedication To Duties

Catron was known for patrolling country roads well into the night,
sometimes all night, work he could have left to his deputies.

A pilot, Catron would spend late summer days hovering over county fields in
a helicopter to search for marijuana crops.

In a town of about 11,000, where police work includes warnings each spring
to would-be pranksters not to pour dish soap into the town square water
fountain, Catron was an ambitious, by-the-book lawman who saw police work
as his calling.

The reason, friends said, could be traced to the porch of the house where
Catron, who never married, still lived with his elderly mother.

As a young boy, Catron was playing inside the house when his father, then
Somerset's police chief, was shot and critically injured on the porch by an
alleged bootlegger. His father died from his injuries seven years later.

"It wasn't revenge, I just think he felt like he needed to pick up where
his father left off, kind of fill his shoes," said Randy L. Thompson, a
deputy state fire marshal who worked closely with Catron for years.

Across Kentucky, being county sheriff isn't just about a life's ambition.
It is also, in no small measure, about politics. In rural and mountain
counties where economies long dependent on tobacco or coal have steadily
eroded, holding an elected county office - anything from coroner to jailer
- - means a steady paycheck and the power and influence to put friends and
family to work as well.

Every election season, a slew of candidates fill the ballots and campaign
yard signs cover the state. In this year's Pulaski County sheriff's race
alone, five men were running in the GOP primary - the decisive vote in the
heavily Republican county, about 75 miles south of Lexington.

No one expected a simple race, but they figured it couldn't get much
stranger than four years ago.

Then, Catron won a fourth term in a vote so close that county officials
called it with a coin toss. Even before that bizarre finish, the race had
been marred by a federal extortion indictment against the county's chief
prosecutor, who later was convicted and sent to federal prison for shaking
down a local pawnbroker for $100,000 to use as political contributions -
chiefly to Catron's closest competitor, who was the prosecutor's cousin.

Rival A Former Deputy

Among this year's rivals was one of Catron's former deputies, Jeffrey A.
Morris, who was forced out of the department last summer over what
officials have called an "internal disciplinary problem" and who was
working for his father's plumbing business.

Unseating Catron to get back inside the sheriff's department wasn't going
to be easy.

To do it, authorities now allege, Morris and two of his closest campaign
workers crafted a deadly plan and put it into action at one of the most
genteel events of the campaign season - the annual spring fish fry to raise
money for the volunteer fire department that serves the tiny communities of
Stab and Shopville on the eastern edge of the county.

Every election year, local candidates are invited to speak at the event as
a way to draw a bigger crowd and raise a bit more money, said Charles David
Hawk, the department's chaplain. Each candidate got about five minutes to
speak. Catron took far less.

"I think he said, 'My name is Sam Catron. I'm running for sheriff. I
appreciate your vote,'" Hawk recounted last week. "Sam's was probably the
shortest. He's a man of few words."

An old-fashioned cake auction followed the candidate speeches. Catron went
to the stage to help Hawk sell the homemade cakes and bought two himself -
a chocolate bundt cake and an Amish chess cake - leaving the cashier with a
$100 bill.

Catron carried the cakes across the road from the fire station to his
cruiser. He had put one of the cakes on the trunk of the car and unlocked
the car doors to set the other cake on the back seat when a rifle shot rang
out from a woods about 170 feet away.

The shot, from a high-powered 25-06 hunting rifle, hit Catron on the left
side of the head and killed him instantly, police said. He fell onto the
road, a cake still in one hand.

Pursuit Of Motorcycle

Almost immediately, Hawk said, several people in the crowd saw a man in
camouflage clothing get on a motorcycle parked nearby and speed away, a
rifle slung over his shoulder.

Police and volunteers with the fire department gave chase and, about five
miles away, they caught up with a man on a bike.

It was Danny C. Shelley, 30, an unemployed campaign volunteer for Jeff
Morris who had about $20,000 in credit card debts, court records show.

The motorcycle that Shelley was riding was registered in Morris' name.

Shelley was charged with murdering a law enforcement officer. Two days
later, state police charged Morris and another of his supporters, Kenneth
"Fingers" White, 54, with complicity to commit murder for allegedly
planning and helping execute Catron's slaying.

White was arrested last year on cocaine possession charges. Court papers
show that an informant told police that White, 54, had sold him the
prescription painkiller OxyContin, increasingly abused as a street drug in
rural areas. Longtime observers say that factor could prove more
significant as the case develops.

"I think drugs had to play a part in it, and, of course, the dirty hand of
politics," said Jimmie W. Greene, the chief elected official in adjoining
McCreary County, who worked closely with Catron for years. "We never called
on Sam that he didn't come."