Mass Murder In Allen Kentucky 1981

As mass murder has become almost a daily occurrence in the United States with three hundred and seven being reported in 2018 as of November 16, 2018, we tend to generally believe that it is a relatively recent phenomenon.  But that is not entirely true.  Mass murders have been happening in America since at least since 1966 when Richard Speck murdered eight nurses in one night in Chicago.  On Labor Day in 1949 what is generally believed to be the first mass murder in America occurred when Howard Unruh murdered thirteen people in Camden, New Jersey.  But this blog is generally centered on subjects within Central and Southern Appalachia.  The first mass murder I remember in Appalachia happened in Allen, Kentucky, in October 1981 when five men were murdered in an auto parts store in Allen, Kentucky, less than twenty miles from where I grew up in Dema, Kentucky, and about three miles from Banner, Kentucky, where I operated an auction house for several years.  

On Friday, October 16, 1981, William "Okie" Bevins, a seventy year old retired miner walked into a small auto parts store on the banks of the Big Sandy River and shot eight men, fatally wounding five of them.  According to news coverage of the event at the time, Bevins drove back to his home at Printer, Kentucky, after the murders, dropped the gun down a hand dug well and was sitting on his porch when the arresting officers arrived.  He claimed that he had been bitten by a spider earlier in the day and had no memory of any of the day's events afterward.  Bevins had been convicted of a previous murder in 1930. He had served seven years on a life sentence in that case.  Witnesses who knew Bevins and at least one of his victims believed that the murders had occurred because of an ongoing relationship with the wife of one of the dead men,  twenty-eight year old Roger Click of Allen.  The other seven men, including the three wounded survivors, all seem to have been only what the military calls "collateral damage".   The general consensus at the time was that Bevins simply intended to murder all the witnesses to the crime.  As is common in such crimes, Bevins was transferred to the Laurel County Jail in London, Kentucky, for his own protection and claimed during the investigative interviews conducted there that he did know Roger Click who had previously rented a house from him and that Click always paid his rent on time.  

The other victims of the shooting were Rufus Hamilton, whom Bevins claimed he had worked with in the mines for more than ten years, Roger Hatfield, 34, Mohawk, W. Va.; Jarvey Hamilton, 27, Grethel, Kentucky, and Michael Halbert, 28, Allen, a co-owner of the auto parts store.  According to the testimony of his thirteen year old brother, Roger Click called home from the store just seconds before he was murdered.  Stanley Click, 13, answered the telephone at the home of their mother. He said the person on the other end didn't identify himself but Stanley Click was certain it was his brother.  He told investigators that "Roger yelled out as loud as I ever heard, 'God help me, Mommy!' Then it sounded like a belt popping, I handed the phone to Mommy and she heard it, too." At least one other witness, Tommy Joe Reitz, testified that he saw Bevins and Click arguing outside the store before Click went inside and asked to use the telephone.  Reitz went on to say that he saw Bevins follow Click inside the store and left immediately.  Autopsy reports on the bodies of the five victims revealed that each of them had been shot between two and eight times and colloquial reports from the area always agreed that Bevins had shot each victim at least once after they fell to make certain that they were dead. The story was so unusual and violent that it actually made the New York Times.  Sadly, in today's world, such stories of mass murder do not survive much longer than the victims. 

Bevins initially plead not guilty and a jury trial began in Floyd Circuit Court in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.  But following early testimony, Bevins instructed his legal counsel to withdraw his plea of not guilty, entered a plea of guilty to all charges, and ask for the judge to proceed with sentencing.  The judge sustained the motion by counsel and proceeded to sentence Bevins to death.  On March 20, 1986, the Kentucky Supreme Court delivered a ruling on an appeal by Bevins in which he claimed nearly a dozen errors in the trial and sentence.  The ruling stated "We have conducted an independent review of these circumstances and conclude that these circumstances exceed any minimum threshold justifying capital punishment. The sentence is not excessive or disproportionate to the death penalty imposed in other cases.  The judgment is affirmed."  In 1972, the US Supreme court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was unconstitutional and Bevins' death sentence was commuted to life.  He died in prison.