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William Jesse Buchanan was born in an era and locality where children were expected to contribute to their family’s welfare and were often beget with that purpose in mind. The fifth of seven siblings—four boys, three girls—he was assigned chores on the family’s hard-scrabble Union County farm before he was old enough to attend school. By age six, he was responsible to help hoe the garden, gather coal and kindling for the cooking range, clean the chicken house, and gather eggs. By age ten, he could hook up the family mule and “plow a straight furrow” from sunup to sundown, then wrestle or play rough-tag with his brothers half the night before crawling into the straw-mattress bed he shared with two of them. At age twelve, he was tutored by his father in the hallowed Scottish trade of stone masonry. By age fifteen, he had perfected that talent to where he was much in demand by land owners needing cisterns lined, chimneys built, and pasture walls erected.

Always what was termed in those days “a hoss,” he was the strongest of four powerful brothers, a fact they learned each in his own time, the hard way. Beginning in his teen years, his legendary strength became a crucial family asset. His older brother, James, also a giant of a man, had suffered a brain injury at birth. Predisposed to violent seizures that could strike at any time, he would lash out at anything and anybody in his path, once badly injuring his elder sister Nolie with a blow to her face. One evening at supper, when James was twenty-two, he emitted an anguished cry, jumped to his feet, and started beating the table with both fists. Seated next to him, eighteen-year-old Jess stood, locked his brother in a bear hug, and held on. For five minutes, the enraged James fought in vain to break the steel-trap grip. Jess continued the rigid embrace until his brother collapsed into the deep sleep that often followed his seizures. Thereafter, whenever Jess was nearby when James was stricken, the younger brother would bear-hug his older brother until the spell passed. He was the only person with the necessary brawn to overcome James’s frenzied strength. It was a doleful ritual that lasted until James died peacefully in his sleep at age forty-two.

Although he feared no man, Buchanan was afraid of the dark. Once, at a carnival in Morganfield where he consumed too many beers, his friends locked him in a nearby horse barn to sleep it off. He awakened to the pitch darkness of a tiny stall. Not knowing where he was, he became frantic and crawled along the dirt floor until he came up against a wooden wall. Jumping to his feet, he began to kick the wall with all his strength. In minutes, the entire side of the barn collapsed outward, bringing the rest of the building down around his head. In view of startled spectators, he walked out into the carnival brightness, uninjured. For the next three weeks, under his persuasive supervision, his friends rebuilt the structure.

Once asked why he feared the darkness, he attributed it to an older sister who teased him from the time he was a toddler about “goblins” that were coming to get him as soon as the lights went out. Often during those boyhood years, he would lie awake all night, terrified. When he was old enough to do so, he demanded that a lamp be kept burning throughout the night where he could see it from his bed. In later years the lamp became an electric light, and it remained an uncompromising requirement for the rest of his life.

As his reputation grew, friends began to encourage Jess Buchanan to run for public office. Sheriff was the position most often mentioned. To test the waters, he accepted a commission as Deputy Sheriff from Judge A. W. Clements. His fellow deputy was Earle Clements, later to become U.S. Senator from Kentucky. Recalling their tenure together, Earl Clements would remark: “Jess Buchanan is the only man I ever met who could quell a riot just by stepping into the room.”

In 1925 Buchanan married Clements’s divorced sister-in-law, Margaret Kagy Clements, from Uniontown, taking her two children to raise as his own. Over the years, two more children were born to the union. About his wife, Buchanan often remarked that the wisest move he ever made in life was to “marry above myself.”

Discovering a passion for law enforcement, in the same summer he got married, Buchanan followed the advice of his constituents and entered the race for sheriff. He won handily.

That was the job he held the following year, when the infamous Birger gang decided to invade Union County. In the rich annals of the Ohio River Valley of Western Kentucky, no story is more revered than that of the time the notorious Birger gang came up against Big Jess Buchanan.

Charley Birger was one of the most notorious outlaws in the Midwest. Rivaling Capone, whose murderous tactics he admired, Birger masterminded a widespread gambling and bootleg-whiskey operation from a well-guarded headquarters in Central Illinois. In the winter of 1926 he decided to expand operation into Kentucky, just across the river.

On Christmas Eve three of Birger’s lieutenants crossed the Ohio on the Shawneetown Ferry in their Oldsmobile touring car to scout the territory. That afternoon, in the rural village of Henshaw, they were caught in a severe snowstorm. Roads became impassable. To occupy their time the three decided to raise a little hell. Throughout that afternoon and night, fortified by their stock-in-trade, 100-proof moonshine bourbon, they terrorized the three hundred peaceable citizens of Henshaw by taking pot-shots at road signs, store windows, and stray dogs and cats.

Late Christmas morning, while frightened residents remained barricaded in their homes, Reverend H. B. Self, pastor of the Henshaw Christian Church, succeeded in getting a telephone call through to Sheriff Jess Buchanan in Morganfield, ten miles away.

Buchanan pondered the complaint. The roads to Henshaw were impassable, but there was a solution.

“Brother Self,” Buchanan said, “those fellows aren’t going anywhere in this storm. I’ll be down on the four o’clock train to arrest them. You tell them that.”

Braving the elements, Reverend Self found two of the trio, haggard from a night of carousing, seated at a back table in Gilbert Vaughn’s general store. At the meat counter, Vaughn was reluctantly preparing two baloney sandwiches. The third culprit was nowhere in sight.

Reverend Self delivered Sheriff Buchanan’s message.

The two men stared at the preacher in disbelief, then doubled over in laughter. “Arrest us! You hear that, Ed,” one of the men said. “Some hayseed sheriff’s comin’ down here on the train to run us in. God, is that rich!” He guffawed again. “Hey, when’s the last time you plugged a badge?”

The man called Ed wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “No need to waste lead.” He withdrew a four-inch Russell Barlow switch-blade knife from his pocket and flipped it open. Spitting in his hand, he began to hone the blade against his palm. “Gawdamighty, Hank . . . this trip might turn out to be worthwhile after all.”

Throughout the afternoon, between eating and swilling booze, the two men described to the preacher and the storekeeper the gruesome reception they planned for the sheriff.

At 4:40, a distant whistle signaled the arrival of the inbound train. The man called Hank perked up. “Hey, Ed, let’s take the hayseed’s nose back to Charley.”

Fingering his knife, Ed heartily endorsed the idea. “Maybe Charley will give us a bonus,” he said, and they both settled back to wait.

Minutes later the front door opened and a gust of frigid air swept through the store. Crowding the doorway from hinge to latch, a giant man stooped low to clear the lintel and entered the room. The newcomer was wearing whipcord trousers with legs stuffed in the tops of size-15 lace-up boots. His heavy plaid Mackinaw coat, to which was pinned a six-pointed star, was buttoned snugly around his 22-inch neck. His broad-brimmed gray felt hat would have served any lesser man as an umbrella. The mackinaw was drawn back on the right side to reveal a holstered, silver-plated, stag-handle Smith and Wesson .44 Special revolver that looked every bit as formidable as the man wearing it.

The two scofflaws sat transfixed as Sheriff Buchanan stomped snow from his boots and walked over to them. He laid a ham-sized hand in front of Ed and tapped the table. “Put that knife down right here, son. If you boys got guns, lay them out here too . . . now.”

Two snub-nose .38s immediately appeared on the table.

The sheriff grasped each man by the shoulder, welding them to their seats. “Where’s your friend?”

“Down . . . down by the depot,” Ed said. He mentioned the name of a woman who lived in a shanty at the edge of town.

Buchanan picked up the knife and the pistols and put them in his coat pocket. “You boys just sit right here. I’m going to get your friend, then we’re all going to catch the evening train back to Morganfield.”

The sheriff turned and strode out the door without looking back.

Ed and Hank looked at each other sheepishly. At the counter, Reverend Self and Storekeeper Vaughn were grinning ear to ear.

After a long while, Hank said, “Ed, I thought you were going to cut him up.”

“Oh, sure,” Ed retorted, “and I thought you were gonna take his nose back to Charley.”

The two looked at each other for a moment. Then, with a resolute shake of his head, Hank exclaimed, “Ed, I’d rather climb a thorn tree naked with a bobcat under each armpit than rile that big son of a bitch!”

The story is not apocryphal. It happened. And it became part of the legend.

One who heard it was Governor Ruby LaFoon.

LaFoon came into office during hard times. A relentless depression gripped the land. Across the nation, desperate men tramped the roadways by day and huddled around hobo fires by night, fruitlessly searching for livelihood in an era gone haywire. Committed to change, LaFoon was contemplating remedies not popular with the political Old Guard who saw their privileged status threatened. He wanted a man of courage in his office as a buffer between himself and the power brokers. He sent for Jess Buchanan.

Buchanan arrived in Frankfort on an unseasonably warm but cloudy day. As he left the train station to hail a taxi he passed a clothing store that catered to large men. On display in the window was a single-breasted seersucker jacket, size 58 Extra Long, special sale price, $6.50. Buchanan looked woefully at his frayed blue-serge coat. He took out his wallet and counted his money. He had his return ticket and enough money for supper, but if he bought the seersucker jacket he wouldn’t be able to afford to take a taxi to the Capitol, a mile and a half up the hill on the other side of the Kentucky River. Still, for an interview with the governor. . . .

He relented and entered the store.

Fifteen minutes later he emerged proudly wearing his first new coat in six years and began the long walk up Capital Avenue.

He had gone about a half-mile when he felt the first raindrops. A minute later he was caught in a blinding downpour, and he still had a mile to go.

Governor LaFoon was at his desk that day when his secretary stepped into his office. “Governor”—she barely suppressed a giggle—“you must see this.”

LaFoon, who never tired of telling the story, described the sight: “There were a dozen or so legislators and lobbyists waiting in the lounge. In their midst, towering above all, stood Jess Buchanan. He was drenched to his skin, his hat had collapsed down around his ears, and he was standing in a ever widening puddle of water. He was wearing a seersucker coat that had shriveled up about ten sizes too small for him. It lacked about a foot of closing across his belly. The bottom had shrunk up to his belt, the sleeves had shriveled at least six inches up his wrists. It was truly a comical sight. But you know what? No one of those hard-nosed jackals out there was laughing. I hired Jess on the spot.”

He stayed with LaFoon for two years, then in 1934 he was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal for Western Kentucky, where his reputation as a lawman spread. In 1935, U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings offered Buchanan a promotion and his pick of districts west of the Mississippi River. Buchanan declined on the grounds that he could not leave his native state.

In 1936, newly elected Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler, faced with growing unrest over primitive penal conditions, called Buchanan to Frankfort and asked him to take over the job of warden of the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville.

Buchanan had known Chandler since the governor was a youngster. He liked and admired him. Still, he demurred.

Sensing the reason, the young governor said, “I understand your reluctance, Jess. Our penitentiaries have been run like Banana Republics. No one knows who’s in charge. Hell, Ruby LaFoon had to promise those convicts down there ham and eggs for breakfast to keep them from taking over the joint. Well, I not going to give in to that sort of blackmail. If you take the job at Eddyville, you will be in charge. I’ll back you all the way.”

It was a persuasive proposal. Buchanan accepted.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kentucky’s maximum security prison sat high atop a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River in the small town of Eddyville in the western extremity of the Bluegrass state. In June 1936, one month after his fifty-third birthday, Jess Buchanan arrived to take charge at the institution. He was not prepared for what he found.

Conditions at the prison were shocking. The fortress-like “Castle on the Cumberland” housed the dregs of the state’s criminal element. Among an inmate population of 1,262 (jammed into facilities built for 800) were murderers, rapists, armed robbers, child molesters, kidnappers, gang lords, recidivists, and other assorted thugs. Mixed indiscriminately with this hardcore element, often sharing the same cell, were youthful first-termers incarcerated for minor offenses.

Sanitary conditions were deplorable. Litter and debris cluttered the prison yard and the four cellblocks. In the kitchen and dining hall, where summer temperatures sometimes reached 130 degrees, the stoves, cooking utensils, floors, and eating tables were caked with filth. One cook’s sole duty was to fish cockroaches out of the food before it was delivered from the kitchen to the dining room.

The bare-subsistence diet, 1,000 calories per man per day, was mostly carbohydrates. Rampant among the inmate population were diseases of the skin, eyes, lips, membranes, mouth, throat, and bones.

Unaffected by these irritants were the “Moguls.” Living in relative splendor in well-furnished cells on the top tier of Cellblock Four, a score of pampered convicts slept on innerspring mattresses, came and went within the confines of the prison as they pleased, ate food delivered from the outside, and, in some cases, had convict servants to attend to their needs. Politically or financially powerful, or having feared underworld connections, the Moguls received deferential treatment from inmates and guards alike.

Among the staff, all of them political appointees, was a small core of professionals dedicated to proper prison operations. All they needed was leadership. Within seventy-two hours of his arrival, Warden Buchanan had identified every man in this category.

One was Porter Lady.

Painstakingly efficient in his job as Cellblock Supervisor, articulate and a natty dresser, thirty-six-year-old Porter Lady was regarded by his colleagues as a dandy. For the first week, Lady’s relationship with the new warden was discreetly proper. Then, late one night, Lady came to the prison and asked to speak to the warden in private.

“If I’ve misjudged you,” Lady said to Buchanan that evening, “I’m putting my job on the line. But there’s something I think you should see.”

They went to Cellblock One. In a remote corner of the basement Lady lifted a manhole cover and shined his flashlight down a flight of stone steps. The steps led to a narrow tunnel that opened onto a cavernous room. At the far end of the clammy chamber, Lady shined the light onto two dungeon cells. Buchanan stared incredulously. At the front of one cell a man stood hand-cuffed to the bars with his feet barely touching the floor. Bearded and soiled by his own wastes, he looked more animal than human. The shackled man moaned and closed his eyes to avoid the painful light.

Buchanan seethed. “How long has he been here?”

“Thirty days.”

Thirty days suspended in a dank dungeon totally devoid of light. Let down for fifteen minutes each midnight to relieve himself in a slop bucket, gobble down a single daily meal with his bare hands, then strung up again. Watered twice a day by a convict who held a dipper to his lips.

Lady said, “His infraction was—”

“I don’t give a damn what his infraction was,” Buchanan said, his voice cold with fury. “I want that man taken to the infirmary at once. If you don’t have the keys, cut those damned bars down.” He took a couple of breaths to bring his anger under control. “And Porter . . . thank you.”

One week later, Buchanan received a letter from Governor Chandler listing the names of nine guards and other officials at the institution whom the governor wanted dismissed at once. The first name on the list was Porter Lady. It was followed by the names of Sam Litchfield, Clyde Twisdale, Tom Woodward, and five others that Buchanan had determined to be first-rate men.

Buchanan felt betrayed. He had been promised autonomy. Now the young Governor he had trusted and forfeited a secure federal appointment to serve was defaulting on his word.

That night, alone at his desk, Buchanan penned his resignation as warden. At 3:00 A.M. the next morning, he left Eddyville for a four-hour drive to Frankfort. When Governor Chandler arrived at his office in the Capitol that day, Buchanan was waiting.

The governor studied the list of names over his signature. “Jess, I never saw this letter before in my life.”

The letter, typed on Chandler’s official stationary, was a clever forgery.

“Jess,” the governor said, “I don’t care how many orders you get to fire or hire people, you make the decision as you see fit. If you think a person is necessary for the competent operation of that institution, you keep him—even if the order to fire him comes from me.”

Reassured of Chandler’s integrity, Buchanan departed for Eddyville without ever showing the governor his handwritten resignation.

Subsequent investigation into the bogus letter from Governor Chandler established that a prominent state legislator filched the stationery from the governor’s office, brought it to Eddyville, where a Lyon County executive typed the firing order and forged Chandler’s signature, and carried it back to Frankfort to mail so that it would bear the capital city postmark. Such was the state of prison politics.

The day after returning from Frankfort, Buchanan announced the immediate dismissal of eleven officers and guards from the prison staff. Then he announced that he was establishing a new position at the prison, Chief of Staff, accountable only to the warden and responsible to assure that the warden’s policies were implemented without question. The new Chief of Staff—Porter Lady.

With his promotion, Lady received his first orders.

“To begin with,” Buchanan said, “I want that dungeon sealed off. Fill the damned thing with cement. I never want it usable again.

“Next, I want this institution cleaned up, top to bottom. Put mop and bucket crews on it and keep them on it every day until I tell you I’m satisfied. From now on it will be the guard captains’ responsibility to see that the yards and cells stay clean, and I’m going to inspect them myself every day.

“Next, I’m disbanding the Disciplinary Committee. There’ll be no committees making decisions here while I’m warden.

“Next, I want new cellblock assignments—maximum to minimum. I’ll decide with your help who goes where. I don’t care how much shuffling it takes or who screams; I want young boys and first offenders kept away from the heavyweights.

“Finally, tell the kitchen supervisor that any cockroaches I find in the food from now on, he’s going to eat.”

Lady could hardly suppress his enthusiasm. “Yes sir!”

“And Porter . . . one more thing. Put those damned Moguls on the scrub brushes.”

No coddler of convicts, Warden Buchanan nonetheless demanded that they be treated humanely. In following weeks, he focused on upgrading the inmate diet. On advice from a physician, the first addition to the menu was citric acid. Every second day, lemonade was served with the evening meal. As they could be afforded, fresh fruits and vegetables were added. Then, an unheard of luxury: meat once a week. Slowly, inmate health problems began to wane.

Staff positions were restructured. Rejecting the commonly held view at many state prisons that any man who could turn a key and shoot a gun was qualified to be a prison guard, Buchanan instituted a classification system for employees. Guards who were excellent marksmen but poor in one-to-one situations with inmates were assigned to wall-tower duty. Others who couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn at ten paces but were cool in trying circumstances were assigned to yard and cellblock duty. Every man was used where his talents best served the institution.

It was the beginning of one of the most esteemed prison administrations in American history. Over the next two decades, out-of-state wardens, legislative committees, officials from the American Prison Congress, and a Chief Justice of the United States would visit Eddyville to study Warden Buchanan’s innovative, hands-on methods.

It was all accomplished by a man whose formal education ended with the sixth grade.