A real Man of God Malice in Wonderland a real man of god

Breaking the silence
In the weeks after Melanie Flynn disappeared, Bizzack said he thought she was alive and well and living in Florida, Ritchey Flynn said.

"I thought that was a joke," she told Oddy.

It was not the first time Flynn's mother has publicly criticized police. In April, Ritchey Flynn broke a 16-year public silence when she called a radio talk show and told Lexington Police Chief Larry Walsh that her views on her daughter's disappearance had been ignored.

Walsh, a member of the police department's traffic division before taking over as chief in 1990, was not involved in the investigation of Flynn's disappearance. Under his administration, however, the case has become a top priority.

"Since at least Feb. 1, 1990, this case has been actively pursued," Walsh said yesterday. "Every lead has been checked and rechecked.

"If anything, it is the most active case that we have."

Three detectives have been assigned to investigate Flynn's disappearance. It is their primary mission on the force, Walsh said.

Will the case ever be solved?

"I feel that we've made progress on this case," Walsh said. "I fully expect someday we're going to come to some end on this."

The mystery of Flynn's disappearance has been a favorite topic of conversation at parties, bars, dinner tables and back fences in Lexington. The Flynn family is well-known in Central Kentucky.

Melanie's father, Bobby Flynn, is a former state senator and a member of Lexington's Urban County Council. Her brother, Doug Flynn, played professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds and New York Mets.

The case figures prominently in a book, The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs and Murder, published in 1990. Interest in the Flynn mystery surged this spring after one of the book's principals, former Lexington police officer Bill Canan, was arrested on federal drug charges.

In April, a former colleague on the Lexington police force testified that Canan once indicated he had killed Flynn. Ritchey Flynn told Channel 27 she thought Canan was connected to her daughter's disappearance.

Canan said in a published report in August 1977 that he had met Melanie Flynn three years earlier in a bar while working undercover and built a case against her for possession of marijuana. Instead of prosecuting her, Canan said, he worked out a deal where she would introduce him to people in the drug culture.

The Flynn family said the two had dated.
Final sightings
Melanie Flynn disappeared after leaving work at the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, where she was a secretary.

Channel 27 reported Monday that Flynn, who left work on Cooper Drive about 5 p.m., was seen talking to someone in a blue van near the intersection of Cooper and South Limestone Street.

The station reported that another witness had seen Flynn later that night in Nellie Kelly's, then a Lexington restaurant. She was talking to a man with a pock-marked face and brown hair parted in the middle, the station said, citing unnamed witnesses.

It was the first time news reports have traced Flynn's final-known whereabouts beyond Cooper Drive, where she was seen turning right onto Limestone soon after 5 p.m. the night she disappeared.

The story of Flynn, who was declared legally dead for insurance purposes in 1984, remains an open book. Without a body, a court order would be required to file a death certificate, said Brad Hughes, a spokesman for the state Department for Human Resources.

That has not happened. As far as the state is concerned, Flynn is alive.

Someone, somewhere, knows better.

In an interview with the Herald-Leader, Ritchey Flynn made a plea for information in the case:

"Somebody out there knows something. Won't you please speak up?"

RESERVING

JUDGMENT

FRANKFORT

1993
Lives hang in the balance on lonely stretches of the Mountain Parkway near Slade and in the bottleneck known as U.S. 23 at Prestonsburg and along Interstate 64 near Winchester.

Except for fully loaded coal trucks, the roads aren't especially treacherous -- unless you're guilty of something. This is where U.S. District Judge Joseph Martin Hood sometimes ponders the fate of those who have broken the law.

Hood, who travels about 17,000 miles each year as he shuttles among courtrooms in the Eastern District of Kentucky, has plenty of time to consider sentences while he's behind the wheel of his car. "When you drive a lot, you have a lot of time to think," he says.

Hood, a federal district judge since April 30, 1990, recently has presided over a spate of high-profile cases, including:

•The April trial and July sentencing of former Kentucky Speaker of the House Don Blandford, convicted of bribery, misusing campaign money and lying to FBI agents.

•Gov. Wallace Wilkinson. He was convicted of taking a $20,000 bribe to fix a horse-racing arbitration decision and sentenced in May to three years in prison.

•The July trial of Fayette County Attorney Norrie Wake, convicted of mail fraud, theft of government money and conspiracy. Wake will be sentenced next month.

•The ongoing extortion and tax-fraud trial of Dr. Bill Collins, husband of former Gov. Martha Layne Collins.

•The June guilty plea and sentencing last week of former state Sen. Art Schmidt. He was put on two years' unsupervised probation and fined $2,500 for concealing from the FBI that he took $200 in cash from then-Sen. John Hall while attending a 1990 Jockeys' Guild convention in Las Vegas.

Like any judge, however, most of Hood's work is done away from the public eye -- out of the robe and free of the spotlight. Hood, 50, writes and reads pertinent opinions and decisions in his chambers, at the kitchen table, on the back porch, by the swimming pool.

And he presides over many cases that don't make statewide headlines but that he considers at least as important as those stemming from Operation BOPTROT -- the wide-ranging federal investigation of corruption in state government.

"I don't think anything is particularly earth-shattering," Hood says. "To me, a case is a case."

'Hooray, Judge Hood!'
For better or for worse, however, Hood's involvement this year in so many high-profile cases has made him something of a household name in Kentucky -- especially after the Blandford trial. The uncommon sentence Hood gave the former speaker of the house -- one provided for by federal sentencing guidelines -- drew rave reviews from a public outraged by the evidence of corruption and betrayal brought out at the trial.

"Hooray, Judge Hood! Hooray, Judge Hood! Yay! Hooray, Judge Hood!" began one letter to the editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

"We applaud U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood for the sentence given to former House Speaker Don Blandford," another said.

Hood, who at 5-foot-7 sometimes looks lost in the big, high-backed chairs in which he must sit in many courtrooms, has not heard that kind of cheering since his teammates at Holy Family High School in Ashland carried him off the basketball court for scoring 4 points in a game.

Paying for crime
Hood built an imposing reputation by sentencing Blandford to 64 months in prison -- and ordering him to pay for it out of his own pocket. Blandford is appealing.

Not everyone is convinced that making Blandford pay for his punishment is a good idea. Some attorneys have said Hood might have set an ill-advised precedent.

But federal guidelines allow a judge to order those who can afford it to pay for their own prison stay. It is not cheap. Blandford's stay at the minimum-security federal prison camp in Manchester would cost him $56.84 a day. The Ramada Inn just down the highway in London costs $10 less -- and has HBO.

No wonder Art Schmidt appeared stiff and nervous last week as he stood before Hood awaiting sentencing.

Had Schmidt and Hood met under different conditions, they might have gotten along famously. Both are renowned for their warmth and sense of humor, Hood having made slack-jawed jurors burst out laughing during Bill Collins' trial hours before.

"I was just trying to wake everybody up," Hood said.

But Schmidt, fresh off a 25-year career in the Senate during which he passed especially slow days by shooting rubber bands at red-hot light fixtures to "stink up the place," would rather have been somewhere else than in front of Hood in a federal courtroom.

"You got a raw deal," one of Schmidt's lawyer friends had told him when he discovered the former legislator would be sentenced in Hood's court: "Hood's tough."

But Hood took no pleasure in seeing Schmidt before him. "I'd just as soon not have grandfathers before me under circumstances like that," Hood said afterward.

"Deciding the appropriate punishment in a case is an awesome responsibility."

As with Blandford, Hood was bound by federal sentencing guidelines in Schmidt's case. But within those parameters, the sentences showed that the judge is both tough and compassionate.

Although Hood seemed to bristle at published reports of Blandford's calling the charges against him "crap," he spoke to Schmidt in an almost comforting voice, citing the legislator's long record of public service and calling his brush with the law a "blip."

Hood, known for his ability to break the tension in a courtroom or to add a dash of dry humor, freed Schmidt from the jitters in a completely different -- and unintended -- way. He brought tears to Schmidt's eyes by talking about the retired legislator's record of public service.

Schmidt pulled out a rumpled handkerchief and wiped his eyes as Hood lauded his dedication to his family. Schmidt cares for his elderly mother and his wife, who is ill.

Hood said he thought putting Schmidt in prison would be a "tragic mistake."

"I do feel a need, however, for punishment," Hood said. "Hopefully so I don't have to see anybody else in your situation here, Mr. Schmidt."

'A sense of what's right'
Hood, who jokingly admonishes attorneys at the outset of trials to avoid making reference to "bald allegations" or "short questions," might not take himself seriously, but he takes his job very seriously.

His sense of justice is keen. When pressed into talking about his tour of duty in Vietnam -- a subject that Hood, a decorated member of the Green Berets, does not enter into lightly -- his almost perpetual smile fades and his face grows dark.

He saw things that just weren't right -- like the platoon leader who was killed before he could testify at the court martial of a deserter. As a result the deserter went free.

"A good man dies," Hood says, "and a piece of . . ." His voice trails off as he searches for the next word. When he says it, it is barely audible: "flotsam . . . ."

Schmidt, after being sentenced, said he thought Hood had treated him fairly.

"I was really impressed with what he said. I could not believe he knew as much about me as he did. He does his homework."

Schmidt was relieved. "He had the power of life and death over me," he said of the judge.

Justice and mercy must go hand in hand, Hood said. "You'd have a hard time doing this job if you didn't have a sense of what's right, if you didn't have any compassion."

Schmidt might not have been so nervous had he known about a barely publicized case Hood handled that ended recently after four years in the courts.

On June 22, Ricky Holcomb of Eminence stood before Hood.

Holcomb was arrested in February 1990 and charged with selling rifles illegally while working part time at a sporting goods store.

While he waited for federal prosecutors to bring their case against him, Holcomb, an ex-convict who had served time for assault, joined Eminence Baptist Church. Members elected him a deacon, asked him to lead a youth group and wrote letters on his behalf.

He began coaching Little League football and started working toward his master's degree in social work at the University of Louisville.

Still, Holcomb feared the worst as he walked into Hood's courtroom with the Rev. Michael Duncan and five fellow deacons from the church. Prosecutors were pushing for a prison sentence of 10 to 20 years. "My lawyer kept telling me there wasn't any way I wouldn't go to jail," Holcomb said.

But Hood put Holcomb on probation for two years and sentenced him to home incarceration for two months.

"You have effectively rehabilitated yourself," Hood told Holcomb. "I mean, looking at this pre-sentence report, it's one of the most unusual situations that I believe I have ever seen."

To Hood -- devoted family man, devout Catholic, product of a stable home in a shaded middle-class neighborhood in Smalltown, America -- the show of support and faith from Holcomb's friends was important. And it rang true.

Justice is not blind. Justice sees a bit of the judge in the defendant.

Hood has done time himself: He was forced to stay away from his beloved family for long periods the first three years he was a federal judge. Carol, his wife of 23 years, and their children, Marty, 20, and Betsy, 16, lived in Ashland while Hood traveled around the eastern half of the state presiding over trials and other court-related matters.

At night Hood would call his wife. "It was kind of mushy, actually," said his sister Katie Starkey, whose home in Lexington often served as Hood's home.

"He was terribly lonely."

This summer Hood and his family moved into a house in Lexington with a big yard in which Hood can putter around.

The judge is a free man.

GEARED

UP

FOR

CHALLENGE

LEXINGTON

1993
Stephen D. Rowland's desk is neat as a pin, devoid of paper and clutter. This executive's work piles up in the parking lot outside his office.

Early on a sweltering afternoon, more than a dozen empty LexTran buses are parked together on the asphalt. When Rowland took over as LexTran's general manager July 1, he inherited the job of getting all those quiet, dark buses outside the southeast wall of his office back on the road.

Rowland, 40, works for DAVE Transportation Services Inc. of Santa Ana, Calif., the management company that recently was awarded the contract to run Lexington's troubled bus system.

The transit authority board voted in May to oust ATE Management Co. and Rowland's predecessor, Brian Tingley -- a move that reflected growing public discontent with the bus system amid service cuts.

The vote ended ATE's 17-year reign, even though the Ohio-based company had submitted the low bid.

LexTran employees who attended the meeting rejoiced afterward, smiling, slapping backs and hugging one another -- even though none had a good idea what DAVE was all about. The important thing was that a change was coming, they said.

Rowland's mission is to get LexTran rolling again. In the face of a tight economy and dwindling federal money, it will be no easy task.

The number of miles and routes traveled as well as midday service have been slashed unmercifully -- the reason LexTran's parking lot looks like a bus graveyard at lunchtime.

"That's a pathetic transportation system," LexTran spokeswoman Jenny Williams says, frustration in her voice. "We're really at a crossroads."

Rowland, his sleeves rolled up, puts it this way: "You really can't cut service any more without just shutting it all down."

He lays down a paper clip he's been turning over and over in his hand, unfolds his 6-foot-6 frame from behind his desk and stands up. Rowland looks like a power forward rising from the bench.

It is very late in the game.

Happy with change
Few LexTran employees have met Rowland or know much about him. They are happy with him simply because he represents change. A city audit of the transit authority made public May 24 found that the LexTran management, namely Tingley, was not well liked by employees.

It did not help that Tingley, who hails from Lincoln, Neb., presided over unprecedented service cuts in a last-gasp effort to rescue LexTran's failing budget.

"Nobody liked him," driver Bill Newman says as he stands outside his idling bus in Bay 5. "He had an attitude of, 'You're going to do things my way, and that's it,' "

Switching management companies improved morale almost overnight, says Billy Perkins, a city bus driver for 19 years.

Not everybody blames Tingley for LexTran's problems. Amelie Charron, chairwoman of the Citizens Transit Advisory Board, blames ATE for failing to give Tingley adequate support.

LexTran's slide began well before Tingley took over as general manager in 1989, she says.

"I think if ATE had been in here backing Brian and doing things, they would not have given such a poor perfomance as a company," Charron says.
Kentucky native
Into the storm rode Rowland, whom DAVE recruited away from the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission specifically for the LexTran job. Rowland had been manager of operations for the suburban Washington, D.C., transit system since 1988, overseeing a budget almost three times as large as LexTran's.

Rowland's move to Kentucky from Fredericksburg, Va., last month was a homecoming. He was born in Corbin and his father lives in Somerset.

"It was a strong reason for my even considering the position -- a strong desire to come back to this area," Rowland says. He graduated cum laude from Eastern Kentucky University in 1976 with a bachelor of arts degree in planning and development.

Rowland played intramural basketball at Eastern and attended classes with Rick Sparer, LexTran's assistant general manager.

Rowland also went to college with Dallous Reed, engineering branch manager in the state Division of Mass Transportation. The division commonly works with LexTran on requests to match federal grants for capital projects.

"I think he's got a tough job," says Reed, who worked with Rowland in the state Department of Transportation after the two graduated from Eastern. "My recollection of Steve is he'll give it a 100-percent effort."

One of Rowland's first and biggest efforts over the coming weeks will be to meet one-on-one with each LexTran employee. It is an unprecedented move, but one Rowland sees as necessary.

"When you have service cuts and layoffs, it affects employees," he says. "That can deflate employee morale more than anything. . . . One of my first priorities is to let people know I'm working for them."

Rowland's priorities also include "alleviating the negative perception I feel LexTran has in the community."

The continuous cutbacks in service have led to increasing public outcries.

One especially contentious public hearing last August led to the creation of the transit advisory board, whose members contend that many riders have lost their jobs because of the service changes.

Census data show that before July 1992, more than 160,000 Lexingtonians -- 71 percent of Fayette County residents -- were in the LexTran service area, meaning that many people were within a quarter mile of a bus stop.

Since April only 145,307 people -- or 64 percent -- live in LexTran's service area.

LexTran passengers who once spent no more than 30 minutes waiting for a bus now must wait 40 during rush hour, 80 during off hours and up to 140 on Saturday, says Williams, the LexTran spokeswoman.

The service cuts are whittling away at LexTran's ridership.
Financial troubles ahead
LexTran asked Lexington last month to help it out with an increase in the city's payroll tax. But the Urban County Council rejected that idea.

Now LexTran's new budget contains a $112,000 shortfall. To help make up the difference, three jobs are being held open.

Holding the jobs open should make up at least $50,000, Rowland says.

As a last resort, LexTran could increase fares. Raising the cost of a ride from 80 cents to $1 is a possibility, Rowland said. But he added, "We're trying everything we can to hold off. If we can avoid it at all possible, we will."

Neill Day, LexTran board chairman, says the city may allow LexTran to patch the budget with carry-over money from last year. Nonetheless, he thinks the board will proceed with plans for a fare increase in early September. A series of public hearings probably will be scheduled in the next two or three weeks. In the meantime, Rowland's immediate goals as LexTran manager include more don'ts than dos. He does not want to raise fares or cut service or lay anybody off. He does want to regain the public trust.

Although Rowland is an easy-going man who admits to a childish streak and a fondness for practical jokes, he takes the task at hand seriously. And he is starting out with his share of believers.

Deanna Skees, executive director of the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, remembers being impressed with Rowland when she worked with him in 1977 and 1978. Both worked at the area development district then. Rowland, fresh out of college, was a transportation planner.

"When he worked on the transportation plan, he had to hold public meetings and listen to concerns," Skees said, "and he was a jewel at that."

So far, Charron, of the advisory board, is impressed with Rowland and DAVE. But she does not expect the moon.

"I think the change was necessary, but I don't look for the new management company to be miracle workers. You can't work a miracle if you don't have a budget."

Rowland knows the public hearings ahead might be like none he has seen before. But he just shrugs and laughs.

"A lot of people probably want to check my brain waves, but I'm real excited about this job," he says.

JACK

NEVITT’S

RIDE

LEXINGTON

1993
Amoody summer dusk, thick with billowy clouds, hangs like smoke over the Belle Reve barn at The Red Mile. Jack Nevitt of New Hope is trapped in a fire nobody else can see.

Nevitt, 52, a saddlebred trainer with soft eyes set in a hard face, is a man haunted as he sets about his business at the Lexington Junior League Horse Show. In a few hours he will ride a world-champion horse called The Groomsman -- the same horse he saved from a burning barn just eight days before.

"I've been nervous all evening," Nevitt says. His hands shake whenever they're unoccupied, so he stands outside the barn playing idly with a wing nut on The Groomsman's tail brace.

The fire, fast and wicked, killed five horses and destroyed a barn June 6 at actor William Shatner's Belle Reve Farm in Woodford County.

Tonight, the flames are flickering again in Nevitt's mind, illuminating unwanted memories in their ghastly glow.

"I was really sorry to hear," Bill Grace tells Nevitt. "If I got anything you can use, you're welcome to it, Jack."

Nevitt nods absently, as he did moments before when Jennifer Barnett, a groom for The Groomsman, walked out of the barn holding aloft a tin can of Kiwi shoe polish for the trainer to see. He had approved: Yeah. Black. Good.

Getting a saddlebred horse ready to show takes time. Barnett has spent hours sanding old polish off The Groomsman's hoofs, bathing him, gently pulling the tangles out of his long, black tail by hand.

It's a special night. "We almost didn't even have him," Nevitt says of the horse, owned by Heather Greenbaum of Scottsdale, Ariz.

The trainer enters the barn, ties a black shoelace around the tail brace as he holds it between his knees. "He's got so much doggone hair it drags on the ground and gets heavy," Nevitt says.

His hands are steady, steady . . .
Fire erupted again
Nevitt heard the grooms first, heard them yell fire. Businessmen in downtown Lexington were eating lunch as Nevitt ran to the front of the barn, grabbed a hose and helped put out the flames.

The trainer was relieved when the fire was extinguished, horrified when the flames erupted again. He watched helplessly as the fire flashed up the wall and across the top of the barn.

"I knew we were in bad trouble," Nevitt says.

Screaming, he ran to the other end of the barn. The Groomsman was in his stall. Nevitt led the big, bay horse out of the heat of the barn, into the heat of July, then returned for another. In no time, the latches on many of the stalls were too hot to open.

Flames as high as a man's knees raced down the main aisle of the barn.

In the ring, show horses are judged on manners, on performance, on presence and conformation and appearance. Comes a day when none of that matters.

"Tell you what, you take so much for granted with equipment and everything," Nevitt says, bent over the tail brace. "Then you look around and you don't have scissors."

He cannot bring himself to talk any more about the fire, not before he rides. "It's only been a week and a day," he says.

In the stall, Barnett wipes shoe polish on The Groomsman's hoofs. Nevitt squats and wraps blue bandages around the horse's legs. The Groomsman stands still as a statue. Nevitt's watch, its hands crawling on his skin, flashes in the barn lights as he wraps, wraps, wraps.

After a while Nevitt ventures out into the drizzle, walks to his truck and takes out a straw hat and a riding coat wrapped in plastic. A far-off train howls.

Nevitt wakes up sometimes, sits bolt upright in bed, thinks: Just tell me it's a bad dream. Horses are his life. "This is the only thing I've ever done."