When the Bluegrass Ran Red

In the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, when Bowling Green was known as “Little Chicago” and Newport was called “Sin City”, sensational murders, crime and corruption made daily headlines across Kentucky. Colorful characters, along with rampant corruption and horrific violence, produced a unique period in the Commonwealth’s history.

Many of the murder cases remain unsolved. Those murders — and this era of unbelievable, headline-making crime — are still vividly remembered, discussed and written about to this day.

In When the Bluegrass Ran Red, award-winning journalist Wes Swietek examines some of the true stories from this dangerous era, when the Bluegrass was stained in blood.

Abstract

In the early 1900s, a place known as Burke’s Alley became the epicenter of crime in the small but growing river town of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Whenever a crime occurred in the city, police invariably descended on the Alley to search for suspects. Murders, assaults, gambling, prostitution and other crimes became commonplace in Burke’s Alley at a rate few today could comprehend.

In the 1960s, when Burke’s Alley was slowly scraped away in the name of urban renewal — buildings torn down and never rebuilt and streets realigned — there was the belief that the effort would curb crime in the city. That belief would soon be shattered.

Not only were there numerous high-profile crimes across Kentucky in the 1960s and early 1970s that are still discussed today, but Bowling Green also became known for vice and crime — so much so that the city earned the nickname “Little Chicago.”

At the same time, Newport, Kentucky, located just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, was known as an “open city” where any vice could be openly indulged, with bars, gambling halls, and brothels located up and down Monmouth Street — the city’s main thoroughfare. In fact, vice became the biggest business in town, earning it the nickname “Sin City.”

While crime and corruption are, unfortunately, a part of every era in Kentucky’s history, the roughly 1965-1975 period was especially fertile ground for sensational crimes, from Bowling Green to Newport, Lexington, Lewisburg, and all points in-between. Colorful characters, along with rampant corruption and horrific violence, produced a unique period in the commonwealth’s history.