Serial killers are not a modern phenomena. In the late 1700s, Kentucky suffered a violent rampage by Micah and Wiley Harpe, brothers who left a trail of senseless murders across Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. Micah (1768) and Wiley (1770) were born in North Carolina. As young men in their early twenties, they moved to Beaver Creek in East Tennessee. There they began their murders. They killed adults and children, male and female.

On August 20, 1799, the Harpe gang spent the night at Moses Steagall’s cabin, east of Dixon Kentucky in present-day Hopkins County. During the night they killed one adult with an ax. The next morning they slit the throat of the Steagall baby, killed the child’s mother, and burned the cabin.

A posse soon captured Micah in Muhlenberg County. They cut off his head and brought it back to Hopkins County in a saddlebag where it was impaled on a pointed stick about three miles north of Dixon, a site now known as Harpe’s Head. Wiley "Little Harpe" escaped but was later caught and hanged on February 4, 1804 in Jefferson County, Missouri.

The story of these serial killers, who murdered at least 35 persons in the 1790s, has been fictionalized in "A Wilderness of Tigers" by Kenneth Tucker, a retired Murray State University professor. Even today, historians cannot explain the motivation for those senseless killings. The behavior of the Harpes gang, which included three women, defies rational explanation.

Perhaps there is no psychological explanation. Perhaps the answer is simple: Evil exists. And if evil exists, then evil people exist. Tucker tells a fascinating story of these evil doers. It is an interesting part of our history, but the book is very "adult" in content and would not be appropriate reading for children.

An interesting, but less violent, companion book is "Sunshine Crime: Murder and Mayhem in Dixie," a collection of thirteen short stories each set in a Southern state. This carefully selected anthology provides insight into the people of each state, how they lived and what their world was like. These stories of mystery, crime, and detection would be a fun read for an adult at the beach or a restless teenager who keeps moaning, "I don’t have anything to do!" Included in this masterful collection are "Hell’s Acre" by Jesse Stuart and "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Henry.

For those who want to read non-fiction accounts of regional violence, I recommend "Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky" by well-known journalist, John Ed. Pearce. Hidden in the darkest corners of Kentucky’s past are the violent, murderous feuds that raged through the hills of Eastern Kentucky from the late 1800s until well into the twentieth century. Pearce’s engrossing narrative details six of the best-known and longest-running feuds—those in Breathitt, Clay, Harlan, Perry, Pike, and Rowan counties. Each feud emerged from petty grievances and ended many generations later only when most of the feudists were dead.

These three books, along with dozens of other books that focus on regional mysteries, treasures, feuds, killings, ghosts, and other inexplicable phenomena, like the Mothman, are available in a special section of the Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore, 1645 Winchester Avenue in downtown Ashland. For more information, call (606)326-1667 or visit our website: JSFBOOKS.COM.