Anything more KY than a couple who ran a Hatfield-McCoy museum finding a body? | Opinion

It’s said that all the planets in our solar system only line up nearly perfectly within our sky every 13.4 trillion years. A rare cosmic event I will never be around to see myself.

Yet I felt the planets align when I learned the news that a descendant of one of the infamous McCoys, of the feuding Hatfield-McCoys, found the body of a suspected shooter that 14 police investigative agencies were unable to find after almost two weeks of searching the Daniel Boone National Forest.

If you’re just crawling out of bed then you may have missed the news that Joseph Couch, the man suspected of shooting at drivers on Interstate 75 injuring five people, was found dead.

The shootings set off a massive manhunt for Couch that lasted 10 days across 28,000 acres of forested area, but evidently didn’t include the important part. Authorities announced Tuesday they were retreating from the woods and putting more resources on patrols.

What hundreds of hours of police work, boots on the ground and helicopters with infrared cameras couldn’t accomplish was achieved by Fred and Sheila McCoy.

The McCoys posted a live YouTube video around 3:30 p.m., Sept. 18, saying they’d found Couch’s body after they themselves had been searching for six days and nights; there are additional videos on their channel of their search efforts. Police later confirmed that to be the case.

The couple said they saw vultures circling nearby in the area they were searching, and they commented on a foul smell as they walked toward the vultures.

Fred McCoy shouted, “I got him!” Sheila replied, “Oh, my ‘Lanta!” Oh, my ‘Lanta! Oh, gosh. Oh, gross.” The video showed a body, which the couple said appeared to have deteriorated.

The couple went live a second time after finding the body and discussed what they’d do with the reward money. Authorities had offered a $35,000 reward for information that led to Couch’s arrest, and police said the couple will receive $25,000 of the reward.

Both videos have been taken down, or perhaps removed from YouTube, which isn’t surprising as you could see a dead body in frame.

The couple previously operated the Hatfield and McCoy Museum in Casey County, which is closed indefinitely, according to the museum’s website.

On the website, Fred McCoy lays out his family history as one of the descendants of the famous feuding families the Hatfields and McCoys from West Virginia and Kentucky.

Origins of what started the feud are a bit murky. A love affair is a possibility, as is the American Civil War playing a role in some way. What we do know is there were numerous violent acts between these two feuding families that claimed the lives of 12 to 20 people over the years.

However, the Hatfield and McCoy feud, while the most popularized today, was far from the bloodiest act of shock killings in Kentucky’s Appalachian region during the time period.

Truly, is there anything more Kentucky than a descendant of the Hatfield-McCoy families finding the body of a highly sought after mass shooter while live streaming it with his wife? The real cherry on top is the two were searching for Couch as date nights, according to WKYT.

What then could make all of this even more Kentucky fried? Glad you asked: the McCoys get a bourbon named after them, Mark Pope lets them take the first shot at UK’s first home basketball game, Andy Beshear makes them Kentucky Colonels and they both get to duet the national anthem at next year’s Kentucky Derby.

All the best to these two, and maybe that reward money can get the museum up and running again. I think there’d be a good number of folks interested in stopping by— I know I would.

This story was originally published September 19, 2024 at 12:38 PM.

Andrew Henderson

Opinion Contributor,

Lexington Herald-Leader

Andrew is the deputy audience editor for McClatchy’s mid-sized and smaller newsrooms. His home newsroom is the Lexington Herald-Leader and he occasionally writes opinion columns for the paper. He was previously the editor of the Oldham Era and is a graduate of Western Kentucky University. Andrew is from Olive Hill in Carter County.