West Virginia County Still Produces Violent Headlines

WILLIAMSON, W.Va. - The Hatfield-McCoy feud started it more than a century ago. Later, there was armed insurrection over organizing coal mines. Later, the sheriff and more than 50 officials went to federal prison for corruption.

No wonder they called Mingo County "Bloody Mingo."

Now a homecoming queen is shot dead at a sewage-treatment plant. A state senator again faces federal charges for wiretapping his ex-wife's home. A high-school science teacher is accused of being in a drug ring.

High-profile, mostly federal cases can make it seem that life is very hard in this tough Appalachian coal county of about 33,000 people beside the Tug Fork River and Kentucky, about two hours south of Charleston.

"Most of our crime is people who know each other or have some involvement," says Circuit Judge Elliott Maynard. "Violent crimes committed by strangers are just not all that common."

Even with all the headline-making cases, state police say the rate of violent crime stood at 15.6 per 1,000 residents in the county, compared to 24.9 per 1,000 residents for the state in 1993.

More than 47,000 people lived in Mingo during its heyday in the early 1940s. Those remaining point to the mountains and their friends as their reasons for staying. Unemployment stood at 16 percent in September.

"I stayed because you will not find any better people than you'll find in this area," says Steve Cantees, principal at Matewan High School, about 20 miles up the Tug Fork.

Michael Ann "Miki" Koontz was one of them, Williamson High School's 1994 homecoming queen and most popular in her class.

She was slain in late August on the edge of town. Authorities found her body near the sewage-treatment plant with two .22-caliber bullets in her head.

Chris Pennington, 20, of Goodman Hollow, a former classmate and high-school dropout, is accused of the murder. Authorities refuse to discuss a motive, but Williamson residents whisper of drugs.

And Koontz's brother, Tim, a Charleston attorney, arranged for guards with rifles and shotguns to protect a surviving sister during the funeral.

Pennington, who attended school with Koontz until he dropped out in 1992 at age 17, is being held in Mingo County Jail without bond. His trial is set for Jan. 8.

Last year he was convicted with others of stealing $11,000 worth of prescription drugs from a nearby Kentucky pharmacy.

But Mingo's best-known couple are Truman Chafin and Gretchen Lewis.

They were once law partners. He is now state Senate majority leader, and she is secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Resources.

They were once married and had a daughter before they, too, feuded and went public with the messiest of divorces.

Now he is charged with four federal counts involving a wiretap on the telephone of her Charleston home.

This is not Chafin's first brush with the law. In the 1980s, state corruption charges were filed alleging Chafin, then a county commissioner, took money to install Charles Hilbert as sheriff. The charges against Chafin were thrown out because a grand jury was improperly impaneled.

Matewan High School teacher Terry Warren now also faces charges he was in a cocaine ring with six men. Miki Koontz was a former student of his at Williamson High, but prosecutors deny a connection to her slaying.

It's all nothing really new.

In the late 1980s, Sheriff Johnie Owens went to prison for trying to sell his office for $100,000. Owens pleaded guilty in 1988 to federal bribery and tax-evasion charges stemming from his attempt to sell the sheriff's job to Hilbert, who wanted the political power of the post.

The nation's most notorious family feud began in the late 1800s when Devil Anse Hatfield's brother, Ellison, was stabbed two dozen times and shot on Election Day across the Tug Fork in Pike County, Ky.

Devil Anse Hatfield and his clan seized the three McCoys responsible and, when Ellison died, they were tied to papaw trees and executed. No one is sure exactly how many people died in the long-running feud.