Chapter Five
“We were having a series of bank robberies, maybe one every couple of weeks. There were five banks hit about the time I called Putnam, and Mark being fresh out of the academy and all, he just jumped on it,” Deputy Burt Hatfield recalls. “He was real eager to work, real energetic. When he first came out he didn’t have a car, so we were pretty much taking my car everywhere. We stayed together day and night. We teamed up because I had information that was taking me into Virginia and West Virginia, and I used his jurisdiction to cross state lines.”
According to Hatfield, Putnam came across as a guy who’d always wanted to be a police officer, the kind of guy who would never be satisfied with a nine-to-five job. He needed to do something with a little “zip,” otherwise he’d be bored to death. And he was ambitious about his career. Putnam wanted to move up as quickly as possible, the deputy thought.
“He was using my knowledge of the people. I had information on Cat Eyes, and we wanted to get those robberies solved,” Hatfield said. “I spent a lot of time with him. He was the kind of guy who kept on working, putting in the extra hours. I went with Mark to Home Creek, Virginia. This was before I introduced him to Susan Smith. We went there because Mark had a hot lead after a bank had been robbed. We went to a car lot over in Buchanan County, and discovered that Cat Eyes had purchased a Firebird and paid five thousand dollars in cash for it. He’d also purchased a second car with cash. Then we went over to the Richlands Mall in Virginia and found out that Cat Eyes had bought a lot of expensive jewelry there, so we were on to him.”
Still, everything Hatfield and Putnam had picked up was only circumstantial evidence. They had been unable to obtain the proof they needed to indict and convict Cat Eyes Lockhart, but Hatfield assured Putnam that Susan Smith had been an effective informant of his for years, and he thought she would probably prove to be fruitful in this instance. Informants were hard to come by unless you had something to threaten them with, and since Susan was in no kind of trouble, Putnam figured it would be difficult to get her cooperation. Hatfield assured Putnam that Susan would work with him if the FBI would make it profitable enough for her.
He stressed her knowledge of drug trafficking, and he said she could also find out about other criminal activities — bank robberies, burglaries, and things of that nature. Smith had helped him for three or four years, on and off, he said, and she was the one who just might be able to hand Cat Eyes over to them. Putnam told Hatfield to offer Susan five thousand dollars for information leading to Cat Eyes’ arrest.
“She ran in a circle of people who did anything they wanted, pulled off all kinds of things; and she could get information out of anybody. That was just her way,” Hatfield later said. “She had done me many favors, but in our department, we don’t have a lot of money to pay informants, so when this offer from Putnam came up, Susan and I talked about setting her up as an FBI informant so she could receive more money.”
Susan’s ex-husband Kenneth was with her the day she met Putnam in a hospital parking lot in Williamson, West Virginia, about fifteen minutes from the Freeburn/Vulcan area. Susan would remember the day well. Kenneth gave her a hard time for flirting with the handsome FBI man, and she would later tell Shelby that she was bowled over by Mark’s charm and sophistication. Putnam had a refined New England manner of speech, and he kidded about her Southern accent during their initial meeting.
It was on that hot summer night in the Williamson Memorial Hospital parking lot, just after Putnam had finished interviewing Kenneth, that the chemistry between Mark and Susan flared.
But Susan had her doubts about cooperating. For one thing, she wasn’t sure he was going to come across with the money. Others in Freeburn had been promised money by the feds, and then had been “cheated” out of it. That was what she had always heard. And even if Putnam would pay her, she wasn’t sure she should get involved with him. She knew Cat Eyes would kill her if he found out he was being ratted on. She didn’t know if it was worth the risk. Still, this handsome man was avidly pursuing her, and she was overwhelmed.
Kenneth had gotten out of Putnam’s car moments before, he was shaking his head in a manner that told her to keep her mouth shut, so she was scared. And besides, five thousand dollars wasn’t all that much money. . .she might make that in a few drug transactions with Kenneth and their Chicago connections. What was Putnam offering that would make it worth her while? Susan wondered. But sometime during their introductory hour of flirting and carrying on, it suddenly seemed clear, that Putnam was offering her something much more than money.
Kenneth remembers thinking that Susan was getting too close to Mark during the interview that night. He saw too much laughing and cutting up, and he believed that something was going on between them from the very minute they met. It enraged him to see how Susan behaved with Putnam. Fueled by anger and jealousy, Kenneth finally turned to Hatfield and said, “Hey, what’s taking them so long in there? Is this the way the FBI operates?”
But Hatfield just shrugged.
When Susan emerged from Putnam’s car, all smiles, she told Hatfield that she and Mark had come to an “understanding.” Of course, right away Kenneth didn’t like the idea of Susan becoming involved with Putnam. He could see that she was smitten with the agent, and he knew that her becoming an informant would put their present existence in jeopardy. But he kept silent until Putnam and Hatfield were out of sight.
On the drive back home, Kenneth and Susan got into an argument that was so fervent Susan insisted Kenneth drop her off in front of Shelby’s house in Freeburn. She said she didn’t want to be around him or any of his seedy friends in Vulcan. But before he let her out of the car, Kenneth continued to yell at her, trying to bully her into staying away from Putnam.
“I don’t want you messing with this FBI bastard. What do you think you’re going to pull off? Don’t you think Cat will get suspicious?”
“Hey, don’t you go telling me what to do! This is my life, Kenneth! If you don’t want to work with the FBI, fine, but it’s none of your damn business what I do, you understand, because I need the money, okay! So just stay the hell out of it.”
“What the fuck are you going to do when you get caught in the middle?”
“Look, Kenneth, I don’t have to worry about nothing! This guy is going to protect me. What do you think? The FBI doesn’t let you get hurt when you’re working for them!”
“Bullshit!” Kenneth taunted.
“I’ll get Cat Eyes in the back. That’s going to get me five thousand dollars! So why don’t you just keep your mouth shut!”
“Oh, hell, you go do whatever you want to, Susan. If you want to be a stupid bitch and trust that guy, then go do it. I don’t know what you’re thinking, that you’re going to get laid I guess!”
“Oh, shut up, Kenneth! Why don’t you just shut your mouth! This is business now! This is no fooling around!”
With that, Kenneth took off for Vulcan and Susan went over to Shelby’s. She told her sister all about Mark Putnam, about how handsome he was and what a great body he had. Insisting that she was going to help him solve a bank robbery case, that she was going to get paid five thousand dollars, she vowed that she would get Mark Putnam to fall in love with her.
“I really hardly paid any attention to her when she came in talking to me about Mark Putnam that night,” Shelby recalls. “Susan just rambled on about so much that you got to a point where you just didn’t pay attention to what she was saying. She’d make up so many stories and claim she knew so many different things about people, and half of it wasn’t true. You just never knew what to believe.”
Meanwhile, as the two law enforcement men drove back to Pikeville in Hatfield’s police car, Hatfield was deliberate in explaining the problem Susan might pose, telling Putnam that Susan was the type of girl who “fabricated,” someone who was insecure about her personal life and who would make up stories about having affairs with important people. He warned Putnam to be “cautious” with her. He said that Susan was streetwise, that though she wasn’t an educated person, she was sharp in a lot of ways and Mark might find himself in her clutches if he didn’t watch himself.
But Putnam just shrugged the warnings off.
“I tried to explain the situation to him going in, because he was young, he was new to it,” Hatfield remembers. “He was a good agent, he loved what he was doing, but he needed to be careful around Susan. She had ways of manipulating people. She was good at it. But I don’t know if Mark listened to me. You know, he just said yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Burt Hatfield knew what he was talking about when it came to Susan Smith because he’d had a special personal relationship with her over the years. Hatfield claims that they shared a father/daughter type friendship. Whatever the case, the two of them talked a lot, and Susan would use Hatfield’s shoulder to cry on. Whenever she would help him with information about local criminals, Hatfield would listen to her talk about her life, about Kenneth, and about her depression. Hatfield thought drugs played a part in Susan’s willingness to talk so freely about her personal life.
“Kenneth was a bum, an alcoholic, a drug user,” Hatfield said, “and she was always talking about Kenneth laying drunk. I’d tell her, if she wasn’t happy in the situation, she needed to get out of it. I’d tell her it’s not going to get any better. I’d say, why don’t you move, either backwards or forwards would be better than just staying there.”
But rather than taking Hatfield’s words to heart, Susan would construct tales about an incredible love life, telling Hatfield about all the assorted men who were in love with her. That was Susan’s usual response whenever Hatfield questioned her about how things were going with Kenneth. She would talk about important men in Pikeville, say she was sleeping with them, say she was getting paid a lot of money for her sexual favors. The Pike County Deputy didn’t believe Susan, but occasionally he would check one of her stories out, only to catch her in another lie.
The affair between Susan Daniels Smith and Mark Stevens Putnam had begun with Susan seducing Mark in his car, which was parked near a deserted strip mine just outside town. Soon, they became routine, these drives to remote hill areas, and on these forays out past civilization, Mark would tell Susan about the cases he had worked on since his arrival in Pikeville and he’d talk about his days as a soccer player and at prep school. Ironically, although it probably was true that Susan was the one who pushed their involvement along, it was Mark who stood to gain the most from the affair. He was using Susan as a stepping stone to further his career.
From the moment their sexual relationship began, Susan diligently pursued discussions with Cat Eyes, acting as though she herself were interested in robbing banks, asking about his various criminal techniques. Night after night, she would pump him for information without Cat Eyes ever suspecting that she was turning every bit of it right over to Putnam.
Mark had given Susan his home number and had told her to call him day or night, even at four A.M., if she found out anything that would indicate Cat Eyes was about to pull off a bank heist. In the meantime, her relationship with Kenneth was growing increasingly stormy, characterized by more and more fights. It blew hot and cold, with Susan running increasingly into Mark Putnam’s arms, having established a love affair with the FBI man just weeks after they began working together.
Putnam, who ordinarily was in complete control of himself, lost his self-possession in this case. Drawn in by Susan’s childlike awe of him, he never lost sight of the fact that he needed her to get this job done. It was a complex situation, but he was perfectly capable of putting on an act for Kathy and his co-workers, who did not suspect he would be involved with the likes of Susan Smith, a girl from the hills with no education. The clash in their backgrounds was the perfect alibi for him. In fact, Kathy had even seen Susan going in and out of Mark’s office on more than one occasion, according to Susan’s brother, Billy Joe, who had watched the two women exchange nods and glances.
Naturally, when Susan began telling Hatfield that she and Mark were in love with each other, that they were spending nights together, Hatfield never believed her. But in time, as Susan began to talk openly about her affair with Putnam, Hatfield questioned his colleague about the relationship, using a joking manner to disguise the gravity of the situation.
“Hey, Mark, you dating Susan? She says you are,” he casually remarked.
“Ah, hell, you know she always says those things,” Putnam responded. “She said she’s screwing you, Burt. She said she’s screwing Ron Poole. She said she’s screwing another guy that works over at the federal building. You know how she is. You can’t take her seriously.”
“Yeah, I just thought I’d ask. For the hell of it, you know. She talks about you a lot.”
“Oh, really?”
Putnam spoke convincingly, never letting Hatfield see that he and Susan were involved in an intense sexual relationship.
As the weeks passed, Susan spent more and more time in Pikeville, telling her family in Freeburn about her romance with Mark but not yet giving them any information about his wife’s frequent absences. She kept quiet about that because she was afraid that if Kenneth found out Mark’s wife had left town, the situation would be explosive and everything would backfire on her. Susan was smart enough to know that she could not afford to lose her family over someone who was just casually involved with her. She also knew that she had to continue to satisfy Kenneth’s needs, and for a long time, at least for a year, neither Mark nor Susan were found out by their respective mates.
From the beginning of their affair, Mark continued his life as a family man, and things were going well for him. Kathy was six months pregnant and was making regular trips to see her doctor in Connecticut, so she was relatively happy, and Mark continued to take Danielle out on “dates.” But, all the while, he saw Susan, meeting her in the afternoons, making passionate love to her, and afterward pumping her for information about Cat Eyes. And whenever Kathy took Danielle to Connecticut, Susan and Mark’s times together would be more frequent and prolonged. It was a suitable arrangement.
Back in Vulcan, Susan was still busy with her children, getting their clothes laid out each morning for the school day, cooking meals for Kenneth and the rest, and making life as bearable as possible for herself by continuing to use and sell drugs. Cat Eyes, she believed, was about to pull off another robbery, so she had Mark on the telephone constantly, reporting his every move. Cat Eyes was hanging out with a rowdy bunch in a placed called Williamson Lunch, and Susan was sure he was meeting his soon-to-be bank robber accomplices there.
And then it happened.
It was on September 10, 1987, that Cat Eyes Lockhart, accompanied by an unidentified man, entered the Ferrells Creek branch of the First National Bank of Pikeville, in Belcher, Kentucky. A ski mask over his face, he handed a pillowcase to the teller, instructing her to fill it up with money and not to put any dye packs in. He then herded all the bank employees and the customers into the vault area of the bank, again telling the teller not to put any dye packs into the bag, at which time he reached down and took one dye pack out of the pillowcase.
He absconded with over twelve thousand dollars, which included prerecorded “bait” bills, but when he got outside the bank, a dye pack exploded just before he drove off in a white van, heading toward an area called Mouthcard, Kentucky, where individuals saw the van whiz past a service station en route to the Virginia state line.
The bank had already been staked out by Mark Putnam, Dan Brennan, and the Kentucky State Police, thanks to Susan’s detailed information, But, unfortunately, no police were on the scene at the time of the robbery. The day before Cat Eyes hit, however, Putnam had instructed a bank teller to insert a pack of one hundred two-dollar bills and a red dye pack into Cat Eyes’ pillowcase. These would later be used as evidence against the robber.
The van was found parked on a gravel road about fifteen minutes after the robbery, a shotgun left inside along with two hundred twenty dollars worth of red-stained money. Photographs were taken of the tire impressions left near the van, and Dan Brennan observed that it looked as though it had been struck by a small gray vehicle. He found damage on the right rear side of the van and noticed that a hub cap had come off. The next day, Brennan summoned Putnam to accompany him to Buchanan County, Virginia, where they examined a gray four-door Dodge Colt resembling the car seen near the bank, which, it turned out, belonged to Cat Eyes Lockhart. Just one week after the robbery, a man fitting Cat Eyes’ description entered the Pikeville National Bank to exchange one hundred seventy-two dollars in two-dollar bills, some of which had red dye on them, for other currency.
When the bank teller identified Lockhart as the man who had exchanged the two-dollar bills, Dan Brennan arrested and interrogated him. During the questioning Cat Eyes told Brennan that he had sold a stereo to an individual named Bishop at a roadside stand in Belfry, Kentucky, receiving two-dollar bills in payment.
According to Pike County Records, a preliminary hearing was held on September 24, 1987, and Lockhart’s lawyer indicated the defendant would testify that he obtained the two-dollar bills from two strangers for work done on their Cadillac. Brennan then testified as to the statements Lockhart made about selling a stereo. Based on Lockhart’s prior statement, his testimony during the pretrial hearing was impeached and Cat Eyes Lockhart was indicted by a grand jury in October of 1987 for taking twelve thousand eight hundred seven dollars from the Ferrells Creek branch of the First National Bank of Pikeville.
Lockhart’s trial would take place in London, Kentucky, on January 27, 1988, and Susan and Kenneth Smith, along with their neighbor, Gary Mounts, and Cat Eyes’ uncle, MacArthur Lockhart, were all summoned as witnesses.
Gary Mounts, who grew up with Cat Eyes and Kenneth, was called because he’d happened to give Cat Eyes a lift up the road in Vulcan on the day of the robbery. Putnam and Brennan had approached Mounts about this on several occasions, and Mounts recalls that Putnam was a down-to-earth type of guy, and he says their interview went well, although Mounts contends he had no real information to offer the agent.
“Well, did you pick Cat Eyes up on the morning of September tenth in Vulcan?” Putnam wanted to know.
“I picked him up one morning in Vulcan with a duffle bag. I don’t know what morning it was. He walked on the road every day. It was an everyday thing to give him a ride. That’s all I can tell you,” Mounts said.
That answer wasn’t good enough, so for the second time Putnam and Brennan went to question Mounts. This time they had a summons with them, and they wanted him to go to Pikeville to be fingerprinted. Mounts told them he had nothing to hide, and after some arguing, he went along and got fingerprinted. About two weeks later, the FBI team appeared with a summons for Mounts to testify against Cat Eyes in court. Mounts kept insisting that he knew nothing, that he wasn’t involved in the bank robbery, but his pleas were of no use. Putnam pressured Mounts into testifying in London, claiming that Mounts might be cited as an accessory to the crime if he didn’t cooperate.
“What are you handing me a summons for?” Mounts asked, fearful.
“Well some of that bank money came up with your fingerprints on it,” Putnam told him.
“No. That’s where you’re wrong, buddy. Show me the money. Show me proof!”
“It’s in London. You’ll see it when you get there. Your expenses are paid. You’ve got a place to sleep. Come prepared to stay two or three days,” Putnam said before he drove off.
So Gary Mounts went to London with Susan and Kenneth, sharing a room with MacArthur Lockhart. Actually, the four of them shared adjoining rooms, a suite. They had quite an exclusive setup, Susan thought, and just minutes after they arrived, Mark called her room and wanted to know if everybody was all right.
Kenneth grabbed the receiver and asked, “Hey, how can we find any beer around here?”
“It’s a dry county. You’ll have to go about forty miles to Tennessee. Are you planning on going?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, be back in two hours, cause I gotta keep a check on you,” Putnam said in an authoritative tone.
So the four of them went down to Jellico, Tennessee, an eighty-mile round trip, to pick up two cases of beer and a few bags of ice. However, much to their surprise, when they returned to the Ramada Inn Putnam told them that none of their testimony would be needed that day, that they had made a wasted trip. They would be called back, they were told, when the trial was rescheduled. So they loaded their beer in the trunk and traveled the four hours back to Freeburn.
Upon his return to Freeburn, Mounts discovered that the FBI never paid the Ramada bill. He alleges that for weeks to follow, Agent Putnam was trying to stick him with the tab for the motel room.
“You better pay this, or they’ll put you in jail,” Putnam threatened on one of his visits to Mounts, waving the bill in his hand.
“Well, buddy, I was a witness for the prosecution, and you told me you were going to pay it, that everything would be taken care of. Then I got down there and it was a different situation. I’m not out anything, and I’m not going to be out anything — because I don’t know anything!” Mounts told him.
Putnam showed up again in Freeburn two weeks later, and when he spotted Mounts across the river in Vulcan, he blocked the Vulcan bridge with his car. Putnam was driving a four wheel-drive pickup truck, a copper-tone Ford ’78 or ’79 model, Mounts recalled, and Putnam cornered him, saying, “We’re going down here and cash this check. I’ve got to take this money to the people at the motel. You’re messing up the witness program.”
So Gary Mounts signed a government check at a West Virginia bank, arguing all the while that Putnam had promised to pay for the room in the first place, that the FBI was responsible for the problem.
A few weeks later, Susan and Kenneth and Gary were summoned to appear in London, Kentucky, once again. And this time Mark instructed them not to leave their rooms, not to communicate with anybody, and to order their meals from room service.
The Ramada in London is a large brick structure with white columns adorning the entranceway. Its restaurant even serves shellfish, rare in most establishments in the vicinity. Since Susan Smith had never actually been on a vacation in her life, she was in her glory in London. She had a beautiful room to sleep in, fancy food being brought to her bedside, and Mark, her lover, was staying right down the hall.
Mounts didn’t know that Susan was working as an FBI informant at the time. During his three-day stay in London, he didn’t understand the FBI man’s overly friendly behavior with her. He recalls that Susan wore a see-through pink negligee when she went to talk to Putnam before the trial started, which struck him as quite odd.
“I thought he was letting her get a little bit too friendly with him, and I kind of suspected that something was going on between them because she flirted with Putnam right in front of me and Kenneth,” Mounts said. “Then before the trial, Putnam wanted each of us to come down to his room separately, to go over the questions, and I went down for maybe fifteen minutes, Kenneth was with him about five minutes, but Suzie stayed with him over an hour.”
But Kenneth had no proof that Mark and Susan were involved in a love affair. She vehemently denied all of his accusations, acting insulted that he could think an FBI man would violate federal rules. She had her ex-husband convinced that the extent of her involvement with Mark was the undercover operation, and she told Kenneth that she spent the extra time in Mark’s motel room going over her orchestrated testimony, which, she reminded him, Gary Mounts was to have no knowledge of, under any circumstances.
Each morning after the trial began, Mark Putnam escorted Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. Mounts over to the federal courthouse, a beautiful old building in downtown London. The courtroom, located on the second floor, is trimmed in mahogany and marked by an oval shape. Its oval dropped ceiling and arched windows lend it a touch of elegance. Beyond that, however, the room has an air of authority about it, which is compounded by the heavy security checks routinely taking place at the door, everyone passing through a metal detector and opening all bags for inspection.
When Susan was called and sworn in as a government witness, she sat in a large box to the right of the judge and spoke her name clearly into the microphone. Mark Putnam, Kenneth Smith, Gary Mounts, and the others looked on as she pointed out Carl “Cat Eyes” Lockhart. Susan stated for the record that exhibit 3, a single-barreled gun, looked exactly like the weapon Cat Eyes Lockhart had kept in a pillowcase at her home. This was believed to be the gun Cat Eyes had used to pull off the bank robbery at the Ferrells Creek branch. When asked about her knowledge of the bank robbery, Susan told the court that Cat Eyes and Sherri Justice appeared at her home at about eleven P.M. on Friday, a week before the First National Bank of Pikeville was robbed, at which time they talked about their plans to rob a bank.
Before Susan left the stand, she was asked whether or not any law enforcement officers had come to her home after September 10, investigating the robbery in question. She responded that the investigation began before September 10, that Burt Hatfield had come to her house once and that Mark Putnam had also come there to talk about the bank situation. When she brought up Putnam’s name in connection with the investigation before September 10, the prosecutor cut her off. “That’s all,” he said, and Susan stepped down and was excused.
On January 28, 1988, at the US District Court, Cat Eyes was convicted and sentenced to serve fifty-seven years in federal prison. Susan watched as the one hundred ninety-five pound bearded man with the strange hazel-blue eyes was marched off in handcuffs. He was taken to the Fayette County Metro Detention Center in Lexington, Kentucky, where, he claims, Mark Putnam came to see him in March of 1988. Putnam was there to try to get Cat Eyes to “roll over” on his partners, Lockhart said. Cat Eyes alleges that Putnam asked a lot of questions about Susan — about the time she spent in Chicago and Louisiana — and seemed overly interested in her.
Years later, Cat Eyes told others that he was in love with Susan and to this day, from his jail cell in Leavenworth, Kansas, the bank robber claims that Susan was acting on Kenneth’s instructions. Still refusing to distrust Susan, he claims that the two of them might have become lovers if it weren’t for Putnam’s interference.