Chapter Nine
Regardless of the rumors about Putnam, most of the people he worked with only saw the official side of him and never got any true insight into his personal life. He was deliberately evasive, and knew that no one could prove anything even if some people had their suspicions. As time went on, he made sure that his private life remained a mystery; he spoke less and less to other law enforcement people about what he did when he was off the job.
Corporal Roby Pope of the West Virginia State Police worked with Putnam on the robbery of the Matewan National Bank for a period spanning two years. The two men spent countless hours together trying to find patterns, clues, witnesses, and informants that would lead to the evidence they needed to convict members of the McCoy gang. Pope recalls that Putnam was extremely closemouthed about his personal life, never one to talk about what he did in his spare time or to stick around for a cup of coffee after a meeting.
“We were looking for McCoy in West Virginia, and they were looking for him in Kentucky. Putnam had been involved in the case for over a year, following leads, but nobody would come out and say that John P. McCoy robbed the bank,” Pope reminisced. “When Mark was here, he’d be with the Kentucky State Police. We’d have some joint meetings, and he was always business. Afterward, he didn’t hang around. He didn’t have time to shoot the bull. He was out. He always had some place to go next.”
Putnam spoke so little about his family life that once, when Kathy Putnam and her mom were in a serious auto accident in Connecticut, Pope heard through other law enforcement agents that Kathy Putnam had been killed. Pope later found out that Kathy Putnam and her mother were all right, but he learned that from other police officers, not from Putnam. Putnam was just out to solve crimes as far as Pope was concerned, an all work kind of guy who was thoroughly dedicated to “cleaning up” eastern Kentucky. He even told Pope that he was investigating political corruption in Pike County. For one thing, Putnam said that he and Ron Poole were checking out allegations of voter fraud in the area.
Obviously Putnam made sure that Roby Pope never got wind of his involvement with Susan, and he had to be especially careful around him because Susan had revealed she’d worked with Pope on an unofficial basis as an informant. Putnam made sure he didn’t bring her name up around Pope, and he never told him that Susan Smith was his informant on the Cat Eyes Lockhart case.
The last time Pope saw Putnam, the FBI man said he was being transferred to Florida. He’d explained that he and his wife were receiving threatening calls; the caller would say the house was being watched and would describe the room his wife was in. “That’s why I’m getting an early transfer,” Putnam told Pope. “Otherwise I would have been here another three years.”
Evidently, Pope didn’t think it unusual that Putnam was suddenly being transferred out of Pikeville, although the transfer to Miami was somewhat strange. According to one report, the FBI announced budget cuts somewhere in the fall of 1988 and Putnam, being a rookie agent, was told he would have to stay at the Pikeville office for five years instead of the two years he had originally bargained for. With this crushing news, Kathy reached a breaking point, and Mark would come home every night to find her sobbing uncontrollably. Allegedly the pair came up with a plan to get themselves removed from the Pikeville area, resorting to desperate and unorthodox measures.
Kathy later told an interviewer that she had begun working undercover on a political corruption case, deliberately putting herself at risk, betting on the idea that if she was personally in danger, the FBI would move the family out of Pikeville. Kathy allegedly got the idea from hearing Ron Poole talk about Project Greylord, an assignment in Chicago involving judicial corruption and the mafia. Poole had said that when his life had been threatened he and his family had been moved out of the area.
At any rate, Kathy and Mark told the state police and the FBI that they were receiving continual bomb threats. Kathy even called the Putnams’ insurance company to check on their coverage in case of arson or a bombing. She later claimed that when Susan Smith found out about her undercover work, she called her and threatened to have her “set up.”
In any event, Kathy continued to report threats to the local police and the FBI. Reportedly, one night when Mark was out of town, a man called and said he was on his way over to kill Kathy. She said she stayed up until dawn, shaking and weeping, alone in her living room, a .357 Magnum aimed at the front door.
In February of 1989 the FBI did move Kathy and her children from eastern Kentucky. It was a covert operation, carried out in the middle of the night. Kathy Putnam never said goodbye to any of her neighbors. She just disappeared. She and the children stayed in Connecticut for two months, until Putnam was transferred to his office of preference — Miami, Florida. Of course, in those months Mark lived alone in Pikeville, and Susan came by regularly.
As she spent more and more time with Mark, Kenneth’s anger grew. Not only had Susan thrown him over for another man, now he stood to lose a large part of his welfare support if she left him. Kenneth was further incensed by Susan’s saying that if he tried to pull anything, Mark Putnam would set him up on drug charges. Smith’s neighbor, Johnny Blankenship, she told him Putnam had come to Freeburn offering five thousand dollars to anyone who would plant cocaine on Kenneth. Frightened and infuriated, Kenneth began hitting Susan in front of the children and other family members. He wanted to humiliate her in every possible way.
“What did you do today?” Kenneth once said in a rage. “Did you go fuck Mark? Did you screw him? Miranda, your mommy’s been out screwing today!”
According to Bo, whenever Susan returned from Pikeville, Kenneth walked around the house, muttering under his breath, “Slut, whore,” and Susan would scream “Why, you son of a bitch, I wish you’d just leave!” But after a day or so, Kenneth would try to make up with Susan, following her around like a puppy, trying to do her favors, asking if she needed anything from the store and bringing home little gifts for the children.
Then when Susan made another trip to Pikeville, the fighting started all over again, and sometimes Bo would see his sister’s lip swollen or her arm bruised. Susan would say, “That bastard over there did it,” pointing to Kenneth. Then Bo would get angry and want to fight Kenneth, but Susan wouldn’t allow it. “Just forget it. Leave him alone,” she’d say.
Despite the anguish she had to put up with in Freeburn, Susan was seeing more of Mark, having constant sex, determined to get pregnant. She and Mark had the house all to themselves for over two months, and she believed that he and Kathy had agreed to a trial separation. Mark only told her that Kathy had gone back to Connecticut for a while. He didn’t inform her that he’d be transferring until much later.
It was at the end of February, within a month of her miscarriage, that Susan became pregnant again. She did not tell Putnam about it at first. Instinct told her to wait. She began having cravings for tuna fish and grapes, she woke up every day with morning sickness, but she couldn’t have been more pleased. She knew she had to get out of the Vulcan house. Unwilling to chance Kenneth’s interfering with her pregnancy, she planned to move in with Shelby temporarily.
So while Mark was busy making moving and storage arrangements, Susan’s thoughts were on when to tell Mark about the baby and where she could live so she could bring it to term in peace. Shelby’s would be a fine interim stop, but Susan knew she had to get out of the Freeburn area. She felt sure that Putnam would put her under the federal witness protection program, although he had made no promises to her yet. Convinced of this, she figured she’d wind up living somewhere near him in Florida, she even told Shelby and Kenneth about how the witness protection program worked, claiming that she was about to be removed from the area.
“Before she moved out, things were beginning to change at home. She wasn’t cooking like she usually did. She wasn’t doing anything around the house. She didn’t spend time with the children,” Kenneth recalls. “Her mind was somewhere else. And she began talking about witness protection, claiming that she would just disappear one day. She told me she’d be in a place where no one could find her.”
In reaction to her claims, Kenneth threatened to go to Pikeville and harm Putnam. Susan relayed the information to Mark, who then threatened to have Kenneth “set up” on a drug-trafficking charge. In response, Kenneth told Susan that he had pictures of her and Mark entering and leaving Pikeville motels. He said he’d show them to Kathy Putnam. He also threatened to show copies of their phone bill to the FBI. Susan took as many phone bills as she could find and promptly shredded them, throwing them, like confetti, into the Tug River.
In his determination to expose Mark Putnam and hang on to Susan, Kenneth began to tape his conversations with Susan, intending to bring the tapes to the authorities if need be. He wired a mini tape recorder to his body and had Susan openly admit to the affair with Putnam. In these recorded conversations, she talked openly about her love affair, her drug dealings, and about the money she received from the FBI for her “work,” admitting that all along she and Mark had been making love in various motel rooms and billing everything to the FBI.
Kenneth taped much of what Susan said in the weeks before she left the Vulcan house to move in with Shelby, and he brought the tapes to Kelsey Friend, Jr., for safekeeping in mid March. He told Friend that if anything ever happened to him, the tapes would prove he’d been wise to some of the “goings-on” inside the FBI. Friend refused to listen to the tapes, but his records show that he did, in fact, log them into his office.
In the first tape-recorded conversation, Kenneth targeted Mark Putnam’s knowledge of Susan’s drug dealings and Putnam’s willingness to support her criminal behavior.
“Would you let me finish, okay? If I work with them, they’ll protect me! If I don’t work with them, you think they’ll protect me? Shit, no!” Susan was speaking, her children crying in the background.
“I just don’t want anybody trying to blow my ass up! Here you are dealing drugs, and that’s supposed to be just fine!” Kenneth was responding.
“I told Mark, I’ve got bills. He said if I don’t have enough money, my hand to God, he said to deal — wide open! He said for me to deal! He said if I get busted in some way, he’ll get me out of it.”
“He said he’s going to help you out if you get busted? He knows about you dealing?”
“I told him I do coke. I told him I deal, just like that. And I asked, if I got busted — bad, you know — say my house gets raided, are you guys going to help me out? And Ron and Mark both said they’d do it. We won’t let you go to jail, they said.”
On another tape-recorded conversation, Susan talked to Kenneth about Putnam’s bedroom practices.
“So you’re going to motels with him?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you all been going to motels, Susan?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I know but — ”
“Me and Mark’s been dating about a year and a half.”
“So. . . I knew it all along, and you’ve been denying it!”
“Yep.”
“Have you been going to his house?”
“That is none of your business. That is nothing to you, and if you go calling and telling Kathy, she won’t believe you. She doesn’t want you calling her, so what are you going to do now? Go to her house and try to make her believe you? It’s none of your business anyway.”
“He told you he loved you?”
“Yes he did.”
Later in the recorded conversation, when Kenneth brought the issue of marriage and pregnancy up, Susan pretended that she did not want to have any serious involvement with Putnam or any other man.
“What would you have done if you had come up pregnant? Would you have had his baby?”
“Well, Kenneth, yes, I guess, if I didn’t have the money to have an abortion. I told him I already have two kids. I don’t want any more. They’re too hard to take care of, and I don’t want any kids to take Brady and Miranda’s place. I just want Brady and Miranda.”
“What if he made you stay pregnant and have his baby?”
“I wouldn’t want to stay pregnant. I’d just see if I could get the money to have an abortion.”
“Well, you don’t care anything about me or the kids anymore, so I don’t see why you don’t just have a kid with him!”
“I love my kids and I’m going to raise my kids!”
Finally Kenneth tossed in the idea that Kathy might find out about the affair.
“Hey, what are you going to do if Kathy ever does find out?”
“She knows we go to a motel to talk. She knows we go there to work together. She doesn’t know we’re going out.”
“She knows you’re in there four or five hours?”
“She knows people stay in there a long time. She loves Mark. She trusts him. She’s been with him five years.”
“And you can handle that?”
“Yes, ’cause I don’t want to get married again. I don’t want any steady relationships anymore.”
“So you can handle you and Mark just having sex in a motel?”
“No, Kenneth. It’s not just sex. It’s other things. We’re real good friends. . . . I’m sorry I fell in love with somebody, Kenneth. I’m sorry.”
“So you fell in love with a married man?”
“Yeah. My God, I wish he wasn’t married, but he is, and I’m not going to quit him just because he’s married. I’m not going to do it, ’cause I can’t!”
“You love him that much?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And he loves you that much too?”
“I don’t know, Kenneth. I don’t know how much he loves me. He said he loves me. I didn’t ask him how much.”
“Who pays for the motel when you go there? The FBI?”
“That’s none of your business! I don’t know who does. I stay in the car. I don’t really want to talk about it anymore. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“And Kathy believes you all are working?”
“We are working together — as a team!”
“Yeah, as a team, in motel rooms!”
Just days after Susan moved in with her sister, in late March, Mark told Susan about his transfer. She was stunned, all the more so because she was now sure she was pregnant.
Desperate to keep Mark by her side before he left, Susan called him from Shelby’s every day to cry about all the problems she was having. She used any excuse to call and beg him for help. And she needed it. Kenneth had burned all of her new outfits and all of her high-heeled shoes. Shelby had had to take Susan over to Williamson and charge the clothes she bought her on a credit card because Susan had arrived at her sister’s with only the clothes on her back. Now Susan owed Shelby money. She had supplemented her wardrobe with yard-sale clothing and was borrowing some of Shelby’s things, but she had no decent underwear anymore. Everything is gone, she told Putnam. Kenneth had even tossed all of her makeup and jewelry into the fire, and he had burned her purse, which contained her social security card and her birth certificate. She would have to reapply for these or she might lose most of her welfare money.
But it didn’t faze Mark that Susan was left with nothing. All he cared about was what he wanted — to be out of Pikeville. It meant little to him when Susan said Kenneth would no longer allow her to see her kids, that her brother-in-law, Ike, was threatening to throw her out of his house if she kept up her involvement with the FBI.
Susan’s life was in chaos. In late March, she drove to Pikeville to tell Mark about the pregnancy. The news was not welcome, certainly not when Putnam was making final preparations to leave town. At first, he was nonchalant about Susan’s baby, denying that he was the father. Then she made another trip to see him. This time she insisted that Mark help her with the child. He told her he was about to complete his transfer, but acted concerned, promising to take good care of Susan, even after he moved away.