New book from Madison High '80 grads explores two centuries of Western NC murder, mayhem

HOT SPRINGS - A new book from two 1980 Madison High graduates covers "moonshine, murder and mayhem" in the Blue Ridge region of the Appalachian Highlands, including a number of Madison County subjects.

The book, from authors R. Scott Lunsford and Alfred Dockery, is "Blood on the Blue Ridge: Historic Appalachian True Crime Stories, 1808-2004."

The book was spawned from the authors' collaboration on Lunsford's crime podcast, Felon File Podcast.

But the authors' work in dissecting the region's history goes back way further than that: Dockery, an editor currently residing in Seneca, South Carolina, and Lunsford, a former Asheville Police Department detective and current school resource officer with Madison County Sheriff's Office, were students together in Mr. Beam's social studies class in 1976.

According to the authors, they spent about a year writing the book.

For Lunsford, the true crime history book marked a departure from his other works, which include a young adult fiction book, "The Girls from G.I.F.T.: The Devil Dog Investigation," a fantasy series dealing with monsters, devils and magic along the Buncombe Turnpike in 1834, as well as a number of other nonfiction books, including "There's Plenty of Good Air and Sunshine: The Depression Years in Asheville, N.C."

Lunsford said the authors' work complemented each other well.

"I'm a detective. I mean, that's what I've done for years, when I was with Asheville," Lunsford said. "I love digging around in stuff, and talking to people and interviewing people, and things like that, and getting these ideas. But there's more to writing than just getting the ideas and putting them on paper. It took two of us, and really, truly, a lot of editors don't get the credit that they deserve. The publishing companies do. But Alfred dug up a bunch of stuff. He's like a dog with a bone, just like me. We start digging, and you don't know what type of rabbit hole you're going to find, and what you're going to find there."

Dockery referred to himself as "an obsessive researcher." With the book spanning nearly two full centuries, they had many different cases to research.

But with some of the cases occurring in the early 1800s, the resources available to the authors were sometimes specious, at best.

For example, while the authors were able to turn to newspapers such as The News-Record & Sentinel, Charlotte Observer and Asheville Citizen Times, some newspapers have not been digitized, making the authors' research more difficult.

In other instances, parts of the cases were exaggerated or fabricated.

For Dockery and Lunsford, their research allowed them to dispel some of these misconceptions, such as in the case of Nancy Franklin (born Nancy Shelton), a Civil War heroine who, despite multiple tragedies, including the Shelton Laurel Massacre, remained defiant

In "The Myth of the Murdered Mason" the authors explore the case of Franklin.

"She's been written about a lot, and a lot of people have missed the mark," Dockery said.

"She has become legend, and when legends happen, things expand and then get expounded upon that are not necessarily true," Lunsford said. "There was one gentleman that did some research and pretty much didn't believe that one thing happened."

That event was a shooting of a man on Mars Hill College campus.

"We dug around, and it didn't happen," Lunsford said.

The authors also explore the Biltmore book heist of the 1980s.

"That was kind of absurd in its own way," Dockery said. "They were shooting a comedic mystery movie called 'The Private Eyes' with Don Knotts and Tim Conway. While they were there, one of the staff wanted to show Tim Conway one of the rare volumes from the library, and when they opened up the case, the rare volume wasn't there.

"They did a rather rapid and spirited inventory and found there were 234 works missing. Back in the '80s, they valued it at more than $300,000."

The team also consults the work of Dan Slagle , a local historian and genealogist who has studied the Shelton Laurel Massacre for years.

For Dockery, one of his main takeaways in the book's production was related more to the familial connections he made with a number of the subjects in the book.

"Nancy Franklin's sons that were killed at her house during the raid, they were in the Second North Carolina Mounted Infantry, and I believe they were Company E," Dockery said. "Company C is Alfred Lemuel Dockery. He's my great-great-uncle.

"In the chapter, 'The Old Money Murder,' the Duckett cousins, they killed a harmless old man in Spring Creek. They were arrested in Knoxville, and there's a picture there of Sheriff Guy English with them. Guy English is the man that took my grandfather, Alfred Barry Dockery back to central prison to serve out the remainder of his 30-year term after a case of justified homicide. There was a dispute between him and a guy he was running a moonshine still with. I really wasn't expecting to make those connections."

Though the book spanned the nearly two centuries, Lunsford said he was struck by the similarities of the cases.

"You change some of the names, you change some of the dates and some of the locations, and these are the same cases that were being worked when I was in Asheville working in the detective office," Lunsford said. "Time changes, the methods may change, but really the acts themselves are there."

Lunsford is certified as a North Carolina law enforcement instructor and also is certified as a substitute teacher in the state. He has been teaching DARE in Madison County Schools for a number of years and said that one of his main goals in writing the book was to educate.

"We shouldn't forget our history," he said. "When we forget our history, we're going to do it all over again, and well, we're doing it all over again even if we remember it. So, why not try to get a foot up on it and just be aware that there are snakes in the grass.

"There are good people in the grass too, and we talk about some really good people too, and some of the great things that they did. Hopefully, we're going to write some more about them."

The authors published the book through Paint Rock Publishing.

"I like that because pictographs were the newspapers in books, originally, and we've got Paint Rock right down the road," Lunsford said. "That's how stories were told, when you wanted to preserve them and put them on a rock."

"Blood on the Blue Ridge" is available online through Lunsford's website , as well as on Amazon . For more information, visit scottlunsfordauthor.com .

Johnny Casey has covered Madison County for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel for three years. He earned a first-place award in beat news reporting in the 2023 North Carolina Press Association awards. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: New book from Madison High '80 grads explores two centuries of Western NC murder, mayhem