by Laurence Hammack | May 8, 2005 | Politics/government
APPALACHIA — At first, Christina McKinney just laughed at the suggestion that she sell her vote for a pack of cigarettes and a bag of fried pork skins. Then McKinney started hearing stories from her neighbors in Appalachia: They too had been approached by a...
by Laurence Hammack | Feb 20, 2005 | Politics/government
GATE CITY — Tough as it was to lose by two votes, Mark Jenkins was ready to accept defeat graciously in the May election for mayor of this mountain gap town that calls itself a city. Then Jenkins called to congratulate incumbent Mayor Charles Dougherty. His...
by Laurence Hammack | Sep 26, 2004 | Prisons
CAPRON — Behind locked steel doors and fences topped with razor wire, old men sit in wheelchairs and wait for their life sentences to end. Floyd Brown of Roanoke is one of them. He hopes it will be parole, not death, that releases him from Deerfield Correctional...
by Laurence Hammack | Apr 18, 2004 | Religion
When the Rev. Dwayne Long picked up a rattlesnake in church last Sunday to show his faith in God, he was breaking a Virginia law that makes it a misdemeanor to handle dangerous snakes. A conviction could have cost him $250. His convictions, however, cost him his life....
by Laurence Hammack | Mar 28, 2004 | Addiction/drug abuse
The occupants of apartment No. 99 were well-known to neighbors, if not by name, then by loud music and late-night parties. One such gathering at Camelot Village Apartments in Salem lasted well into the morning of May 13. The calm that finally settled over the building...