In March 1956, deputies forced open a hidden door in the basement of a farm outside Hazard, Kentucky. They found six young women, aged 18 to 22, all in distress and in need of immediate medical care. All six had been reported missing over the previous four years.
All six were pregnant. All six had the same uncle.
The case began with an anonymous letter that arrived at the Perry County Sheriff’s Office in late February 1956. It was plain Manila paper, postmarked from Lexington, with no return address. Inside, a single typed page listed six names: Ruth Anne Leadford, Barbara Jean Cornett, Sylvia May Woolum, Nancy Carol Duff, Linda Sue Meyers, and Patty Louise Kinser.
The letter stated that all six were living in a basement at a specified address on rural Route 4, roughly eight miles northeast of Hazard. All were pregnant. All were being held by a man named Dale Haverman.
Sheriff Raymond Kelch read the letter twice. He knew the Haverman property. The farm had belonged to Dale’s parents until their deaths in a house fire in 1948.
Dale had inherited the place and lived alone, keeping to himself, tending a small tobacco crop, and attending church only on Christmas and Easter. The letter ended with a warning: if they waited much longer, some of the girls would not survive their deliveries.
Kelch ordered Deputy Margaret Coddle to pull missing person reports for the six names, going back five years if necessary. By late afternoon, she had assembled six case files. The girls had disappeared between May 1952 and September 1955.
Each investigation had stalled within weeks, marked with notations like “probable runaway” or “declined to pursue further.”
The oldest case belonged to Ruth Anne Leadford, reported missing in August 1952 at age 18. She had last been seen walking home from a church social. Her file noted she was “known to be moody” and likely staying with friends.
The case was marked inactive by October.
Barbara Jean Cornett disappeared in January 1953. She was 19 and had told her father she was visiting her grandmother in Hazard. The grandmother never saw her.
Her file concluded with “subject has history of deception. No evidence of foul play.” Coddle noticed a detail: Barbara Jean’s mother had mentioned that Dale Haverman, married to the girl’s aunt, had driven Barbara Jean to a dental appointment three weeks before she vanished.
Sylvia May Woolum disappeared in July 1953 while visiting relatives in Perry County. She walked to a neighbor’s house to return a pie dish and never arrived. Jurisdictional delays between counties stalled the case for six weeks.
Nancy Carol Duff vanished in March 1954. Her stepfather reported her as rebellious and threatening to leave home. The investigating deputy wrote that the domestic situation appeared unstable and that the subject likely left on her own.
Linda Sue Meyers disappeared in November 1954 at age 18. Three witnesses saw her accept a ride from a dark pickup truck, but none could identify the driver. Her mother insisted her daughter would never get into a vehicle with a stranger.
The deputy noted that the mother’s judgment was questionable. The case remained open longer than the others but was marked inactive by February 1955.
The final case belonged to Patty Louise Kinser, 18, missing since September 1955. She had gone to help a family friend with tobacco stripping. The friend claimed she never arrived.
Patty’s file contained something the others did not: a handwritten note stapled to the inside cover reading “Check Haverman property.” Below it, in different handwriting, were the initials “RK” with the notation “confirmed with H, not present. No cause for warrant.”
The initials were Sheriff Kelch’s own.
Kelch remembered the visit. He had driven to the Haverman farm in October 1955 after Patty’s father insisted Haverman was lying. Haverman had met him at the door, let him look around the main house, and showed him the barn and tobacco shed.
When Kelch asked about the cellar, Haverman said the door had swollen shut after spring rains and had not been opened in months. Kelch could see the door was painted over and looked untouched. He had no probable cause for a warrant, so he left.
Coddle’s research revealed more. County records showed Haverman had made substantial renovations to the property between 1949 and 1951, including foundation stabilization and basement waterproofing. No inspections were conducted because the work was classified as maintenance.
Bank records showed weekly deposits and monthly withdrawals inconsistent with a solitary lifestyle. In December 1955, Haverman purchased over $200 worth of canned goods, dried beans, and flour, paying cash and refusing help loading the supplies.
A neighbor told Coddle that Haverman had helped her fix a well pump the previous summer. While he was there, she heard crying coming from his truck. When she asked about it, he said he had brought barn cats that did not like riding in vehicles.
She thought the crying sounded more human than animal but did not press it.
Kelch obtained a warrant from Judge Harold Winters that evening. The convoy left the sheriff’s office at 6:15 on the morning of March 12, 1956. Four vehicles carried deputies, state police, and Dr.
Samuel Garrett from Hazard Hospital. They arrived at the Haverman farm just after 7:00.
Haverman opened the door before Kelch could knock. He wore clean work clothes and held a coffee cup. He read the warrant slowly, then stepped aside.
“You’re welcome to look wherever you need to,” he said.
The house was meticulously maintained. In the kitchen, Coddle noticed more dishes in the drying rack than one person would use for breakfast. The cellar door, unlike Kelch’s description from his previous visit, showed no paint buildup.
The handle was worn smooth from frequent opening. Haverman explained he had fixed the door over the winter.
The cellar matched the original house plans: roughly 8 by 10 feet, with stone walls and a dirt floor. But Coddle noticed the stonework near the back wall looked newer. The mortar was fresh and even.
Behind a shelving unit loaded with empty jars, set into the newer stonework, was a door with a heavy bolt lock on the outside.
Kelch drew the bolt and pulled the door open. The smell hit them first: unwashed bodies, human waste, something sickeningly sweet. A hallway extended back into darkness, far beyond where the original foundation should have ended.
Electric lights hung from the ceiling at intervals. Six doors lined the hallway, three on each side, all closed, all locked from the outside.
From behind one door came a voice, hoarse and uncertain. “Is someone there? Please, is someone finally there?”
Kelch worked the lock and opened the door. Inside was a small room, perhaps 6 by 8 feet, with a single cot, a bucket, and a girl sitting on the floor against the far wall. She raised one arm to shield her eyes from the light.
Her other hand rested across a swollen belly. It was Ruth Anne Leadford.
She looked far older than her age, her face gaunt, her hair matted. She wore a cotton dress stretched tight across her pregnant stomach. When Kelch told her it was March and she had been missing since August 1952, she closed her eyes.
“Three years and seven months,” she whispered. “I kept trying to count, but I lost track after the first year.”
Deputies opened the other doors. From each room came the same progression of sounds: the scrape of locks, the creak of hinges, shocked silence, then quiet weeping. All six girls were found.
Each room was identical: a cot with thin blankets, a bucket for waste, a small table with a basin. No windows, no natural light.
Ruth Anne was the most coherent. She explained that Haverman had offered to drive her home from the church social because it was getting dark. She knew him from family gatherings.
Instead of taking her home, he brought her to the farm and told her she was going to help him start a family. He said God had chosen her for this purpose.
He brought meals twice daily, spoke to them about scripture and their duty, and told them they were building something important together. As the months passed, his visits grew less frequent and his behavior more unpredictable. When Kelch asked what happened to the babies, Ruth Anne said Haverman took them upstairs, claiming he was giving them to good families.
But she heard him digging outside after one died. There was a garden patch on the east side of the house.
Barbara Jean Cornett spoke from her doorway. She had given birth to a girl who survived briefly. Haverman named her Mary and said she was an angel returning to heaven.
Then he brought Barbara Jean back downstairs and it started all over again.
Upstairs, state police had Haverman in handcuffs. He sat at his kitchen table, calm, watching through the window as ambulances arrived. “They were safe here,” he said.
“Nobody was looking for them anyway. I gave them purpose.”
The investigation into Haverman’s family connections revealed a web of relationships that explained how he had positioned himself within reach of each victim. Ruth Anne’s connection ran through Haverman’s deceased sister, who had married Ruth Anne’s mother’s first cousin. Barbara Jean’s mother’s sister had married Haverman in 1946, a union that lasted only eight months before she left him, citing his peculiar ideas about family and religion.
Sylvia’s family attended the same Methodist church Haverman’s parents had belonged to. Nancy’s deceased mother had been engaged to Haverman in 1942 before breaking it off to marry Nancy’s father. Linda Sue’s family had no connection to him at all until 1954, when Haverman began attending their small Pentecostal church, offering rides when their truck broke down.
Patty’s father had worked alongside Haverman in the coal mines.
State police found Haverman’s journals in a locked trunk. Page after page contained observations about girls in various communities: their ages, their family situations, their vulnerabilities. Ruth Anne’s name appeared first, with entries dating back to 1949.
The final entry, written the morning of the raid, read simply: “The work continues. Seven would be better than six.”
Elizabeth Watts, a reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal, arrived three days after the discovery. She obtained the original missing person reports and found a pattern of systemic failure. Investigators had looked for reasons not to investigate rather than reasons to pursue leads.
Girls from troubled homes, girls who seemed moody or rebellious, girls whose families didn’t fit conventional molds: each had been dismissed as a runaway. One deputy admitted he had received an anonymous tip about Haverman in December 1954 but had not pushed further because he lacked probable cause. Kelch himself had seen the painted-over cellar door and accepted Haverman’s explanation without question.
Watts published her findings on March 18, 1956. The reaction was immediate and furious. Families of the victims demanded answers.
They had been told their daughters were runaways, that they bore responsibility for not controlling their children better. Nobody wanted to consider that someone had taken them.
Dale Haverman’s trial began on September 10, 1956. The prosecution built a case on physical evidence, medical testimony, and the journals. The defense argued diminished capacity stemming from childhood trauma and religious delusion.
A psychiatrist testified that Haverman genuinely believed he was acting righteously, that the girls were lost souls he was saving.
The prosecution countered that this was not delusion but deliberate calculation. Haverman had spent years cultivating trust, selecting vulnerable girls, building hidden rooms in secret, lying to investigators, and hiding the evidence of dead babies in his garden. “A delusional man doesn’t take those precautions,” the prosecutor said.
“A criminal does.”
The jury deliberated for six hours. They returned guilty verdicts on six counts of kidnapping, six counts of severe unlawful acts and abuse, and three counts of concealing a death. Haverman was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without possibility of parole.
He showed no emotion when the verdict was read.
Between April and August 1956, five of the six girls gave birth. Ruth Anne delivered a boy, her first surviving child. Barbara Jean had a girl.
Sylvia delivered twins. Nancy gave birth to a girl. Linda Sue had a son.
Only Patty Kinser miscarried. The Commonwealth moved to terminate Haverman’s parental rights, and social services arranged closed adoptions for all five infants.
Ruth Anne refused to surrender her son for two weeks. She had already lost two babies and had spent four years imagining motherhood. When the social worker finally convinced her she had no means to support a child, she signed the papers without reading them.
She never held him again.
The girls scattered in the following months. Ruth Anne returned home but left for Lexington after six months, unable to bear the community’s whispers. Barbara Jean stayed in Perry County, enrolled in a secretarial program, and found work at a law office.
Sylvia finished high school through correspondence and moved to Cincinnati, inventing a conventional childhood. Nancy moved to Louisville, changed her name legally in 1959, and married in 1962 without telling her husband about the basement or the baby. Linda Sue left Kentucky entirely, moving frequently under assumed names, never reconnecting with her family.
Patty stayed home, struggling to move forward.
Dale Haverman died on February 7, 1960, in the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville. Complications from untreated diabetes led to kidney failure. He was 47 years old and had served less than four years of his sentence.
Prison medical records showed he had refused insulin treatment for months, citing religious objections. No family claimed his body. He was buried in the prison cemetery under a marker listing only his name and dates.
The anonymous letter that triggered the investigation was never explained. The writer knew specific details: names, approximate ages, the hidden nature of the basement rooms. Someone had known what was happening at the Haverman farm and had finally chosen to act.
Theories emerged over the years, but the truth remained hidden.
The Perry County Sheriff’s Office conducted an internal review following Watts’s investigation. It identified multiple failures but stopped short of recommending disciplinary action. Kelch retired in 1958.
Coddle remained with the department and became the first female sheriff in Perry County history when she was elected in 1966.
In 2003, a journalist tracked down Ruth Anne Leadford in Columbus, Ohio. She was living under her married name, working as a hospital administrator. She had never changed her first name.
When asked why, she said, “Changing my name would mean he’d taken that from me, too.”
She had earned her GED in 1959, attended nursing school, and married in 1968. She raised three children with her husband, who knew her history and loved her anyway. She declined to discuss the son she had given up for adoption, saying only that she hoped he had found a good family and a peaceful life.
She had never searched for him, believing that reopening that door would cause more pain than healing.
When asked if she had ever learned who sent the anonymous letter that led to her rescue, Ruth Anne smiled slightly. “No,” she said. “But whoever it was, they gave us back our lives.
That’s enough.”