For 60 years, the murder of 21 Kentucky deputy sheriffs remained one of Appalachia’s most chilling unsolved mysteries, a rampage that federal investigators could never explain. When the truth finally emerged, it came from the handwritten journals of a dead man, found beside his body in a hidden valley where he had lived alone for six decades. Jeremiah Combmes was a 32-year-old Great War veteran living in the remote mountain country of Pike County, Kentucky, in the spring of 1934. He shared the family land with his younger brother, Ezekiel, a 28-year-old farmer and union sympathizer whose outspoken support for organizing coal miners had made him a target of the men who controlled the region’s coal industry.
The coal operators had built a system in which company money purchased sheriff badges, company judges issued warrants, and company deputies enforced control with violence that was officially called lawful. Sheriff Vernon Crawford, whose position had been secured by the operators specifically to crush labor organizing, developed a particular hatred for the Combmes family, who refused to work in the mines, refused to sell their mineral rights, and refused to accept company authority. On the night of June 15th, 1934, Crawford led 21 deputies to the Combs property while Jeremiah was away in Virginia buying supplies. The deputies roused Ezekiel from sleep, beat him, chained him with heavy links and a collar, and marched him more than 20 miles to Pikeville, where a gallows had been constructed overnight in the public square.
On the morning of June 16th, before a crowd of hundreds that Crawford had deliberately gathered, Ezekiel was given a mock chance to speak. He declared that he was innocent of all charges and that his only crime was believing that coal miners deserved to be treated as human beings. No one in the crowd came to his defense. Crawford personally adjusted the noose and ordered that the drop be insufficient to break Ezekiel’s neck.
The hanging was a strangulation that lasted an estimated 23 minutes while the crowd watched. Ezekiel’s body was left displayed on the gallows for the rest of the day as a warning. When Jeremiah returned and found his brother dead, he cut the body down, carried it 20 miles home through the night, and buried Ezekiel beside their mother. Over the next three weeks, he gathered intelligence on every deputy who had taken part in the arrest and hanging, compiling a list of 21 names.
He deliberately left Crawford for last. The first deputy was killed on July 8th, 1934, found in his home with his throat cut and a note pinned to his chest bearing a single word: Ezekiel. The second killing came 12 days later, by the same method and with the same note. Through July, August, and September, Jeremiah systematically eliminated the deputies, some of whom had fled to Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee.
None escaped. Deputies who resigned or fled were still hunted down. Guards assigned to protect Crawford were killed without raising an alarm. By late September, 20 of the 21 men were dead, and only Crawford remained.
He attempted to flee on September 28th, but he was intercepted on a mountain road. According to journals Jeremiah kept, he hanged Crawford with a deliberately slow strangulation and then buried the sheriff in an unmarked grave that has never been found. The investigation that followed was the largest in Kentucky history up to that time. Federal authorities were brought in, rewards were offered, and profiles were developed for a killer who did not match the actual culprit.
Jeremiah was questioned repeatedly, but he had prepared alibis, and the evidence against him could not be established. In October 1934, he simply vanished. Jeremiah had planned his disappearance as carefully as his campaign. He located a hidden valley surrounded by walls of stone about 500 feet high, with an entrance concealed by terrain that appeared impassable.
He built a cabin against a rock face, disguised from view, and established a garden, hunting traps, and water sources that allowed him to survive entirely apart from the world. For six decades he lived alone, tracking the decades by carving marks into posts. He kept journals made from birch bark and leather, documenting the killings and his reasons. In one entry, he explained that he had killed the 21 men because they had killed his brother and called it justice, and because vengeance was the only response available when every other avenue had been closed.
Neighbors and relatives who maintained Ezekiel’s grave periodically found fresh flowers at the site, but no one pursued the question of who had left them. The world changed around him, but Jeremiah remained in the valley, emerging only rarely and carefully to visit his brother’s resting place. Jeremiah Combmes died in his cabin on March 15th, 1994, at the age of 92. His final journal entry expressed his readiness to see Ezekiel again.
His body was not found until three years later, when surveyors mapping the region for a forestry project discovered the hidden valley and the cabin. The journals found beside him contained detailed confessions to all 21 killings, with descriptions that investigators were able to match against crime scene records from 1934. The case was reopened, and forensic specialists confirmed that the confessions were genuine. The revelation produced national headlines and reopened a painful, complicated legacy.
Descendants of the dead deputies learned that their ancestors had participated in the lynching of an innocent man. One granddaughter of Crawford found letters among her grandmother’s effects that confirmed his plans for Ezekiel, describing the lesson he intended to teach the county. Legal and moral debate followed, but no prosecution was possible, as Jeremiah was dead and the man responsible for the original murder had long since faced his own brutal end. The Combs descendants arranged for Jeremiah’s remains to be buried beside Ezekiel, amid inscriptions that read: “He loved his brother.
He avenged his brother. He waited 60 years. ”
The hidden valley where Jeremiah lived has been preserved, and its location remains known only to family members and historians. The cabin still stands, maintained as a monument to an impossible survival.
The ballad of the Combs brothers now holds a place in Appalachian tradition, and the graves of the two brothers rest together in the mountains above Pike County.