A federal investigation that had remained sealed for four decades was forced open in 1993 when spelunkers discovered a body in a remote Kentucky cave system, along with journals that contradicted the government’s official account of one of the deadliest events in federal law enforcement history. The remains were identified as Netty May Combmes, a woman who had vanished in 1953 and was believed dead. According to journals found beside her body, Combmes was responsible for the deaths of 21 federal agents who had murdered her family in 1952. Born in 1918 in Perry County, Kentucky, Combmes was 34 years old when her life was destroyed.
She lived with her husband, Ezekiel, and their three children—Elizabeth, 12, Samuel, 10, and Ruth, 7—in a cabin that had belonged to her family for generations. Ezekiel operated a small still, a practice the family had maintained since before Kentucky was a state. In the autumn of 1952, federal agents under the direction of a supervisor named Vernon Crawford targeted the Combmes family. Crawford had reportedly identified Ezekiel as a symbol of resistance to federal moonshine enforcement and planned a raid designed to destroy him.
The raid took place on the night of October 15, 1952. Twenty-one agents surrounded the cabin, set fires at multiple points, and shot Ezekiel when he emerged with his hands raised. The children, who had been sent to the root cellar beneath the cabin for safety, died of smoke inhalation as the fire consumed the structure above them. Netty, who was outside the cabin during the attack, heard her children calling for her while she was unable to reach them.
After the agents left, she recovered what remained of her family and buried them on a ridge overlooking the hollow. She then spent two weeks preparing for what the journals describe as an act of vengeance. On Halloween night, October 31, 1952, she attacked the federal compound outside Hazard, Kentucky, where the 21 agents were housed. According to her journals, she killed all of them, using a combination of natural compounds, a knife, and close-range combat.
Crawford, who was the last to die, was allegedly made to watch the deaths of his men before he was killed. The federal government reported the deaths as a training accident. The facility was demolished, bodies were buried without thorough examination, and records were sealed. For 40 years, the official account held that the agents had died in an explosion and fire.
Combmes, however, did not reappear. After the killings, she retreated into a cave system that her grandmother had shown her decades earlier, located in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. She remained there for four decades, surviving through gardening, trapping, and knowledge passed down through generations of her family. Her journals document both the killings and the decades of solitude that followed.
They describe how she maintained her existence, how she spoke daily to her dead children, and how she preserved the memory of the raid and its aftermath. The journals were initially suppressed by federal authorities, but leaks eventually brought the story to public attention. Investigators who later examined historical records reportedly found evidence supporting Combmes’ account. Documents were located that appeared to confirm that Crawford had ordered the raid despite knowing children were present, and that the fire had been deliberately set.
The official narrative of a training accident was challenged and eventually discredited. Combmes died in her cave on November 1, 1992, forty years to the day after the attack on the federal compound. Her body was discovered six months later, positioned near markers she had carved for the graves of her husband and children. Her remains were buried beside her family.
The inscription on her stone reads: “Netti May Combmes 1918–1992. They murdered her family; she answered. She waited 40 years. Together again at last.
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Her story became part of Appalachian oral tradition, and songs were composed memorializing the events, the children who died, the mother who answered their deaths, and the decades she spent in hiding. Though the government had denied the incident for four decades, the journals recovered from the cave ensured that the account Combmes preserved could no longer be suppressed.