story.
Add that the crime took place in the Bible belt, where church involvement is a way-of-life—even for killers.
Add that those closest to the victim are honest believers who respond to the tragedy in often unique ways.
Add international extradition struggles.
Add family secrets, lies lived and told to neighbors, addiction and greed.
Add that one of the people closest to the victim is a federal agent and you have a true crime story with an unusual perspective, accurate inside details and emotional insights not usually available.
Murder in Mayberry is not a clinically researched crime story. It’s the emotional journey of my family, as we moved from normal to changed forever.
I’ve shared Ann’s story as honestly as I know how. And I realize that in doing so, I’ve broken many of the ties to the small town where I grew up, where I married my high school sweetheart and where our children attended public schools.
For many years, the newspaper in the town where Ann died included a quote from Lord Byron as part of its masthead: “With, or without offence to friends and foes, I sketch your world exactly as it goes.” That’s the honesty with which I’ve tried to write.
To understand it all, you need the entire story. Impressions, perspectives, exact quotes, real actions and reactions. The lovely and the not-so-lovely. What I’ve written is my reality of Ann’s murder.
Ann deserves an accurate account of the motives, investigation and greed that surrounded her murder. By telling her story accurately, I feel that I’ve brought dignity to her death.
Mary Kinney Branson
Ann Branson lived in Madisonville, Kentucky. Her daddy was the well-to-do owner of one of the local coal mines. She fell in love with a poor farm boy named Carroll Branson, and they were married. They were dirt poor during their early years, but they worked shoulder-to-shoulder and eventually became multimillionaires.
They made their fortune in, of all things, a Dairy Queen. It was one of the first chain restaurants in the little town and year after year, generation after generation, it was the teenage hang-out.
Ann was an icon in Madisonville. “Prominent businesswoman” was how the newspapers described her.
Ann and Carroll had no children. But eight years after their marriage, Carroll’s brother married Ann’s sister. This couple’s only child, a towheaded blue-eyed boy, became the focus of Ann’s maternal instincts. He was like her own son and she was like a second mother to him. That boy was Jack, my husband.
Jack and I grew up in Madisonville, too. We were high school sweethearts and as soon as we were old enough, we married. I knew of Ann before I knew Jack. Everyone knew Ann, Carroll and the Dairy Queen. For all of us growing up in the small western Kentucky town, the greatest amusement on Saturday night was “circling the Queen” to wave at friends and maybe pull in and give a carhop your order for a cone.
Growing up in the midst of small-town Americana, Jack and I had goals and borders that reflected our surroundings. When a high school newspaper reporter asked senior Jack his long-range plans, he reached for the hand of his steady girl and replied, “To own the Dairy Queen and raise little Dillies.” It was my hand he was holding.
But Jack and I soon dreamed dreams that couldn’t come true in Madisonville. His career as a federal agent caused us to move several times, each time to a larger city. And eventually, Ann and Carroll retired, selling the Dairy Queen and erasing the Branson-DQ icon for future generations.
Carroll spent most of his retirement creating intense and moving works of art that you’d never imagine coming from the hands of the once farm boy. Ann had more difficulty weaning herself away from business. She occupied herself buying, fixing up and renting a good chunk of Madisonville’s real estate. She busied herself further with church work, bridge clubs and an occasional cruise.
In 1994, Carroll died of cancer and Ann became a rich widow. She was still the envy of most women in the town. She possessed that combination of qualities most of us long for. She was rich, successful, smart and beautiful.
Ann had a closet full of furs and no less than twelve carats of diamonds in the rings she wore with her everyday wardrobe. She lived alone in a stately 1923 Dutch Colonial home, where every piece of antique furniture and every accessory was unique and carefully chosen.
She eventually tired of the old home and the antiques and was planning to build a new home in an exclusive area, on a lot overlooking a lake. She’d purchased the lot but builders had not yet broken ground.
Ann, however, had not given up on life or the future. She now was engaged to an eye surgeon, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to settle down, at least not yet. He was working diligently to persuade her to marry him, but she had decided to wait until her younger sister, Grace, died. Grace had been diagnosed with small cell lung cancer—oat-cell carcinoma—more than two years earlier. It had spread quickly, and she had long ago outlived her doctor’s expectations. Ann figured she had less than a year left. She alternated Grace’s care with other relatives, but as the oldest of five siblings, she felt the strongest responsibility for her unmarried sister.
Ann would have been beautiful without the furs and jewels. Heads turned when she entered a room, admiring her slim body, chiseled face and graceful demeanor. She dressed tastefully but flamboyantly. She had a certain presence that no money could buy, though if there’d been a price tag attached, she could have paid it.
Ann was a bridesmaid at our daughter’s wedding. Penny decided she wanted only family members in the wedding party—people who still would be dear to her years later—and I was privileged to be both matron of honor and mother of the bride. Penny’s three “grandmothers” were her attendants—my mom, Jack’s mom and Ann.
She loved being in the wedding, from the pedicures that resulted in periwinkle-hued toenails to the bridesmaids luncheon at the quaint German restaurant. In the photo of her walking down the aisle, Ann’s face is animated, her eyes are sparkling and the smile inching across her face looks just seconds away from a joyful laugh. All eyes were on her that day (something she was comfortably acquainted with) and she loved it.
Ten months after the wedding, Ann was murdered.
A few weeks before the murder, Ann spent Christmas with us, as she had done each year since Carroll’s death. She and her sister Iva Ray—Jack’s mother—drove from Kentucky to Georgia in Ann’s crimson pearl Cadillac Seville. We stayed up late playing Rook, laughing and good-naturedly accusing each other of cheating.
“You Winstead sisters can’t be trusted,” joked Jack to Ann, referring as he often did to the sisters’ maiden name. “Before you know it, we’ll see your picture plastered all over television.”
Before we knew it, we did.
The last time I saw Ann was the day after Christmas. She was wearing one of the gifts we gave her the day before, a black cape with a leopard skin collar. I often thought, I hope I look that good when I get to be her age. Then I’d remind myself: Too late. I don’t look that good now, and I’m decades younger.
Jack walked to the car with Ann and his mom, carrying their
