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tell me that drugs don’t harm people? How can you?’
    Keith Gaultney was off again on one of his regular ranting matches with Kathy. But this time she decided to respond. She was fed up with himgoing on and on about drugs. It was time for some home truths.
    ‘Well, pot is hardly any more harmful than all that booze you drink.’
    Kathy was hitting back. OK, she could not defend the use of heavier drugs, but as far as she was concerned her narcotics overlords were only dealing in cannabis. Where was the harm in that?
    But her husband did not quite see it that way.
    ‘Drugs are drugs. One type leads to another. It’s as simple as that.’
    Kathy was concerned about her husband’s attitude because he was unshakable. Nothing would convince him that pot might not be so bad. She feared that he might one day do something about her involvement with the notorious Dean family.
    But it wasn’t just drugs that were tearing the Gaultney family apart. Keith’s drinking had become a morning, noon and night-time obsession. The only work left to him was the opening of bottles. His reward – consuming the contents.
    By the time Kathy got home after a hard day running the beauty salon followed by hours of weighing a fortune’s worth of cannabis, she was exhausted. Yet, she would be expected to make them all dinner. Bath her son. Get both kids to bed and attend to her husband’s every whim and command. It was simply proving too much for her to handle.
    Some nights she would stay on at the shop in Collinsville and have a drink with her great friend and partner Martha, because it was infinitely preferable to going home to face Keith and the kids.
    But Kathy knew things could not just go on like that for ever. When she got home late yet again one night in February, 1988, Keith rounded on her and started threatening her. She decided she’d had enough.
    As Keith ranted and raved about ‘those damn drug peddlers’, she packed a suitcase, grabbed both the kids and headed out the front door. A few days later, she filed for divorce. But what disturbed her the most was that each time she tried to have a sensible conversation with Keith on the phone, he would start up again about those drugs. But this time he was more adamant.
    ‘I reckon the authorities would like to hear all about those scumbags you work for.’
    Kathy did not like the sound of what she was hearing. The ramblings of a drunken, vindictive husband were one thing. But a threat to destroy everything she had built up so carefully was another matter altogether.
    She could sense from the tone of his voice that he was contemplating taking this whole business a much more dangerous stage further.

     
    ‘It’s the perfect weapon for a single lady.’
    The assistant in the gun shop in Collinsville might as well have been trying to sell Kathy Gaultney a piece of jewellery. But then that’s America for you. A reasonable gun costs about the same as a nice ring. And it’s just as easy to buy!
    By then Kathy was looking at purchasing a .22 ‘Saturday Night Special’. In a country where some states have more deaths from gunshot wounds than car crashes, it’s no great surprise when a woman walks into a shop wanting to buy a gun.
    As she handled the snub-nosed pistol over the counter of the shop, she knew she had to buy it. The stress and strain of running a legit beauty salon and an illicit drugs factory, and contemplating a divorce from her alcoholic husband was driving her to consider desperate measures in order to maintain the happiness she so needed.
    ‘Do ya think it’ll make my husband stop abusing me?’
    It seemed a strange question to ask a guy who was trying to sell you a gun. But Kathy wanted some reassurance.
    ‘I can assure you, ma’am, that no husband in his right mind will mess with one of those things.’
    By the time Kathy Gaultney enrolled at a nearby shooting range for expert training on how to handle that gun, her husband’s threat to blow the whistle onher