Case of the Chief and the Wino Divides Town : Enforcement: The town drunk died and a lawman is accused of putting castor oil or steering fluid in his bottle. The case has split the community.

Police Chief Gene King, the only law officer in this mountain hamlet, said that all he wanted to do was clean up Main Street. Now he stands accused of causing the death of the town’s favorite wino by spiking his stash of wine with castor oil--or perhaps steering fluid from his police car.

Clay’s 940 residents are divided over whether King is a hero or a villain.

Dana Love, 66, an infantryman twice wounded in World War II, died of pneumonia three weeks after witnesses said King bragged that he had spiked Love’s bottle.

Love’s brother, Earnest Love, swore out a criminal complaint charging King with attempted murder after county prosecutor Richard Facemire said he could not bring charges.

“He’s admitted to putting stuff in the bottle. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be,” Love said. “If I shot you with a pistol, that’s attempted murder whether there’s a hole in you or not.”

King is free on $20,000 bond. The Town Council recently voted 3 to 2 to keep him on the job pending the outcome of the case,

“It’s really divided this community,” Facemire said.

Rocky bluffs rise hundreds of feet on each side of the town, which amounts to a half-mile strip of small cinder-block and brick one- and two-story storefronts.

The muddy Elk River snakes behind the buildings on one side. Modest white frame homes, churches and Clay Elementary School dot the steep hill on the other.

“It’s the kind of place where you can leave your keys in your car and your doors unlocked,” said Town Recorder Betty Murphy.

But Clay County also has the state’s fifth-highest unemployment rate--11% recently--said Steve Shackelford, analyst for the state Division of Employment Security.

Dana Love was one of a handful of people who hung around drinking at the downtown Henry Clay Hotel. He had bounced from construction work to coal mining to street sweeping to manufacturing before returning to Clay about 1970, his brother said.

He lived alone in a shack with no running water on the 23-acre farm he and seven brothers and sisters grew up on, according to his brother.

Even family members called Dana Love a wino.

Every morning, he would hitch a ride down the hill to town. One of the first stops was always State Store No. 86, where he would buy a big green bottle of Gibson’s White Port Wine.

“He called it the ‘Big Bird’ because it has a big eagle on the label,” said clerk Mary Workman. “He’d always walked in and say, ‘Hello, bootlegger,’ and I’d say, ‘Hello, wino.’ ”

Although many people said Love was usually drunk and always smelled bad, few have bad words for him.

“He was a nice old man. He never hurt nobody,” said Valerie Pringle, clerk at Dollar General Store. “He’d come in and shop, talk to people a little bit. It’s a shame he died.”

Sometimes, Love would visit the Clay Senior Center, a one-room building two doors from the hotel.

“Dana never bothered nobody,” said A.C. Ferrebee, who drives a shuttle bus for the center. “He never hurt anybody except himself. Dana Love drank seven days a week.”

Murphy said Love used to stop by Clay’s 10-by-20-foot Town Hall to give her four-leaf clovers.

“He smelled of wine all the time, but he never seemed to stagger,” she said.

King, by contrast, was a rising star in Clay.

He was appointed to the $12,000-a-year post as police chief 19 months ago despite no previous police experience or training.

King, 53, worked for 26 years at Union Carbide Corp. in South Charleston and served on the Clay County Board of Education for more than 18 years.

King said in a recent interview that his main duty as police chief has been to clean up Main Street.

Others concede that the drunks were a problem.

“Winos would hit people up for money outside the general store here,” said Clinton Nichols, publisher of the weekly Clay County Free Press and former county commissioner.

“It’s embarrassing for women to have to deal with that. You couldn’t trust the girls walking by them. It was trying to do something good that got King in trouble.”

King said he often chased Love and others from the alley beside the hotel, but he also often drove them home because it was cheaper than arresting them and taking them 20 miles to the Braxton County Jail. Clay County has no jail.

King said he sometimes did more.

Once, he said, he covered a garbage can with tar so Joey Smith, one of Love’s friends, would not sit on it.

King said he also poured bacon grease on a grassy area near the river where Love and others passed the time. He once poured honey over a pile of logs they squatted on in an effort to attract bees.

“It may have not been nice, but that’s all there is to do,” King said.

Alma (Peach) Jarrett, who runs the Henry Clay Hotel, said King told her in September that he bought some castor oil and poured it in Love’s wine bottle.

King told television station WCHS-TV in October that he spiked the wine but threw the bottle away. In another interview with the station, he said he spiked a bottle with steering fluid from his police car.

“I said, ‘This’ll scare ‘em,’ and the word got around and they stopped going back there,” King said.

King said recently that he never spiked any wine.

“We had a problem with several (drunks) and one day I said, ‘I’ll fix this guy,’ ” King said recently. “That’s all that was done. I just told Peach because I knew it would get around and maybe they’d stop going back there.”

Love suffered diarrhea and vomiting for several days and was taken to the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Beckley, where he died Oct. 13, authorities said.

The body was taken to a funeral home, where it was embalmed, a procedure that hampered an autopsy, authorities said.

“My problem in this whole thing is the medical examiner’s report appears to exonerate the police chief,” Facemire said. “There was no finding of any substance. But unless it’s a metallic item, it would’ve been passed through the body, according to the state medical examiner.”

The state medical examiner has yet to issue a written report on Love’s autopsy. Facemire, saying he works too closely with King on other cases, has removed himself from the case in favor of a special prosecutor.

Many people are squarely behind King.

“All Gene King tries to do is his job,” said Fay Asbury, a worker at the senior center. “I think it’s all politics. Gene King was a fine man until he said he was thinking about running for sheriff. There’s some people who want him out of politics and this is their way of doing it.”

Some believe King should just be suspended until the investigation is completed.

“A lot of people feel that way,” said Pringle, the general store clerk.

“All I know is there’s no evidence he did anything wrong,” said Mayor Don Moore.

Love’s niece, Linda Dawson, 41, said, “I don’t think castor oil killed him, but I know it made him spend his last days on this earth hooked to a respirator in a VA hospital. It’s sad.”