Lexington's Narcotics Farm

For most of the 20th century, Lexington was the drug addiction capital of the nation. Not because of its citizens, but because of the inmates at the U.S. Narcotics Farm - also known as the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, the NIH Clinical Research Center, and the Federal Medical Center.

Construction started in 1933, and was completed in 1935. From then on, some of the worst drug-addiction cases around the nation found their way to the good old Kentucky hills. As the popularity of Heroin grew in beatnik musician and literary circles, celebs and celebs-to-be like William S. Burroughs, Chet Baker, and boxer Barney Ross ended up here for "the Lexington Cure". But as time passed, the center's ideas for treatment of drug addiction remained laughably primitive. According to a 1962 survey, the hospital had a success rate of less than 7 percent.


Burroughs mentioned his time spent at Lexington often in the course of his writings, especially his first novel Junkie, written under the pen name William Lee. He become addicted to Heroin in 1942, but managed to live in a highly adaptive state with his burden. Fellow writer Alan Ansen met Burroughs at the height of his addiction, and described him as a "totally autonomous personality". Ansen was impressed with Burroughs' eloquence and intelligence, and his ability "to use drugs without losing consciousness or articulateness".

The "cures" at Lexington were useless and Burroughs remained an addict. It wasn't until 1957 that Burroughs was permanently cured of drug addiction in the U.K. by Dr. John Yer­bury Dent's ground-breaking apomorphine therapy. Upon returning to the states a healthy man, he tried to interest the docs at the Lexington farm about Dr. Dent's discoveries. None of them would listen. They preferred their own ineffective and barbaric methods.

By the late 1960s, however, the public and the media gradually became aware of the psychiatric atrocities taking place, and the Center's reputation grew more and more infamous. An article in the Lexington Herald in the early 1970s exposed cruel and bizarre "treatments": "Some of the patients were stripped of their clothing and their pubic hair burned off, that some of the male patients' genitals were placed in ice water for long periods of time."

The junk really hit the fan when it was learned that tax dollars were funding wild experiments, with hundreds of federal convicts volunteering as human guinea pigs and being rewarded with Heroin and cocaine! The institution was dealing smack and coke even as it was raking in the megabucks to try to fight these drugs. And partially declassified CIA documents relating to the controversial MK-ULTRA program not only mention the Lexington hospital as a place of interest, but as an actual CIA-cooperative asset:

Because of the unconventional use of the materials involved, CD has had added difficulty in obtaining expert services and facilities to conduct tests and experiments. Some of the activities are considered to be professionally unethical and in some instances border on the illegal. These difficulties have not been entirely surmounted but good progress is being made. Another problem is raised by the lack of professional knowledge of lysergic acid, the basic substance with which CD is concerned...

The National Institute of Mental Health conducts tests on its ape colony to study the effects of P1, and knockout material and has provided much information of operational value. Human experimentation is more difficult to accomplish. The best results have been obtained from mental institutions such as [one line redacted] Narcotics Addiction Hospital, Lexington, Ky., [one line redacted].

An arrangement is in process with the [one line redacted] which is expected to produce valuable results. Even with all the data gathered from these institutions there remains a considerable area of doubt. These tests and experiments are conducted under controlled conditions and the results may be quite different from those obtained in the operational use of the material. In this respect, [half-line redacted] must be experimental as well. Much more testing must be conducted before the behavior program can be considered to have accomplished its objective. [One-half page redacted]

In 1974 the center was turned into a federal prison but maintained a sideline as a run-of-the-mill psychiatric hospital until 1998, when two inmates allegedly killed each other and it was decided to move all psychiatric prisoners elsewhere. Currently the prison houses, last I checked, 1,530 men and 284 women.

Prisoners Burn Northpoint

Friday night, a riot erupted at Burgin's Northpoint Prison, resulting in four injured and the building moderately damaged by fire. According to the Associated Press, "Officials would not say what caused the rioting".

According to a reader post made to a WLEX-TV news report:

"I have a brother there. I spoke with him at approx. 8 o'clock an he described it as hell breaking loose. It seems that the inmates that have become irate are angry because they feel that the eating conditions are deplorable which are causing the inmates to become sick. however the alternative is to purchase their food from the canteen which is being raised constantly by it's vendor Aramark. Leaving the inmates unable to purchase the vending food and they are angry and hungry".

The Danville Advocate-Messenger is reporting that the prison had been on lockdown since Tuesday, when one group of inmates assaulted two others. On Friday, some inmates started setting fires in trash cans as a sign of protest. It's also being reported that some prisoners were allowed to smoke cigarettes, and that this could also be blamed for their having access to matches. (Great. The anti-smoking fanatics among us will probably have a field day with that one.)

Interestingly, it's being reported that the kitchen and canteen were totally destroyed, and that it seemed to be the centerpiece of the arson attack. This may or may not lend credence to that WLEX reader comment about the riot being related to intolerable food quality. Still other sources are claiming the melee was racially motivated.


Northpoint has a pretty interesting history. According to their website's "About us" page, it was originally constructed as the Kentucky state mental hospital. In 1941, the Pentagon assumed control of the facilities and made it a military institution for Army soldiers suffering from psychiatric illness. Towards the close of the war, the site became a compound to contain Nazi POWs, probably including some for Operation Paperclip, a then-classified program to recruit Nazis into service for our own military-industrial complex. The Government renamed the site "Darnell Hospital" for their purposes, not sure why.

The Kentucky Department of Corrections took control of the property (which consists of 551 acres and approximately 50 buildings) in 1983 and it became Northpoint, a medium-security institution with a stated capacity of 1,256 inmates.

I'm also a little confused about the prison's whereabouts. News stories alternately refer to it as being in Burgin or Danville, and Google Maps actually lists it as being in both. Northpoint's website gives their address as being 710 Walter Reed Road in Burgin, yet Google Maps clearly shows that 710 Walter Reed Road is actually at a halfway point between the two, closer to Faulconer. Chalk it up to vaguely-defined rural boundaries, I reckon.


There's a cemetery on Northpoint's sprawling grounds, dating back to the Darnell days. According to findagrave, only two of the graves are identified with names and dates, and that there used to be an abandoned cremation oven on the premises until approximately 1982. From geneaological records, we do know some of the names of the many people interred here, which findagrave also has available here.

Dangerous Trio of Escapees

Three more escaped convicts are on the loose in Kentucky.

According to the the Kentucky State Police, the three escapees assaulted three Carroll County men - beating them and and tying them up in a house near Sanders, KY. The three victims were flown to a Louisville hospital. Richard Marshall, 59, of Sanders, is still there and in stable condition. The other two, Keith Marshall, 56, and Barry Marshall, 50, were treated and released.

The Madison Courier describes the three escapees:

• Bobby Cockerell III, 31, of Jeffersonville, IN. Cockerell is white, about 6-foot-2, weighs about 220 pounds and has brown eyes and brown hair. He has scars on his left hand, lower arm and face. "Char-lee" is tattooed on his upper chest and lower neck. "Wizard" is tattooed on his left shoulder, and a skull is tattooed on his left inner forearm. He has a birthmark on his abdomen.

• Jerry Sargent, 59, of Dry Ridge, KY. Sargent is described as white, about 6-food-5, weighs 210 pounds and has blue eyes and red hair. He wears glasses and has the word, "Panama" tattooed on his upper left arm. He has family in the Grant County, KY, area, and police said he might be trying to contact them. He escaped from another prison in 1974, according to court records.

• Christopher J. Marshall, 49, of Monon, IN, who police said is not related to the Marshalls who were beaten and bound. Marshall is described as white, about 5-foot-8, weighs 188 pounds and has green eyes and brown hair. He usually keeps his hair tied in a ponytail and has a long, unkempt beard. He wears glasses and walks with a noticeable limp. His right leg is shorter than the left, and he has a built-up shoe on his right foot. He has a scar on his lower right arm and surgical marks and scars on his right foot, upper left leg and lower right leg. He also has tattoos of a skull with axes on his upper back, a chain with a skull on his right ankle and multiple tattoos on both arms.

These geniuses are apparently traveling together, which is, like, the dumbest possible thing a trio of escaped convicts could do. Maybe they saw O Brother, Where Art Thou and mistook its plot for solid advice. The truck they're driving around in is a dull green 1998 4X4 Ford Ranger pickup truck with a super cab and Kentucky license number 7824 BZ. The truck has a dent on a rear fender and part of the lower spoiler on the front end is missing.

Do not, not, not follow or interact with these suave gentlemen if you see them. They are armed and considered dangerous (Anyone who would willingly tattoo the word "Wizard" on their body is clearly not to be trusted).

Powerless Prisons

According to Lisa Lamb, the spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Corrections, it's expected that the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville and the Western Kentucky Correctional Complex in Fredonia will be without electricity for at least four or five more weeks.

Lamb says emergency generators and kerosene heaters are being brought in to try to help keep the inmates warm. All prisoners in both institutions are on lockdown during the blackout.

According to WLKY, "extra blankets have been shipped from other prisons to the penitentiary and the department is trying to lease more generators for the prison".

I had always kind of assumed that these giant, multi-million dollar prisons had their own personal backup generator system for occasions like this. Guess not.