MAN DIES OF SNAKE BITE. SECOND MEMBER OF RELIGIOUS
SECT TO DIE IN FOUR DAYS; BITTEN DURING SERVICES
County Attorney Dennis Wooton listed Jim Cochran, 39, unemployed mechanic, today as the second member of an eastern Kentucky snake-handling religious sect to die within four days as the result of bites suffered during church services.
Bitten on the right hand Sunday morning Cochran, married and father of several children, died 18 hours later at his home at nearby Duane.
Mrs. Clark Napier, 40, mother of seven children, died Thursday night at Hyden, coal-mining community in adjacent Leslie county, and County-Judge Pro-Tem Boone Begley said she had been bitten at services.
Wooton said Jimmy Stidham, Lawsie Smith and Albert Collins were fined $50. each after Cochran’s death on charges of violating the 1940 anti-snake-handling law. Unable to pay, they were jailed, he said.
Elige Bowling, a Holiness church preacher, is under bond pending grand jury action on a murder charge in the death of Mrs. Napier. Wooton said Perry county officials would be guided on further prosecution in the Cochran case by disposition of the Leslie county case.
—Corbin, Ky., Times
Finding themselves in the throes of the law, members of the snake-handling sect at times turned to drinking poison in testing their faith. There was no legislation to prevent it, the leaders craftily observed. However, in some southern mountain states such a measure has been advocated.