Kentucky town demands apology from A&E after unflattering show

“Obviously, being labeled the town from hell can not be interpreted in any way as positive,” City Manager Donovan Blackburn wrote in a letter to network.

Blackburn said local residents cooperated in the production of the documentary show, which revolved around murders committed by a group of occultists, after a producer told them the town would be portrayed positively.

A&E acknowledged Wednesday that it received Blackburn’s letter.

“It was not the intention of A&E Network to malign the town of Pikeville, but rather to examine it through the eyes of people who live in that community and who were affected by the particular case we were profiling,” the network said in a statement Wednesday. “We are deeply sorry that the mayor’s office of the city of Pikeville was offended by the portrayal.”

“City Confidential” is billed as a show that “goes inside a unique American city and explores its colorful characters, its peculiar history, and the truth behind its hidden mystery.”

Blackburn said he watched the show when it aired on March 26 and was shocked that Pikeville was portrayed as a hillbilly haven, a stereotype people throughout the region have fought vigorously to overcome.

“You start the piece by showing a rebel flag on Julius Avenue, an overweight man without a shirt smoking a cigarette and an old pickup with a few women in the back,” Blackburn said. “As I am sure you would agree, you can go to almost any city in America and find the same.”

A description of the show on A&E’s Web site describes the Appalachian town of 6,300 as “a place where most kids will do anything to escape. Like in April of 1997, when one Pikeville girl and her five fellow teenagers took a road trip to hell.”

The show delved into the 1997 kidnappings and murders of a Tennessee couple and their 6-year-old daughter by six eastern Kentuckians now serving life sentences in prison. The couple’s 2-year-old son also was kidnapped and shot, but he survived.

Tennessee prosecutors said the six held a bizarre ritual in a Pikeville motel room that included self-mutilation and bloodletting before they left on the road trip. The reputed ringleader of the group, then-19-year-old Natasha Cornett, had told her attorney she was the daughter of Satan.

According to prosecutors, Cornett saw the movie “Natural Born Killers,” decided she wanted to traverse the country killing people and began recruiting people to go with her.

Blackburn claimed in his letter to the network that the show was filled with “unbelievable misrepresentation of fact.” As a result, Mayor Frank Justice II and city commissioners passed a resolution on Monday demanding a public apology.

“We have instructed the producers of the episode to re-examine the program and, in the event that there are any factual errors, to make corrections prior to future airings,” the network said in its statement.

Justice said he fears the show has put Pikeville in such an unfavorable light that industrial recruiters will find it more difficult to convince companies to move into the town.

“We’re a progressive town,” Justice said Wednesday.