The Savage Killing of a Small-Town Teacher and Her Teen Daughter

It only took a few years for a tiny, picturesque Kentucky town to go from the “Most Beautiful Small Town in America” to a place where residents felt they had to barricade their doors at night, a natural response to five unsolved murders. And in the most brutal killing of them all, it only took about 15 minutes for some faceless monster to savagely beat 16-year-old high school student Samantha Netherland to death and fatally shoot her mother, special-ed teacher Kathy Netherland, and slash both their throats. Who would want to kill such harmless residents of Bardstown, a town of only 13,000 people? The loved ones of the Netherlands want answers, as do plenty of other Bardstown residents still shell-shocked by the four other murders that came in rapid succession from 2013 to 2016. Jason Ellis, a well-respected police officer, trapped and ambushed on a highway exit ramp in May 2013. Crystal Rogers, a mother of five, presumed dead in the summer of 2015 after vanishing without a trace. And her father, Tommy Ballard, blown away by gunfire in late 2016 after apparently getting closer to finding answers in his daughter’s death. Sign up for Beast Inside and join us as we try to make sense of these harrowing murders in our special Beast Files series.