Widow: Moonshiner took his life to avoid prison
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 6:08pm EST
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
Famed Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, whose incorrigible bootlegging ways were as out of step with modern times as his hillbilly beard and overalls, took his own life rather than go to prison for making white lightning, his widow says.
"He couldn't go to prison. His mind would just not accept it. ... So credit the federal government for my husband being dead, I really do," Pam Sutton told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday from the couple's home in the Parrottsville community, about 50 miles east of Knoxville.
He wrote a paperback called "Me and My Likker" and recorded videos on how to make moonshine. The History Channel featured him in a 2007 documentary called "Hillbilly: The Real Story."
