An Appalachian Preacher’s Fall: Bigamy, Abduction and Deceit

A preacher with five wives, a kidnapped teenage girl, and a cross-country manhunt. This isn’t fiction, it’s the unbelievable true story of Joseph Herman Johnson, a Primitive Baptist minister whose lies and crimes unraveled in an East Tennessee courtroom in 1927. From bigamy to abduction to a bizarre promise of Hollywood stardom to his victim, this episode covers one of the most twisted scandals in Appalachian history, another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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