This is the tale of two clans from the backwoods of Tennessee, who lived about ten miles east of Chattanooga, in a densely-forested hollow cut by the Tennessee River. Each clan operated competing moonshine businesses, sometimes operating as many as one hundred stills each.

With such large operations, the two clans were prime targets for federal agents. In the 1940s, however, they also became targets for each other.

This week, we meet a memorable moocher named George.

Our friend George is allergic to work, and so he's developed a remarkable talent for getting others to do for him what he should be able to do for himself. Nevertheless, George was a man of ambition; he believed that the world was his oyster-- if only he could find someone to pry it open for him. And so George must've thought he had hit the jackpot when he married a prosperous fashion designer.

But George is about to learn that his pot of gold will lead him to the state penitentiary with a life sentence for murder.

It was a long, dangerous two mile walk to the Pembroke Academy, a school situated between Manchester and Concord, in New Hampshire's Merrimac County. Josie Langmaid, the pretty 17-year-old daughter of a mill worker, usually made the daily journey with a group of friends. But on the morning of October 4, 1875, Josie was running late. Her friends had already departed. On that morning, Josie walked alone.

Local landowner Brainard Gile recalled that he had passed Josie in his buggy that morning and had waved to her. Josie, with her usual cheerful disposition, waved back. And that was the last anyone saw of Josie Langmaid, until her headless corpse was discovered in a swamp.

This is the true story of Merrimac County's most astonishing murders-- and the peculiar monument that was erected to keep her memory alive.