244: Psycho Snake-Handling Preacher Serves 99-Year Sentence

"Psycho Preacher" is what Darlene Summerford called her ex-husband, Glenn, an Appalachian Pentecostal pastor who tried to murder Darlene with a poisonous serpent used in religious ceremonies. Officers who worked the case said they had never seen anything like it— a 5-foot-long rattlesnake used as a deadly weapon. But the circumstances of the crime quickly became a "he-said, she-said" argument. With almost no eyewitnesses other than the victim and the perpetrator and very little physical evidence, many doubted the trial would end in a conviction. And this crime has continued to haunt the sleepy town of Scottsboro for decades to come.