of a man who assisted the authorities was found dead and mutilated by the Harpes in retaliation. On April 22, 1799, Kentucky Governor James Garrard placed a $300 reward on each of the Harpes' heads. Fleeing northward, the Harpes killed two men named Edmonton and Stump. When they were near the mouth of the Saline River in southern Illinois, they came upon three men encamped there and killed them. The pair then made their way to Cave-In-Rock, a natural cave on the bluffs above the Illinois bank of the Ohio River and a stronghold of the river pirate and criminal gang leader Samuel Mason. A posse had been aggressively pursuing them but stopped just short of the cave on the opposite shore in Kentucky. With their wives and three children in tow, the Harpes holed up with the Samuel Mason Gang, who preyed on slow-moving flatboats making their way along the Ohio River. While the Mason Gang could be ruthless, even they were appalled at the actions of the Harpes. After the murderous pair began to make a habit of taking travelers to the top of the bluff, stripping them naked, and pushing them off, Samuel Mason forced the Harpe brothers to leave. The Harpes then returned to eastern Tennessee, where they continued their vicious murder spree. They killed a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Hardin, and a boy named Coffey in July 1798. Soon more bodies were discovered, including those of William Ballard, who had been disemboweled and thrown in the Holston River; James Brassel, who had his throat viciously slashed and was discovered on Brassel's Knob; and John Tully. John Graves and his teenage son were found dead with their heads axed in south-central Kentucky. In Logan County, the Harpes killed a little girl, a young slave, and an entire family they found asleep in their camp. In August 1799, a few miles northeast of Russellville, Kentucky, Big Harpe bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him, the only crime for which he would later confess genuine remorse. That same month, a man named Trowbridge was found disemboweled in Highland Creek. When the Harpes were given shelter at the Stegall home in Webster County, the pair killed an overnight guest named Major William Love, as well as Mrs. Moses Stegall's four-month-old baby boy, whose throat was slit when he cried. When