CRIME HUNTER: Why did Kentucky porn star Kelsey Michaels murder roommate?
· Toronto Sun
It’s rare to see a woman from Boston, New York or Philly embark on a sexxx-rated career in porn.
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More often than not, the starlets emerge from California, Florida, Arizona, Vegas and Texas. But there is also a huge swath from the backwaters of Tennessee, the Carolinas and Kentucky .
The latter group often started underage in southern jiggle joints and honky tonks before taking the geographical cure and boarding a westbound Greyhound .
Often, there is little to keep them in these sad-ass burgs, so they take maybe their only asset (looks and sex appeal) and land in the San Fernando Valley.
Reborn as a porn queen
One of these girls was Danelle Powell.
Born in Somerset, Kentucky (population 12,000) in 1986, she was 19-years-old when she put Kentucky in the rearview mirror. And under the warm, California sun the pretty, petite brunette reinvented herself as porn queen Kelsey Michaels.
Cops said that somewhere along the way, Danelle Powell faded away and Kelsey Michaels emerged.
In a three-year career in Porn Valley, the Kentucky native appeared in 55 pornographic videos. Among the entries in her cinematic CV: Barely Legal 53 , Couples Seduce Teen 4 , Frisky Babysitters and Teens in Need .
‘I love to stand out’
She described herself as a person who does “allot [sic] of things on impulse.”
“I love living on the edge, it’s more fun that way to just feel that adrenaline rush,” she wrote. “I don’t like to take the path that everyone else does. I love to stand out … If you ask my friends they will tell you, you never know what to expect from me.”
Indeed. Her final entry from the smut centres of Southern California came in 2009’s Jack’s Playground 37 .
The porn business is not for the faint of heart. The hours are long and there is significant wear and tear on the body. Drug abuse is rife and many of the starlets are broken even before they arrive.
Scores of stars end up in the morgue every year, most from drug overdoes or suicide.
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Victim was a social bug
What Kelsey Michaels’ intervening years were like is anyone’s guess. By 2019, she looked pale and gaunt. Gone was the cute teenager, in her place was an obviously broken woman clearly struggling with drug addiction.
Back in Pulaski County, Kentucky, she met Gerald Avalon Hendricks, 53, a white trash provocateur. Hendricks was into all manner of crime, including rape and drug trafficking.
Kelsey Michaels moved in with Hendricks Nephew Corky and mother of two LeeAnna Brumley, 25.
What went on in the household is anyone’s guess. What is known is that on May 22, 2019, Brumley vanished.
Like the others, she had endured serious drug addiction issues.
“If you were going to talk to her, she was a social bug. If you talked to her, she would talk to you. I think where LeeAnna talked to her (Kelsey Michaels) on Facebook. They got a connection,” Duggins said.
Body set on fire
Brumley was reported missing by her mom on June 4, 2019. Days later, her body was discovered in a field off Charter Oaks Rd. in northern Pulaski County.
She had been shot to death and it was determined she had been smashed in the head with a hatchet.
Her body had been set ablaze.
“At some point, LeeAnna Brumley was led away from that residence, led to a rural area in northern Pulaski county. The information that we got was that she was shot, and then struck in the head with a hatchet, and then burned,” Lt. Bobby Jones said. “It was brutal circumstances that she went through.”
Jones added that cops believed Brumley had been murdered elsewhere and her remains were later dumped in the field.
Two weeks later, cops made their visit to the former porn star’s house. It didn’t take long for them to zero in. Danelle Powell, aka Kelsey Michaels, told them everything.
She told detectives that Hendricks threatened to kill her three children if she didn’t park a bullet in poor LeeAnn Brumley. At the time, he was facing a slew of rape charges. She was charged with first-degree murder, a death penalty bounce in the Bluegrass State.
The rape and kidnapping charges were unrelated to the homicide. Also charged was Hendrick’s nephew, Corky Henricks, 39. At the time of the arrests, he was locked up for charges unrelated to the Brumley murder, including cultivating marijuana and possessing a handgun as a convicted felon.
Why Hendricks wanted Brumley dead is anyone’s guess.
“I mean, you don’t expect the worst out of it, you just expect the best. We all expected LeeAnna to come out of nowhere, but she didn’t,” said Faith Duggins, Brumley’s sister.
“I mean, there’s been rumours of her being smashed with a hammer, tied up. It is horrible. All we did is go for months, since May, going through hell about it.”
No way out for accused
But there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room for the accused and the real Danelle Powell showed up to plead guilty in a plea for manslaughter that earned her eight years in prison.
Corky Lee Hendricks was sentenced to five years for tampering with evidence.
“Mastermind” Gerald Avalon Hendricks, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter in 2024.
Shockingly, the court didn’t deliver much time for such an insidious crime, the murder of a young mother. It’s likely we would not have even heard of it if not for the killer’s short-lived career in porn.