Revisionist History · Pushkin Industries

The Alabama Murders - Part 6: The Porterfield Sessions

October 30, 2025·33 min·3 clips

A trauma psychologist reveals why mock executions leave an unimaginable physiological imprint on survivors.

Kenneth Eugene Smith had inherited names. Kenny and his brother Joey were both named for Wesley Eugene Smith, the truck driver their mother Linda later regretted honoring that way. Linda still lives in the Shoals. In her interview with Lee Hedgepeth, she remembers Gene as someone who did not seem ready for a child when Kenny arrived. Kenny was the oldest. Linda and Gene had five children together quickly, but the home she describes was already tense. Gene was on the road a lot. Linda says his problem was less alcohol than pills, the uppers and downers of that time. Then there was another relationship. She says Gene got involved with an underage girl and got her pregnant, while still returning to Linda. Sometimes he wanted sex. Sometimes, as the questioning slowly gets at, he came back simply to hurt her. The violence began after Kenny was born. Linda ties it to jealousy, saying Gene imagined she was doing what he was doing. She says she had a child to raise. The details come plainly: blows to the head, being knocked to the floor, slaps, and a bottle that left a scar. The episode is already heavy. Earlier recap material places Kenny near execution, strapped to a gurney while people worked on an IV line for three and a half or four hours. That scene is procedural and cold. Linda's interview pulls the story back into Kenny's childhood and the damage around it. The point is not to make anything neat. It asks what a legal story leaves out when a man becomes a conviction and a gurney. A mother answers careful questions, and the episode lets those answers trouble what listeners think they know about Kenny Smith.

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