Popcorn Sutton
Marvin Sutton was an American Appalachian moonshiner and bootlegger. Sutton committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in March 2009, aged 62, rather than report to federal prison after being convicted of offenses related to moonshining and illegal firearm possession. A new company and associated whiskey brand have been named after him.
About Popcorn Sutton in brief
Marvin Sutton was an American Appalachian moonshiner and bootlegger. Sutton committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in March 2009, aged 62, rather than report to federal prison after being convicted of offenses related to moonshining and illegal firearm possession. He wrote a self-published autobiographical guide to moonsHining production, self-produced a home video depicting his moonshine activities, and was later the subject of several documentaries. A new company and associated whiskey brand have been named after him. Sutton was a Scots-Irish American and descended from a long line of moonshiners. He was given the nickname of \”Popcorn\” after his frustrated attack on a bar’s faulty popcorn vending machine with a pool cue in the 1960s or 1970s. He had been in trouble with the law several times, but had avoided prison sentences. Sutton’s first appearance in a feature film was in Neal Hutcheson’s 2002 documentary, Mountain Talk, as one of various people of southern Appalachia featured in this film focused on the \”mountain dialect\” of the area.
The source footage from the 2002 documentary was also re-worked into a PBS documentary, The Last One, which was released in 2008 and was broadcast on PBS. It received a 2009 Southeast Emmy Award. In March 2008, Sutton told an undercover federal officer that he had 500 gallons of moonshines in Tennessee and another 400 gallons in Maggie Valley that he was ready to sell. This led to a raid of his property by the ATF, led by Jim Cavanaugh of Waco siege notoriety. In 2007, a fire on Sutton’s property in Parrottsville led to firefighters discovering 650 gallons of untaxed alcohol there, for which he was convicted and put on probation again by Cocke County authorities. Sutton, who had used a public defender as his attorney in the case and had pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 18 months in a federal prison for illegally distilling spirits and possession of a firearm.
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This page is based on the article Popcorn Sutton published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
