Uncovering theSecrets BehindBoss Brooks

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

“Your grandfather faked his death.”

I received this shocking news when I was in college. All I knew before that was that my grandfather, Lytle Boss Bingham, a bank manager in the small town of Saltillo, Tennessee, died in 1931 in a fiery car crash. For more than four decades, the details surrounding his death were kept silent—although rumors and suspicion lingered.

My curiosity about this “man of mystery” increased over time, and it became my mission upon retirement to discover exactly what, how, and why it happened. To my good fortune, Leon Alligood, a well-respected journalist and storyteller, agreed to collaborate with me.

For over ten years, Leon and I have researched, investigated, and travelled to uncover facts that reveal what really happened. It’s been quite a journey. And I am proud to announce that our book, Boss Brooks: A True Story of Fraud, Family, and Forgiveness from Tennessee to Texas, is now published by the University of Tennessee Press. It is the first full, public telling of this fascinating, 90-plus-year-old story.

Kathy follows her aunts into a field on their way to find the location of Brooks’ creek side camping spot. Photo by Leon Alligood.
Kathy Bingham Turner

Kathy Bingham Turner is a native Tennessean who grew up hearing fragments of stories about her grandfather, Lytle “Boss” Bingham—some true, others less so. In 1975, as a college student, Turner learned the truth from her father: her grandfather had not died in a car fire in 1931, but had fled Tennessee and begun a second life in West Texas under a different name. She met her grandfather’s Texas children that same day, yet everyone on both sides was instructed not to speak of it again.

After retiring from a decades-long career in human resources at Gannett, Turner set out to uncover the story behind that long-held secret. Turner’s meticulous genealogical research, countless interviews, and journeys between Saltillo, Tennessee, and Sherwood, Texas, became the foundation for Boss Brooks. With compassion and candor, she weaves together a century-spanning narrative of deception, redemption, and the ties that endure through generations. The journey affirmed a belief  that guides her today: “No family secrets.”

Turner approaches her family’s history with steadiness rather than judgment, choosing to understand the pressures and loyalties on both sides of her grandfather’s divide. Boss Brooks is her first book.

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Leon Alligood

Leon Alligood was born in Florida, raised in Georgia, and has spent most of his adult life in Tennessee. A graduate of the University of Georgia’s Henry Grady School of Journalism, he earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College near Baltimore.

His journalism career spanned four decades, including work for the Clinton Courier News, Nashville Banner, and The Tennessean. Known for his “backroads” reporting, Alligood traveled to all 95 Tennessee counties covering fires, floods, and the lives of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. His work earned awards from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, and Tennessee Press Association, and twice took him overseas as an embedded reporter with the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2008, Alligood joined Middle Tennessee State University’s journalism faculty, where he created a social justice journalism minor and advised Sidelines, whose student journalists won more than 120 national and regional awards. Honored with MTSU’s Kimbrell Award for excellence in teaching, he was inducted into the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame in 2017 and named a finalist for National Teacher of the Year by the Scripps Howard Fund in 2024. Upon his retirement in 2023, he was named Professor Emeritus.

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At the Sherwood Cemetery in Texas, Bobbie and Sue point out graves of family and friends. Photo by Leon Alligood.

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Boss Brooks: A True Story of Fraud, Family, and Forgiveness unravels the shocking tale of Lytle “Boss” Bingham, a Tennessee banker who faked his own death in 1931. This true crime memoir reveals hidden family secrets, dual identities, and a legacy explored through meticulous research and powerful storytelling.

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Copyright © 2025 by Kathy Bingham Turner and Leon Alligood. All Rights Reserved.
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Boss Brooks: A True Story of Fraud, Family, and Forgiveness from Tennessee to Texas is manufactured in the United States of America. Unless otherwise noted, photographs are from the Bingham or Brooks families.