This led to a unique episode in American history where the next governor, Lamar Alexander, was sworn in a few days before his term was scheduled to begin to stop Blanton’s pardons.
Once away from the position of governor, Blanton continued to get in the news for the wrong reasons. In 1981, he was convicted of selling liquor licenses to friends and political supporters. He was sentenced to 22 months in prison for this offense.
Blanton died in 1996 after thankfully never regaining the influence he had in the 1970s. Like all great scandal magnets, though, we are still learning about the extent of what he did.
On February 1, 1979, after Blanton had been removed from office, a businessman (and yet another scandal machine) named Sam Pettyjohn was murdered in a beer shop he owned. It was believed that a bank robber named William Edward Alley committed the crime, but the case went cold.
In 2021, though, investigators announced breakthroughs in what likely happened. In short, Pettyjohn was executed because he “knew too much.” Pettyjohn was involved in Blanton’s cash-for-parole scheme, and when the FBI started looking into Blanton, he became an informant. Alley was then paid to kill Blanton, and this hit had been traced back to Blanton’s administration.