Autopsy ordered for famed Appalachian moonshiner who died days before he was to enter prison

An autopsy has been ordered for famed Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, who died Monday just days before he was to report to prison.

Cocke County Coroner Terry Jarnagin said Tuesday there was no evidence of foul play but suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning was suspected. The autopsy was being performed at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.

Sheriff's detective Bryan Murr said the 62-year-old Sutton was found in his old Ford Fairmont by his wife Monday afternoon on his property in the Parrottsville community, about 50 miles east of Knoxville.

He was pronounced dead in the Cocke County Baptist Hospital emergency room shortly before 6 p.m., Jarnagin said.

The author of the book "Me and My Likker" pleaded guilty in April to illegally producing distilled spirits and being a felon in possession of a handgun.

Sutton had been ordered to report to federal prison Friday to serve an 18-month sentence.

An undercover operation by the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission busted Sutton in 2008.

Authorities who searched his home and a storage unit in Maggie Valley, N.C., said they found just under 1,700 gallons of moonshine, three stills capable of producing up to a thousand gallons of alcohol and large supplies of moonshine ingredients. They also found firearms and ammunition.

At his January sentencing, prosecutors played videos showing Sutton surrounded by guns and demonstrating how to make moonshine.

The defense offered petitions of support for Sutton signed by hundreds of people from North Carolina and Tennessee. "We trust him in any matters of great importance in our everyday lives and would welcome him as a neighbor," the petitions said.

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer decided he couldn't give probation to a man who had been convicted five times. But he said he considered Sutton's age and medical condition and decided on less than the maximum sentence.

"If 18 months doesn't deter you, I don't think 24 months will either," Greer told Sutton.

Sutton's record stretched back to at least 1974, when he was charged by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms with multiple violations of liquor tax laws. He was convicted in Haywood County, N.C., in the 1980s on charges of possessing controlled substances and assault with a deadly weapon.

In 2007 firefighters putting out a fire at his Parrottsville property discovered 650 gallons of untaxed alcohol, leading to a probationary sentence on Tennessee charges of untaxed liquor.