The Devil Reads the Bible

CHAPTER XVI

THE DEVIL READS THE BIBLE

NOT LONG BEFORE THE CLEANUP, the Phenix City Junior Chamber of Commerce sent questionnaires to graduating seniors at Central High School. Now that you are graduating, the questionnaire asked, in effect, what do you hope to do?

Eighty per cent of the boys replied that their ambition was to get into the "bug,*' or lottery', racket. To the Reverend John B. Trantham this was expected, but nevertheless depressing. As minister of the Girard Baptist Church, he had set his goals on aiding the youth in his community, but he was a realist who recognized the problems with which he had to deal.

"Don't just be good. Be good for something," was Dr. Tramham's credo. He wanted to be good for the children, but he knew their difficulties.

'' The most accepted people in town were the racketeers," Dr. Trantham declared. "They drove the biggest cars. They wore the nicest clothes. More people slapped them on the back. That's what the children saw,"

Many youngsters were raised in homes where parent played the bug daily. Adolescents, grown into adulthood in Phenix City, accepted that way of life as being neither illegal, immoral, nor undesirable. Grownups did not wish to recognize that their community had a larger share of evil than other cities. They raised the constant defensive cry that gambling and corruption existed everywhere.

A minister in Phenix didn't want for work if he was conscientious, but even when the clergy banded together to wipe out vice, their efforts were of little lasting effect. Seldom could they close down the city for more than three days at a stretch.

It required a layman, Hugh Bentley, to put a backbone into most of the preachers. Some had fought the criminal element so long and fruitlessly that they had wearied of the struggle.

Others were willing to overlook conditions and compromise their goals in order to avoid friction. Phenix City is in that part of the Bible Belt which runs through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. In 1954, the city proper contained thirty-seven white churches and thirteen churches for Negroes, or, an average of one church for every 450 residents.

The top political-gambling combine had seized control of the churches. Ministers who opposed them from the pulpit were framed and often transferred. Yet, to prove they were good people at heart who believed in religion, the kingpins kicked in with heavy donations. In fact, more contributions could be obtained from the gambling element in two weeks than the remainder of the congregation could or would donate in two years.

It was in 1946 that Bentley took on the machine almost by himself. He was invited to speak before the Inter-City Club, composed of religious and civic groups, including the Phenix City Ministerial Alliance. The meeting was held at the Recreation Center.

Bentley spoke on "Phenix City's Problems and Possible Solutions." Discussing the Lord's Prayer, he pointed out that Phenix City's problems were not so much economic, social, or political as they were moral.

"I have maintained from the beginning," Bentley said, "that all this has been a religious matter. Until the people do something about the moral breakdown that allows gambling, unholy Sabbaths, and prostitution to operate openly, we will never make any progress because it isn't God's will,"

At the end of his talk, Bentley was approached by the Reverend Paul Mathieson who asked him to give a similar speech at the Trinity Methodist Church on Laymen's Night,

Bentley refused. He said the church was controlled almost completely by Mayor Homer D. Cobb, head of the gangster-politburo for the city. But the Reverend Mathieson was insistent.

"Doctor," Bentley said, "I have a wife and three children. They'd burn my house down or kill me if I made that talk at your church.'*

"Are you a Christian, Mr. Bentley?"

"I try to be."

"If you are a Christian and if you refuse to suffer for Christ's' sake, you are unworthy."

Bentley could not argue against that. He agreed to the talk but warned that both the minister and himself would pay for their actions. The speech was made as planned and as predicted Mayor Cobb called on the minister,

"Why was that talk allowed in my church?" Cobb asked.

"It's not your church. It's the Lord's church," the minister replied, "The people needed the talk and should be told the truth,"

"The people already know the truth," Cobb said. "I don't want any such talks like that made in the future."

Of course there is no direct evidence that this led to the removal of the Reverend Mathieson, but when the next period occurred during which ministers could be reassigned, he was given a pulpit in another city.

Bentley took part in a movement to form the Christian Laymen, composed of pastors and three or four laymen from each church, but it was unsuccessful and short-lived. Still, the fight of religion against the gangs continued spasmodically, usually sparked by Bentley, who seemed to be one of the few to realize that final surrender of the churches would lead to a completely hopeless way of life. He was joined in his crusade by Hugh Britton.

They realized that the churches were handicapped by the system. Many church-goers, if not participating in the rackets, were fence straddlers who just didn't like to squabble. There were hypocrites galore who would attend services on Sunday morning and spend the rest of the day boozing and gambling.

Often, after a Bentley "get with it" speech, an average church member would protest against talks of that nature being allowed in the House of God.

Selfishness, fear, and ignorance played a part. The selfish said the church revenue would be cut if the combine was disturbed. They were afraid to buck the hundreds of fellow members who were part of the gambling fraternity. And there was ignorance on the part of other hundreds who refused to see what was happening to their city and their children.

"I don't go in those places. They don't bother me," was their typical attitude. It meant nothing that a Hoyt Shepherd-Jimmy Matthews pool room operated within one block of a school and three churches. Even many of the ministers, who preached against sin as a generality, never pinpointed it.

One minister approached Bentley a few days before a speech to request that conditions in Phenix City not be mentioned. Bentley, amazed, complied. Later the preacher apologized to him. He said he had been told to deliver those instructions and he did so because he had ulcers and a daughter in college, and he didn't want to lose his job.

When a pastor opposed the syndicate too vigorously, he got the treatment just like lesser men.

One such minister was at home when he received a telephone call from a woman who asked to speak with him in person. He invited her to his home, where his wife was present, but she insisted on seeing him alone at the church. He agreed to meet her there and did so. He hardly had entered the church when the woman snatched off her pants and began yelling "Rape!"

Policemen appeared almost instantly. The entire elapsed time from the woman's entrance until the police arrived was estimated by the minister at three minutes. Murders have remained unsolved for years and gambling continued in sight of the police station without interference but this time the cops were right there— "on the job."

Conditions like that made it difficult for even a minister to speak out truthfully and fearlessly. This infiltration of the churches was one of the most potent weapons the machine held over the heads of its subjects. It was almost as if the congregation could worship as it pleased so long as the way the congregation pleased also pleased the bosses.

The ministers could, on occasion, rise to meet an emergency.

In 1949, a bill to legalize horse-racing was killed in the State Legislature, Shortly thereafter a similar bill to permit horse-racing only in Russell County was advertised in the local weekly newspaper. By law, the bill had to be advertised for four weeks before it could be introduced.

Dr. Trantham, president of the Phenix City Ministerial Alliance, noticed the advertisement and literally hit the ceiling. He called a special meeting for five following day and urged each pastor to have his congregation adopt a resolution opposing the measure. More than 75 percent of the churches responded. Dr. Trantham organized civic groups as well.

Two nights before the four week deadline passed, Dr. Trantham telephoned Russell County Representative J. W, (Jabe) Brassell. He told the legislator he understood Brassell was going to introduce the horse race bill. Dr. Trantham said he remembers vividly what happened next

"You tell me who told you that and I'll sue him for slander," Brassell exploded.

"I don't know," Dr. Trantham replied. "So many people have told me . . ."

"Well, tell me some of 'em."

"It's just common talk on every street comer."

The minister said they discussed the subject further but Brassell did not deny he planned to introduce the bill so finally Trantham asked him.

"He hedged then," the minister recalled. "I assumed he was the one, I put his back to the wall. We got pretty hot on it."

Brassell invited Dr. Trantham out to his house to "look me in the eye" and repeat his conversation. Dr. Trantham, with church services almost due, accepted instantly, saying there was nothing he would prefer to looking Brassell in the eye and asking why he would sponsor a bill of that nature in view of the already existing state of affairs.

Unable to find Brassell's home. Dr. Trantham telephoned him again.

This time he ran down the list of churches and clubs which had passed resolutions against the proposed bill. The clergyman asked Brassell if he could honestly say he represented the people of Russell County with that kind of opposition already lined against him.

The bill never was introduced, and Dr. Trantham's conversation with Brassell ended very cordially with the representative inviting the minister to attend the legislature as his guest. He even offered to have the privileges of the floor extended to Dr. Trantham.

Dr. Trantham said he had been told that the higherups were planning to take over Idle Hour Park, one of the few places children could visit, and convert part of it into a race track.

"That bill would have ruined us," Dr. Trantham added. "It would have made Phenix City the gambling center of this part of the United States. We would have been a little Reno."

Trantham now is pastor of the Inglenook Baptist Church in Birmingham.

He said he found it difficult to convince members of his Birmiingham congregation that men like Hoyt Shepherd and Jimmy Matthews— personable individuals— were actually undesirable. Matthews could almost be taken for a minister himself. Dr. Trantham said, except that Matthews was too quiet. He credited Shepherd with being a top administrator whose capacities, if channeled along other lines, might have carried him to the Governor's chair on ability alone.

That, too, was what the youth of Phenix City and Russell County saw. It was what made the task of the preacher so important and yet so difficult to convince the mind— young or old— that evil doesn't always dwell in an ugly exterior.

A change came over the religious atmosphere of Phenix City immediately following the death of Albert Patterson. Ministers rose to the opportunity. For the first time in years some of them preached openly from the pulpit on the badness which walked among them. They urged, they exhorted, they preached.

The Minister's Alliance became more militant, doing the things now it had wanted to do in the past.

On the occasion when the ministers heard that Billy Graham, the evangelist, was planning to visit to Phenix City, they appeared happy at this chance to muster the forces of good in a great gathering. Graham's advance agents hit town and consulted with Major General Waiter J. Hanna about the program. Hanna advised against Graham's coming but the advancemen ignored the suggestion and went ahead with their own plans. They even contacted the Governor's office in Montgomery.

Vernon Merritt, the Governor's executive secretary, invited Graham to Phenix City, without consulting Hanna.

When Hanna heard the matter had progressed to such an extent, he made an attempt to reach the Governor and could not. He asked the ministers if they would call a meeting and let him speak to them about the problems which would be created if Graham came to Phenix City. The ministers arranged the conference and for forty-five minutes Hanna discussed the difficulties which would face cleanup authorities if the Graham pilgrimage was permitted.

Phenix City, he said, would be swamped should Billy. Graham hold a revival there. People would come from all over the Southeast, not only to hear Billy Graham, but to take his visit as an opportunity to see Phenix City. The police problem would be tremendous. With all the other responsibilities now in the hands of the Alabama National Guard in Phenix City, Hanna said, he did not see how the Guard could undertake this new task. There would be no telling what might happen.

The ministers remained somewhat hostile.

''People over the country no doubt feel that you're partly responsibility for the situation here," Hanna said, laying the facts on the line, "but we know you ministers have been beating your head against a stone wall. That's changed now. You' re going to have a field day."

From the rear of the room, came a shout. "A-men!'^'

With that cry, the ministers switched their position. Now they hung on as Hanna explained further that the people who needed Billy Graham the most would be in jail or out of town anyway and unable to hear him. When he finished, Hanna said he hoped the ministers had no ill will towards him, and suggested that he take them on a tour of the city so they would know at first hand just what had been taking place.

"I nominate General Hanna as an honorary member of the Ministerial Alliance of Phenix City," one of the preachers cried.

The motion was seconded and passed unanimously.

The tour of the city did take place with Hanna personally acting as guide. This time, unlike his speech at the meeting, he lapsed into his customary use of choice words to better explain the complete picture. After all, "a house of ill repute," does not sound as imposing as "a whorehouse," and Hanna wanted the ministers to get the full treatment, uncensored.

Seventeen ministers participated in the two-hour tour. At its conclusion, they had a better idea of just how large their assignment was as men of God. Religion in Phenix City was given a chance for re-birth.

Chapter XIX-The Russell County Betterment Association
CHAPTER XIX

'''THE RUSSELL COUNTY BETTERMENT ASSOCIATION 

MEN HAVE GROWN from boyhood to middle age, in Phenix City, under the daily influence of the most ruthless and corrupt racket machine this nation has ever known, and yet themselves aloof from the profits and pleasures that were theirs for the taking.

As kids, many of them thought nothing of spending the nickels and dimes in their pockets on the slot machines or buying a chance on the daily lottery. Some of them went even further and became frequent customer of the bootleggers or the dice tables.

The miracle of it was that so many of them, when they turned the comer into manhood, became normal citizens, married and established their homes in spite of the pervading atmosphere of vice.

These substantial citizens frequently held meetings and publicly deplored the situation at their doorstep. But they were able to accomplish little, until in 1951, a small group of brave and determined men met in the office of former State Senator Albert L. Patterson, and within two hours the Russell County Betterment Association was born.

This meeting was inspired by the treatment accorded to representatives of the Ministers' Alliance, who appeared before the Russell County Grand Jury on October 21, 1951, to plead for action to restore decency in Phenix City. The clergymen were accused of mixing politics with religion, and told to go read their prayer books.

That was the first big mistake the racket machine made. In the heart of the southern "Bible Belt" the people of the Chattahoochee Valley are deeply religious.

The treatment of the men of God outraged the citizenry, and a mild-mannered sporting-goods dealer, Hugh Bentley took the leadership with Patterson in organizing the Russell County Betterment Association.

From the first, it was decided that the membership of the organization would be kept secret, except for a ten-member board of directors. Bentley was elected as the first president of the crime-fighting group, and he had, as his right-hand men, Hugh Britton and Howard Pennington, who attended the second meeting.

Britton was a gutty little war veteran who was to prove a painful thorn in the flesh of the racket bosses. He was named as intelligence officer for the association, and it was his carefully collected information, and first-hand knowledge of crime operations, that enabled National Guard investigators to score heavily against the gamblers during the first few weeks of the cleanup.

Pennington, a contract carpenter, was a steadying hand on the helm when the going got rough. He was a slender, towering man with a ready wit and soft drawl. Friends said that even the Devil himself couldn't scare Pennington. He was a calm strategist, and good mixer. His talents were valuable in the raising of funds and in affairs political.

Bentley, who operates one of the largest stores in Columbus, although he lives in Phenix City, was a deeply religious man, one who wouldn't back up when the going got rough. He had been a professional boxer in his youth, and at the age of forty-four, could still step a few lively rounds.

There were many stalwarts who served with distinction during the dark days when it was dangerous to be known as a member of the cleanup society. Scores of others worked undercover, or supported the group financially.

The RBA wasn't the first organization that had been formed to fight crime in Phenix City. It had been preceded by such groups as The Christian Laymen's Association; the Good Government League; Phenix City Veteran's League and the Citizens Committee. None of them had even dented the calm, self-assurance of the mobsters.

But the RBA was a different kind of organization— and it had behind it a different breed of men; men who were used to getting things done and knew what sacrifices were necessary. They were ready to make those sacrifices if it would bring about a decent place In which they could rear their children.

The night of the first meeting, the score of men present were told by Bentley and Patterson in no uncertain terms what they could expect from the mob if they ever began hurt the rackets. Some of the more timid bowed out, muttering about the safety of their families. Patterson served as legal advisor to the group, and the first action decided upon was a move to impeach Sheriff H. Ralph Mathews Jr., whom they considered an important front man for the gamblers.

There were those who thought the first assault should have been made on Solicitor Arch B. Ferrell, instead of Matthews. Patterson was among those who held that opinion. He believed that from a standpoint of proving a case on impeachment, Ferrell would be the more vulnerable of the two.

But there was no denying that Sheriff Matthews was the most popular political figure in Russell County, and was the darling of the racketeers. The infant RBA felt that if he could be impeached, they would have scored an important victory against the machine forces.

To bring the impeachment, the RBA employed Roberts Brown, Opelika lawyer and Speaker of the State House of Representatives. Patterson worked with Brown in preparing the case, which charged Sheriff Matthews with malfeasance and misfeasance in office. The evidence was heard by the Alabama Supreme Court, but Sheriff Matthews called as defense witnesses nearly all of the state's top law enforcement men, including the state attorney general, Silas Garrett.

While the RBA presented proof of wide-open gambling overlooked by Matthews and his deputies, the defense proved more potent by far. One after another state and federal law enforcement officials paraded to the witness stand to testify to the good reputation of Sheriff Matthews; to the absence of gambling and vice in Russell County, and the vigor with which the sheriff enforced the law.

The Supreme Court heard, and was impressed. One member of the Attorney General's staff said he hoped that, when he died, his friends would speak as highly of him as did the witnesses for Matthews. The vote by the Supreme Court clearing Matthews of the impeachment charges was nine to zero.

Among those who testified for Matthews were L. B. Sullivan, state public safety director; Joe Smelley, chief criminal investigator for the state; Ben Scroggins, State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board agent in Russell County; and even an agent for the FBI who worked that territory.

In finding Matthews not guilty, the Supreme Court evidently could not avoid taking note of the unsavory reputation of Phenix City.

"We would be blind to realities," the court said, "if we did not acknowledge the unsavory reputation, justified or not, we do not say, which Phenix City has acquired because of alleged gambling operations there through years past. ''(Authors' Italics.)

The RBA was only a few months old when, on January 9, 1952, Hugh Bentley was approaching home, about midnight, in time to see a terrific explosion split his house apart. Inside were his wife and two sons and an infant nephew. Bentley stumbled over the prostrate form of his sixteen-year-old son, Hughbo, who had been blown from his bed and into a clump of bushes thirty feet away. Although he was half unconscious, he fortunately suffered no serious injuries. The thirty-six sticks of dynamite used to wreck the Bentley home accomplished only that purpose. The explosion didn't frighten Bentley or any of the other RBA members into quitting. By a miracle, Bentley's family suffered no permanent injuries from the dynamite blast. For this Bentley got on his knees and thanked God -then he got up to fight.

The crime-fighting organization had established its reputation for fighting and courage, A few months after Bentley's home was bombed, a group of racketeers led by "Head'"' Revel and Glenn and Ernest Youngblood, savagely beat Brittton, Bentley, Hughbo Bentley and a Columbus newspaper reporter, Tom Sellers, as they observed an election being stolen by the usual underworld tactics of buying votes or simply stuffing the ballot box.

As seven husky racketeers beat and kicked the poll watchers. a woman protested to a state highway patrolman who was standing by watching with bored interest. The state law officer shrugged. "Lady," he answered her, "they're not going to hurt them. They're just using their fists and feet.*'

That was the election in which Governor Persons had given the RBA his personal guarantee it would be clean, and free from the usual Phenix City brand of electioneering.

The victims were thwarted in attempts to swear out warrants for the assailants and the officials of the county took little action.

A month after the Bentley bombing, and while state officials and FBI men were investigating the incident, a gasoline-fed fire was set outside Patterson's office. The fire was extinguished before it could reach the important files inside.

Shortly thereafter the mobsters struck again, this time against Attorney Brown, in nearby Lee County. Brown woke up in time to save himself and his wife by climbing out of a window of their home before it was destroyed by fire.

Authorities called it arson, but, like the bombing, the election beatings, and the Patterson office fire, it never was solved.

The fire followed Brown's refusal of a $50,000 offer from the Phenix City gang to drop the case. Joe Allred, of Opelika, approached Brown with the proposition, asking that Brown withdraw the suit, or that he have a ''falling out" with the RBA, The "offer;" of course was not couched in such blunt terms.

The RBA had its own cloak-and-dagger operations. Undercover members found out much about the racketeers by pretending to be part of the machine, snooping on secret meetings and thus discovering plans and operations. Men were able to go unidentified into the dives and bawdy houses and learn first-hand what it was they had to fight. The group also employed a private investigator who obtained much valuable information about the lottery, and the amount each establishment pulled down yearly.

Wives of RBA members, and sympathisers, formed an RBA Auxiliary, and its members attended all city and county commission meetings. They persistently kept the heat on officials who were playing footsie with the machine, and publicly called upon them to get out. This group became hated and  feared by the machine almost as much as was the RBA itself.

Patterson had once represented some of the racketeers in important cases, and had tried to straddle the fence between the good and bad elements of his home town for the sake of his law practice.

In doing this, he was exercising his right as an attorney and not as a hired agent of the machine. During that time, however, the racketeers looked upon him as one of their own, with certain important reservations— they could never control him.

But his association caused many people, including some members of the RBA, to question his motives in coming all-out against the machine which had once helped elect him to state office. Patterson was a stubborn man, one not easily swayed when he made up his mind. After he took his stand against the racket forces of Phenix City, Patterson could not be scared, bought or compromised.

He numbered among his closest friends the directors of the RBA. Pennington was particularly close to him, and accompanied him all over the state in his successful bid for nomination as Attorney General.

Just two nights before Patterson's murder, he and Pennington pledged each other that, if one were killed, the other would see that the murderers were brought to justice. Both men knew that they were on the death list drawn up by the underworld and its respectable collaborators.

When Acting Attorney General Bernard F. Sykes set up offices in Phenix City to investigate Patterson's murder, two unpaid members of his staff were Pennington and Britton.

Patterson's martyrdom won the fight which the RBA had waged so bitterly, and at such cost. Today, for the moment, the RBA has friends or members in most of the elective and appointive offices from which old machine members were either ousted or forced to resign.

Like the vigilantes of the old West, this group of determined men accomplished their dangerous mission against odds that would have made men of lesser stature throw up their hands in despair.

This mission ended, they will always be ready to take up the fight again, should their home town ever again be threatened by a new rule of fear and violence.

Chapter XX-US Infantry vs. Phenix City
CHAPTER XX

U.S. INFANTRY vs. PHENIX CITY

THE 1,300,000 “DOUGHFOOT" soldiers who have passed through the nation's gigantic infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia, since the beginning of World War II, have written a glorious history of courage, often with their own blood, in the earth's most remote places. Theirs has been a proud tradition to uphold; a tradition that says the United States Infantry is the "Queen of Battle" and knows not the meaning of defeat.

The history of the infantry will not record the continuing battle of Phenix City, nor the ignominy of its defeat on the banks of the Chattahoochee.

Phenix City was in large part a product of Fort Benning, and its greatest nemesis. When Benning was first established in 1918 as a temporary infantry center, composed of tents and thrown-together buildings, Phenix City was a quiet little town in Lee County. Joining Phenix City to the south was the town of Girard, which had a bloody history running back nearly one hundred years. Girard was a part of Russell County.

The few thousand soldiers then stationed at Fort Benning soon learned that Girard was a town where a soldier could find diversion on a Saturday night. He could gamble on Dillingham Street, or find a girl who would go with him to the tree-shaded river banks,

In 1916, Alabama's Attorney General, Logan Martin, had led a clean-up of Girard which resulted in the destruction of 265,000 gallons of moonshine liquor and the cracking of the biggest illegal liquor ring ever to operate in the South.

In that clean-up, National Guardsmen were called to duty in Russell County, though martial law was not declared. The state refused to support the crusade against the bootleggers, and Martin found himself having to raise private funds from influential friends in Birmingham to finance the expedition. Martin today is one of Alabama's most eminent lawyers.

Martin's clean-up was short-lived, and by the time the recruits began moving into Fort Benning, bootleg liquor was again flowing free. As Fort Benning grew through the 1920's and 1930's, Girard continued to exact its tribute.

The sordid reputation of Girard grew to the point where the citizens of the area decided something must be done. The solution hit upon was to abolish Girard as a town, and achieve a merger with Phenix City. They hoped that the association with Phenix City would cause Girard to look to its own misdeeds—putting reverse English on the old theory about one rotten apple in the barrel.

To effect the change, the Alabama Legislature in the middle 30's approved a land swap between Lee and Russell Counties. Lee traded Phenix City to Russell for a strip of land in the southwest section of Russell County, and Girard-Phenix City set up joint housekeeping under the name of Phenix City.

Bur Phenix City fell into step with Girard instead of the other way around, and began to acquire a reputation which was to make its name synonymous with vice, crime, and corruption throughout the nation. The rotten apple that was Girard had contaminated the entire orchard.

When World War II loomed darkly on the international horizons, a great influx of America's finest fighting men was underway at Fort Benning. Payrolls at the Army base, and at adjoining Lawson Air Force Base, jumped to nearly $8,000,000 monthly, and hundreds of civilian employees at the military bases swelled the total payroll.

Fort Benning was getting ready for battle, and Phenix City was ready for Fort Benning.

Almost weekly new night spots sprang up in Phenix and its environs. Where there had been only gambling, lottery and bootlegging in the past, there now appeared the narcotics pusher and dope dens, the B-girl joints and the whorehouses.

The Army found itself with a serious problem on its hands. Almost daily hundreds of its young charges reported to sick call for treatment of ailments contracted in the cribs and backrooms of Phenix City's vice dives. Venereal disease rates jumped to alarming proportions.

The Army began sending crack teams of investigators and swarms of military police into Phenix City, and many of the worst places were declared off limits. But it was like sweeping back the tide with a whisk broom. The GIs, eager to spend their money for the tainted commodities offered in Phenix City, poured across the river in a khaki colored torrent,

As the personnel at Fort Benning swelled to near the 80,000 mark, the bloated vice lords of the nation's wickedest city expanded facilities to take care of the rush. Authorities at Fort Benning have estimated that about eighty percent of the personnel frequented the Alabama vice capital where they spent sixty percent of their pay.

The word "spent" is used loosely. It covers the losses on crooked gambling devices; muggings, rolling of soldiers and many other methods used to separate the soldier from his hard-earned pay.

Military pay alone at the base has averaged, since 1940, the staggering total of $53,000,000 yearly, according to records. This was the average in both war and peace years. In addition, civilian employees have pulled down many millions more each year to run the total to near the billion dollar mark in the fourteen years.

Estimates on the gross "take" of the vice and gambling places in Phenix City run from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 yearly during the lush war period.

But the impact of Phenix City on Fort Benning, and vice versa, can't be measured in terms of dollars alone, any more than it could be measured in the thousands of cases of venereal disease.

During those years, a number of soldiers were known to have lost their lives in the "Battle of Phenix" and rarely were their deaths avenged by prosecution. Still others, listed as AWOL and never found, may today be fertilizing with their bones the water grass chat grows from the muddy bottom of the river.

The Army keeps as classified information the number of soldiers who were beaten, maimed, rolled, dragged or robbed in Phenix. It had rather forget about the hundreds of its members who picked up the drug habit there.

Veteran taxi drivers remember, however, the dozens of drugged or beaten soldiers who were hauled, penniless, back across the river after each camp payday. The cabbies should remember. They were paid at least $2 per head for each soldier they carried to the whorehouses or gambling joints. The haul back to camp was less profitable. The trip was usually "on the cuff' since the soldier often lacked the dollar to pay the fare.

The soldiers themselves didn't always take the abuse handed out in Phenix without resistance, But singly, or in pairs, they were no match for the trained toughs who served as bouncers in the joints.

The strong-arm thugs were well equipped to handle any trouble the soldiers could start. They were armed with an array of the most vicious hand-made weapons ever seen outside of a medieval torture chamber. One of the favorite weapons used to beat soldiery into line or insensibility was a short length of chain, lightly wrapped with adhesive tape, and fitted with a padded hand grip.

When Alabama National Guardsmen shook down the joints following the declaration of martial rule, they gathered dozens of the chains, along with metal knucks, blackjacks, loaded whips, pistols, sawed-off shotguns and large-caliber rifles.

Try as it would, the Army could not cope with the situation across the river. When the places were off limits, soldiers put on civilian mufti and went in. Fort Benning authorities were aware of this but simply could not detail enough man-power to property police all of the places.

Stiff penalties were meted out to military personnel caught in off limit places, especially in civilian garb. But an MP hesitates to shake down a civilian and particularly to hold one for investigation, simply on the chance that he might be a soldier bent on a hell-raising spree.

The toughest soldiers in the world were trained at Fort Benning and taken for suckers in the clip joints of Phenix. When they tried to fight back, the joint operators, gamblers and harlots were the first to yell for military police protection.

Shortly after the end of World War II, a soldier was found dead outside the Atomic Club. His mates marched on it, only to be met by a host of club-swinging MP's. In 1951, about two hundred and fifty war-toughened Rangers rendezvoused at Beachie's Swing Club, bent on doing the job which MP's had been unable to do under military regulations —clean the joint. They found that their plans had leaked and the place was filled with officers and military police who dispersed the group.

As far back as 1940, Gen. George C. (Blood and Guts) Patton proposed the perfect solution to Phenix City. He threatened to send tanks to level Dillingham Street and the infested area around the city's main traffic artery adjacent to the Fourteenth Street Bridge. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson inspected the record a few years later and declared that "Phenix City is the wickedest city in the United States."

In 1952, a United States District Court judge. A. B. Conger, after listening to details of how Korean War veterans had fared at the hands of the clip joint entrepenuers, declared that there would be a lot less trouble "if a fence could be erected around Phenix City."

On two occasions during World War II, the Army was goaded into declaring the entire town off limits, but the pressure from the politically powerful mobsters was too great for the order to stand.

There were a few occasions when soldiers grouped together to deliver a lacing to some of the toughs from the Fourteenth Street pleasure parlors. These fistic affairs always ended the same way— with MP's coming to the rescue of the misued citizenry.

Once a large group of fed-up soldiers were stopped at bridge by police and military guards who deterred them from their mission of putting a torch to the town which had been the source of so much grief to them and their buddies before them.

Federal narcotics agents told the authors of this book that during the war year the dope problem in Phenix City got completely out of hand and undercover agents spent months there trying to pull the stinger from the world's most vicious racket. At that time, according to the dope sleuths, this citadel of corruption, was among the "hottest spots" in the nation.

Military authorities talked to numerous soldiers who became dope addicts in Phenix City, and learned that it was almost as easy to acquire a shot of morphine as it was to buy a beer. You simply had to know the right door to knock on and ask to be accommodated.

Guard investigators in July, 1954, found ample evidence of a dope traffic of alarming proportions. In a filthy room in the rear of the 514 Club, on Dillingham Street, they found thirty-two hypodermic needles, along with piles of empty narcotics containers. The place was operated by W. C. Roney and his son, Lawrence.

In April, 1954, Colonel Bieri, Provost Marshal at Fort Benning, ordered a survey of slot machines in operation at a dozen of the gambling places. The survey was completed just two months before the beginning of the big clean-up, and at a time when local law enforcement officers were denying the existence of gambling there.

The report showed thirteen places off limits, though it did not list the reason for the action on those places, while other places frequented by soldiers continued to operate open gambling.

The places off limits at that time were:

Bama Club, 500 Dillingham Street; nine slot machines, nine pinball machines with payoffs; two horse-racing machines; baseball blackboard (lottery type).

Blue Goose, 1000 Brick Yard Road; four slot machines; one dice table; one poker table; one blackjack table.

Manhattan Cafe, 203 14th Street; twelve slot machines; five horse-racing machines; four pinball machines, with pay-off; one blackjack table; one dice table; one poker table— all in operation.

Hi-Lo Club, 215 14th Street; eight slot machines; four pinball machines; one poker table; one dice table; one blackjack table, with a large amount of money in circulation.

Skyline Club, Highway 431 North; four slot machines; two dice tables; one blackjack table.

Hi-Way Tavern, Highway 431 North; two slot machines; one dice table; one poker table; large amount of money in sight.

Bennie's Cafe, 519 Dillingham Street; seventeen one-armed bandits; two dice tables; baseball blackboard (lottery type).

Cliff's Fish Camp, Highway 80 North; two morocco games, large amount of money.

Yarbrough's Cafe, 204 14th Street; four slot machines; four pinball machines; one large poker table with ten players.

Star Light Cafe, 1719 South Railroad Street; off limits but no gambling equipment listed.

Club Avalon, 1500 Seale Road; five slot machines, one horse race machine; dice table with ten players when checked.

New York Club, 1648 Fountain Road; five slot machines, poker game in back room, dice table with five players when checked,

602 Club, Brick Yard Road; twenty slot machines; six horse-racing machines.

Singers Paradise, 1600 Fountain Road; off limits but no gambling devices listed.

The Army's policy in declaring places off limits for gambling, according to Colonel Bieri, was determined by whether most of the income of the places was derived from gambling.

If was considered by the Department of the Army to be detrimental to the welfare of military personnel for soldiers to frequent establishments where gambling was the principal commodity.

The places listed are those which were off limits as of April 5, 1954. Army authorities explained that the list changed from time to time. A place declared off limits one month might be open for Army personnel the next, should the operator meet the required standards.

There were few places in Phenix City that had not been off base to soldiers. Sometimes more than half of them were. That meant a windfall for those spots still allowed to cater to the Gl trade. Most joints were willing to sacrifice a few slot machines, or a dice table, in order to get in under the wire.

By the Army's own count, on April 5, 1954, some of the places open for soldier trade had more gambling than many of those off limits. The swank Bamboo Club, for instance, had four slot machines, one blackjack table with six players, and a dice table with twenty players.

Perhaps in fairness it should be noted that the Bamboo Club, operated by a tough named W. T. Thurmond, Jr., did not cater to the casual soldier trade. The dice games there ran into the big money, and Thurmond didn't want low paid GI's around cluttering up the scenery. A few higher paid officers courted dame chance at Thurmond's crap tables, but he wouldn't let MP's hang around. He once roughly escorted two MP's from his club and told them not to come back. He further informed them that he would eject a provost marshal or a five-star general.

The 514 Club, 514 Dillingham Street, was not off limits, though it had ten slot machines; three horse-racing machines; one pin-ball machine; one dice table and one blackjack table. If more than half the revenue of this place was not derived from gambling, then the extra income could only have been explained by the presence of the hypo needles found in the back room, or the dozens of cases of rubber prophylactics also found there. Certainly no one could seriously contend that the food business at the 514 would amount to enough for the monthly light bill.

Also open for service personnel in April was the Golden Rule Cafe, 1500 Third Avenue, with four slot machines, three horse racing machines; a pin ball machine and a large poker table upstairs. At this place the Army investigator was refused entrance. The Golden Rule was operated by France Knighton, poet-laureate of the gambling set.

He dressed in outlandish clothes, his ensemble usually consisting of a loud-colored cap, red-checked shirt and pink trousers. He spent his spare time writing epic poems about the stealing of elections, the Russell Betterment Association, and even the gamblers themselves.

After all liquor licenses were revoked on order of Governor Gordon Persons, July 23, 1954, Knighton was the only operator with nerve enough to approach General "Crack"  Hanna and ask for his license back. He assured Hanna that he had operated a clean establishment, free from gambling. Hanna, who had the gambling records of the Golden Rule in his pocket, along with a warrant for Knighton's arrest, listened, then made a counter proposal. He would return the license, he said, if Knighton was willing to swear to an affidavit— subjecting himself to perjury prosecution— that no gambling had existed at his place.

The poet-gambler knew he had lost his hand. He admitted to the gambling operations at his place, picked up his fancy cap and walked to the jail.

Soldiers were welcome— and the Army didn't mind— at Red Top Cafe, on Highway 541 North, where pot-bellied Sam Johnson kept slot machines, pinball machines, a dice table and blackjack table. Johnson also had an elaborate warning device by which the gambling room could be warned of any impending trouble, though that seemed hardly necessary in Phenix City.

Other places "on limits" to soldiers included the famous Ma Beachie's Swing Club, Club Lasso, the Silver Slipper Cafe, Haytag Cafe, Riverside Cafe and the Coffee Pot. All these places were noted either as prostitution pickup points, or specialized in B-girls and knockout drops, or both.

Fort Benning authorities tried for fourteen years to keep some order in Phenix City, at least to protect its own personnel against the leeches who drained their financial blood every month.

On the night of Albert Patterson's murder, when a killer's bullet shocked the people of Alabama into a full awareness of the corruption of Phenix City, prostitution was running rampant; the whir and clang of slot machines could be heard above the Sunday sermons at half a hundred churches; narcotics and "goof balls" could readily be obtained; a payday night never passed that some luckless GI didn't collect his lumps from the knucks or blackjacks wielded by the bouncers who protected the harlots and crooks. Soldiers were still being drugged and rolled. In short, Phenix City was conducting business as usual.

The United States Infantry that never tasted defeat in battle was never able to will a victory in the grim "Battle of Phenix."

Chapter XXI-The High Command
CHAPTER XXI

THE HIGH COMMAND 

YOU DON’T RUN A $50,000,000 crime machine with slogans and resolutions. There are always those who would like to muscle in on a good racket. Some of them can't be dissuaded with gentle hints. In some cases, it becomes necessary to drop a body— well weighted— into a deep part of the Chattahoochee. A simple, hard-hitting philosophy; a rule of business in a town where a man had to be tough to keep in business and smart to keep ahead of the competition.

The inner council of the racket high command was composed of no more than a half dozen persons, with each having his chain of command, his lieutenants and his mugs who were always available to carry out orders as they were handed down.

No person familiar with the Phenix City operations could doubt where the final power lay when there was an important decision to be made concerning gambling in any form. The boss who presided at alt such meetings was J. Hoyt Shepherd, and his chief advisor was his partner and long-time friend, Jimmy Matthews.

Shepherd stepped into the top spot following the death of Mayor Homer D. Cobb, in the late I940's. Cobb was a benevolent, strong-man mayor who held undisputed control over all things political in the town he ran and loved. Until Cobb's death, politics ran the rackets. It was only after his strong hand was removed from the helm that the underworld gained the upper hand and ran politics.

Mayor Cobb was not, himself, a racketeer. He was a practical man who faced a tough situation and decided to make the best of it.

As pointed out elsewhere in this book, Phenix City was a municipality almost devoid of any industrial backbone, so could not depend for revenue upon the sources from which most cities derive the main portion of their operating expenses. Mayor Cobb recognized this fact in the black depression years of the I930's and looked about for a way to keep the town out of receivership. It was then that a working alliance was made between the city fathers and the hungry gamblers who wanted to secure foothold close to the multimillion-dollar monthly payroll at Fort Benning, In return for permission to operate, the gamblers saw to it that the town received sufficient income to keep out of the bankruptcy courts.

If the arrangement wasn't always a happy one, it at least had the virtue of accomplishing its purpose for both sides. The gamblers had their bastion. The city had its revenue, and the people of Alabama had on their hands a festering sore that was to spread its poison through the entire body politic.

When the bars of law enforcement were let down, Phenix City became a giant magnet, attracting to it all of the itinerant gamblers, pimps, ladies of pleasure, and assorted cutthroats from surrounding states.

The situation was bound to get out of hand, and it did. Only a few weeks before his death, Mayor Cobb confided to friends that the crime monster they had created in Phenix had grown too big for anyone to control, and admitted that he was fearful of the future,

At Cobb's death. Shepherd was ready to step into the top role and supply the steadying hand. His right to the job was recognized even by those who disliked him personally, or were jealous of the success he and Matthews had enjoyed since he came, penniless, into the domain nearly two decades before.

Shepherd was a man of sound reason and good judgment. He was a student of humanity and seemed to know instinctively just how far the public would let the racketeers go. He was, for a gambler, a cautious man, and his advice was sought after and heeded. His regime was cursed by the greed of some of the second-string mobsters, and the avarice of law enforcement officers whose appetites grew bigger and bigger with each payoff.

Just as Mayor Cobb had predicted, the monster got out of control and began feeding upon itself while striking out blindly at all those it considered its enemies. The pattern of self-destruction began taking shape in 1952 with the senseless beating of citizens by mobsters, and the bombing and burning of homes and offices of the people who tried to oppose the racket bosses.

Those who know Shepherd and Matthews are sure these things were done without their knowledge or advice. They bore the marks of a thick-headed gangster rather than the smooth planning of a master strategist.

The ambush murder of Albert Patterson was the final, senseless act which brought the crime kingdom crashing about the ears of those who had so carefully built and nurtured it from its inception.

In the modem history of the city's shadowy career, the names of Shepherd, Jimmy Matthews, C. O. (Head) Revel, Godwin Davis Sr., George Davis Sr., Sheriff Ralph Mathews, Chief Deputy Sheriff Albert Fuller, Solicitor Arch B. Ferrell, and Assistant Police Chief Willis M. (Buddy) Jowers,  stand out above all others.

Following would be the names of Glenn and Ernest Youngblood, Wilson McVey, E. L. (Red) Cook, Clyde Yarbrough, A. B. (Buck) Billingsley, Cliff Entrekin, J. D. Abney, Stewart McCollister, John Benefield, Robert (Shorty) Myrick, E. V. Boone, Frank Gullatt, W. C. and Lawrence Roney, Rudene Smith, H. C Harden, Jr., France Knighton, C. W. Franklin, A. C. Griggs, B. L. Cole, W. T. Thurmond Jr., H. J. (Pap) Revel, Godwin Davis Jr., Billy Clark, Mayor Elmer E. Reese, R. W, (Heavy) Daugherty, John Hovey, Sam L. Johnson, James Bush, H. C. Edwards, Jimmie Putnam, J. F. Claridy Sr., and Charlie Byrd.

There has been no effort in compiling the above list to rank the cast of characters in order of their importance to the Phenix City scene, nor is it intended as a complete list of persons who were active in, or profited by, the lawless activities.

Some of the named persons were merely operators of joints, who went along for the ride and paid their fare. That was one cardinal rule-nobody rode on a pass. Everybody was expected to do his bit around election time, either through cash contributions to the political slush fund, or by other and more direct methods of getting out the vote for the right people.

Men like Mayor Reese were only figureheads, used by the machine wherever needed. He always won his elections handily, and, in return, gave orders to his policemen not to raid any gambling joints or pick up slot machines even if they stumbled over them.

There were many others over the years who left their imprint on Phenix City. The day passed for such one-time political powers as Lum Griggs, Jim Harris and Yarbrough. They were succeeded by the more forceful and energetic set composed of Fuller, Ferrell, Mead Revel, Shepherd, Matthews, and their lieutenants.

SHEPHERD

JOHN HOYT SHEPHERD was born on the Alabama side of the river on August 22, 1899, but moved as a child to LaGrange, Georgia, where, reports have it, his family were employed as cotton mill workers.

His life has been shrouded in mystery, and even less is known of his family, except that he had one brother, Grady (Snooks) Shepherd, who worked with Hoyt in Phenix City until the late 1940's, then went back to LaGrange to operate a taxi company until he died of cancer in 1949.

Courthouse records at LaGrange shed no light at all on the Shepherd family, and they were not prominent enough to have been remembered by the townsfolk over the years.

Hoyt first made FBI record files in 1924, when he was sentenced from Troup County, Georgia, to serve a year on a manslaughter charge, but it was later dropped. Two years later, on December 28, 1932, he was arrested in Jersey City as a "disorderly person" but the disposition of the case was not shown.

The most serious violation was leveled against him on September 23, 1946, when he was charged, along with his brother, Grady, and his partner, Matthews, with the murder of Fayette D. Leebern. At Hoyt's trial, brotherly love won out and Grady took the blame. Hoyt was freed by the jury, and Grady then came to trial and won an acquittal on a plea of self-defense. Matthews was never indicted on the charge.

Shepherd has since paid gambling fines in both Columbus and Phenix City.

Hoyt's first wife, an alcoholic, since deceased, left him after having three children, two girls and a boy. All of them are of good reputation, and the son works in the Post Office at Phenix City, One daughter is married and the other is in college at Auburn.

By his second wife, Josephine, Hoyt has one small son, whom he tikes to show off as does any proud father.

Josephine, a tall, striking blond, was born in the shanty-town section of Columbus, Georgia, and first caught the eye of the master gambler while working as a dice girl. Hoyt sent Josephine to a "charm school" in Atlanta, where she learned how to dress and was taught the art of makeup. She acquired the charm and poise to go with her already superb figure.

Shepherd is reputed to be wealthy, owning much real estate in Alabama and Florida, as well as gilt-edged securities, stocks and bonds.

He owns tourist courts and citrus fruit companies in Florida, as well as a high priced tourist court, called The Pines, just a few miles out of Phenix City, and within the police jurisdiction of Opelika. He is reputed to own an interest in a large automobile dealership in Auburn, Alabama.

There is a rumor, unverified, that Shepherd tried once to gain a foothold in Miami, but the local syndicate took a dim view of such outside competition. According to this widely circulated story, which Shepherd denies, one morning his chauffeur stepped on the starter of Shepherd's Cadillac and was blown as high as the limit on Shepherd's dice tables. Shepherd allegedly took the hint.

He is known to have bankrolled gambling in several states, including Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Maryland, and perhaps Mississippi and Louisiana. He and Matthews backed a Birmingham racketeer, Winston Reynolds, in a big lottery venture in Tallahassee, Fla. Reynolds, who served a five-year prison term in Alabama for conning a widow out of her life savings, was convicted in the Summer of 1954, of evading federal gambling taxes.

Reynolds drew a seven-year federal penitentiary sentence and a fine of $12,500. Shepherd was called as a government witness in the Reynolds trial, but never was placed on the witness stand.

On October 27, 1954, Shepherd crossed the state line into Georgia for the first time since the night in September, 1948, when Leebern was killed by gunfire in the high dice room of the Southern Manor Club (now the 241 Club) in Phenix City. Shepherd lives in fear of his life. He has reason. Four times since 1948 he narrowly has escaped death at the hands of assassins. Once a bullet from a high powered rifle knocked a brick from a wall above his head. The shot had been fired from a hill on the Georgia side of the river. Shepherd later advised his partner not to build his house on a hill where it could be seen from the Georgia bank, explaining that "they can knock you off from there with a high powered rifle with telescopic sights."

Shepherd broke his long rule against setting foot in Georgia to visit a cancer specialist in Atlanta, for a check on two small sores on his face. Shepherd's father, as well as his brother, died of cancer.

A shrewd man, with little formal education, Shepherd has an inordinate curiosity to know all that is going on around him, particularly anything that might affect him. Usually he depends for his information on numerous operatives and contact men on both sides of the river. Since he was indicted during the Phenix City crime cleanup in four cases of renting property for gambling purposes, he came to the City Hall, disguised, to call on Acting Military Police Chief Colonel James N. Brown. He was dressed in coveralls and wore a painter's cap. He and Matthews pleaded guilty in two of the four cases against them, and drew fines, plus ninety-day prison sentences. They began serving those sentences on November 29, 1954.

Shepherd is a born “dealer" and doesn't hesitate to make a trade with his enemies if that course appears advisable. He tried several times to make deals with state officers conducting the cleanup. As early as the Fall of 1951, he tried to make a deal with Hugh Bentley, head of the RBA. In a meeting arranged by Albert Patterson, Shepherd met the RBA leader and asked if he wanted a political office. When Bentley assured Shepherd he was not interested, the gambler countered by asking what was his price to halt the war on the gamblers.

Bentley told him he wanted only a clean town and honest elections, and further advised Shepherd that the RBA would finally beat him. Shepherd appeared distressed and said he had been thinking of quitting the rackets. He said he didn't sleep well, and worried a lot.

He did quit, along with his partner. It was shortly thereafter that he and Matthews turned in a warehouse full of slot machines, valued at nearly half a million dollars. He even got most of the other gamblers to cease operations, and it was a few weeks later that Bentley's home was bombed by disgruntled gamblers.

After leaving the active gambling field, Shepherd and Matthews rented several places to gamblers, and continued to draw profits from the illegal activity. Shepherd became even more active in politics-a game he loved second only to gambling. His activities in the field of politics are discussed in detail in another chapter.

Shepherd says he is through this time for good. He has confided to friends that he would be willing to give up all his ill-gotten gains to win a respected place in the community for the sake of his children..

He likes to refer to himself as a retired farmer, or as a contractor or cattleman. He and Matthews have donated freely to churches and charities, before and since they left the active gambling field. Of one thing you can always be sure with Shepherd: he'll be found playing the percentages in whatever he undertakes.

MATTHEWS

JIMMY MATTHEWS, born March 3, 1911, in South Shields, England, first came to Phenix City about 1951. He was the son of an English girl who married an American. When they came to America, Jimmy was with them, posing as his mother's brother. They have lived in Phenix City for years as brother and sister.

Matthews’ enemies have wondered why the government didn't report the gambler. Here, for the first time, the facts are made public. A few months ago U. S. Immigration authorities inquired about his citizenship, or lack of it, and told him to prove he was a citizen, or else.

Matthews went to a strongbox in Atlanta and obtained the papers proving his birth. They showed he became naturalized prior to 1926 under a law providing that when a parent of foreign nationality becomes naturalized, the minor child takes on citizenship status.

As a schoolboy, Jimmy sold papers and shot dice with his schoolmates at recess and after hours. He had as his tutor wily old Clyde Yarbrough, who took the little English lad under his wing early and taught him to handle crooked dice and marked cards. Later, he worked in the laundry at Fort Benning, and gambled on paydays with the GIs who were earning $21 per month. The laundry job was a sideline for the dexterous Matthews. It gave him a chance to run the soldiers through the cleaners, financially, every thirty days.

At twenty-one, Matthews had amassed a bank account of $11,000. It was about that time he met the penniless but ambitious Shepherd over a poker hand, and the S & M Syndicate was born, with Matthews' money as the backing.

Matthews is a smiling, blue-eyed, well-met fellow, who makes friends easily. He has always avoided the rough stuff. He is reputed to be the wealthiest man in Phenix City today, and is considered a wizard at handling money in the investment field. While Shepherd was the strong man of the S & M Syndicate, he often called on Matthews for advice on important matters.

Matthews is a slow man with a buck, and Shepherd once said of his bachelor partner that he would get married as soon as the government allowed husband and wife to split income for tax purposes. He did.

While Shepherd likes to show off in the most expensive Cadillac he can find, Matthews drives a battered car of cheap make. He buys a new car about every five years.

When Matthews learned that a book was to be written about Phenix City, he lent the authors two books, one of them dealing with the relationship between Chicago mobsters and politicians. He is an avid reader, and likes the classics. In a crowd, he would be the last person you would pick as a notorious racket figure,

He loved the feel of money, and spent his Sundays looting the slot machines which the S & M Syndicate operated in the Phenix City Pool Room, and the Ritz Cafe, before Shepherd and Matthews retired from the field as active gamblers. In the halcyon days, these two locations took in about $20,000 weekly.

FBI records show that James Ramsey Matthews was arrested for robbery by Columbus, Georgia, police on August 24, 1931. He pleaded guilty. On October 16, 1942, he was apprehended as a "proprietor" to face War Department charges. No disposition of the case was shown,

REVEL

C. O. (HEAD) REVEL was a product of Florida, where he was born one year after the turn of the century.

Of his childhood, almost nothing is known. But he came to public notice in 1917, when he was arrested on a burglary case in Montgomery, Alabama, That charge was dismissed but he was back on the record again two years later, when he drew a year on the Georgia chain gang for stealing an automobile, in 1921 he was convicted of grand larceny in Alabama and served a year in Kilby Prison.

After that stretch. Revel managed to escape arrest only until 1923, when he drew two more years for grand larceny.

On February 8, 1936, he was arrested in Miami for violating the immigration laws. He was, the government said, a member of a gang engaged in smuggling Chinese aliens from Cuba into hidden ports along the Florida Keys. For this, he drew five years in the federal penitentiary, and a $1,000 fine.

Before that, on Armistice Day, 1927, he had been arrested in Miami during an investigation of hi-jacking, and given hours to get out of town.

During his long, crime-studded career. Revel has been arrested many times on other charges, including one on which he drew a year in the federal lock-up for conspiracy to violate immigration laws. He paid fines on several whiskey charges and, in 1944, was indicted by the government on a liquor conspiracy which he beat when the government's principal witness, Johnny Frank Stringfellow, turned up missing, to be discovered four years later in a lime pit near Revel's Florida home.

Revel came to Phenix City in the late 30's, and entered business with an old Florida side-kick, Godwin Davis, Sr. Together they operated a lottery and gambling house, and dabbled in various other rackets. Later the partners split up, with Davis giving Revel the boot. Revel retaliated by moving in with a gang of armed thugs and loading all the slot machines on a truck, while Davis stood helplessly by.

Revel then went into business with George T. Davis, Sr., and Davis' son, George Jr., in the Bridge Grocery. It was perhaps the most unique business establishment ever to operate under the prosaic name of grocery store. It never had a can of beans on the shelves, and the place was jammed so full of  slot machines and gambling tables that a milkman would have had to come down the chimney to deliver his product. In conjunction with it was the largest lottery house ever to operate in Phenix City. The Metropolitan Lottery Company did a yearly gross business of well over $1,000,000 during the plush days of its existence. Revel and Davis also operated a music company, which farmed out both juke boxes and slot machines.

True to a greedy nature, Revel soon began trying to gain control of the profitable gambling enterprise. He started by getting the elder Davis addicted to narcotics to such an extent that he was in a stupor most of the time. Today, George T. Davis, Sr., is a hopeless addict, taking more than three grains of morphine daily.

Earlier, Revel framed the younger Davis, and accused him of dipping into the till. He sold the old man on the idea, and together they kicked the younger Davis loose from a financial tit worth $40,000 a year to him.

When Guardsmen entered the Bridge Grocery just thirty-six hours after martial rule was declared, they found the most complete gambling records and gambling equipment any of them had ever seen. They also found a small arsenal of guns, and a set of tools such as are used in safe burglaries.

Revel was not a gambler in the true sense of the word. He was a burglar by inclination and training. General Hanna, on the basis of facts dug up by his National Guard investigators, called Revel a master of safe-cracking, and said he operated the "Head Revel School of Burglary."

A sandy blond with regular features. Revel was as much at home in a tuxedo as in the coveralls of the safe burglar, He looked like a member of the local country club. He was rather stocky, well built, unpretentious and charming. In a friendly poker game or bull session. Revel \vas the best of companions.

Despite his mild manner. Revel had all the morals and conscience of a cobra. He is, as this is written, at large and widely sought for questioning in the Patterson murder case, as well as on fifty-five gambling indictments. He left his old haunts just hours before the first indictments were returned against him by the cleanup Grand Jury, taking with him an estimated $100,000 in cash. So far he has managed to elude a nation-wide manhunt, though investigators have been hot on his trail many times. Once they were only hours behind him in Americus, Georgia, where he signed papers giving his power of attorney to a lawyer there. It is believed he managed to get out of the country. There have been reports of his presence in Guatemala.

He has extensive real estate holdings in Alabama and Florida, but he may be willing to sacrifice them to federal income tax liens to avoid a long prison term.

His wife, Nora, and adopted son disappeared from their home in Phenix several weeks behind Revel, but since have returned to their home. Nora, who once taught a class of Sunshine Girls at the church she and her husband attended, was extremely jealous of her charming husband, and trusted him about as far as she could have towed the Queen Mary with anchor dragging. She caught Mabel Yarbrough with her husband one night and fired three shots at her from close range. One of them took effect under her heart, and Mabel almost cashed in her chips.

Revel is by far the most sinister figure ever to glide across the Phenix City scene, where dangerous men were almost as numerous as prostitutes and B-girls.

GODWIN DAVIS, SR.

JAMES GODWIN DAVIS, SR., 55, is like a rat that didn't get off the sinking ship in time. He guessed, wrongly, that he could ride out the cleanup as he had so many other crises during his career

Today he faces, with little relish, the prospect of two years behind prison bars. He has posted heavy fines, and his business enterprises are in such condition that he can't afford to leave if he were permitted.

Davis, like Revel, is believed to have been born in the Miami area, and spent most of his youth there. He calls himself a small operator, but the record belies this claim. He operated the big National Lottery Company with his son, Godwin Jr., and Jared Kenyon. It was second in size only to the Metropolitan Lottery, operated by Revel and George Davis. It ranked in the million dollar class, but his audit reports show that the net profit was less than $10,000 in 1950. That year he had heavy payoffs checked against his earnings, as well as a robbery which accounted for nearly $12,000, reportedly pulled by his former partner. Revel.

The loss to yeggmen might have been authentic, but it is highly unlikely that his lottery paid off nearly four-fifths of its gross, as he claimed.

The government didn't believe it, so they slapped him with a heavy tax lien for unreported income that year. Davis is paying the government $500 a month on a lien of $60,000, and settled with the State of Alabama for a cash payment of $4,900. Davis and his son each faced forty-four indictments on lottery cases, and Sonny, as the younger Davis is known, has been convicted on the first of the indictments against him. Both father and son were active in vote steals in the 1954 state elections, and the elder Davis admitted to a Grand jury in Birmingham that he contributed thousands of dollars to the campaign of Lee Porter, Gadsden attorney, who opposed Albert Patterson in the hard-fought Attorney General's race.

With his son, Davis owns a large trailer park on Victory Drive, in Columbus, Georgia, as well as most of the property near the Fourteenth Street Bridge.

Arrogant and tough when holding the high cards, Davis and his son went whining to the RBA, the state investigators, Guardsmen and everyone else who would listen, when it became apparent they faced prison terms. Godwin even offered to take the rap for his son and plead guilty, if Sonny could be allowed to remain free to operate the far-flung Davis enterprises.

Junior eventually went off for eighteen months. Senior will take a two year spin in the bastille after Junior comes home.

Senior once held a U. S. Government permit to wholesale malt beverages, but, in, 1952, the government got wise and denied the Davises a renewal of that permit. They found that he hadlied about his criminal record, and listed it for him. It included:

1925 fined $200, violation of National Prohibition Act.

1925 indicted, violation Seer, 5440, nolle-prossed.

1930 fined $100, violation N. P. A. at Miami.

1930 fined $400 violation N. P. A. at Miami.

1930-31, four cases of reckless driving.

1930 fined $25 for gambling.

1931 indicted for conspiracy to violate N. P. A.

1938 arrested "resisting arrest." case dropped.

1938 arrested, assault with intent to murder, nolle-prossed,

1939 fined $5 and costs, keeping gambling machines.

1941 fined $10, operating slot machines.

1942 arrested for keeping slot machines, case nolle-prossed.

1944 indicted for conspiracy to violate U. S. Internal Revenue laws. Verdict not guilty. (That was the case in which Stringfellow was the government witness who came up dead.)

1948 indicted on a charge of murder (Stringfellow). Case dropped from docket in 1950 without prosecution.

1950 fined $1,000 in Columbus, Georgia, for possession of slot machines.

1950 fined $500, Russell County, Alabama, for possession of slot machines and operating a lottery.

1952 fined $250, Russell County, for possessing slot machines.

Though it wasn't listed on the government's report, Davis and his son were both indicted on twenty-three charges of possessing slot machines in Georgia in 1954. They entered pleas of guilty to several of the charges, and received fines of $5,000 and jail sentences of seven and one half years. The sentences were probated.

The government observed that the partem of lawlessness on the part of the elder Davis was clear, and that it was being discussed at length, both in fairness to the applicants "and to the possible future filing by them or any of them, for renewal permits."

"While there was not absent a measure of brilliance or agility on the part of Godwin Davis, Sr., during the course of his testimony at the hearing in this matter," the government noted, "there was absent (at least in our view) a measure of frankness and candor. The matter at times seemed considerably confused, although we think not without purpose and deliberation. ..."

The application tor permit for the Tri-State Beverage Company, was in the names of Godwin Davis Sr., James Burke and Mrs. June Davis, daughter-in-law of Godwin Davis. The government felt, and so stated, that the money behind the company belonged entirety to Davis.

Faced with his record, Godwin admitted it in most part, but denied a couple of minor charges, saying it was somebody of the same name. A pan of Davis' testimony went like this;

"Let's kind of get back down there-when I filed for my basic permit wav back yonder, twelve years ago, I admitted all that. I haven't got no secrets and dark past. ... I did all those things you asked when I was a boy. But when I quit, I quit. Somewhere in the early I920's,"

The Davises are disliked, even by the gamblers and shadowy underworld element of Phenix City. The respect they command is through fear.

ALBERT FULLER

ALBERT FULLER, 35-year-old gun-swinging deputy, was by all odds the most powerful law enforcement figure who walked hand in hand with the underworld. He was feared for his quick gun and ready trigger finger. He rose to power and prominence only six years before the crime machine toppled, but it is doubtful whether any other person, including the biggest gambling operators, raked in the profits that Fuller did.

He was a shakedown artist of no mean ability, and never missed a. chance to turn a dishonest dollar. It was under his directorship that prostitution grew to be the highly organized and profitable business it was. Not only did he furnish protection in exchange for a third of the income, he was ever on the alert for new talent for the beds of the brothels. It was through him that the arrest racket was operated. Fuller would put the pinch on a likely chick and throw her into the Russell County hoosegow, where she would stay until visited by some of the sex camp operators. They would offer bond on a work-it-out-in-trade basis. Fuller could make such an offer most attractive by the methods he employed in the jail.

On occasions he even used the jail as a call house, sending soldiers at $20 a head back to spend an hour in the women's department.

Though married, Fuller always kept his personal stable of women. He is known to have kept three women in Columbus, Georgia, at one time, buying them cars, clothes and apartments. He was jealous, and would often go into a rage when he felt one of them had been two-timing him. On such occasions he would break furniture and kick out windows, while threatening to kill anyone who double crossed him.

The three women knew each other, and each knew of the other's relationship with Fuller. They sometimes got together in a little frameup on the deputy, The one who knew she would be with Albert at a particular time would pass this information on to the others. If they had any cheating to do, they did it then. He once threatened to kill an Army lieutenant he learned had been dating one of his women. The woman concealed the officer's identity to protect him.

He explained his increasing girth to his brother, Buddy, on one occasion, by saying that his amorous activities sometimes required him to eat three dinners.

His first romantic involvement was with Mabel Yarbrough, young wife of an aging gambler, Mabel spent most of her husband's fortune on Fuller in the days before the deputy had acquired his roll. Later, she helped Albert spend a good part of his.

Mary Arthur Cheshire, a honey-colored blond, was one of Fuller's favorites for years. To keep her close by him-and also to watch her-he got her a job as a hostess at Chad's Rose Room, one of the nicer Phenix City nighteries. He met her while she was employed in the jewelry department of a large Columbus, Georgia, department store. He showered her with gifts, but sometimes beat her when he thought she had been stepping out behind his back.

As chief deputy sheriff of Russell County, Fuller ruled by brute force. U. S. Treasury agents are checking on reports he shook down as much as $6,000 weekly from gambling and prostitution operations for protection, and believe he has a large part of that stashed away in a strong box somewhere.

He went with Sheriff Ralph Matthews at a salary of $200 per month after coming home from Navy service in World War II. His buddies in the Navy looked upon him as a pudgy clown, and he was pushed around by anyone who felt like it. It was not until he got a gun in his hand that he became a bully.

After a couple of killings to his credit. Fuller found that his gun commanded respect he could not get otherwise. He grew to love his guns, and owned thirty of them at the time

Guardsmen disarmed him, following declaration of martial rule. Among them was a gold-and-silver inlaid .557 caliber magnum, a heavy, powerful revolver, valued at several hundred dollars.

Fuller had an intense dislike for Godwin Davis Sr., and the feeling was mutual. Davis told the authors of this book he had repeatedly warned Fuller that his greedy shake-down tactics would bring the gambling empire tumbling down upon him. In this bit of advice, Shepherd joined Davis.

The racketeers held regular meetings in the sheriff's office, with Sheriff Matthews and Fuller present. Fuller's behavior was often the main topic of discussion at these meetings. Sheriff Matthews was dominated by his chief deputy, if he wasn't actually afraid to buck him. Fuller could not be controlled by anyone, and from 1948 until the crash came, Fuller grew bigger and more powerful. Shepherd once warned him that his actions would get him a long prison term, but Fuller shrugged it off.

Shepherd and Matthews lost some of their power after their retirement from active gambling operations, and Fuller moved in more and more. He teamed with Revel, the two of them hoping to get the whole fantastic crime operation under their thumbs. Their closest associate was Solicitor Ferrell, who acted as a kind of legal advisor to them. Ferrell expressed admiration for both Revel and Fuller even after both were under a host of indictments, and were suspects in the Patterson killing.

The ultimate goal of Fuller and Revel was domination not only of Phenix City, but of the entire South. This was not unlikely, inasmuch as Revel was already strong in Florida, and had a close-knit crime machine operating over much of the country.

Fuller was a show-off, and liked to flash $1,000 bills. He had a standing offer to buy any $1,000 bills that came into the joints. He has been seen with seventy to eighty of them at one time.

The feud between Godwin Davis and Fuller often threatened to erupt. Fuller told the gambler he had better stop talking about him, because everything Davis said was relayed to him. Friends warned Davis that Fuller would blow his head off, and Davis suggested that unless the deputy drew fast there would be two heads ventilated.

Fuller at one time shared his payoff from prostitution with W. M. (Buddy) Jowers, the assistant chief of police. Later he and Jowers had a falling out and became bitter enemies. Jowers, who towered six feet, four inches and weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, was perhaps the only man in Phenix City who had no dread of Fuller's gun. The assistant police chief was a rough-and-ready character, who had got his seasoning as a bootlegger. A relative of Mayor Elmer E. Reese, Jowers was given the police job after Reese persuaded a federal court judge to dismiss a five-year probationary sentence against him for liquor conspiracy.

Fuller and Jowers began raiding in each other's territory. The places under Fuller's protection were raided by Jowers, and Fuller, in turn, started knocking off Jowers' friends.

On July 4, 1954, Fuller suffered serious injuries, including two back fractures. He said he fell from a horse, but the story persists that Jowers kicked him into unconsciousness and left him for dead. Jowers took off for other scenes, leaving a string of indictments behind him, but was later apprehended in Texas, and is awaiting trial.

Fuller as this is written, has been convicted of murdering Patterson, and has appealed a life sentence. He is also under a seven-year prison sentence for taking bribes from Cliff Entrekin operator of Cliff's Fish Camp, one of the best known whorehouses in the district. Fuller faces nine other bribery cases, plus a dozen other indictments growing out of election frauds.

A native of Russell County, Fuller owns no property locally, though he is thought to have had interests near Orange, Texas. His 1953 state income tax return shows he claims to have paid $6,000 to the federal government in income taxes, in a year in which his visible income was $300 a month.

The state tax return didn't show where he received the additional money.

ARCH B. FERRELL

ARCH B FERRELL, the ambitious Circuit Solicitor of Russell County, played politics to win. With the early training he received around the polling places m Phenix City, Ferrell reportedly tried, in 1954, to salvage the election which Porter had just lost to Patterson.

Ferrell was a bitter enemy of the elder Patterson, who had sworn to clean out the rackets in Phenix City if elected State Attorney General. But it was not for personal reasons alone that Ferrell called Shepherd from Birmingham on the night of June 3 and reported that Porter was losing and the election had to be saved. Shepherd gave the order for the Phenix City election specialists to move out over the state and gather enough votes to insure Porters election. This, remember, was after the election was held, but before the official count was made in most of the state's sixty-seven counties,

Ferrell, thirty-seven, is a brilliant lawyer and prosecutor, but can't control his personal drinking habits. Consequently, he is often seen in a drunken condition downtown. He comes from an old, well established Russell County family of lawyers.

Ferrell served in the Army and rose to the rank of captain. After the war he received an appointment from Governor Folsom to the job of solicitor of the newly-created circuit of Russell County. Ironically, it was Patterson who sponsored the legislative act which created a circuit in Russell County, and thus put Patterson's worse enemy in a position of power and influence.

Ferrell had influence and friends throughout the state, as demonstrated by the fact that he was elected and served a year as commander of the American Legion in Alabama. There could be no doubt that Ferrell had his eyes on bigger political plums in the state.

He saw those ambitions crumble under the impact of a Grand Jury indictment in Birmingham, which accused him of helping to engineer a steal of six hundred votes from the official election records. The votes were added to the Porter total and the sheets changed to add up to the new total.

Since then, Ferrell has been indicted by the Russell County Grand Jury for violation of the state's corrupt practices act which act deals with the conduct of political campaigns.

A jury acquitted him in the Birmingham vote steal and he paid a fine to satisfy the charge against him in Russell.

Ferrell also was charged with Patterson's murder but a Birmingham jury freed him on that count, too, on May 4,1955.

A man of violent temper, Ferrell once broke Jimmie Putnam's jaw, though Putnam, the city clerk, was one of his closest friends. Ferrell was fined $101.50 on March 9, 1953, for assault and battery in that case.

He was in court again on February 28, 1954, when he paid a $5 fine and $10 costs in Macon County for speeding. The case. No. 1043, was reduced from reckless driving on Ferrell's plea of guilty.

His next brush with the law was on August 8, 1954, when he was arrested in Phenix City and charged with speeding, reckless driving and driving while intoxicated. The first two charges were dismissed, and he was fined $101.50 on the driving while intoxicated charge, in Case No. 38059.

Ferrell served as legal advisor to the racketeers, and his position in the setup was at or near the top. Ferrell told the authors on one occasion that he "was the boss of the outfit" and that his orders were countermanded by nobody. Ferrell was under the influence of drink at the time of the conversation. He may have been inflating his importance to some extent, but there was no doubt that his word was enough to set off a statewide vote steal, and even Boss Shepherd acted on the advice of Arch.

As indicated elsewhere in this book, there was evidence that Ferrell was casting his lot more and more with the firebrands and "young Turks" of the rackets. He occupied the ideal position to swing the most weight, since it is the solicitor, in most cases, who writes grand jury reports, and who works with and advises that body in all its deliberations. He holds the power of prosecution or nolle-prosse— a powerful weapon in the kind of war he fought.

One of Ferrell's friends paraphrased the words of Shakespeare, in describing Ferrell’s downfall. "If ambition," he said, "can lift a man to the heights, it can also plunge him into the depths— and Ferrell was an ambitious man."

There were other important figures in the high command of Phenix City. E. L. (Red) Cook, a ready enforcer of machine edicts, cut a wide path. Clyde Yarbrough's influence was on the wane before Phenix City entered its most roaring era, but it was he who had served as coach and mentor to many of the men who were to command extensive racket enterprises.

Support and substance was drawn from people who were never a part of the machine. Such was the case with certain attorneys who served the mobsters in legal capacities.

Two brothers, Joe and Roy Smith, enjoyed a lucrative practice from legal business thrown their way by some of the higher echelon gamblers. The Smith brothers, for the sake of their practice, never became completely identified with either side and numbered among their friends, supporters and clients all elements of the jurisdiction in which they practiced,

Roy has long served as city attorney for Phenix City. It was well established that no avowed enemy of the racket machine could hold such office in the days when the machine was in full control, but he still holds his position, with the support from the good people of Phenix City. Roy is considered a practical man who knows when to fight and when to keep quiet.

Joe will serve during 1955-59 as State Senator from the counties of Russell and Lee. He won that position without the support of the machine, but with the full backing of the RBA and the church elements of the city and county. Roy was one of his brother's strongest supporters, and helped htm to become one of the first men in years to win public office against the machine.

Since the cleanup, Joe has represented several of the top gamblers and crooks, such as Shepherd and Matthews and Fuller,

While he does not walk the fence with quite the grace and dexterity of his brother, Joe has successfully kept his contacts on both sides, and has wide influence.

Sheriff Matthews poses what is perhaps the toughest problem of classification. He was always at the beck and call of such men as Shepherd, yet he enjoyed the admiration of many of the anti-vice elements of the county. This is shown by his overwhelming popularity at the polls. All of this could not be accounted for by the activities of the machine.

Matthews may be, as some say, a weak man who would rather drift with the tide than buck a hopeless situation. He cooperated fully with state law enforcement officers in the cleanup.

On the other hand, Matthews may have been a smarter, smoother operator than some of his supporters believed. There has been no evidence uncovered to date that definitely links him with any graft or payoffs, yet he allowed his chief deputy a free rein in his shakedown activities.

Sheriff Matthews has no criminal record. In this he is unlike the former acting police chief, Pal M. Daniel, who served a federal prison sentence for embezzlement before coming on the police force at Phenix City,

Matthews pleaded guilty to charges of willful neglect of duty. He has retired from public life after resigning his job last September 1, and is now operating his pig farm.